The Violet Flash

There’s a rip in the blue umbrella, and time—and Chelsea—are slipping through! One moment she was there, the next moment she was not, and Ches Cholmondeley was watching when it happened. And he learns of other mysterious goings-on: for three days in a row the world’s atomic clocks have lost a second, resulting in bizarre accidents ranging from dropped casseroles to plane crashes. Are these events related? What’s a brother to do? Figure out a way to get his sister back, of course. In search of answers, Ches befriends the local clockmaker, Myron Stinchcombe, who knows a lot about time, and seeks out Sky Porter, who knows a lot about, well, everything. But time is running out. And Ches is torn, knowing that the very deed that can save the world might also keep his sister from ever returning to it.

July 24, 1915. Chicagos deadliest day, far worse than the Great Fire. The SS Eastland - a poorly-designed, overcrowded lake steamer - capsized without warning in the heart of downtown Chicago, killing 844 people preparing for a company picnic. The victims - mostly young immigrants who toiled long hours in Western Electrics Hawthorne Works - and the disaster itself were largely forgotten to the mists of time. But on the 100th anniversary of the tragedy, a quake strikes below Chicago, a purple flash emanates from a mystery hole in the Chicago River and an inexplicable hazmat event strikes a Chinatown diner. Thus begins Chicagos shocking reintroduction to the horror of July 24, 1915, and a commemoration of the victims. The Eastland Water Spirits is a parable about memories and stories which refuse to disappear. It explores our ancestors impact on each of us, like it or not. It celebrates our connectedness over time and space, using water and spirits to tell the tale.

List of members, 1890-1913, bound with v. 1-23.

Nearly twenty years ago Robert Silverberg began writing a monthly column of opinion and commentary, for Galileo Magazine, Amazing Stories, and then for Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. Now he has chosen the liveliest and most relevant of his hundreds of magazine columns for the present collection. They constitute a vivid chronicle of events both in science fiction and the world in general over the past two decades. Robert Silverberg is one of the great veterans of fantasy and science fiction. During the course of a career that has now stretched across more than forty years, he has written dozens of novels and hundreds of short stories, many of them considered classics of the genre. He has won more major award nominations than any other writer in his field, and no less than nine Hugo and Nebula awards, the key s-f/fantasy trophies. His books have been translated into some eighteen languages and his short stories have appeared in every science-fiction and fantasy magazine in the world, as well as in Omni, Playboy, and Penthouse.

The best-ever anthology of one of science fiction's most vigorous subgenres