The cover features the art of MichaelO, an internationally-recognized digital artist who specializes in vivid, eye-popping imagery. Michael's goal is to create art that is more than just a pretty picture, by focusing on unique concepts that tell a story. Normally we would ask you not to judge a book by its cover, but in this case, we'll take it as a compliment!

Soul Searching (art)

Rose Lemberg was born on the outskirts of the former Habsburg Empire. She spent many happy years in Berkeley, CA, where she also received her doctorate. Rose is a new professor at a large Midwestern university. She lives in a beautiful modernist house with her family and a small army of books. Her fiction has appeared in Fantasy Magazine and the Warrior Wisewoman anthology and her poetry in Mythic Delirium, Goblin Fruit, Abyss & Apex, GUD, and other venues.

Imperfect Verse (stories)

Tammy Ho Lai-Ming is a Hong Kong-born writer currently based in London, UK. She edited Hong Kong U Writing: An Anthology (2006) and coedited Love & Lust (Chameleon Press Ltd., 2008). She is also an assistant poetry editor of Sotto Voce and a founding coeditor of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (asiancha.com), the first Hong Kong online literary journal. More at sighming.com.

Suggestions for Distributing Your Poems (poetry)

After two years pursuing teaching and travel in central Europe and the Middle East, T. F. Davenport has returned to the womb of the university. He is pursuing a doctorate in cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego. His fiction has appeared in ChiZine, Nature, and other publications.

Nature's Children (stories)

Steven J Dines lives in Aberdeen, Scotland. His work has appeared in over sixty print and online publications. His story "Unzipped" (published in GUD Issue 1) was selected as a Notable Story in storySouth's Million Writers Award and received an Honorable Mention in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2008. He is currently writing his first novel. For more information (and stories), visit stevenjdines.blogspot.com.

Lost Lying on Your Back (stories)

Richard Kadrey is a freelance photographer and writer living in San Francisco. He photographs under the name Kaos Beauty Klinik. His new novel is Sandman Slim (Eos, 2009).

Infrared 2 (art)

Paul Spinrad is a writer and editor based in San Francisco. He is Projects Editor for MAKE magazine and the author of The VJ Book: Inspirations and Practical Advice for Live Visuals Performance.

The Prophet of Menlo Park (reports)

Isabel Cooper Kunkle was educated in Rhode Island and currently lives in Cambridge, MA. In her spare time, she reads a lot, especially since she takes the subway everywhere; she also enjoys martial arts, video games, and watching trashy TV accompanied by a fair amount of alcohol.

Other short stories of hers include "Higher Education," which appeared in the Winter 2008 issue of Spacesuits and Sixguns Magazine, and "Stone and Fire," which appeared in the January 2009 issue of Allegory.

Aftermath (stories)

Alicia Adams is an MFA student at CSU Long Beach.

Deadman on the Titanic (poetry)

Jason Hardy hails from southeastern Massachusetts, where he spends his daylight hours writing and editing for an appraisal firm. He writes fictional tales of woe when more respectable folks are sleeping, and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Afterburn SF, Arkham Tales, Coyote Wild, and Necrotic Tissue.

Fletcher's Lunch (stories)

Geordie Williams Flantz is an alum of the Oberlin College creative writing program and a current MFA candidate at Purdue University. His work has previously appeared in r.kv.r.y. quarterly literary journal.

The Tiger Man (stories)

Paul J. Kocak is a former caddy, editor, bagger, teacher, hitchhiker, and seminarian. For now, he writes, edits, develops business, and ardently advocates for the serial comma.

The Grammar of Desire (poetry)

Sydney Padua is an animator, story artist, and tiresome bore working mostly in visual effects in London. She started drawing comics by accident and is still trying to figure out how to stop. The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage is a monstrous perversion of nature, viewable by horrified bystanders at 2dgoggles.com.

Get free Sydney Padua wallpaper from tor.com/blogs/2010/10/…-padua-wallpaper">Tor.com. (registered Tor.com users only)

Ada Lovelace: The Origin! (comics)

Andrew N Tisbert is a miserable sonofabitch in Los Angeles with a band called Attic of Love and fiction that can be found if you look for it.

Getting Yourself On (stories)

Kevin Brown won the Permafrost literary journal's Midnight Sun Fiction Contest and the Touchstone fiction competition and placed third in the Cadenza Open Short Story Competition. He has had work published in Alligator Juniper, New Delta Review, subTerrain, Rosebud, Space and Time, UNDERGROUND voices, Dark Gothic Resurrected Magazine, and Morpheus Tales, among others. He was recently the recipient of a Walton Family Foundation Fellowship in fiction. Visit him at his website: invisiblebodies.com.

Birthday Licks (stories)

Zac Carter: currently residing in las vegas. currently writing in fits. currently speaking at length on obscure topics to disinterested ears. can be reached at deathtohemingway@gmail.com.

desideratum (poetry)

Jon Radlett will photograph anything, and if it's got wings, will photograph it repeatedly! Jon loves candid photography, but also experiments with still-life and tableau work. You can inspect the results at flickr.com/photos/…">flickr.com/photos/…. When not hiding behind bushes with a camera, Jon is a teacher and psychologist in Kent, England, happily married with two cats.

Bust (art)

Tristan D'Agosta grew up in a small fishing village in Maine and now lives in New Jersey. Some of his poems and stories have appeared in hoi polloi, Poesia, Barnwood Magazine, Cause & Effect, Pocket Change, and others.

Sweet Melodrama (scripts)

Paul Hogan: Eighty-two years old. Perfect health. Visited forty-nine countries. Two years in the Merchant Marine in WWII. Two trips on a ship carrying German POWs to Europe and GIs home. Eleventh Airborne Division during Korean War. Peace Corps Regional Director in Colombia during Viet Nam War. Finishing his tenth year as a Township Supervisor. Three kids, third wife (this one's a keeper). Designed and built over four hundred playgrounds; two books on the subject. Author of "A Philadelphia Childhood." Designs and makes furniture. Web site: Triax2000.com. Articles in numerous papers and magazines on travel and play, including The New York Times.

The Pearl Diver with the Gold Chain (stories)

Melissa Carroll scribbles verses on wet cocktail napkins, argues philosophy over vodka tonics, and channels energy through her hands. She also writes in third person from time to time. In 2005 and 2006 she won first place for poetry in the student journal Quilt, and has also been published in FEILE-FESTA, Ascent Aspirations Magazine, In the Mist, 63 Channels, and South Tampa Magazine. Melissa is an MFA student at University of South Florida. For a good time, visit zenontherocks.blogspot.com.

7 Ways to Fake an Orgasm (poetry)

Joseph Calabrese is a freelance screenwriter. He was one of the winners at Slamdance Film Festival in 2004 for his religious thriller Second Coming and, as a result, has received interest from several producers. His action fantasy script The Eyes of Mara has recently been adapted into a graphic novel entitled Her Majesty's Bulldog Brigade, with art by Harsho Mohan Chattoraj and Brendan Keough, published by Chimaera Comics. The "Gunga Din" short comic is a spinoff from that project and features characters found in HMBB. Visit bulldogbrigade.com for more info on the project.


Harsho Mohan Chattoraj is a graphic novelist and illustrator based in Kolkata, India. He's worked in the comics medium for seven years, on individual projects and for clients in India, the UK, and the US. His comics published in 2009 include Operation Military and Charlz of Marz, both published in the US, and Around the Swiss World in 20 Days, published in India and Switzerland. Harsho also has work experience as a journalist, visualizer, storyboard artist, voice-over artist, and promo producer, but has always been a fan of comics, since his first dosage of Asterix at the wee age of five.

Gunga Din (comics)

Taras Castle lives in a filthy apartment and is engaged in a continuous battle with the vermin of New York City. He also has a rat and cockroach problem.

Hidden Things (poetry)

Studying with Vince Mariani (Texas), Fernando de Szsyslo (Peru), and Juan Antonio Roda (Colombia) in the 1970s and '80s, Jerry Goins is a Pan-American anatomist, always looking at the body upside out. In this way, his terror, joy, and tenderness toward the mortal form increase daily. The drawing Tangible-2 stopped before it turned into a painting. It did, however, insert itself into a poem by Rumi, in the Corazón Cinco suite: jerrygoins.com/…_cinco.html">jerrygoins.com/…_cinco.html.

Tangible-2 (2004) (art)

Lucy A. Snyder is the author of the upcoming Del Rey novel Spellbent and the collections Sparks and Shadows, Chimeric Machines, and Installing Linux on a Dead Badger. Her writing has appeared in Strange Horizons, Farthing, Masques V, ChiZine, GUD, and Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. You can learn more about her at lucysnyder.com.

Internal Combustion (poetry)

Kenneth Schneyer's fiction has appeared in Nature Physics, Odyssey: Adventures in Science, Niteblade, FLASHSHOT, Nanoism, Thaumatrope, and the anthology Misfit Mirror. He is a 2009 graduate of the Clarion Writers Workshop. During his strange career, he has worked as an actor, corporate lawyer, dishwasher, judicial clerk, typist, IT project manager, and Assistant Dean of a technology school. He was born in Michigan but now lives in Rhode Island with his wife (ritual artist Janice Okoomian), their children, and a narcissistic cat. He blogs, sort of, at ken-schneyer.livejournal.com. See his current bibliography at writertopia.com/profiles/…">writertopia.com/profiles/….

Liza's Home (stories)

Heather Lindsley is a geographically-conflicted Southern Californian who keeps most of her stuff in Seattle while living in London. Her stories have been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and The Year's Best Science Fiction #12.

The Prettiest Crayon in the Box (stories)