Book picks similar to
A Step Farther Out by Jerry Pournelle


science
non-fiction
science-fiction
fiction

Steelheart


William C. Dietz - 1998
    A battle against an alien race who hold all technology to be the ultimate evil. Human, alien, and android alike struggle against them. But to win, they must unite. And to unite, they need a leader...

Doc Sidhe


Aaron Allston - 1995
    While looking for Gaby, he interrupts a bizarre trio as they are kidnapping her, and he is hurled into another, very weird, universe. His only hope is Doc Sidhe, this Art Deco universe's greatest champion of justice.

One Jump Ahead


Mark L. Van Name - 2007
    Lobo: An AI-enhanced Predator-Class Assault Vehicle, a mobile fortress equipped for any environment from the seabed to interstellar space. TWO WOLVES IN A GALAXY OF LARGER PREDATORSJon Moore wanted only to relax on the pristine planet of Macken--but Macken was the secret battleground of two megacorporations, both determined to control the local jump gate and the riches of an undeveloped world. Moore was too valuable a tool not to be used, whether or not he was willing. What the corporations didn't realize was that Moore had a mind of his own and a conscience that wouldn't let him quit until he'd righted the wrong they'd tricked him into making. And Moore had Lobo--or just possibly Lobo had Jon Moore, because this Assault Vehicle had a mind of its own. . . .Finding allies and enemies among terrorist groups and elite mercenaries, gun-runners and the only kind of government possible on a frontier short on rules and long on riches, Jon and Lobo fight to a climax with a corporate army that can't afford to leave any witnesses. Exotic settings, fast action, real tech, mechanically-enhanced animals--and a beautiful woman who's as deadly as a cobra!"One Jump Ahead: " the first novel in the Jon & Lobo series

The Immortals


James E. Gunn - 1962
    That he will never contract a disease, an infection, or even a cold. That because he will never die, he must surrender the right to live.For Dr. Russell Pearce, the price is eternal suspicion. He appreciates what synthesizing the elixir vitae from the Immortal’s genetic makeup could mean for humankind. He also fears what will happen should Cartwright’s miraculous blood fall into the wrong hands.For the wealthy and powerful, no price is too great. Immortality is now a fact rather than a dream. But the only way to achieve it is to own it exclusively. And that means hunting down and caging the elusive Cartwright, or one of his offspring.

The Book of Andre Norton


Andre Norton - 1974
    Originally puublished uner the title 'The Many Worlds of Andre Norton'

Phoenix Without Ashes


Harlan Ellison - 2010
    The year is 2785, and Devon, a farmer banished for challenging his community's Elders, discovers a secret that changes everything he knew about the world, leading him on a quest to solve a mystery beyond his understanding before his entire world is destroyed in a cataclysm.

Schild's Ladder


Greg Egan - 2002
    Now humans must confront this deadly expansion. Tchicaya, aboard a starship trawling the border of the vacuum, has allied himself with the Yielders-- those determined to study the vacuum while allowing it to grow unchecked. But when his fiery first love, Mariama, reenters his life on the side of the Preservationists-- those working to halt and destroy the vacuum-- Tchicaya finds himself struggling with an inner turmoil he has known since childhood.However, in the center of the vacuum, something is developing that neither Tchicaya and the Yielders nor Mariama and the Preservationists could ever have imagined possible: life.

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space


Carl Sagan - 1994
    This stirring book reveals how scientific discovery has altered our perception of who we are and where we stand, and challenges us to weigh what we will do with that knowledge. Photos, many in color.

Climbing Olympus


Kevin J. Anderson - 1994
    Kevin Anderson, the author of the Star Wars Jedi Academy trilogy, now examines the colonization of Mars by biologically-altered humans--exploring what it truly means to be human. Ties into Anderson's final book in the Jedi Academy trilogy, published by Bantam.

Time Travel: A History


James Gleick - 2016
    Gleick's story begins at the turn of the twentieth century with the young H. G. Wells writing and rewriting the fantastic tale that became his first book, an international sensation, The Time Machine. A host of forces were converging to transmute the human understanding of time, some philosophical and some technological the electric telegraph, the steam railroad, the discovery of buried civilizations, and the perfection of clocks. Gleick tracks the evolution of time travel as an idea in the culture from Marcel Proust to Doctor Who, from Woody Allen to Jorge Luis Borges. He explores the inevitable looping paradoxes and examines the porous boundary between pulp fiction and modern physics. Finally, he delves into a temporal shift that is unsettling our own moment: the instantaneous wired world, with its all-consuming present and vanishing future.

Little Brother & Homeland


Cory Doctorow - 2013
    I'd recommend Little Brother over pretty much any book I've read this year." -Neil Gaiman Little Brother Marcus Yallow is seventeen years old when he skips school and finds himself caught in the aftermath of a terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his friends are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they are brutally interrogated for days.When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state. He knows that no one will believe him, which leaves him one option: to take down the DHS himself. Can one brilliant teenage hacker actually fight back? Maybe, but only if he's very careful...and if he chooses his friends well. Homeland A few years after the events of Little Brother, California's economy collapses and Marcus finds himself employed by a crusading politician who promises reform. Then his former nemesis, Masha, emerges with a thumbdrive containing WikiLeaks-style evidence of government wrongdoing. When Marcus witnesses Masha's kidnapping by the same agents who detained and tortured him earlier, he has to decide whether to save her or leak the archive that will cost his employer the election and put thousands at risk.Surrounded by friends who consider him a hacker hero, stalked by people who look like they're used to inflicting pain, Marcus has to act, and act fast.

The Dog Said Bow-Wow


Michael Swanwick - 2001
    The reigning master of short fiction reinvents science fiction and fantasy in a dazzling new collection unlike anything you’ve ever read. Time-traveling dinosaurs wreak havoc on a placid Vermont town. An ogre is murdered in a locked room in Faerie. An uncanny bordello proves as dangerous as it is alluring. Language is stolen from the builders of babel. Those strangely loveable Post-Utopion scoundrels and con men, Darger and Surplus, swindle their way through London, Paris, and Arcadia.The Dog Said Bow-Wow includes three Hugo Award-winning stories and an original novelette of swashbuckling romance and adventure, “The Skysailor’s Tale.” Ranging from the hardest of science fiction to the highest of fantasy, this irresistible collection amuses and enlightens as only Michael Swanwick can.

None So Blind


Joe Haldeman - 1994
    But Haldeman, like Einstein, proves that clerks can have enough vision to rock the cosmos. This book includes 11 stories and four story poems, ranging in length from two pages to just over 100. Together they have earned two Nebula, two Hugo and one World Fantasy awards. Each one showcases the author's grasp of what it means to be alive and human (or inhuman), written with a powerful clarity and a subtle imagination. Publishers Weekly called this one "a stunner."Contents:Feedback (1993)Passages (1990)Job Security (1992)The Hemingway Hoax (1990)Images (1991)Beachhead (1991)The Monster (1986)If I Had the Wings of an Angel (1991)The Cure (1994)Graves (1992)None So Blind (1994)The Homecoming (1990) poemFire, Ice (1994) poemTime Lapse (1989) poemDX (1987) poem

Day Million


Frederik Pohl - 1970
    Snodgrass (1962)The Day the Martians Came (1967)Schematic Man (1969)Small Lords (1957)Making Love (1966)Way Up Yonder (1959)Speed Trap (1967)It's a Young World (1941)Under Two Moons (1965)

The Door Through Space


Marion Zimmer Bradley - 1961
    It is a peaceful reign, held by compact and not by conquest. Again and again, when rebellion threatens the Terran Peace, the natives of the rebellious world have turned against their own people and sided with the men of Terra; not from fear, but from a sense of dedication. There has never been open war. The battle for these worlds is fought in the minds of a few men who stand between worlds; bound to one world by interest, loyalties and allegiance; bound to the other by love. Such a world is Wolf. Such a man was Race Cargill of the Terran Secret Service… At one time Race Cargill had been the best Terran Intelligence agent on the complex and mysterious planet of Wolf. He had repeatedly imperiled his life amongst the half-human and non-human creatures of the sullen world. And he had repeatedly accomplished the fantastic missions until his name was emblazoned with glory. But that had all seemingly ended. For six long years he'd sat behind a boring desk inside the fenced-in Terran Headquarters, cut off there ever since he and a rival had scarred and ripped each other in blood-feud. But when The Door Through Space swung suddenly open, the feud was on again—and with it a plot designed to check and destroy the Terran Empire.