On Blue's Waters


Gene Wolfe - 1999
    Horn, the narrator of the earlier work, now tells his own story. Though life is hard on the newly settled planet of Blue, Horn and his family have made a decent life for themselves. But Horn is the only one who can locate the great leader Silk, and convince him to return to Blue and lead them all to prosperity. So Horn sets sail in a small boat, on a long and difficult quest across the planet Blue in search of the now legendary Patera Silk. The story continues in In Green's Jungles and Return to the Whorl.

Virtual Light


William Gibson - 1993
    He finds himself on a collision course that results in a desperate romance, and a journey into the ecstasy and dread that mirror each other at the heart of the postmodern experience.

Dancers in the Afterglow


Jack L. Chalker - 1978
    Ondine was a resort planet. Sixteen million tourists travelled there from just about every world you could think of to live and love in sixteen million different ways. Then came the machists... They had gobbled up world after world, spreading their culture to thousands of different races with a brutal, vicious, but most effective system. They were inhuman, unthinking...uncaring. The Combine had already seen what they had done on other worlds, seen whole populations converted into something horrible...something not quite human, non-thinking and no longer caring. Now they had captured Ondine, and no human could save the planet. And then Daniel came to Judgment. Daniel was a cyborg, a former fighter pilot now wedded to a master computer and life-support system housed in a flying golden egg. He was the Combine scientists' finest creation, a spaceship that could control twenty-two robot slaves. He was the perfect saviour for Ondine, but for one thing. Everyone seemed to forget that deep inside that golden egg was a very human being...

The World Menders


Lloyd Biggle Jr. - 1971
    Few of them are aware that their prosperous civilization is totally dependent upon the olz, a race of slaves owned by their god-emperor. The olz till the fields and work the forests and mines, and their reward is starvation and the vicious, caustic stroke of the zrilm whip.

The Singers of Time


Frederik Pohl - 1991
    When their home planet disappears into a black hole, however, the aliens' only hope for the future hinges on the possibility that humanity's flawed sciences might contain a glimmer of truth. Two veteran sf authors combine their strengths to produce a novel that both explains and explores the ''mysteries'' of modern science. - Library Journal

Feersum Endjinn


Iain M. Banks - 1994
    His only clues point to a conspiracy that reaches far beyond his own murder, and survival lies in discovering other fugitives who know the truth about the ultimate weapon of chaos and salvation. Reprint.

The Kraken Wakes


John Wyndham - 1953
    Strange fireballs race through the sky above the deepest trenches of the oceans. Something is about to show itself, something terrible and alien, a force capable of causing global catastrophe.

The Overman Culture


Edmund Cooper - 1971
    He could remember things significant & insignificant. He remembered--if hazily--when he was young enough to be fed milk only. He remembered the odd child who disappeared from playschool & he remembered the other child who fell (or was pushed?) from the high window & lay all smashed & crumpled on the ground, but not bleeding & he remembered how he'd wanted to know about words, how you could keep them, how you could fix them--perhaps like a drawing--forever." "Time seems to have run amok. London is governed by Queen Victoria & Winston Churchill, populated by young people called 'fragiles' & others called 'drybones' because they don't bleed. The young fragiles come to realize that they're the last of their kind--whatever kind that might be. Thus is established the setting for a brilliant novel of adventure that speaks to the largest questions facing young people everywhere--questions of identity, of purpose in life & of responsibility for themselves & their kind."--Book Club Edition

In the Days of the Comet


H.G. Wells - 1906
    But mankind is too busy hating, stealing, scheming, and killing to care. As luminous green trails of cosmic dust and vapor stream across the heavens, blood flows beneath: nations wage all-out war, bitter strikes erupt, and jealous lovers plot revenge and murder. The earth slips past the comet by the narrowest of margins, but all succumb to the gases in its tail. When mankind wakes up, everyone is completely and profoundly different. An ill-fated romance between Willie Leadford and Nettie Stuart unfolds in a world buried in misery and bent on its own destruction. After the earth passes through the comet's tail, suffering, pettiness, and injustice melt away. Willie, Nettie, and everyone around them are reborn. They now see themselves and their world in a dramatically new and wonderful way.

The Beginning Place


Ursula K. Le Guin - 1980
    Irena Pannis was thirteen when she first found the beginning place. Now, seven years later, she has grown to know and love the gentle inhabitants of Tembreabrezi, or Mountaintown, and she sees Hugh as a trespasser. But then a monstrous shadow threatens to destroy Mountaintown, and Hugh and Irena join forces to seek it out. Along the way, they begin to fall in love. Are they on their way to a new beginning...or a fateful end?

Gate of Ivrel


C.J. Cherryh - 1976
    In their time, long before the rise of the native civilizations, they had terrorized a hundred worlds—not from villainy but from folly, from tampering with the strands that held a universe together.Now the task was to uproot these Gates, destroy their potency for mischief, take horror out of the hands of the few who hungered for power by misuse of the Gates.This is the story of one such Gate and one such world.

Hothouse


Brian W. Aldiss - 1962
    The last remnants of humanity are fighting for survival, terrorised by the carnivorous plants and the grotesque insect life.Contents:· Hothouse · Brian W. Aldiss · nv F&SF Feb ’61 · Nomansland · Brian W. Aldiss · nv F&SF Apr ’61 · Undergrowth · Brian W. Aldiss · na F&SF Jul ’61 · Timberline · Brian W. Aldiss · nv F&SF Sep ’61 · Evergreen · Brian W. Aldiss · na F&SF Dec ’61

Dimension of Miracles


Robert Sheckley - 1968
    It was waiting for him, just as he had left it. But where? He only knew he was in the center of a galaxy in a universe of galaxies. Within them lay endless varieties of the planet Earth. And there was only one way to find his Earth again: he would have to visit each one. And he would have to hurry--because his search for home had turned into a race with death.

Orion


Ben Bova - 1984
    He is an eternal warrior destined to combat the Dark Lord through all time for dominion of the Earth. Follow him, servant of a great race, as he battles his enemy down the halls of time, from the caves of our ancestors to the final confrontation under the hammer of nuclear annihilation.

Sisterhood of Dune


Brian Herbert - 2012
    Great changes are brewing that will shape and twist all of humankind. The war hero Vorian Atreides has turned his back on politics and Salusa Secundus. The descendants of Abulurd Harkonnen Griffen and Valya have sworn vengeance against Vor, blaming him for the downfall of their fortunes. Raquella Berto-Anirul has formed the Bene Gesserit School on the jungle planet Rossak as the first Reverend Mother. The descendants of Aurelius Venport and Norma Cenva have built Venport Holdings, using mutated, spice-saturated Navigators who fly precursors of Heighliners. Gilbertus Albans, the ward of the hated Erasmus, is teaching humans to become Mentats…and hiding an unbelievable secret. The Butlerian movement, rabidly opposed to all forms of “dangerous technology,” is led by Manford Torondo and his devoted Swordmaster, Anari Idaho. And it is this group, so many decades after the defeat of the thinking machines, which begins to sweep across the known universe in mobs, millions strong, destroying everything in its path. Every one of these characters, and all of these groups, will become enmeshed in the contest between Reason and Faith. All of them will be forced to choose sides in the inevitable crusade that could destroy humankind forever….