The Best of Subterranean

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From its launch in 2005 to its final issue in 2014, Subterranean magazine published stories by the leading lights of science fiction and fantasy literature. From Hugo and Nebula winners to Pulitzer and Booker Prize finalists to New York Times bestsellers, this anthology collects 30 pieces of Subterranean’s best, representing diverse, breathtaking short fiction from today’s modern masters.

In “Last Breath” Joe Hill spins the tale of a man who collects the breaths of the dying for his haunting museum. Catherynne M. Valente’s “White Lines on a Green Field” chronicles what might happen if Coyote became a small town high school quarterback. Karen Joy Fowler’s “Younger Women” finds a woman confronting her daughter’s new boyfriend, who happens to be a vampire. Visit the Twilight Zone via George R.R. Martin in the script “The Toys of Caliban”. In Ted Chiang’s “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling” the narratives of a journalist and a young man are told in contrast, both impacted by technology and literacy. And in Kelley Armstrong’s “The Screams of Dragons” a boy is declared a changeling and things only get stranger from there. Other pieces visit far-flung space and intimate sick rooms, the futuristic pyramids of the rich and a jungle where a man-eating tiger stalks a village.

Contents:
- Perfidia by Lewis Shiner
- Game by Maria Dahvana Headley
- The Last Log of the Lachrimosa by Alastair Reynolds
- The Seventeenth Kind by Michael Marshall Smith
- Dispersed by the Sun, Melting in the Wind by Rachel Swirsky
- The Pile by Michael Bishop
- The Bohemian Astrobleme by Kage Baker
- Tanglefoot by Cherie Priest
- Hide and Horns by Joe R. Lansdale
- Balfour and Meriwether in The Vampire of Kabul by Daniel Abraham
- Last Breath by Joe Hill
- Younger Women by Karen Joy Fowler
- White Lines on a Green Field by Catherynne M. Valente
- The Least of the Deathly Arts by Kat Howard
- Water Can't Be Nervous by Jonathan Carroll
- Valley of the Girls by Kelly Link
- Sic Him, Hellhound! Kill! Kill! by Hal Duncan
- Troublesolving by Tim Pratt
- The Indelible Dark by William Browning Spencer
- The Prayer of Ninety Cats by Caitlín R. Kiernan
- The Crane Method by Ian R. MacLeod
- The Tomb of the Pontifex Dvorn by Robert Silverberg
- The Toys of Caliban by George R.R. Martin
- The Secret History of the Lost Colony by John Scalzi
- The Screams of Dragons by Kelley Armstrong
- The Dry Spell by James P. Blaylock
- He Who Grew Up Reading Sherlock Holmes by Harlan Ellison
- A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong by K.J. Parker
- The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling by Ted Chiang
- A Long Walk Home by Jay Lake