Sixteen all-new stories by science fiction’s top talents, collected by bestselling author George R. R. Martin and multiple-award-winning editor Gardner Dozois

From pulp adventures such as Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Carson of Venus to classic short stories such as Ray Bradbury’s “The Long Rain” to visionary novels such as C. S. Lewis’s Perelandra, the planet Venus has loomed almost as large in the imaginations of science fiction writers as Earth’s next-nearest neighbor, Mars. But while the Red Planet conjured up in Golden Age science fiction stories was a place of vast deserts and ruined cities, bright blue Venus was its polar opposite: a steamy, swampy jungle world with strange creatures lurking amidst the dripping vegetation. Alas, just as the last century’s space probes exploded our dreams of Mars, so, too, did they shatter our romantic visions of Venus, revealing, instead of a lush paradise, a hellish world inimical to all life.

But don’t despair! This new anthology of sixteen original stories by some of science fiction’s best writers—edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author George R. R. Martin and award-winning editor Gardner Dozois—turns back the clock to that more innocent time, before the hard-won knowledge of science vanquished the infinite possibilities of the imagination.

Join our cast of award-winning contributors—including Elizabeth Bear, David Brin, Joe Haldeman, Gwyneth Jones, Mike Resnick, Eleanor Arnason, Allen M. Steele, and more—as we travel back in time to a planet that never was but should have been: a young, rain-drenched world of fabulous monsters and seductive mysteries.

FEATURING ALL-NEW STORIES BY

Eleanor Arnason • Elizabeth Bear • David Brin • Tobias S. Buckell • Michael Cassutt • Joe Haldeman • Matthew Hughes • Gwyneth Jones • Joe R. Lansdale • Stephen Leigh • Paul McAuley • Ian McDonald • Garth Nix • Mike Resnick • Allen M. Steele • Lavie Tidhar

And an Introduction by Gardner Dozois

Stories and Narrators:
Introduction by Gardner Dozois read by Roy Dotrice

“Frogheads” read by Jake Weber
“The Drowned Celestial” read by Roy Dotrice
“Planet of Fear” read by Tisha Donnelly
“Greeves and the Evening Star” read by Stephen Fry
“A Planet Called Desire “ read by Jake Stormoen
“Living Hell” read by W. Morgan Sheppard
“Bones of Air, Bones of Stone” read by Gethin Anthony
“Ruins” read by Mandy Williams
“The Tumbledowns of Cleopatra Abyss” read by Wil Wheaton
“By Frogsled and Lizardback to Outcast Venusian Lepers” read by Harry Lloyd
“The Sunset of Time” read by Matt Frewer
“Pale Blue Memories” read by Prentice Onayemi
“The Heart’s Filthy Lesson” read by Janis Ian
“The Wizard of the Trees” read by Michael Dorn
“The Godstone of Venus” read by Ron Donachie
“Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts” read by Dame Diana Rigg

Interstitial author biographies read by Scott Brick