In Synners, the line between technology and humanity is hopelessly slim. To be a Synner is to join the online hardcore, an outlaw band of hackers, simulation pirates, and reality synthesizers hooked on artificial reality and virtual space. Now you can change yourself to suit the machines - all it costs you is your freedom, and your humanity. Synners shows us a world perilously close to our own. A constant stream of new technology spawns new crime before it hits the streets, and the human mind and the external landscape have fused to the point where any encounter with "reality" is incidental. Equal parts thrill-ride and cautionary tale, this classic novel by the Queen of Cyberpunk offers us a terrifying glimpse into the future of our race. Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for best novel, 1992

Mindplayers are tomorrow's psychoanalysts, linked directly to their patients using sophisticated machinery attached to the optic nerve. In one-to-one Mindplay contact, you can be inside someone else's head, wandering the landscapes of their consciousness. Allie is a sensation-seeking young woman, obtaining illicit thrills from her shady friend Jerry Wirerammer. But Allie goes badly astray when Jerry supplies her with a "madcap" - a device that lets you temporarily and harmlessly experience psychosis. There's something wrong with Jerry's madcap, and the psychosis doesn't go away when it's disconnected. Allie ends up undergoing treatment at a "dry-cleaner", and she is faced with a stark choice - jail, for her illegal use of the madcap; or training to become a Mindplayer herself. During training Allie becomes familiar with the Pool - a cohesive, though shifting mental landscape jointly constructed by a number of minds; and more disturbingly encounters McFlor, who has been mind-wiped, so that his adult body is inhabited by a mind only two hours old. And as a fully-fledged Mindplayer Allie has to choose between the many specialist options open to her - Reality Affixing or Pathosfinding; Thrillseeking or Dreamfeeding.

Warning: Personalities for Sale. All the World's a role. In a world of brainsuckers and bodysnatchers, you can't take anything for granted. Not even your own identity. When Marva, a struggling Method actress, wakes up in a hologram pool in an exclusive priv club with fancy new clothes and plenty of money, she knows something is strange. When a memory of a murder starts tugging at her, she knows something is very strange, and that she'd better find out whose life she's living. Fast. Pursued by assassins from a mysterious Escort Service and renegade mind-pirates of every description, Marva must venture into the seamy Downs to find out who wrote the script of the most difficult role of her career. Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for best novel, 1995

This is a book of science fiction - without galactic fleets or plucky scientists' daughters; a book of fantasies - without elves, barbarians or wizards; a book of horror - without clichéd mad slashers in hockey masks. If one must categorize this collection by Pat Cadigan, then the inevitable conclusion would be that Patterns is a book about people, good and bad, noble and monstrous, common and oh so extraordinary. Cadigan's characters live and breathe in these fourteen astonishing stories, making even the most outlandish ideas seem more than possible.

From the SF Gateway, the most comprehensive digital library of classic SFF titles ever assembled, comes an ideal sample introduction to the compelling work of Pat Cadigan, two-times winner of the ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD. Pat Cadigan has been dubbed 'the Queen of Cyberpunk' but her novels defy such narrow categorisation. In addition to winning two ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARDs and a WORLD FANTASY AWARD, she has been nominated for the HUGO, NEBULA and PHILIP K. DICK AWARDs and garnered praise from such genre heavyweights as Neil Gaiman, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Few writers are as adept at facing the onrushing near-future as Pat Cadigan, and this volume perfectly showcases that skill, featuring TEA FROM AN EMPTY CUP, PHILIP K. DICK AWARD-finalist MINDPLAYERS and the ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD-winning FOOLS.

"How can you drink tea from an empty cup?" That ancient Zen riddle holds the key to a baffling mystery; a young man found with his throat slashed while locked alone in a virtual reality parlor. The secret of this enigmatic death lies in an apocalyptic cyberspace shadow-world where nothing is certain, and even one's own identity can change in an instant.

Dirty Work? In a manner of speaking, perhaps, but certainly not along the lines of de Sade or Henry Miller. "Dirty" maybe because within this remarkable volume of short stories (a follow-up to her award-winning collection Patterns) author Pat Cadigan unflinchingly explores the implications of technology on modern and near-future societies, humorously challenges our perceptions of reality, and chillingly strips away our civilized facades to confront the bestial nature of our souls. With stories like "Home By the Sea," "Dispatches from the Revolution," "No Prisoners," "50 Ways to Improve Your Orgasm," and "Naming Names," Pat Cadigan exhibits an enviable ability to tackle a variety of themes, moods, and perspectives. And makes it all seem easy. Featuring 18 stunning fictions (including the previously unpublished "Lost Girls" written especially for this book)-as well as intriguing author introduction to each story-Dirty Work is a thought provoking, often funny, never compromising collection by one of America's most gifted authors. It doesn't get any better than this.

Science fiction reviewer Cynthia Ward calls two-time Arthur C. Clarke award-winner Pat Cadigan The Queen of Cyberpunk in her review of Cadigan's acclaimed 1999 work, Tea From an Empty Cup. Ward writes of the genius of her near-future extrapolations, and the beauty of her writing. No one else has explored and illuminated the mind-machine interface with the keen and relentless intelligence she demonstrates in her novels Mindplayers, Synners, Fools, and the long-awaited Tea from an Empty Cup. In The Ultimate Cyberpunk, Cadigan takes readers through the evolution of this influential science fiction genre, from the groundbreaking forefathers of the field such as Alfred Bester, Philip K. Dick and Samuel R. Delany to the founding members of the cyberpunk movement, such as William Gibson, Bruce Sterling and forward through the such innovators as Neal Stephenson, Lewis Shiner and Rudy Rucker. In over 300 pages of stories, Cadigan presents the cyberpunk world in which reality and virtual reality intersect. The growing impact of the Internet on our sense of community, the seduction of a world behind the screen and the inherent dangers of a society in which any information can be hacked, st

A provocative story about the relationship between the humans on a British airbase and the AI security system that guards that base. When a group of humans are killed, the question is who is responsible and why. Find out in AI and the Trolley Problem, Pat Cadigan's Tor.com Original story. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The definitive story of Harley Quinn by her co-creator, Paul Dini, and Pat Cadigan, revealing the secrets of her history even as she seeks to kill Batman. When she was only seven years old, Harleen Quinzel witnessed her father being beaten up by thugs, and then arrested by the police. That night she ran away to the safest place she could think of: Coney Island amusement park. But there, pursued into the Funhouse by the men who brutalised her father, she beheld unimaginable horrors. Years later, Harleen has put her past behind her, and used her intelligence and ambition to escape her childhood of poverty with a career in psychiatry. Assigned to her first position at Arkham Hospital, she will discover, deep in the asylum, something dangerous and alluring, something quite unlike anything else she has ever known before: The Joker. Because why would you settle for love, when you could have MAD LOVE? From the moment that Harleen finds a rose on her desk, to the moment she dons her harlequin hat, this is the definitive story that chronicles the obsession, the burning desire, the manic laughter, and the birth of one of the most controversial and popular comic book supervillains ever created: Harley Quinn. Copyright © 2017 DC Comics. BATMAN, THE JOKER, HARLEY QUINN, SUICIDE SQUAD and all related characters and elements © & TM DC Comics and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.