When the searchers arrive, what they find will ultimately lead to the transformation of the human race by something beyond its imagination.

    Yet none of these tribes has held sway since a mysterious Warlord and his legion of alien mercenaries seized power and began a fifty year reign of terror.Now, at last, the tide may be turning: the leaders of the warring Eickarie factions have forged an alliance strong enough to capture a city and corner the Warlord and his minions in their fortress. And the post Palpatine Empire of the Hand is lending support to this revolt against tyranny by deploying no less a fighting force than the Imperial 501st Legion of stormtroopers.Once infamously known as "Vader's Fist," the legendary 501st are the best men for the dangerous objective at hand capturing the Warlord alive. It's a risky mission that might be jeopardized when Imperial unit commander Twister and his comrades, Shadow, Cloud, and Watchman, are waylaid by a band of zealous freedom fighters, armed with their own agenda... and plenty of firepower.The Eickarie renegades determined to free hundreds of their people from the Warlord's dungeons have an offer to make, and a strategy that could give the Imperials the edge in the bloody showdown to come. But can Twister and his men trust their new allies? Or will they get more than they bargain for?

    Included in this volume: Charlie's Law (Charlie X), Dagger of the Mind, The Unreal McCoy (The Man Trap), Balance of Terror, The Naked Time, Miri, The Conscience of the King.

    It towers above his village and falls away below it. It is vast and unforgiving and it is everything he knows. Life is hard on the wall, little more than a clinging on for dear life—and then one day Tighe falls off the wall. On is at once a vertiginous concept novel, a coming of age saga, a picaresque journey across a changed world, and an epic adventure in the very best traditions of science fiction.

    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...

    "First Flight" is a finalist for the 2010 Locus Award.The winner of the 2008 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of short fiction published in Strange Horizons, Cosmos, and Asimov's. Her first novel, Shades of Milk and Honey, will be published by Tor in 2010.

    On Earth, a small band of the few remaining humans pursues a lost past and devastating truth—as four sentient machines depart from Jovian space to investigate, perhaps terminate, the potentially catastrophic emissions emanating from a mountaintop miles above the terraformed surface of the Red Planet.

    They all flared into brilliance at once, then disappeared, replaced by a flat, empty black barrier. He and his best friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, had seen what became known as the Big Blackout. It would shape their lives.Life on Earth is about to get much, much stranger.

    Sword & Citadel brings together the final two books of the tetralogy in one volume:The Sword of the Lictor is the third volume in Wolfe's remarkable epic, chronicling the odyssey of the wandering pilgrim called Severian, driven by a powerful and unfathomable destiny, as he carries out a dark mission far from his home.The Citadel of the Autarch brings The Book of the New Sun to its harrowing conclusion, as Severian clashes in a final reckoning with the dread Autarch, fulfilling an ancient prophecy that will forever alter the realm known as Urth.

    For Ky, it's no contest: Even running the prestigious Vatta Transport Ltd. shipping concern can't hold a candle to shipping out as an officer aboard an interstellar cruiser. It's adventure, not commerce, that stirs her soul. And despite her family's misgivings, there can be no doubt that a Vatta in the service will prove a valuable asset. But with a single error in judgment, it all comes crumbling down.Expelled from the Academy in disgrace—and returning home to her humiliated family, a storm of high-profile media coverage, and the gaping void of her own future—Ky is ready to face the inevitable onslaught of anger, disappointment, even pity. But soon after opportunity's door slams shut, Ky finds herself with a ticket to ride—and a shot at redemption—as captain of a Vatta Transport ship.It's a simple assignment: escorting one of the Vatta fleet's oldest ships on its final voyage . . . to the scrapyard. But keeping it simple has never been Ky's style. And even though her father has provided a crew of seasoned veterans to baby-sit the fledgling captain on her maiden milk run, they can't stop Ky from turning the routine mission into a risky venture—in the name of turning a profit for Vatta Transport, of course.By snapping up a lucrative delivery contract defaulted on by a rival company, and using part of the proceeds to upgrade her condemned vehicle, Ky aims to prove she's got more going for her than just her family's famous name. But business will soon have to take a backseat to bravery, when Ky's change of plans sails her and the crew straight into the middle of a colonial war. For all her commercial savvy, it's her military training and born-soldier's instincts that Ky will need to call on in the face of deadly combat, dangerous mercenaries, and violent mutiny. . . .

    The only problem is that the Confederacion needs him as one of its twelve Prime Operators for its secret service, the TBII. The TBII wants him as a spy, thief & assassin. It's not, of course, a problem for the Confederacion, which simply uses immersion therapy & hypnotic personality overlay for Otto's training, then sends him out in deep cover, encased in plastiflesh, on a variety of dangerous missions on a number of bizarre worlds. But for him, it's a different matter: what he has to witness & what he's forced to do take a terrible toll. Always he returns to his original self--his conscience stabbed by the memory of all those he'd killed in the service of interstellar harmony.

    For although the UN has slated "anomalous" children for deportation and destruction, other people—especially Supreme Goodmember Arnie Kott of the Water Worker's union—suspect that Manfred's disorder may be a window into the future. In Martian Time-Slip Philip K. Dick uses power politics and extraterrestrial real estate scams, adultery, and murder to penetrate the mysteries of being and time.

    It all depended on the survival of the last of the entities known as Calebians.But the Caleban was dying - subjected to systematic torture by the richest, most wicked woman in the Galaxy. Unless she could be stopped, the end was only a few days away, or hours - or even minutes!

    The Stars My Destination is a classic of technological prophecy and timeless narrative enchantment by an acknowledged master of science fiction.

    His body has already begun an insidious, pre-programmed failure that will end in his death. Nikko's only hope for survival rides on an illegal and extremely powerful nanotech device known as the Bohr Maker, that will allow him to rewrite his genetic code and extend his life. He attempts to steal the Maker from the archives of the Commonwealth police, but his plan goes awry. The device escapes into the wild, infecting a young woman named Phousita who lives in an impoverished slum where nanotechnology is regulated only by the black market. Phousita's genetic code is rewritten by the Maker. Her senses are enhanced, and she gains extraordinary powers of healing, but like Nikko she has become a fugitive. The Commonwealth police are on the hunt, determined to sterilize all traces of the Bohr Maker before it can be copied and spread throughout the population. Together, Phousita and Nikko must evade a ruthless pursuit, both to preserve their own lives and to save the Bohr Maker, which holds the promise of re-defining humanity-for good or for ill.A brilliantly original, fast-paced thriller, The Bohr Maker won the Locus Award for Best First Novel. The Bohr Maker is Book 1 of The Nanotech Succession, a collection of stand-alone novels exploring the rise of nanotechnology and the strange and fascinating future that follows.