Sixteen amazing stories, with only four previously published in English, by the award-winning author of The Night Orchid. A lonely astronaut shepherds a flock of artificial intelligences... A human is captured by a wish-seeking fairy... On a hostile world, a small band of scientists must survive the attacks of a lethal vegetation in exchange for the single bud that will give Mankind immortality... A comic glimpse of dinosaurian bureaucracy... Creepy bio-mechanic horror, magical realism, neo-romantic space operas, Orwellian dystopias... All compete to dazzle the reader's eye in a truly outrageous bouquet of stories by an expert dreamer. "Jean-Claude Dunyach and his stories represent the workings of a multiplex engine of creation, its multiple cylinders all entrained in perfect unison, and whirring at high speculative RPMs!" Paul Di Filippo. Find out why The Night Orchid was called "one of the most successful single-author collections I've read for some time" (Alien OnLine) and "a definite must read for science fiction fans" (Blether) and Dunyach "one of the most talented imaginations living today" (David Brin).