"Damian Veers enjoys a rich, comfortable existence. His body wants for nothing, while his soul is possessed by an infinite, enduring genius. Using nothing but his own restless mind, Damian spends his long days visiting a multitude of distant worlds, seducing dream-women of every sort; when he wishes, he leaps casually back and forth through his own rich memories, replaying little portions of a gigantic existence that may never end.

This is the fate of every intelligent species. Minds grow to a point where thought is more real than reality, and the simplest daydreams are more compelling than any starship.

Humanity has never been so happy.

Then a strange woman appears: Dot James, physical and plainspoken, suddenly moves into the house next door to Damian's. To all appearances, she is immune to the addictive kinds of genius that every other person embraces. Damian is astonished and intrigued. He studies his new neighbor as she goes about her simple life, and he remembers back to the fateful moment when the stars first spoke to the helpless Earth.

Over the next weeks and months, Damian builds up his courage. He converses with Dot, and he dreams about her, and with his relentless imagination, he tries to explain both her presence here and her mysterious origins. And all the while, he thinks back to his youth and the wife that he loved then and still loves today.

Somehow, Dot and Damian's pasts are linked, and it's only a matter of time until his intellect figures out this amazing puzzle...

But if the mind has no limits, how can you trust what your mind tells you?

If imagination is more real than the universe, then what is real?

And more importantly, what is right?"

"[Robert] Reed may be one of the most prolific of today's young writers . . . [his] stories . . . count as among some of the best short work produced by anyone in the '80s and '90s. . . ." Thus wrote editor Gardner Dozois in his Year's Best Science Fiction anthology series. Reed's second collection from Golden Gryphon Press, The Cuckoo's Boys, gathers twelve of the best stories from his prolific short fiction output of the past decade and into this, the twenty-first century.

In the near-future title story, a lonely genius clones himself - not once, but millions of times - by creating a virus that affects pregnant women. Throughout the world, women give birth to baby boys with the genetics of Phillip Stevens. Then a few years later, a man with a mysterious past becomes the teacher to three of these clones - and as their teacher, he tests and challenges them. Are these boys little more than genetic copies of Stevens? Or are they individuals in their own right, with unique personalities and coming-of-age problems?

Advances in virtual technology allow the president of the United States to visit every household of the nation's electorate simultaneously on the "First Tuesday" of each month, and he even stays for dinner.

In "Abducted Souls," published here for the first time, a young college student discovers that he has defined himself by his alien abduction as a young child. When that abduction comes into question, he begins to question his own reality and self-worth.

Also included in this new collection are two stories from Robert Reed's well-regarded "Marrow" universe: "River of the Queen" centers on Quee Lee and Perri, immortal beings enjoying a half-million-year voyage around the galaxy in the Great Ship, a starship larger than most worlds. In this story, the Queen of the title is kidnapped (or is she?) and Perri assists in the investigation (or does he?) to locate the Queen and her captors. And in "Night of Time," an ageless human named Ash meets two aliens, one a servant of the other, who prove to be even older - and stranger - than him, as he strives to help each of them recover lost memories.

From the sardonic "On the Brink of That Bright New World" (a laborer uses aliens' first contact to cover up a crime of passion) to the intense "Savior" (a military commander is held accountable for tortuous acts that may have saved the human race) to the surreal "Coelacanths" (four unique, yet interlinked, perspectives of post-humanity), this collection exemplifies Library Journal's assertion that Reed's stories evoke "visionary futures and scientific speculation."

With a nearly 6,000-word Afterword by the author that details the genesis of each story.

Cover art by Edward Miller.

"With his command of prose, characterization and ideas, Robert Reed is the new century's most compelling voice."
- STEPHEN BAXTER, winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award

"Wonderful far-future SF of the best kind: imaginative, epic, mind-blowing."
- ALASTAIR REYNOLDS, author of Revelation Space

In The Well of Stars, Hugo award-nominated author Robert Reed has written a stunning sequel to his acclaimed novel Marrow. The Great Ship, so vast that it contains within its depths a planet that lay undiscovered for generations, has cruised through the universe for untold billions of years. After a disastrous exploration of the planet, Marrow, the Ship's captains face an increasingly restive population aboard their mammoth vessel.

And now, compounding the captains' troubles, the Ship is heading on an irreversible course straight for the Ink Well, a dark, opaque nebula. Washen and Pamir, the captains who saved Marrow from utter destruction, send Mere, whose uncanny ability to adapt to and understand other cultures makes her the only one for the job, to investigate the nebula before they plunge blindly in. While Mere is away, Pamir discovers in the Ink Well the presence of a god-like entity with powers so potentially destructive that it might destroy the ship and its millions.

Faced with an entity that might prevent the Ship from ever leaving the Ink Well, the Ship's only hope now rests in the ingenuity of the vast crew...and with Mere, who has not contacted them since she left the Ship...

With the excitement of epic science fiction adventure set against a universe full of wonders, the odyssey of the Ship and its captains will capture the hearts of science fiction readers.

"THE WELL OF STARS is wonderful far-future SF of the best kind: imaginative, epic, mind-blowing, but anchored by a strong sense of character and a glorious cast of heroes and rogues. The Great Ship is surely one of the most audacious creations in recent SF." ALASTAIR REYNOLDS

Don't forget -- one of the pivotal characters in The Well of Stars is Mere, whose backstory is explored in much greater depth in the limited-edition chapbook Mere, available exclusively from Golden Gryphon Press. In addition to the Mere novelette, this chapbook also includes a 5,000-word Afterword from Reed, explaining the history of his "Marrow" universe, including all the stories that comprise this future history. Only 500 copies of Mere were published, and fewer than half remain. You can read more about the Mere chapbook and order it from directly from Golden Gryphon via this link!

"Reed invests this miniature epic of solitude with such empathy, such remorseless elegiac fury, that reading Mere is like purgation by fire. It is far-future anthropological SF of the highest order."
- NICK GEVERS, Locus, October 2004