Sixteen all-new stories by science fiction's top talents, collected by bestselli
ng 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 classi
c 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, Ma
rs. But while the Red Planet conjured up in Golden Age science fiction stories w
as a place of vast deserts and ruined cities, bright blue Venus was its polar op
posite: 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, reveali
ng, instead of a lush paradise, a hellish world inimical to all life.
