World-renowned paleontologist Richard Leyster's universe changed forever the day a stranger named Griffin walked into his office with a remarkable job offer . . . and an ice cooler containing the head of a freshly killed Stegosaurus. For Leyster and a select group of scientific colleagues an impossible fantasy has come true: the ability to study dinosaurs up close, in their own era and milieu. But tampering with time and paradox can have disastrous effects on the future and the past alike, breeding a violent new strain of fundamentalist terror -- and, worse still, encouraging brilliant rebels like Dr. Gertrude Salley to toy with the working mechanisms of natural law, no matter what the consequences. And when they concern the largest, most savage creatures that ever walked the Earth, the consequences may be too horrifying to imagine . . . </p>

Stations of the Tide is a 1991 science fiction novel by Michael Swanwick. Prior to being published as a novel, it was serialized in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine in two parts, starting in mid-December of 1990.
It won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1991, and was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1992.
Plot introduction
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
Stations of the Tide is the story of a bureaucrat with the Department of Technology Transfer who must descend to the surface of Miranda to hunt a magician who has smuggled proscribed technology past the orbital embargo, and bring him to justice before the world is transformed by the flood of the Jubilee Tides.

Genius renegade scientist and bush wizard, Gregorian, has come to the planet Miranda with magic and forbidden technology, planning to remake the planet in his own evil image. Unless he can be stopped, whatever remains on Miranda will spiral towards death and transcendence.

In a world of plug-in personalities and colonized asteroids, daring fugitive Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark seeks refuge on Earth orbiting settlements, where evil, self-interest, and greed flourish in the vacuum of space. Reissue.

Discover the vast worlds and pocket universes of Michael Swanwick (Stations of the Tide), the only author to win science fiction’s most prestigious award five times in six years. In his dazzling new collection, the master of speculative short stories returns with new tales in which magic and science improbably coexist with myth and legend.

In engaging stories, Mischling the thief races through time to defeat three trolls before the sun rises for the first time and turns the inhabitants of her city into stone. A scientist is on the run from assassins, because her research in merging human intelligence with sentient AI is too dangerous. An aging veteran obtains a military weapon from his past: a VR robotic leopard in which he rediscovers the consequences of the hunt. In the biggest heist in the history of the universe, a loser Trickster (and the girlfriend who is better than he deserves) sets out to violate every trope and expectation of fiction possible.

With two stories original to this collection, Michael Swanwick aptly demonstrates with poignant humor why he is widely respected as a master of imaginative storytelling.

This thrilling collection of twenty-one all-original stories, by an all-star list of contributors, will delight and astonish in equal measure with their cunning twists and dazzling reversals. George R. R. Martin himself offers a brand-new A Game of Thrones tale, chronicling one of the biggest rogues in the entire history of Ice and Fire. Also featuring stories from Gillian Flynn, Joe Abercrombie, Neil Gaiman, Patrick Rothfuss, Scott Lynch and more!

A slave in a dragon factory that manufactures flying fighting machines, Jane changes her destiny when a voice from a dragon promising freedom and revenge prompts her to escape and challenge the foundations of the world. Reissue.