Earth establishes extrasolar colonies and discovers alien races--including the warlike Fallers, the only spacefaring race besides humans. Mysterious, uncommunicative, and relentlessly bent on humanity's extinction, the Fallers have mastered the star gates, and are closing in on earth. Dr. Bazargan commands the scientific team sent to a newly discovered world to study its humanoid natives: beings who literally perceive only one reality. To lie is to be unreal--and condemned to death. The humans must flee for their lives across the unknown planet when they and the aliens learn the scientific mission is a lie. It's the cover for a secret military exploration of the moon Tas, which is another artifact of the gate-makers: a superweapon capable of annihilating all life in a star system, and already known to the Fallers. Nancy Kress has won the Hugo, the Sturgeon, and three Nebula Awards. She is justly acclaimed as a literary SF writer, but receives little acknowledgement that her work is hard SF. Probability Moon should change this, winning her many new readers while pleasing her fans. It's a rare and desirable hybrid: a literary, military, hard-SF novel. Set in the same world as her Nebula- and Sturgeon-winning novelette, "Flowers of Aulit Prison," Probability Moon is the first book of a trilogy, but it has a self-contained story line. The sequel, Probability Sun, will appear in 2001, and the concluding book will be The Fabric of Space. --Cynthia Ward

    

    They brought to life the one man out of history who would most want to destroy Astrobe!

    Linking the disparate human worlds together are diplomats and agents who travel the starways. One of these men is Richard Muller, and now he has the greatest opportunity of his career.Humans at long last have met an intelligent alien species. Muller is sent to make initial contact, but the mission does not go well. Muller is cursed by the aliens. His brain is modified so that his subconscious thoughts radiate from his mind. This makes his presence unbearable to humans. Embittered, he choses to live out his life in an abandoned city of murderous mazes on a long-dead planet.For decades Muller is left alone, but suddenly he is needed again. Humans have made contact with a second and even more dangerous species, one seemingly bent on destroying humanity. The only hope is Muller. His brain can broadcast the thoughts that might convince the aliens that humans are sentient and their equals.A team from Earth make a perilous entry into the maze, confront Muller, and convince him to come to the aid of his former colleagues.

    Two men while away the days in an Antarctic research station. Tensions between them build as they argue over a love-letter one of them has received. One is practical and open. The other surly, superior and obsessed with reading one book - by the philosopher Kant. As a storm brews and they lose contact with the outside world they debate Kant, reality and the emptiness of the universe. The come to hate each other, and they learn that they are not alone.

    They can't contact the aliens in any way or understand their language. All they can do is watch.Then, without warning, a military cordon is imposed on the Blind Lake site. All communication with the outside world is cut off. Food and other vital supplies are delivered by remote control. No one knows why.The scientists, nevertheless, go on with their research. Among them are Nerissa Iverson and the man she recently divorced, Raymond Scutter. They continue to work together despite the difficult conditions and the bitterness between them. Ray believes their efforts are doomed; that culture is arbitrary, and the aliens will forever be an enigma.Nerissa believes there is a commonality of sentient thought, and that our failure to understand is our own ignorance, not a fact of nature. The behavior of the alien she has been tracking seems to be developing an elusive narrative logic--and she comes to feel that the alien is somehow, impossibly, aware of the project's observers.But her time is running out. Ray is turning hostile, stalking her. The military cordon is tightening. Understanding had better come soon...

    But after a bizarre road accident leaves him hundreds of years in the future, Parsons is horrified to discover an incredibly advanced civilization that zealously embraces death. Now, he is caught between his own instincts and training as a healer and a society where it is illegal to save lives. But Parsons is not the only one left who believes in prolonging life, and those who share his beliefs have desperate plans for Dr. Parsons' skills, and for the future of their society. Dr. Futurity is not only a thrilling rendition of a terrifying future but it is also a fantastic examination of the paradoxes of time-travel that could only have come from the mind of Philip K. Dick.

    She flees him, but he pursues her through doorways-interdimensional gateways-to the other place, determined to sacrifice his life, if necessary, for her love. For in her world, to be her mate . . . is to die.

    Francis, realising the implications for the world of an ever-youthful, wealthy elite, wants to keep it secret, but Diana sees an opportunity to overturn the male status quo by using the lichen to inspire a feminist revolution.As each scientist wrestles with the implications and practicalities of exploiting the discovery, the world comes ever closer to learning the truth . . . Trouble With Lichen is a scintillating story of the power wielded by science in our lives and asks how much trust should we place in those we appoint to be its guardians?

    Campbell Memorial Award Finalist“This—THIS—is the cutting edge of science fiction.” —Richard K. Morgan, author of Altered CarbonHow do you stage a mutiny when you’re only awake one day in a million? How do you conspire when your tiny handful of potential allies changes with each job shift? How do you engage an enemy that never sleeps, that sees through your eyes and hears through your ears, and relentlessly, honestly, only wants what’s best for you? Trapped aboard the starship Eriophora, Sunday Ahzmundin is about to discover the components of any successful revolution: conspiracy, code—and unavoidable casualties.Note from the publisher: The red letters in the print edition (and highlighted letters in the e-book) indicate special bonus content from the author.

    Twenty subtugs had been lost in the attempt to bring back oil from the undersea fields on the enemy's borders.A brilliant psychologist-electronics expert is planted in the crew of the subtug Ram to find out what is happening.And theory becomes terrifying reality when, miles deep under the ocean, the minds of the crew begin to crack...

    Since the ringed planet carries no life, scientists deduce the mysterious ship to be a visitor from another star.The world's frantic efforts to signal the aliens go unanswered. The first contact is hostile: the invaders blast a Soviet space station, seize the survivors, and then destroy every dam and installation on Earth with a hail of asteriods. Now the conquerors are descending on the American heartland, demanding servile surrender--or death for all humans.

    The Stars My Destination is a classic of technological prophecy and timeless narrative enchantment by an acknowledged master of science fiction.

      Golden-age hard science fiction luminary Poul Anderson approached the future with a mixture of excitement, hope, and skepticism. In Tales of the Flying Mountains, the multiple Hugo and Nebula Award winner offers stories from a new war of independence and beyond—portending a time when a North American government on Earth will take up arms against its own rebellious children colonizing the cosmos, then exploring the shape of the universe in the war’s aftermath. Firmly based in hard science and human nature, here are seven excursions into a distant tomorrow, from the tense saber rattling preceding the hostilities to the establishment and growth of the independent Asteroid Republic.   Whether he’s spinning an imaginative yarn about the courageous crew of an unarmed state-of-the-art commercial space station using every resources at hand to battle a military incursion from the home world or chronicling a space colony’s desperate gamble to thwart a government takeover by moving an entire asteroid, Anderson builds truly breathtaking worlds and imagines astonishing yet eminently credible future scenarios while infusing his unforgettable tales with intelligence, compassion, surprise, and humanism.Nothing succeeds like failure --Interlude 1 --The rogue --Interlude 2 --Say it with flowers --Interlude 3 --Ramble with a gamblin' man --Interlude 4 --Que donn'rez vous? --Interlude 5 --Sunjammer --Interlude 6 --Recruiting nation

    Named after the migrant workers of America's Dust Bowl, these novels convey Blish's "history of the future," a brilliant and bleak look at a world where cities roam the Galaxy looking for work and a sustainable way of life.In the first novel, They Shall Have Stars, man has thoroughly explored the Solar System, yet the dream of going even further seems to have died in all but one man. His battle to realize his dream results in two momentous discoveries anti-gravity and the secret of immortality. In A Life for the Stars, it is centuries later and anti-gravity generations have enabled whole cities to lift off the surface of the earth to become galactic wanderers. In Earthman, Come Home, the nomadic cities revert to barbarism and marauding rogue cities begin to pose a threat to all civilized worlds. In the final novel, The Triumph of Time, history repeats itself as the cities once again journey back in to space making a terrifying discovery which could destroy the entire Universe. A serious and haunting vision of our world and its limits, Cities in Flight marks the return to print of one of science fiction's most inimitable writers.A Selection of the Science Fiction Book Club