The ancient city of Thaiburley is a vast, multi-tiered metropolis, where the poor live in the City Below and demons are said to dwell in the Upper Heights.Having witnessed a murder in a part of the city he should never have been in, Tom, a lowly street-nick, has to run for his life through the City Below, Thaiburley’s unsavoury basement world. Accused of committing the murder himself, he is pursued by sky-borne assassins, Kite Guards, and agents of a darker force intent on destabilising the whole city. His only ally is Kat, a renegade like him, but she proves to have secrets of her own...Source: back cover

    Beagle and published in 1968. It follows the tale of a unicorn, who believes she is the last of her kind in the world and undertakes a quest to discover what has happened to the others. It has sold more than five million copies worldwide since its original publication, and has been translated into at least twenty languages. In 1987, Locus ranked The Last Unicorn number five among the 33 "All-Time Best Fantasy Novels", based on a poll of subscribers. The story begins with a group of human hunters passing through a forest in search of game. After days of coming up empty-handed, they begin to believe they are passing through a Unicorn's forest, where animals are kept safe by a magical aura. They resign themselves to hunting somewhere else; but, before they leave, one of the hunters calls out a warning to the Unicorn that she may be the last of her kind. This revelation disturbs the Unicorn, and though she initially dismisses it, eventually doubt and worry drive her to leave her forest. She travels through the land and discovers that humans no longer even recognize her; instead they see a pretty white mare. She is taken captive by a traveling carnival led by witch Mommy Fortuna, who uses magical spells to create the illusion that regular animals are in fact creatures of myth and legend. There are many more adventures and the book is a delight, as well as thought-provoking. A good read!!

    Commander Colin Maclntyre, it began as a routine training flight over the Moon. For Dahak, a self-aware Imperial battleship, it began millennia ago when that powerful artificial intelligence underwent a mutiny in the face of the enemy. The mutiny was never resolved--Dahak was forced to maroon not just the mutineers but the entire crew on prehistoric Earth. Dahak has been helplessly waiting as the descendants of the loyal crew regressed while the mutineers maintained control of technology that kept them alive as the millennia passed. But now Dahak's sensors indicate that the enemy that devastated the Imperium so long ago has returned--and Earth is in their path. For the sake of the planet, Dahak must mobilize its defenses. And that it cannot do until the mutineers are put down. So Dahak has picked Colin Maclntyre to be its new captain. Now Maclntyre must mobilize humanity to destroy the mutineers once and for all--or Earth will become a cinder in the path of galactic conquest.

    “Van Name has created a hero worth at least a dozen more novels . . . I want this to be a series. I want to read a new one every year.” —Orson Scott Card      Jon Moore: A nanotech-enhanced warrior who wants nothing more than a quiet life and a way back to his strange home world. 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 PREDATORS!       For the first time in a Jon & Lobo book, “My Sister, My Self,” the short story which introduced Jon Moore.      One Jump Ahead: Jon 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. 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! Slanted Jack: The job looked simple enough:  Jon agreed to help a con man, a friend from a part of his past he’d rather forget, protect a very special young boy.  But the deal didn’t stay simple, as each move Jon and Lobo made resulted in more danger and more enemies. The best con man Jon’s ever known, a ruthless gang boss, a heavily armed group of religious fanatics, a beautiful woman with a mysterious agenda, and an interstellar government out to clean up a dangerous frontier world rush together toward an explosive climax—and Jon and Lobo are caught in the middle. Plus new introductions by the author, making this a package that every Jon & Lobo fan will want to buy.

    Dick has written some of the most intriguing, original and thought-provoking fiction of our time. This collection includes stories that will make you laugh, cringe...and stop and think.The Minority Report: a special unit that employs those with the power of precognition to prevent crimes proves itself less than reliable...We Can Remember It For You Wholesale: an everyguy's yearning for more exciting "memories" places him in a danger he never could have imagined (basis of the feature film Total Recall)...Paycheck: a mechanic who has no memory of the previous two years of his life finds that a bag of seemingly worthless and unrelated objects can actually unlock the secret of his recent past — and insure that he has a future...Second Variety: the UN's technological advances to win a global war veer out of control, threatening to destroy all of humankind (basis of the movie Screamers)...The Eyes Have It: a whimsical, laugh-out-loud play on the words of the title.

    The Hapes Consortium of 63 worlds is ruled by the Queen Mother, who wants Leia to marry her son, the dashing and wealthy Prince Isolder. Han Solo has always dreamed of marrying Leia himself, and now he makes a desperate last gamble to win her back. Soon he, Isolder, Luke Skywalker and Artoo will be at the center of an adventure leading to an awesome treasure, a group of Force-trained "witches," and a showdown with an invincible foe.Features a bonus section following the novel that includes a primer on the Star Wars expanded universe, and over half a dozen excerpts from some of the most popular Star Wars books of the last thirty years!

    Anti-Gerasone halts the aging process and prevents people from dying of old age as long as they keep taking it; as a result, America now suffers from severe overpopulation and shortages of food and resources. With the exception of the very wealthy, most of the population appears to survive on a diet of foods made from processed seaweed and sawdust. Gramps Ford, his chin resting on his hands, his hands on the crook of his cane, was staring irascibly at the five-foot television screen that dominated the room. On the screen, a news commentator was summarizing the day's happenings. Every thirty seconds or so, Gramps would jab the floor with his cane-tip and shout, "Hell, we did that a hundred years ago!" Emerald and Lou, coming in from the balcony, where they had been seeking that 2185 A.D. rarity--privacy--were obliged to take seats in the back row, behind about a dozen relatives with whom they shared the house. All save Gramps, who was somewhat withered and bent, seemed, by pre-anti-gerasone standards, to be about the same age--somewhere in their late twenties or early thirties. Gramps looked older because he had already reached 70 when anti-gerasone was invented. He had not aged in the 102 years since. "Next one shoots off his big bazoo while the TV's on is gonna find hisself cut off without a dollar--" his voice suddenly softened and sweetened--"when they wave that checkered flag at the Indianapolis Speedway, and old Gramps gets ready for the Big Trip Up Yonder." He sniffed sentimentally, while his heirs concentrated desperately on not making the slightest sound. For them, the poignancy of the prospective Big Trip had been dulled somewhat, through having been mentioned by Gramps about once a day for fifty years.

    A dull future seems to await, until a marvelous discovery changes everything. Her father's old starship, missing for a decade, turns up halfway across the galaxy. Its retrieval launches Molly and Cole on the adventure of a lifetime, one that will have lasting consequences for themselves and billions of others. What starts off as a simple quest to reconnect with her past, ends up forging a new future. And the forgotten family she hoped to uncover becomes one she never foresaw: a band of alien misfits and runaways-the crew of the starship Parsona.

    His latest, a novella-length tale of startling originality, beautifully embodies these qualities, reaffirming Simmons's position as one of the finest storytellers of our time.Muse of Fire takes place in a remote future age in which the human enterprise has all but ground to a halt. Earth, drained of its oceans and populated largely by the dead, is little more than a distant memory. The scattered human remnants occupy the lowest rung of a Gnostic hierarchy that dominates both their secular and spiritual lives. Against this backdrop, Simmons introduces the Earth's Men, a wandering troupe of players dedicated to presenting the works of Shakespeare to every accessible corner of the settled universe.The story begins on the planet known as 25-25-261B, a regular stop on the players' interstellar tour. A routine performance of Much Ado About Nothing is in progress when an unprecedented event occurs. A band of Archons—members of the usually invisible ruling caste—enter the makeshift theater and join the audience. In doing so, they change the course of human—and non-human—history.What follows is an intellectual adventure story of astonishing richness and depth in which disparate species face each other across an insurmountable divide, their only point of contact the indelible language of William Shakespeare, the story's true muse. Skillfully deploying the elements of traditional science fiction—advanced technologies, alien encounters, strange new worlds—Muse of Fire entertains and illuminates while celebrating the best, most durable elements of our cultural legacy. It is a work of wit, erudition, and tightly compressed grandeur that only Dan Simmons could have written.

    Once the Empire had ruled the galaxy, linking thousands of worlds with a network of commerce, culture and law... Now, with the Empire gone, only isolated planets remained and they were rapidly sinking into oblivion. Then came Mass, a man driven by a dream of rediscovering the Empire... but to achieve that dream he must find and control the space skimmer, one of the miraculous vessels that had first made the Empire possible...

    Earth scientist Rocannon is on that world, and he sees his friends murdered and his spaceship destroyed. Marooned among alien peoples, he leads the battle to free this new world - and finds that legends grow around him even as he fights.

    At its Summit, on the highest peak of all, far above the clouds, live the gods themselves. Each year, from the village of Jespodar at the foot of the imposing Wall, twenty men and twenty women, selected and trained at arduous length, set forth on a Pilgrimage. Against overwhelming odds they will attempt to scale the Summit, meet with the gods, and gain new knowledge. A few Pilgrims will return as madmen. Most will never be seen again.For Poilar Crookleg, the Pilgrimage has been a lifelong dream. Years ago he and his childhood friend Traiben vowed that they would one day make the Pilgrimage together, converse with the gods, and return not as madmen but as teachers of wisdom. Now it is their year of selection, and the two young men set forth among the chosen forty, determined to succeed where so many before them have failed.Along the way, they must brave ghosts and ravenous Wall-hawks, traverse terrifying Kingdoms and blasted landscapes of heat and ice, and then face the greatest challenge of all…the temptation of eternal life in a paradise of pleasure. At the end, for the few who endure, lies the Summit itself, and with it the secret of the gods—a secret so strange and unsettling that it will shatter centuries of belief and change the world forever.In Kingdoms of the Wall, Robert Silverberg has crafted a masterpiece of the first order, an adventure filled with awesome mystery and disturbing revelation, a voyage to the heart of creation itself as the inhabitants of an alien world strive to learn the truth about themselves and their gods, a truth as harsh and unforgiving as the forbidding heights of Kosa Saag.

    But when a high-profile diplomat goes missing, Abumwe and her team are last minute replacements on a mission critical to the Colonial Unions future. As the team works to pull off their task, CDF Lieutenant Harry Wilson discovers theres more to the story of the missing diplomats than anyone expected...a secret that could spell war for humanity.

    Includes: Another Fine Myth Myth Conceptions Myth Directions Hit or MythFrom dust jacket: What does a half-trained apprentice magician do when his master is killed while conjuring up a demon - leaving him to face a green, pointy-eared creature with razor-sharp teeth? If the place is Klah and the apprentice is Skeeve, the answer is clear: Set off on a riotous odyssey through a universe where magic and science combine to create more trouble - and more laughs - than man or beast can imagine. Another Fine Myth introduces Skeeve to the green-skinned Aahz, dimension-traveler from Perv, who, it turns out, isn't such a bad fellow after all. Stripped temporarily of his powers, the pointy-eared Pervert (that's Pervect, he insists) offers to complete Skeeve's training and help him track down his master's murderer. The killer, a nasty sort of fellow from the dimension of Imper, is scheming to dominate the universe by controlling all magik. But Aahz and Skeeve, impervious to the Imp's charms, aim to stand in his way. Myth Conceptions finds Skeeve applying for the job of Court Magician in Possiltum. The cushy job Aahz has promised becomes quite something else, however, when Possiltum's tight-fisted rulers give Skeeve his first assignment: stop the virtually invincible army of the invading Empire...singlehanded. In Myth Directions, former Assassin Tanda takes Skeeve on a whirlwind tour of the other dimensions to find the perfect birthday present for her old friend Aahz. They find it on the planet Jahk: an enormous toadlike trophy that is the prize in the annual game between the rival cities of Veygas and Ta-hoe. When they're caught stealing it, Aahz and his teammates must take to the field in one of the zaniest sports competitions of all time - with Tanda's life hanging in the balance. Hit or Myth finds Aahz returning to Perv and Skeeve duped into standing in for a cowardly king wo's about to marry the ruthless, bloodthirsty, promiscuous Queen Hemlock. And with Don Bruce's irate Mob pressing their own impossible demands as well, Skeeve had better think fast.... Join Robert Lynn Asprin's engaging menagerie of wizards, demons, kings, dragons, gremlins, gargoyles and dimension-hopping gangsters. Even the most serious lover of fantasy won't be able to resist the spell of these myths. Jacket art by Walter Velez.

    A billion-dollar find, it waits for any company that can drill a world's record, three-mile-deep mine shaft. EarthCore is the company with the technology, the resources and the guts to go after the mother lode. Young executive Connell Kirkland is the company's driving force, pushing himself and those around him to uncover the massive treasure.But at three miles below the surface, where the rocks are so hot they burn bare skin, something has been waiting for centuries. Waiting ...and guarding. Kirkland and EarthCore are about to find out first-hand why this treasure has never been unearthed.