Showing results by narrator "Wil Wheaton" in All Categories

Eleven short stories from award-winning author Joe Hill, building on the success of his blockbuster novels. Some new, some previously published, all terrifying. Includes 'Full Throttle' and 'In the Tall Grass', both collaborations with Stephen King and both being filmed at the time of writing.

In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike brought hordes of newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. Anxious to compete, Russian prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great machine that could mine through Alaska’s ice. Thus was Dr. Blue’s Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born.

Four short novels from the author of The Fireman and Horns. 'Rain' explores an escalating apocalyptic event, as downpours of nails spread out across the world. In 'Loaded', a mall security guard heroically stops a mass shooting, but his story begins to unravel, taking his sanity with it. 'Snapshot, 1988' tells of a kid in Silicon Valley who finds himself threatened. And in 'Aloft', a young man parachutes for the first time...and winds up a castaway on an impossibly solid cloud.

Treacheries, trickeries, assassination attempts and bloody family intrigues have finally maneuvered Merlin, aka Merle Corey, into the Courts of Chaos. Thanks to a series of conventionally fatal "accidents" engineered by his mother Dara and uncle Mandor, Merlin third in line to occupy the throne.

The space-faring Yherajk have come to Earth to meet us and to begin humanity's first interstellar friendship. There's just one problem: They're hideously ugly and they smell like rotting fish. So getting humanity's trust is a challenge. The Yherajk need someone who can help them close the deal. Enter Thomas Stein, who knows something about closing deals. He's one of Hollywood's hottest young agents.

The world's most entertaining and useless self-help guide, from the brilliant mind behind the wildly popular webcomic xkcd and the million-selling What If? and Thing Explainer. For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way and a way so monumentally bad that no one would ever try it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It's full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole. 

In John Scalzi's re-imagining of H. Beam Piper's 1962 sci-fi classic Little Fuzzy, written with the full cooperation of the Piper Estate, Jack Holloway works alone for reasons he doesnt care to talk about. Hundreds of miles from ZaraCorps headquarters on planet, 178 light-years from the corporations headquarters on Earth, Jack is content as an independent contractor, prospecting and surveying at his own pace. As for his past, thats not up for discussion.

Melvin Corey must choose between an alliance with the Pattern of Amber or the Pattern of Chaos, in a tale of a sometimes murderous family of wizards and their alternate worlds.

Alexander X and his friends have had stadiums collapse on them and ancient teachers follow them; they have driven cars through buildings and had entire streets blown up around them. They've been chased, beaten, drugged, and nearly sliced in two by falling sheets of glass. And that...was just on Saturday. Now, they must do whatever it takes to escape Elam Khai and flee the country.

Masters of Doom is the amazing true story of the Lennon and McCartney of video games: John Carmack and John Romero. Together, they ruled big business. They transformed popular culture. And they provoked a national controversy. More than anything, they lived a unique and rollicking American Dream, escaping the broken homes of their youth to produce the most notoriously successful game franchises in history - Doom and Quake - until the games they made tore them apart. This is a story of friendship and betrayal, commerce and artistry.

The collapse of The Flow, the interstellar pathway between the planets of the Interdependency, has accelerated. Entire star systems - and billions of people - are becoming cut off from the rest of human civilization. This collapse was foretold through scientific prediction...and yet, even as the evidence is obvious and insurmountable, many still try to rationalize, delay and profit from, these final days of one of the greatest empires humanity has ever known.

In this sweeping, threaded narrative of the global phenomenon known as the Vampire Wars, mankind is unwittingly infected by a millennia-old bacteria unknowingly exhumed by a scientific expedition in Antarctica. Now, in some rare cases, a person’s so-called junk DNA becomes activated. Depending on their racial and ethnic heritage, they begin to manifest one of the many diverse forms of the "others" that are the true basis for the legends of supernatural creatures. These aren’t your usual vampires and werewolves - it goes much deeper than that.

Alexander Grant is a little too good at a few too many things. Two dozen martial arts. Twice that many languages. Chess, the piano, sports, forging excused absences, you name it. He graduated high school top of his class 17 times. Of course, no one knows any of this. Not that he wants to go unnoticed. It’s just safer that way.

The Interdependency, humanity’s interstellar empire, is on the verge of collapse. The Flow, the extra-dimensional conduit that makes travel between the stars possible, is disappearing, leaving entire star systems stranded. When it goes, human civilization may go with it - unless desperate measures can be taken. Emperox Grayland II, the leader of the Interdependency, is ready to take those measures to help ensure the survival of billions. But nothing is ever that easy.

Following the cliffhanger ending of Blood of Amber, Merlin is stranded in surrealistic Alice in Wonderland-esque bar where the Mad Hatter serves cocktails. Managing to escape, Merlin meets new family members - one of whom is intent on killing him. As events escalate, Merlin finds himself surrounded by his worst enemies - including his ex-girlfriend - back from the dead.

Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, shares what he has learnt in more than a decade of studying climate change and investing in innovations to address climate problems. He explains how the world can work to build the tools it needs to get to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions - investing in research, inventing new technologies and deploying them quickly at a large scale. Gates is optimistic that the world can prevent the worst impacts of the climate crisis.  

Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. Life couldn’t be better…until Andrew begins to pick up on the facts that (1) every Away Mission involves some kind of lethal confrontation with alien forces; (2) the ship’s captain, its chief science officer, and the handsome Lieutenant Kerensky always survive these confrontations; and (3) at least one low-ranked crew member is, sadly, always killed.

Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words - and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet François Rabelais called the “Great Perhaps”. Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young, who will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps.   

Jack Diller is just one more struggling actor on the road to nowhere. He’s got an agent who barely remembers his name, his ex-girlfriend has hooked up with a Silicon Valley dude, and the milk in his fridge is so far past its sell-by date it’s historic. The only way Jack can scrape together a bare existence is by delivering food to exactly the types of successful people he wishes he could be. Then, one day, a very strange audiobook shows up on his phone.

In Rip-Off!, 13 of today’s best and most honored writers of speculative fiction face a challenge even they would be hard-pressed to conceive: Pick your favorite opening line from a classic piece of fiction (or even non-fiction) - then use it as the first sentence of an entirely original short story.