Although humankind today can peer far deeper into the universe than ever before, we still find ourselves surrounded by the unknown and perhaps the unknowable. All great science fiction has used the human imagination to explore that realm beyond the known, just as theistic religions have done since long before the genre existed. As Hugo Award-winning author Robert Charles Wilson argues in Owning the Unknown, the genre’s freewheeling speculation and systematic world-building make it it a unique lens for understanding, examining, and assessing the truth claims of religions in general and Christianity in particular. Drawing on his personal experience, his work as a science fiction writer, and his deep knowledge of the classics of the genre, he makes the case for what he calls intuitive atheism—an atheism drawn from everyday personal knowledge that doesn’t depend on familiarity with the scholarly debate about theology and metaphysics, any more than a robust personal Christianity does. And as he reminds us, the secrets that remain hidden beyond the borders of the known universe—should we ever discover them—will probably not resemble anything currently found in our most prized philosophies, our most sacred texts, or our most imaginative science fiction.

One day in Thailand, 21st-century slacker Scott Warden witnesses an impossible event: the violent appearance of a 200-foot stone pillar. Its arrival collapses trees for a quarter mile around its base. It appears to be composed of an exotic form of matter. And the inscription chiseled into it commemorates a military victory...sixteen years hence.
As more pillars arrive all over the world, all apparently from our own near future, a strange loop of causality keeps drawing Scott into the central mystery--and a final battle with the future.

In his first story collection, Robert Charles Wilson, one of the most distinguished SF authors of his generation, weaves a tapestry of tales set in and around the city of Toronto -- a haunted, numinous Toronto of past, present, and future, buzzing with strangeness.

Beginning with "The Perseids", winner of Canada's national SF award, this collection showcases Wilson's suppleness and strength: bravura ideas, scientific rigor, and living, breathing human beings facing choices that matter. Among the other stories herein are the acclaimed Hugo finalist "Divided by Infinity" and three stories written especially for this collection.

Tom Winter thought the secluded cottage in the Pacific Northwest would be the perfect refuge--a place to nurse the wounds of lost love and happiness. But Tom soon discovers that his safe haven is the portal of a tunnel through time. At one end is the present. At the other end--New York City, 1963.

His journey back to the early 1960s seems to offer him the chance to start over in a simpler, safer world. But he finds that the tunnel holds a danger far greater than anything he left behind: a human killing machine escaped from a bleak and brutal future, who will do anything to protect the secret passage that he thought was his alone. To preserve his worlds, past and present, Tom Winter must face the terrors of an unknown world to come.

From Robert Charles Wilson, the Hugo Award-winning author of "Spin," "A Bridge of Years" is a classic science fiction story of time-travel and human transformation.

In a top-secret government installation near the small town of Two Rivers, Michigan, scientists are investigating a mysterious object discovered several years earlier. Late one evening, the local residents observe strange lights coming from the laboratory. The next morning, they awake to find that their town was literally cut off from the rest of the world...and thrust into a new one Soon the town is discovered by the bewildered leaders of this new world--at which point, the people of Two Rivers realize that they've arrived in a rigid theocracy. The authorities, known as the Bureau de la Covenance Religieuse, have ordered Linneth Stone, a young ethnologist, to analyze the arrivals and report her findings to the Lieutenant in charge. What Linneth finds will challenge the philosophical basis of her society and lead inexorably to a struggle for power centering on the mysterious object that Two Rivers' government scientists were studying when the town slipped between worlds. In "Mysterium," Robert Charles Wilson "blends science, religion, philosophy and alternate history into an intelligent, compelling work of fiction" ("Publishers Weekly").

In 1912, history was changed by the Miracle, when the old world of Europe was replaced by Darwinia, a strange land of nightmarish jungle and antediluvian monsters. To some, the Miracle was an act of divine retribution; to others, it is an opportunity to carve out a new empire. Leaving an America now ruled by religious fundamentalists, young Guilford Law travels to Darwinia on a mission of discovery that will take him further than he can possibly imagine...to a shattering revelation about mankind's destiny in the universe. Robert Charles Wilson has crafted a brilliant science fiction novel--a view of an utterly different 20th century. "Darwinia "is a 1999 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel.

In the hard years of the Depression, young Travis lives with his uncle and aunt. Upstairs lives the mysterious Anna. Anna says she's going to be "changing", and she needs Travis's help...for purposes she won't explain. What follows is a tale of passion, terror, and hope, opening out to a great, dark, and unsuspected universe.

In our rapidly changing world of social media, everyday people are more and more able to sort themselves into affinity groups based on finer and finer criteria. In the near future of Robert Charles Wilson's The Affinities, this process is supercharged by new analytic technologies - genetic, brain-mapping, and behavioural. To join one of the twenty-two Affinities is to change one's life. Young Adam Fisk takes the suite of tests to see if he qualifies for any of the Affinities and finds that he's a match for Tau, one of the largest. Joining Tau is utopian at first. Problems in all areas of Adam's life begin to simply sort themselves out as he becomes part of a worldwide network of people dedicated to helping one another - to helping him. But there are other Affinities than Tau, with differing skills, strengths, and views about what to do with their newfound powers. As all twenty-two Affinities go global, they rapidly chip away at the power of governments, of corporations, of all the institutions of the old world. Then, with dreadful inevitability, the Affinities begin to go to war with one another. For Adam, and for the world, human life will never be the same.