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    Guests: Science Fiction from the End of Time
    Guests: Science Fiction from the End of Time
    Guests: Science Fiction from the End of Time
    Ebook30 pages25 minutes

    Guests: Science Fiction from the End of Time

    By Jay Lake

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    About this ebook

    What happens after the world has run down?

    A pair of deep time science fiction short stories from award-winning author Jay Lake. Includes the critically-acclaimed "The Courtesy of Guests", winner of the Soft Science Fiction Award for 2001, as well as the sequel "The Passing of Guests".

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJay Lake
    Release dateDec 27, 2010
    ISBN9781458100795
    Guests: Science Fiction from the End of Time
    Author

    Jay Lake

    Jay Lake was a prolific writer of science fiction and fantasy, as well as an award-winning editor, a popular raconteur and toastmaster, and an excellent teacher at the many writers' workshops he attended. His novels included Tor's publications Mainspring, Escapement, and Pinion, and the trilogy of novels in his Green cycle - Green, Endurance, and Kalimpura. Lake was nominated multiple times for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the World Fantasy Award. He won the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer in 2004, the year after his first professional stories were published. In 2008 Jay Lake was diagnosed with colon cancer, and in the years after he became known outside the sf genre as a powerful and brutally honest blogger about the progression of his disease. Jay Lake died on June 1, 2014.

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      Book preview

      Guests - Jay Lake

      Guests: Science Fiction From the End of Time

      by Jay Lake

      Smashwords Edition by Jay Lake

      Copyright © 2001, 2002, 2010 Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

      Cover photograph copyright © 2009, 2010 Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

      Originally published in

      Bones of the World, ed. Bruce Holland Rogers, SFF.net Press, 2001;

      and Beyond the Last Star, ed. Sherwood Smith, SFF.net Press, 2002.

      This ebook text varies slightly from the original edition.

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Guests: Science Fiction From the End of Time

      Author’s note: The Courtesy of Guests was the first story of mine ever published, in the autumn of 2001. The Passing of Guests appeared a year later. This is the first edition offering both together.

      The Courtesy of Guests

      by Jay Lake

      Ahriman had carefully crafted the manbone quena to play a classically human minor diatonic scale. The femur was salvaged from an ancient human starship in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. He had flensed the bone, hollowing it with iron picks to make his graceful flute. In homage, Ahriman’s face and body were a reconstruction of the bone’s donor – short, dark-skinned, big-headed.

      He picked his way through an even more ancient human tune acquired from radio archeology instruments beyond the fringes of the galaxy. Every electronic culture recorded itself in expanding spheres through which one could troll endlessly. That was where Ahriman had found his name.

      ‡

      Some fifteen local years earlier, Ahriman had come to Earth to enrich his studies. Rumor said humans sometimes came home too. They were rare enough among the stars. Ahriman

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