Best of
Space-Opera

1993

Against a Dark Background


Iain M. Banks - 1993
    On an island with a glass shore - relic of some even more ancient conflict - she discovers she is to be hunted by the Huhsz, a religious cult which believes she is the last obstacle before their faith's apotheosis. She has to run, knowing her only hope of finally escaping the Huhsz is to find the last of the ancient, apocalyptically powerful but seemingly cursed Lazy Guns. But that is just the first as well as the final step on a search that takes her on an odyssey through the exotic Golterian system and results in both a trail of destruction and a journey into her own past, as well as that of her family and the system itself; a journey that changes everything.

The Planet Pirates


Anne McCaffrey - 1993
    Sassinak escaped from slavery to freedom, and then used that freedom to fight the evil that had wrecked her world, first as a cadet, later as a captain, and finally as an Admiral of the Fleet.Lunzie, one of the galaxy's greatest healers, is Sassinak's great-grandmother -- but in actual years she is her junior; Lunzie spent nearly a century in coldsleep waiting for rescue when her ship was destroyed. Imagine their mutual surprise when Sassinak rescued her.How together Sassinak and Lunzie save first a world, and then a confederation of worlds -- and almost in passing establish amity between the genetically engineered Heavy Worlders and normal humanity -- is the story of The Planet Pirates.Publisher's Note: Never in our experience has a new series met with such solid success as our national bestsellers, THE PLANET PIRATES: Sassinak, The Death of Sleep, and Generation Warriors. Now at last we are able to offer all five hundred thousand words in a single hardcover edition. Note that because of its sheer physical mass, The Planet Pirates can never be offered in a mass market paperback edition.

To a Rocky Moon: A Geologist's History of Lunar Exploration


Don E. Wilhelms - 1993
    Memoirs of the Apollo astronauts have preserved the exploratory aspects of these missions; now a geologist who was an active participant in the lunar program offers a detailed historical view of those events--including the pre-Apollo era--from a heretofore untold scientific perspective. It was the responsibility of the scientific team of which Don Wilhelms was a member to assemble an overall picture of the Moon's structure and history in order to recommend where on the lunar surface fieldwork should be conducted and samples collected. His book relates the site-selection process in detail, and draws in concomitant events concerning mission operations to show how they affected the course of the scientific program. While discussing all six landings in detail, it tells the behind-the-scenes story of telescopic and spacecraft investigations before, during, and after the manned landings. Intended for anyone interested the space program, the history of science, or the application of geology to planetology, To a Rocky Moon will leave all readers with a better idea of what the Moon is really like. In so expertly summarizing this earlier phase of exploration, it stands as an authoritative touchstone for those involved in the next.