But no agent could be sent to investigate and report back. All trips to the Warden worlds were one-way. There, a microscopic symbiont invaded all life forms, after which life became impossible outside the Warden system. The same organism destroyed any form of machinery, so no message could be beamed back by normal means.That called for extraordinary means, of course. One agent was chosen, then four men were stripped of their own minds and personalities, and his was imposed upon them. Hooked up properly, he could then receive their reports, without ever leaving safe territory.Each man was assigned one world to conquer. His mission was first to find the Overlord of that world and kill him, then to take over his link with the aliens. Of course all this must be done with no help beyond his own naked ability...This first book of Jack Chalker's epic tetralogy deals with Cal Tremon, who was sent to Lilith, a planet that was a paradise - but a paradise designed in hell!-from the back cover

    But now, someone is eliminating the Gentian line. Campion and Purslane—two shatterlings who have fallen in love and shared forbidden experiences—must determine exactly who, or what, their enemy is, before they are wiped out of existence.

    But Worlorn isn’t the world Dirk imagined, and Gwen Delvano is no longer the woman he once knew. She is bound to another man, and to a dying planet that is trapped in twilight. Gwen needs Dirk’s protection, and he will do anything to keep her safe, even if it means challenging the barbaric man who has claimed her. But an impenetrable veil of secrecy surrounds them all, and it’s becoming impossible for Dirk to distinguish between his allies and his enemies. In this dangerous triangle, one is hurtling toward escape, another toward revenge, and the last toward a brutal, untimely demise.

    From Argus the Committee keep an oppressive control. Soon they will have the power to edit human minds, but not yet - twelve billion human beings need to die before Earth can be stabilized.

    But before humanity arrived, another species had already claimed Grass for its own. It too had developed a culture...... Now a deadly plague is spreading across the stars, leaving no planet untouched, save for Grass. But the secret of the planet's immunity hides a truth so shattering it could mean the end of life itself.

    Corey. Set two hundred years in the future, where man has colonized the outer asteroid belt, The Expanse follows the case of a missing girl that brings together a hardened detective and a rogue ship captain in a race across the solar system to expose the greatest conspiracy in human history. "Drive" highlights a key moment in The Expanse universe whose ramifications set the foundation for the show.The story is a prequel taking place approximately 150 years prior to the main series, concerning Solomon Epstein and his invention of the Epstein drive.

    For welfare rats like Andrew Grayson, there are only two ways out of the crime-ridden and filthy welfare tenements, where you're restricted to two thousand calories of badly flavored soy every day:You can hope to win the lottery and draw a ticket on a colony ship settling off-world, or you can join the service.With the colony lottery a pipe dream, Andrew chooses to enlist in the armed forces for a shot at real food, a retirement bonus, and maybe a ticket off Earth. But as he starts a career of supposed privilege, he soon learns that the good food and decent health care come at a steep price…and that the settled galaxy holds far greater dangers than military bureaucrats or the gangs that rule the slums.

    He is a "rad" -- radical regenerative. A freak among people who can regenerate injured flesh... and trade extra body parts to the Offworld oppressors for iron. For, on a planet without hard metals -- or the means of escape -- iron is power in the race to build a spacecraft. Iron is the promise of freedom -- which may never be fulfilled as Lanik uncovers a treacherous conspiracy beyond his imagination. Now charged with a mission of conquest -- and exile -- Lanik devises a bold and dangerous plan... a quest that may finally break the vicious chain of rivalry and bloodshed that enslaves the people of Treason as the Offworld never could.

    On this planet far away in space and time from the world of her youth, she has lived and loved, weathered the death of her husband, raised her one surviving child, lovingly tended her garden, and grown placidly old. And it is here that she fully expects to finish out her days–until the shifting corporate fortunes of the Sims Bancorp Company dictates that Colony 3245.12 is to be disbanded, its residents shipped off, deep in cryo-sleep, to somewhere new and strange and not of their choosing. But while her fellow colonists grudgingly anticipate a difficult readjustment on some distant world, Ofelia savors the promise of a golden opportunity. Not starting over in the hurly-burly of a new community... but closing out her life in blissful solitude, in the place she has no intention of leaving. A population of one.With everything she needs to sustain her, and her independent spirit to buoy her, Ofelia actually does start life over–for the first time on her own terms: free of the demands, the judgments, and the petty tyrannies of others. But when a reconnaissance ship returns to her idyllic domain, and its crew is mysteriously slaughtered, Ofelia realizes she is not the sole inhabitant of her paradise after all. And, when the inevitable time of first contact finally arrives, she will find her life changed yet again–in ways she could never have imagined...

    Benevolent, they made few demands: unify earth, eliminate poverty, and end war. With little rebellion, humankind agreed, and a golden age began.But at what cost? With the advent of peace, man ceases to strive for creative greatness, and a malaise settles over the human race. To those who resist, it becomes evident that the Overlords have an agenda of their own. As civilization approaches the crossroads, will the Overlords spell the end for humankind . . . or the beginning?

    He has learned it so well that the interstellar masters, old hands at enslaving planets, regard him as a valuable servant.But Shane has a secret. One day, in a rebellious moment, he invented The Pilgrim: a mysterious figure who incites rebellion and vanishes unseen, leaving a distinctive icon behind him.Now the human underground is preparing to rebel. Shane knows how hopeless their rebellion will be. He knows, as well, that he will be unable to keep himself from taking part.

    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.

    Now its fleet is crippled and stranded in enemy territory. Their only hope is a man who's emerged from a century-long hibernation to find he has been heroically idealized, beyond belief...Captain John "Black Jack" Geary's legendary exploits are known to every schoolchild. Revered for his heroic "last stand" in the early days of the war, he was presumed dead. But a century later, Geary miraculously returns from survival hibernation and reluctantly takes command of the Alliance fleet as it faces annihilation by the Syndics.Appalled by the hero-worship around him, Geary is nevertheless a man who will do his duty. And he knows that bringing the stolen Syndic hypernet key safely home is the Alliance's one chance to win the war. But to do that, Geary will have to live up to the impossibly heroic "Black Jack" legend...

    Each sought his own brand of happiness. But none could have guessed what awaited them. Not even in a million years....

    Earth establishes extrasolar colonies and discovers alien races--including the warlike Fallers, the only spacefaring race besides humans. Mysterious, uncommunicative, and relentlessly bent on humanity's extinction, the Fallers have mastered the star gates, and are closing in on earth. Dr. Bazargan commands the scientific team sent to a newly discovered world to study its humanoid natives: beings who literally perceive only one reality. To lie is to be unreal--and condemned to death. The humans must flee for their lives across the unknown planet when they and the aliens learn the scientific mission is a lie. It's the cover for a secret military exploration of the moon Tas, which is another artifact of the gate-makers: a superweapon capable of annihilating all life in a star system, and already known to the Fallers. Nancy Kress has won the Hugo, the Sturgeon, and three Nebula Awards. She is justly acclaimed as a literary SF writer, but receives little acknowledgement that her work is hard SF. Probability Moon should change this, winning her many new readers while pleasing her fans. It's a rare and desirable hybrid: a literary, military, hard-SF novel. Set in the same world as her Nebula- and Sturgeon-winning novelette, "Flowers of Aulit Prison," Probability Moon is the first book of a trilogy, but it has a self-contained story line. The sequel, Probability Sun, will appear in 2001, and the concluding book will be The Fabric of Space. --Cynthia Ward