Brian Stableford - The growth of the House of Usher

Unsettling story in which the narrator visits Rowland Usher, in his gigantic gene-engineered 'house' on the Orinoco Delta. 'Gantz' gene-techniques can build shelter and other amenities for humanity but Usher is trying to push further, creating buildings which are eco-systems. He is dying of an incurable disease, the same one that killed his sister, whom the narrator imagines is haunting the house...

Karen Joy Fowler - Heartland

Odd very short story about the unhappy love affair of a burger bar waitress in what may be not this world/reality.

Eric Brown - The time-lapsed man

Thorn is an Engineman addicted to the flux of spaceflight. On shore leave he starts to notice a strange delay in his hearing of sounds. Things get worse...

Alex Stewart - Animator

Film critic Karen Taylor is amazed when she sees the special effects used by Tobdy Darke to create dinosaurs in a new film...

Phillip Mann - Lux in Tenebris

A frightened carpenter returning home late at night encounters lights and strange beings in the woods. Picking up a torch they leave, he later drops it in the village well and inadvertantly gives the well a 'holy' aura. But over time things change...

Julio Buck Abrera - Salvage

Distinctly unpleasant story about mutilating kidnapped children and forcing them to beg. ( )