'Raising Hell' features twon new stories from Norman Spinrad, plus an interview with the author.

A hard look at the American Dream, and visions of things to come. From the shrapnel of an exploding culture, Norman Spinrad brings you pieces of tomorrow, fragments of America. I think we're living at a time when a whole civilization has died and a new one is being born. -Norman Spinrad

The Prophet Muhammad is a hero for all mankind. In his lifetime he established a new religion, Islam; a new state, the first united Arabia; and a new literary language, the classical Arabic of the Qur'an, for the Qur'an is believed to be the word of God revealed to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel. A generation after his death he would be acknowledged as the founder of a world empire and a new civilisation. Any one of these achievements would have been more than enough to permanently establish his genius. To our early twenty-first century minds, what is all the more astonishing is that he also managed to stay true to himself and retained to his last days the humility, courtesy and humanity that he had learned as an orphan shepherd boy in central Arabia. If one looks for a parallel example from Christendom, you would have to combine the Emperor Constantine with St Francis and St Paul, an awesome prospect. Barnaby Rogerson's elegant biography not only looks directly at the life of the Prophet Muhammad, but beautifully evokes for western readers the Arabian world into which he was born in 570 AD.

This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic, timeless works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.

For three hundred years the Solarians had isolated themselves from the galaxy with the promise to reappear one day to bring human victory. Now, with the very existence of the human race at stake in a war with the machine-like beings of the computer worlds, they re-emerged with a completely new social order. They possessed strange talents, such as telepathy and total recall. And they had an ingenious strategy for defeating the Duglaars. From the beginning, Jay Palmer had sensed their "otherness" but he had to accept them and their plan of surrendering earth to the merciless, computer-like Duglaars--it was the only hope left.

In the Second Starfaring Age, humans travel the universe via a technology they barely understand, propelled by a space drive consisting of mysteriously complex mechanisms and, symbiotically linked to it, a living woman, the Void Pilot. Pilots are rare, and the ability to be a Pilot also entails physical wasting and a shortened life. But Pilots live only for the timeless moments of Transition, when their ships cross the emptiness of space in an instant. Now Void Pilot Dominique Alia Wu has begun to catch a glimpse of something more, something transcendent in that eternal moment . . . and she needs the cooperation of her Captain to achieve it permanently. Even at risk to the survival of the Ship. Norman Spinrad has been one of SF's most adventurous writers since the 1960s, an internationally praised peer of such writers as Harlan Ellison, Michael Moorcock, and Samuel R. Delany. His stories of the Second Starfaring Age, The Void Captain's Tale and the later novel Child of Fortune, form a single epic praised by the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction as "an eroticized vision of the Galaxy . . . an elated Wanderjahr among the sparkling worlds."

TROUBLE IN PARADISE... Pacifica was a monument to freedom and equality-until the off-worlders came. The Femocrats, a party of female separatists, and the Transcendental Scientists, an institute of technofascists dedicated to male supremacy. Carlotta Madigan, Pacifica's prime minister, and Royce Lindblad, her handsome young lover and media adviser, had to find a way to stop the Pink and Blue War-without becoming casualties themselves.

In the exotic interstellar civilization of the Second Starfaring Age, youthful wanderers are known as Children of Fortune. This is the tale of one such wanderer, who seeks her destiny on an odyssey of self-discovery amid humanity's many worlds. Arresting and visionary, Child of Fortune is a science-fictional On the Road.

"IF WAGNER WROTE SCIENCE FICTION THIS IS THE WAY HE WOULD DO IT." - Harry Harrison Renowned science fiction writer Adolf Hitler's Hugo Award winning novel Ferric Jaggar mounted the platform. A swastika of flame twenty feet high stood out in glory against the night sky behind him, bathing him in heroic firelight, flashing highlights off the brightwork of his gleaming black leather uniform, setting his powerful eyes ablaze. "I hold in my hand the Great Truncheon of Held. I dedicate myself to the repurification of all Heldon with blood and iron, and to the extension of the dominion of True Humanity over the face of the entire Earth Never will we rest until the last mutant gene is swept from the face of the planet "

FEATURES: The weird animation of Bill Plympton; Viktor Koen's biomechanical visions; Exclusive excerpt: The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia.

INTERNATIONAL FICTION SPOTLIGHT: "First Photograph" by Zoran Zivkovic; "The Gong" by Sara Genge; "The Dream of the Blue Man" by Nir Yaniv; "The Wordeaters" by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz; "Out of Sacred Water" by Juraj Cervenak; "Time and the Orpheus" by chiles samaniego; more.

POETRY: "The Monster With the Shape of Me" by Brian J. Hatcher.

NONFICTION: The Library: Elizabeth Genco talks with author Lauren Groff about writing The Monsters of Templeton; The Bazaar: Jessica Joslin's crazy steampunk critters; Weirdism: Robert Isenberg on the cinema's latest obsession with apocalyptic futures; Lost in Lovecraft: Kenneth Hite dives literarily into the Pacific Ocean and pulls up H.P. Lovecraft; Harvey Pelican & Co.: special offers from the esoterica king.