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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: In this first-rate SF anthology by A. L. Sirois: A lonely man captures a baby raincloud; a young reporter learns that the gift of ESP is a double-edged sword; Johann Sebastian Bach goes to the moon; a woman is snowbound with an unseen antagonist that seems to know her innermost thoughts; Hell is reorganized; a bizarre creature made of books menaces a clerk in a porn store, and an earthquake survivor is terrorized by a visitor from the center of the earth. Welcome to The Beginnings of Forever, a collection of short stories including the Pushcart Prize-nominated story, "In the Conservatory."

eBook Publisher: Clocktower Books and Far Sector SFFH (magazine), Published: Clocktower Books, 2000
Fictionwise Release Date: September 2002

17 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [721 KB], eReader (PDB) [249 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [234 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [208 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [207 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [263 KB], hiebook (KML) [532 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [285 KB], iSilo (PDB) [194 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [242 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [276 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [319 KB]
Words: 70000
Reading time: 200-280 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"A.L. Sirois ... has appeared in the major magazines but is more familiar to habitués of the small press. His collection, The Beginnings of Forever, delivers a quite readable dozen helpings from a deftly wry imagination."--Tom Easton, ANALOG

"You won't want to miss these virtuoso compositions from a very talented and broadly gifted science fiction writer, who has given us the fine far-future SF novels Blood Relations and Blind Ambitions, among other things, and illustrated children's books like Penguin Island and Boss Tweed's Dinosaurs. Don't miss this collection!!"--John Argo, author

"The short stories are cleverly written ... delightful..."--Under The Covers Book Reviews

It was a planet entwined with a spaghetti-mess of wires, circuits and weapons, with never-lived-in cities dotted here and there like spatters of ink from a shaken pen. It was an electronic jungle injected with mines, shrouded with ion curtains, mosquitoed with drone rocket planes.

He was a soldier, computer-nourished, militarily taught, with emotions artificially suppressed. He could touch certain teeth with his tongue and he would see in the infra-red; he could hear into the super--and sub-sonic; his skin was naturally blotched brown and green for camouflage. His fingernails were as sharp as broken glass, and his feet had been genetically altered into monkey hands.

Other worlds fought their wars on the Battleworld, and they made soldiers like him because they were unwilling to destroy their own citizens. There was always a waiting list of antagonists. Some planets applied for battle without a specific enemy. It could be extremely interesting to play against a stranger.

If he had ever owned a name, he didn't know about it. His serial number was engraved on a molar and tattooed across his left breast.

Now he crouched in a dirty alley that had never seen a day or night of peace. Like all the streets and avenues and alleys in the dummy city, it was a potential death trap.

A car full of killers drove slowly past the opening of the alley. Did they know he was here? His lips folded back in an unconscious snarl.