Beyond the Beyond: Science Fiction Grand Master

PASSENGERS In this Nebula Award winning short story, unseen visitors can come without warning and inhabit our minds for days at a time. Taking over our bodies, controlling our will for their own selfish, immoral joyrides. Society makes adaptations in its mores and taboos. Since people being ridden have no volition in their actions, they are best ignored. And any action—crime, murder, or rape committed while one in ridden is best forgotten and ignored if at all possible. Becoming conscious after such an psychic invasion is disorienting. For one man who has flashes of memory of his time being “ridden” by a passenger, memories of an uncontrolled sexual encounter impels him to break society’s taboo of forgetting this chance encounter. And he becomes, perversely, compelled to seek her out. “Passengers” is not the only highly-acclaimed masterpiece included within. The other four stories were nominated for multiple major SF awards—and highlight the author’s mastery of the language and his capacity to engage the reader fully in worlds of his own making. Included in this collection are such classic tales as “The Macauley Circuit”, “A Thief in Ni-Moya”, and “Lion Time in Timbuctoo”.