Forced to combat enemies without and within, they strive to overcome the odds under the watchful eye of an unwelcome guest: Drake, agent of the bank funding their expedition, who is far more than he seems and may represent the greatest threat of all.“Intrigue and action in this high octane collision between Firefly, the Bourne films and Indiana Jones. A two-fisted SF adventure, space opera as it should be written!” – Gavin Smith, author of Veteran“It is his characters who live through the story and make the reader need to know just how it’s all going to pan out, human characters who may seem familiar but then there’s that one thing, that shifted alteration that changes the world and changes the reader too.” – Interzone

    She was expected to do her duty, even to the extent of entering into a marriage alliance she did not understand with a man she despised. Lady Caissa, beautiful, rich, and well-educated, had never learned the great secret of Demeathorn, although she was about to be caught in its spell.In the aftermath of disastrous diplomatic negotiations, she fled north toward interdicted territory. A distress signal from deep within the forbidden zone drew her to a rocky island where she would encounter a man alone: intense, handsome, and severely injured in the crash of his antique flyer. Lady Caissa did not know it, but she had just set in motion events which would determine the fate of her family, her planet...and her happiness.

    While they are renowned for their 10,000 year history of glorious battle and honourable deeds, these secretive Space Marines seek to hide the dark flaws at the core of their being from the rest of the Imperium.

    Vonnegut’s absolute familiarity with science fiction tropes and his mocking contempt for them are well displayed in a story which shifts between tragic cartoon and straightforward projection. His highly evolved humans in an indeterminate future have become body-transcending spirits and Vonnegut handles this vaporous situation with deadpan comedy suspended over unspeakable loss, a characteristic technique. In its fluidity--the story is parody masked as extrapolation; no, it is a horror story in the form of a parody. This kind of cross-category narrative attack was often used by Vonnegut and makes him difficult to label; he is too serious to be funny, too absurd (as in jailbreak or as in the concept of Billy Pilgrim’s alien Tralmalfadorians) to be taken as realism. Vonnegut when he wrote this story at 30 was still trying to find his voice, identify his material; as a laboratory of his enveloping subject matter and technique UNREADY TO WEAR is particularly interesting and disturbing, demonstrating that Vonnegut could have gone in any number of directions and perhaps by deliberately failing to make a decision, found his voice through indeterminacy. It is as a poet of indeterminacy then that Vonnegut went on to write his most famous novel, SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE.ABOUT THE AUTHORKurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) is one of the most beloved American writers of the twentieth century. Vonnegut's audience increased steadily since his first five pieces in the 1950s and grew from there. His 1968 novel Slaughterhouse-Five has become a canonic war novel with Joseph Heller's Catch-22 to form the truest and darkest of what came from World War II.Vonnegut began his career as a science fiction writer, and his early novels--Player Piano and The Sirens of Titan--were categorized as such even as they appealed to an audience far beyond the reach of the category. In the 1960s, Vonnegut became closely associated with the Baby Boomer generation, a writer on that side, so to speak.Now that Vonnegut's work has been studied as a large body of work, it has been more deeply understood and unified. There is a consistency to his satirical insight, humor and anger which makes his work so synergistic. It seems clear that the more of Vonnegut's work you read, the more it resonates and the more you wish to read. Scholars believe that Vonnegut's reputation (like Mark Twain's) will grow steadily through the decades as his work continues to increase in relevance and new connections are formed, new insights made.ABOUT THE SERIESHorace Gold led GALAXY magazine from its first issue dated October 1950 to science fiction’s most admired, widely circulated and influential magazine throughout its initial decade. Its legendary importance came from publication of full length novels, novellas and novelettes. GALAXY published nearly every giant in the science fiction field.The Galaxy Project is a selection of the best of GALAXY with new forewords by some of today’s best science fiction writers. The initial selections in alphabetical order include work by Ray Bradbury, Frederic Brown, Lester del Rey, Robert A. Heinlein, Damon Knight, C. M. Kornbluth, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Frederik Pohl, Robert Scheckley, Robert Silverberg, William Tenn (Phillip Klass) and Kurt Vonnegut with new Forewords by Paul di Filippo, David Drake, John Lutz, Barry Malzberg and Robert Silverberg. The Galaxy Project is committed to publishing new work in the spirit GALAXY magazine and its founding editor Horace Gold.

    Feist. This bundle includes the complete Serpentwar Saga.The bundle includes: Shadow of a Dark Queen (1), Rise of a Merchant Prince (2), Rage of a Demon King (3), and Shards of a Broken Crown (4).Return to the world of Midkemia…Ancient powers are readying themselves for a devastating confrontation, and a dark queen has raised a standard and is gathering armies of unmatched might.Into this battleground of good and evil a band of desperate men are forced whose only hope for survival is to face this ancient power and discover its true nature. Their quest is at best dangerous and at worst suicidal.Among them are some unlikely heroes – Erik, a bastard heir denied his birthright, and his friend Roo, an irrepressible scoundrel with a penchant for thievery are accompanied by the mysterious Miranda upon whom all must wager their lives. She appears to be an ally but also possess a hidden agenda and may prove to be a more deadly foe when the final confrontation is at hand…This ebook bundle contains Shadow of a Dark Queen (1), Rise of a Merchant Prince (2), Rage of a Demon King (3), and Shards of a Broken Crown (4).

    This volume assembles some of Clifton's very best work -- including THEY'D RATHER BE RIGHT:STAR BRIGHT (1952)THE KENZIE REPORT (1953)WE'RE CIVILIZED!SENSE FROM THOUGHT DIVIDE (1955)A WOMAN'S PLACE (1955)DO UNTO OTHERS (1958)THEY'D RATHER BE RIGHT (1958)WHAT NOW, LITTLE MAN? (1959)EIGHT KEYS TO EDEN (1960)And if you enjoy this volume, don't forget to search your favorite ebook store for "Wildside Press Megapack" to see more entries in this great series, covering science fiction, fantasy, horror, mysteries, westerns, classics -- and much, much more!

    There is a constant low-level war between the two groups, with the Spacers raiding earth for supplies and for women. The war turns hot in the book and three teenagers, one Spacer and two from Earth, must find a way to bring peace.

    Pathis, Carrin's Account Executive from th AE company that supplied -- well, everything, everything the family bought or needed, "we would not want to deprive you of necessities, which in any case is fully protected by the laws we helped formulate and pass. To say nothing of the terrific items that are coming out next year. Things you wouldn't want to miss, sir!"Mr. Carrin nodded. Certainly he wanted new items."Well, suppose we make the customary arrangement. If you will just sign over your son's earnings for the first thirty years of his adult life, we can easily arrange credit for you."Carrin made his payments, even when they were awful. But how could they aswk him to sign away his son's life. . . ?

    Adam Roberts' new novel is a terrifying vision of a near future war - a civil war that tears the UK apart as new technologies allow the world's first truly democratic army to take on the British army and wrest control from the powers that be.

    Their leader, Holy Matriarch Sasheen, ruthlessly maintains control through her Diplomats, priests trained as subtle predators.Ash is a member of an elite group of assassins, the Roshun, who offer protection through the threat of vendetta. Forced by his ailing health to take on an apprentice, he chooses Nico, a young man living in the besieged city of Bar-Khos. At the time, Nico is hungry, desperate, and alone in a city that finds itself teetering on the brink.When the Holy Matriarch's son deliberately murders a woman under the protection of the Roshun, he forces the sect to seek his life in retribution. Ash and his young apprentice set out to fulfill the mandate, and their journey takes them into the heart of the conflict between the Empire and the Free Ports...into bloodshed and death.

    Some people, anyway. The rich, the powerful--they lived their lives at the rate of one year every ten. Somec created two societies: that of people who lived out their normal span and died, and those who slept away the decades, skipping over the intervening years and events. It allowed great plans to be put in motion. It allowed interstellar Empires to be built.It came near to destroying humanity.After a long, long time of decadence and stagnation, a few seed ships were sent out to save our species. They carried human embryos and supplies, and teaching robots, and one man. The Worthing Saga is the story of one of these men, Jason Worthing, and the world he found for the seed he carried.Orson Scott Card is "a master of the art of storytelling" (Booklist), and The Worthing Saga is a story that only he could have written.

    The worlds they stride across range from the Renaissance city where aristocratic rats rule the human servant class, to a near-future London where chaos is come again. They are two of the most powerful players in the games of magic and politics, and the most colourful. This volume brings together three brilliantly imaginative, powerful and disturbing tales - Rats and Gargoyles, The Architecture of Desire and Left to His Own Devices - and the linked short fiction and confirms Mary Gentle as one of the foremost writers of dark and visionary fantasy.

    So when a competing murder-for-hire organization decides to destroy The Agency, the first person they target for elimination is Agent 47. Tasking someone to off the best hitman in the business is one thing; getting the job done is another. When the attempt falls short, Agent 47 is ordered to track down and kill the culprit who is feeding vital information about The Agency to its enemies.Agent 47 must follow a bloody trail halfway around the world, fight his way through the streets of Fez, Morocco, and battle slavers deep inside Chad. Then he will discover a shattering truth: If he fails at his mission, the price he’ll pay will be far greater than his own life. . . .

    There is a separate entry if you have just the 1938 novella. Also published as 'The Thing and Other Stories'. 'The Thing from Another World' and 'The Thing from Outer Space'. All contained the seven short stories mentioned above.

    Whether fictionalizing his dramatic exploits as a Royal Air Force pilot during World War II or concocting the ingeniously plotted fables that were dramatized on television as Tales of the Unexpected, Dahl was brilliant at provoking in his readers the overwhelming desire to know what happens next—and at satisfying that desire in ways that feel both surprising and inevitable.In this collection:-A Fine Son-Death of an Old Man-Parson’s Pleasure-Poison-The Hitch-Hiker-The Wish-Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat-Dip in the Pool-The Landlady-Skin-Lamb to the Slaughter-Man from the South-The Way Up to Heavan-The Umbrella Man-Taste-The Swan-William and MaryFilled with devilish plot twists, his tales display a tantalizing blend of macabre humor and the absurdly grotesque. Dahl’s creations amuse and shock us in equal measure, gleefully reminding us of what might lurk beneath the surface of the ordinary.