Unauthorized genetically engineered species had been spotted. Geologic survey teams sent to locate newly detected mineral deposits were either coming up empty - or disappearing altogether. And the locals weren't talking - especially not to the company bent on exploiting the planet.Disabled combat veteran Yanaba Maddock seemed to the company to be the ideal spy: the frailty that made her no further use to the military would be a perfect blind to allow her to get close to the Petaybean natives. But miraculously, with her relocation to the arctic planet came a return of Yana's health and strength. And the more she got to know they people of Petaybee, the more determined she became to protect her new home.For something strange and wonderful truly was happening on Petaybee. Something worth fighting for, or even dying for - but, especially, something worthy living for...

    On an island with a glass shore - relic of some even more ancient conflict - she discovers she is to be hunted by the Huhsz, a religious cult which believes she is the last obstacle before their faith's apotheosis. She has to run, knowing her only hope of finally escaping the Huhsz is to find the last of the ancient, apocalyptically powerful but seemingly cursed Lazy Guns. But that is just the first as well as the final step on a search that takes her on an odyssey through the exotic Golterian system and results in both a trail of destruction and a journey into her own past, as well as that of her family and the system itself; a journey that changes everything.

    Whether it wanted to or not. When the Amplitur and their allies stumbled upon the races called the Weave, the Purpose seemed poised for a great leap forward. But the Weave's surprising unity also gave it the ability to fight the Amplitur and their cause. And fight it did, for thousands of years.Will Dulac was a New Orleans composer who thought the tiny reef off Belize would be the perfect spot to drop anchor and finish his latest symphony in solitude. What he found instead was a group of alien visitors, a scouting party for the Weave, looking for allies among what they believed to be a uniquely warlike race, Humans.Will tried to convince the aliens that Man was fundamentally peaceful, for he understood that Human involvement would destroy the race. But all too soon, it didn't matter. The Amplitur had discovered Earth...

    Humanity’s greatest dreams have become reality. Along with dozens of other sentient races, the people of Earth have formed the United Federation of Planets—a galactic civilization that governs much of the known universe for the good of all. Over the past two centuries, mankind has tamed its basest instincts, and reached the stars…But suppose it hadn’t happened that way at all? Suppose instead humanity’s darkest impulses, its most savage, animalistic desires had triumphed? Suppose that the empire mankind made out in the stars was one ruled by terror, where only those willing to brutalize their own kind and their neighbors could survive?One hundred years ago, four crewmembers of the U.S.S. Enterprise crossed the dimensional barrier and found just such an empire. A mirror image of their own universe, populated by nightmare duplicates of their shipmates. Barely able to escape with their lives, they returned thankful that the accident that brought them there could not be duplicated. Or so they thought.But now the scientists of that empire have found a doorway into our universe. Thier plan: to destroy from within, to replace one of our starships with one of theirs. Their victims: the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC 1701-D.

    In one of the most powerful and thought-provoking novels of his remarkable career, Orson Scott Card's Pastwatch interweaves a compelling portrait of Christopher Columbus with the story of a future scientist who believes she can alter human history from a tragedy of bloodshed and brutality to a world filled with hope and healing.

    What's more, every police ship in space has just been alerted that Dar and Samantha are dangerous telepaths to be shot on sight.

    Sword & Citadel brings together the final two books of the tetralogy in one volume:The Sword of the Lictor is the third volume in Wolfe's remarkable epic, chronicling the odyssey of the wandering pilgrim called Severian, driven by a powerful and unfathomable destiny, as he carries out a dark mission far from his home.The Citadel of the Autarch brings The Book of the New Sun to its harrowing conclusion, as Severian clashes in a final reckoning with the dread Autarch, fulfilling an ancient prophecy that will forever alter the realm known as Urth.

    It is the pivot of Marion Zimmer Bradley's novel of Darkover during the final flaming days of the Ages of Chaos.This is the story of the era when the planet of the Bloody Sun was divided into a hundred warring kingdoms and civilization teetered on the edge of oblivion.It is the story of Bard di Asturien, ambitious soldier-outlaw, and of his opponent, Varzil the Good, who struggled to establish the Compact. And it is also the story of a man from distant Terra named Paul Harrell who was the exact duplicate of Varzil's enemy.Two to Conquer is a novel of social forces in combat, of the use and misuse of science, of war, of rape, and of witchcraft.

    In the twenty-third century pioneers have escaped the crowded earth for life in self-sustaining orbital colonies.  One of the colonies, Rotor, has broken away from the solar system to create its own renegade utopia around an unknown red star two light-years from Earth:  a star named Nemesis.  Now a fifteen-year-old Rotorian girl has learned of the dire threat that nemesis poses to Earth's people--but she is prevented from warning them.  Soon she will realize that Nemesis endangers Rotor as well.  And so it will be up to her alone to save both Earth and Rotor as--drawn inexorably by Nemesis, the death star--they hurtle toward certain disaster.

    She's a successful reporter for a hi-tech magazine in Boston, making good money doing what she loves. When her researcher brings her iron-clad evidence of a money-laundering scheme, Miriam thinks she's found the story of the year. But when she takes it to her editor, she's fired on the spot and gets a death threat from the criminals she has uncovered.Before the day is over, she's received a locket left by the mother she never knew-the mother who was murdered when she was an infant. Within is a knotwork pattern, which has a hypnotic effect on her. Before she knows it, she's transported herself to a parallel Earth, a world where knights on horseback chase their prey with automatic weapons, and where world-skipping assassins lurk just on the other side of reality - a world where her true family runs things.The six families of the Clan rule the kingdom of Gruinmarkt from behind the scenes, a mixture of nobility and criminal conspirators whose power to walk between the worlds makes them rich in both. Braids of family loyalty and intermarriage provide a fragile guarantee of peace, but a recently-ended civil war has left the families shaken and suspicious.Taken in by her mother's people, she becomes the star of the story of the century-as Cinderella without a fairy godmother. As her mother's heir, Miriam is hailed as the prodigal countess Helge Thorold-Hjorth, and feted and feasted. Caught up in schemes and plots centuries in the making, Miriam is surrounded by unlikely allies, forbidden loves, lethal contraband, and, most dangerous of all, her family. Her unexpected return will supercede the claims of other clan members to her mother's fortune and power, and whoever killed her mother will be happy to see her dead, too.Behind all this lie deeper secrets still, which threaten everyone and everything she has ever known. Patterns of deception and interlocking lies, as intricate as the knotwork between the universes. But Miriam is no one's pawn, and is determined to conquer her new home on her own terms.Blending the creativity and humor of Roger Zelazny, the adventure of H. Beam Piper and Philip Jose Farmer, and the rigor and scope of a science-fiction writer on the grandest scale, Charles Stross has set a new standard for fantasy epics.

    As the planet is transformed from an unexplored and forbidding terrain to a troubled image of a re-created Earth, we meet the First Hundred explorers—men and women who are bound together by Earth’s tenuous toehold on Mars. Presenting unforgettable stories of hope and disappointment, of fierce physical and psychological struggles, The Martians is an epic chronicle of a planet that represents one of humanity’s most glorious possibilities.The Martians is a unique collection of previously unpublished fiction, a fascinating addition to Robinson’s oeuvre, and a must for all lovers of the red planet.

    His only escape lay in Phaze, a world totally ruled by magic. Soon he learned that his alternate self had already been murdered, and that he was next. On Proton, his fate depended on winning the great Games. On Phaze, he must master magic to survive. And if he used any magic at all, his friends were determined to kill him at once!

    The Servants of Wrath have deified Carlton Lufteufel and re-christened him the Deus Irae. In the small community of Charlottesville, Utah, Tibor McMasters, born without arms or legs, has, through an array of prostheses, established a far-reaching reputation as an inspired painter. When the new church commissions a grand mural depicting the Deus Irae, it falls upon Tibor to make a treacherous journey to find the man, to find the god, and capture his terrible visage for posterity.

    Once he was outbound, where the Society that ruled Earth could not reach him, he headed his starship toward the galactic core, where the unimaginable energies of the Universe wrenched the fabric of time and space and promised final escape from his captors.Then he returned to an Earth eons older than the one he'd left...a planet that had had 3,000,000 years to develop perils he had never dreamed of -- perils that became nightmares that he had to escape...somehow!

    than most people do all day. Threatened by an alien enemy, Earth's military sends Phule and his soldiers to a distant planet. But now, the aliens have chosen a new target of war . . . Phule's Company.