An odyssey of discovery, from a shattered society through the solar system with a handful of men and women who ride a cold, hurtling ball of ice to the shaky promise of a distant, unknowable future.

    For the small community of San Onofre on the West Coast, life is a matter of survival: living simply on what the sea and land can provide, preserving what knowledge and skills they can in a society without mass communications. Until the men from San Diego arrive, riding the rails on flatbed trucks and bringing news of the new American Resistance. And Hank Fletcher and his friends are drawn into an adventure that marks the end of childhood...

    Enter their world of infinite possibility and discover the fascinating secrets of a master race whose plaything is time...they have observed Earth for centuries, making full sensory movies of wars, natural disasters, and horrific human activities, all to relieve their boredom. When they finally became jaded by ordinary, run-of-the-mill tragedies, they found ways to create their own disasters, just to amuse themselves. These are the super beings who control men's destinies and who derive their pleasure from the pain and torture they inflict on mere human beings. However, interfering with human activities was forbidden, and by the time Investigator Kelexel arrived to investigate, things were really getting out of hand...

    Space-faring humans challenge a godlike superrace for survival in the far reaches of the galaxy in this brilliant new adventure from the author of the "Well World" series.

    Heated from below by the planet's seething core, it is the widest, deepest, most fearsome ocean in the solar system.Idealistic young American scientist Grant Archer joins a clandestine expedition to this awesome new world. But Grant does not share the ideals of the scientists he accompanies: he has been planted on their expedition by the New Morality, a religious group that wants to ferret out what the 'godless humanists' have discovered. His mission: to reassure the new religious leaders of Earth that Jupiter holds no intelligent life.But unknown to the New Morality, Grant, though the son of a minister, is both a believer and a man who sees no reason why science and faith can not co-exist. He has come to the vast, planet-girdling ocean of Jupiter with an open mind, and he is about to tell his masters something that may shatter their conviction.

    For fifteen virtual reality gamers undertaking a four-and-half day quest, the fantasy slaying of monsters is suddenly interrupted-by murder.

    He knows about chemical sludge the way he knows about evil -- all too intimately. And the toxic trail he follows leads to some high and foul places. Before long Taylor's house is bombed, his every move followed, he's adopted by reservation Indians, moves onto the FBI's most wanted list, makes up with his girlfriend, and plays a starring role in the near-assassination of a presidential candidate. Closing the case with the aid of his burnout roomate, his tofu-eating comrades, three major networks, and a range of unconventional weaponry, Sangamon Taylor pulls off the most startling caper in Boston Harbor since the Tea Party. As he navigates this ecological thriller with hardboiled wit and the biggest outboard motor he can get his hands on, Taylor reveals himself as one of the last of the white-hatted good guys in a very toxic world.

    It is also a novel about equality and what happens when the hierarchical structures by which we arrange our daily lives disappear.

    The future physics is mind-boggling but firmly grounded in the science of today, and the action never stops.

    Delany is one of the most acclaimed writers of speculative fiction. Babel-17, winner of the Nebula Award for best novel of the year, is a fascinating tale of a famous poet bent on deciphering a secret language that is the key to the enemy’s deadly force, a task that requires she travel with a splendidly improbable crew to the site of the next attack. For the first time, Babel-17 is published as the author intended with the short novel Empire Star, the tale of Comet Jo, a simple-minded teen thrust into a complex galaxy when he’s entrusted to carry a vital message to a distant world. Spellbinding and smart, both novels are testimony to Delany’s vast and singular talent.

    Titan, an independent republic, was originally colonized from Earth three generations earlier. Duncan's initial challenge is to prepare, physically and intellectually, for the 500-million-mile trip to Earth. Once there, he is caught up in a sweep of new experiences, including the social and political whirl in Washington, a strange visit to a carefully preserved ancient city once prominent in the 20th century, and a search for and meeting with a woman he loved since she visited Titan years before.

    Surely in an age such as ours when Terra's Sphere of Influence is once again surrounded by Alien Peril in all its sundry guises, it is desirable - nay, vital! - that our people be aware that, contrary to the official records of the Corps, it was not by the questionable efforts of such worthies as Ambassadors Nitworth and Spradley that Mankind held its own in the terrible arena between the stars, but by the courage, skill and daring of such men as Jame Retief! This collection has six Retief stories to tickle your funny-bone. Retief is in prime form, taking on dangerous aliens and his own bosses in the Corps Diplomatique.Contents: Protocol [Retief] (1962) / short story by Keith Laumer (variant of The Yillian Way) Sealed Orders [Retief] (1962) / short story by Keith Laumer (variant of Retief of the Red-Tape Mountain) Aide Memoire [Retief] (1962) / short story by Keith Laumer Policy [Retief] (1962) / novelette by Keith Laumer (variant of The Madman from Earth) Palace Revolution [Retief] (1961) / novelette by Keith Laumer (variant of Gambler's World) Retief's Ransom [Retief • 6] (1971) / novel by Keith Laumer.

    Now, with the entire city corrupted -from the people to the very buildings they inhabit- only the most wretched sort of existence remains. For security operative Tanner Mirabel, it is the landscape of nightmares through which he searches for a low-life postmortal killer. But the stakes are raised when his search brings him face to face with a centuries-old atrocity that history would rather forget.

    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?

    The age of star formation is long past. Yet there is life here, feeding off the energies of the stellar remnants, and there is mind, a tremendous galaxy-spanning intelligence each of whose thoughts lasts a hundred thousand years. And this mind cradles memories of a long-gone age when a more compact universe was full of light... The 27th century: Proxima Centauri, an undistinguished red dwarf star, is the nearest star to our sun. How would it be to live on such a world?