The Spell Sword


Marion Zimmer Bradley - 1974
    Most of the planet's wild terrain was unexplored...and many of its peoples seclusive and secretive.But for Andrew Carr there was an attraction he could not evade. Darkover drew him, Darkover haunted him--and when his mapping plane crashed in unknown heights, Darkover prepared to destroy him.Until the planet's magic asserted itself--and his destiny began to unfold along lines predicted only by phantoms and wonder workers of the kind Terran science could never acknowledge.THE SPELL SWORD is a Darkover novel to stand with the great ones of the series.

The Neutronium Alchemist 2: Conflict


Peter F. Hamilton - 1997
    Stealing the bodies of the living, they are grouping together into powerful consortiums led by leaders from history. An increasingly desperate Confederation Navy is struggling to stem the tide as the race for the universe's most powerful weapon begins. But if the dead can return to life, who will be the ultimate victors?

David Starr, Space Ranger


Paul French - 1952
    The vital foodstuffs supplied by its Martian colony are being poisoned. Working in secret, the ruling Council of Science sends David Starr, its youngest member, to the Martian farmlands to discover the truth behind the murders...

Hellstrom's Hive


Frank Herbert - 1973
    Hellstrom's Project 40 was a cover for a secret laboratory, a special team of agents was immediately dispatched to discover its true purpose and its weaknesses—it could not be allowed to continue. What they discovered was a nightmare more horrific and hideous than even their paranoid government minds could devise.First published in Galaxy magazine in 1973 as "Project 40," Frank Herbert's vivid imagination and brilliant view of nature and ecology have never been more evident than in this classic of science fiction.

The Space Merchants


Frederik Pohl - 1952
    Now Schoken Associates, one of the big players, has a new challenge for star copywriter Mitch Courtenay. Volunteers are needed to colonise Venus. It's a hellhole, and nobody who knew anything about it would dream of signing up. But by the time Mitch has finished, they will be queuing to get on board the spaceships.Biographical NotesPohl and Kornbluth started writing together as early as 1940, although both authors produced a wide variety of stories separately, under their own names and pseudonyms.Each wrote sections, starting where the other left off, and through long experience they developed an almost telepathic awareness of each other's intentions.

Cities in Flight


James Blish - 1970
    Named after the migrant workers of America's Dust Bowl, these novels convey Blish's "history of the future," a brilliant and bleak look at a world where cities roam the Galaxy looking for work and a sustainable way of life.In the first novel, They Shall Have Stars, man has thoroughly explored the Solar System, yet the dream of going even further seems to have died in all but one man. His battle to realize his dream results in two momentous discoveries anti-gravity and the secret of immortality. In A Life for the Stars, it is centuries later and anti-gravity generations have enabled whole cities to lift off the surface of the earth to become galactic wanderers. In Earthman, Come Home, the nomadic cities revert to barbarism and marauding rogue cities begin to pose a threat to all civilized worlds. In the final novel, The Triumph of Time, history repeats itself as the cities once again journey back in to space making a terrifying discovery which could destroy the entire Universe. A serious and haunting vision of our world and its limits, Cities in Flight marks the return to print of one of science fiction's most inimitable writers.A Selection of the Science Fiction Book Club

Killing Gravity


Corey J. White - 2017
    She escaped the MEPHISTO lab where she was raised as a psychic supersoldier, which left her with terrifying capabilities, a fierce sense of independence, a deficit of trust and an experimental pet named Seven. She’s spent her life on the run, but the boogeymen from her past are catching up with her. An encounter with a bounty hunter has left her hanging helpless in a dying spaceship, dependent on the mercy of strangers.Penned in on all sides, Mariam chases rumors to find the one who sold her out. To discover the truth and defeat her pursuers, she’ll have to stare into the abyss and find the secrets of her past, her future, and her terrifying potential.

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town


Cory Doctorow - 2005
    This naturally brings him in contact with the house full of students and layabouts next door, including a young woman who, in a moment of stress, reveals to him that she has wings--wings, moreover, which grow back after each attempt to cut them off. Alan understands. He himself has a secret or two. His father is a mountain; his mother is a washing machine; and among his brothers are a set of Russian nesting dolls. Now two of the three nesting dolls, Edward and Frederick, are on his doorstep--well on their way to starvation, because their innermost member, George, has vanished. It appears that yet another brother, Davey, who Alan and his other siblings killed years ago, may have returned...bent on revenge.Under such circumstances it seems only reasonable for Alan to involve himself with a visionary scheme to blanket Toronto with free wireless Internet connectivity, a conspiracy spearheaded by a brilliant technopunk who builds miracles of hardware from parts scavenged from the city's dumpsters. But Alan's past won't leave him alone--and Davey is only one of the powers gunning for him and all his friends.

Accelerando


Charles Stross - 2005
    It is the era of the posthuman. Artificial intelligences have surpassed the limits of human intellect. Biotechnological beings have rendered people all but extinct. Molecular nanotechnology runs rampant, replicating and reprogramming at will. Contact with extraterrestrial life grows more imminent with each new day.Struggling to survive and thrive in this accelerated world are three generations of the Macx clan: Manfred, an entrepreneur dealing in intelligence amplification technology whose mind is divided between his physical environment and the Internet; his daughter, Amber, on the run from her domineering mother, seeking her fortune in the outer system as an indentured astronaut; and Sirhan, Amber's son, who finds his destiny linked to the fate of all of humanity.For something is systemically dismantling the nine planets of the solar system. Something beyond human comprehension. Something that has no use for biological life in any form.

The Starmen of Llyrdis


Leigh Brackett - 1952
    Michael Trehearne had always been an outcast among his people on Earth. He knew he was different. He did not know how or why. Then one day, on the wind-swept coast of Brittany, a bewitchingly beautiful girl appeared & told him he had the look of the Vardda--those elite star travelers who alone could withstand the rigors of intergalactic flight.Michael had to join them, had to find his place in the universe at last. But it would not be easy. For even when they allowed him to risk his life aboard their ship, to seal his fate upon their planet, even then, they viewed him as an outcast, a dangerous changeling who suddenly threatened them. He was a man who sooner or later would have to be destroyed!

Eon


Greg Bear - 1985
    NASA, NATO, and the UN sent explorers to the asteroid's surface...and discovered marvels and mysteries to drive researchers mad.For the Stone was from space--but perhaps not our space; it came from the future-but perhaps not our future; and within the hollowed asteroid was Thistledown. The remains of a vanished civilization. A human--English, Russian, and Chinese-speaking--civilization. Seven vast chambers containing forests, lakes, rivers, hanging cities...And museums describing the Death; the catastrophic war that was about to occur; the horror and the long winter that would follow. But while scientists and politicians bickered about how to use the information to stop the Death, the Stone yielded a secret that made even Earth's survival pale into insignificance.

Schismatrix Plus


Bruce Sterling - 1996
    For the first time in one volume: every word Bruce Sterling has ever written on the Shapers-Mechanists Universe.In the last decade, Sterling has emerged a pioneer of crucial, cutting-edge science fiction. Now Ace Books is proud to offer Sterling's stunning world of the Schismatrix--where Shaper revolutionaries struggle against aristocratic Mechanists for ultimate control of man's destiny. This volume includes the classic full-length novel, Schismatrix, plus thousands of words of mind-bending short fiction.

Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days


Alastair Reynolds - 2003
    . . Alastair Reynolds burst onto the SF scene with the Arthur C. Clarke Award-shortlisted REVELATION SPACE, British Science Fiction Award-winning CHASM CITY, and REDEMPTION ARK. Now experience the phenomenal imagination and breathtaking vision of 'The most exciting space opera writer working today' (Locus) in these two tales of high adventure set in the same universe as his novels. The title story, 'Diamond Dogs', tells of a group of mercenaries trying to unravel the mystery of a particularly inhospitable alien tower on a distant world; 'Turquoise Days' is about Naqi, who has devoted her life to studying the alien Pattern Jugglers.

The Martians


Kim Stanley Robinson - 1999
    As the planet is transformed from an unexplored and forbidding terrain to a troubled image of a re-created Earth, we meet the First Hundred explorers—men and women who are bound together by Earth’s tenuous toehold on Mars. Presenting unforgettable stories of hope and disappointment, of fierce physical and psychological struggles, The Martians is an epic chronicle of a planet that represents one of humanity’s most glorious possibilities.The Martians is a unique collection of previously unpublished fiction, a fascinating addition to Robinson’s oeuvre, and a must for all lovers of the red planet.

Refugee


Piers Anthony - 1983
    1 RefugeeCALIGULA OF THE STARSThough he was later accused of every crime and sexual perversion in the galaxy, Hope Hubris began as an innocent. Because he defended his older sister against the violent lusts of a wealthy scion, Hope and his peasant family were forced to flee Callisto, one of the moons of Jupiter. Pursued by the bloodthirsty scions across the airless desert, they barely escaped with their lives. The illegal space bubble was overcrowded with refugees, all hoping to reach Jupiter for asylum.But the space travelers had not reckoned on the terrible threat of high space-the pirates, barbaric men who rape, rob, and murder, with no thought but to satisfy their bestial appetites. It will take all Hope's ingenuity to survive, but the atrocities he witnesses will never die. There is only one way he can be rid of them . . . REVENGE