Its destination-unknown. Its purpose-a mystery. Now, one man wakes up. Ripped from a dream of a new home-a new planet and the woman he was meant to love in his arms-he finds himself wet, naked, and freezing to death. The dark halls are full of monsters but trusting other survivors he meets might be the greater danger.All he has are questions-- Who is he? Where are they going? What happened to the dream of a new life? What happened to Hull 03?All will be answered, if he can survive the ship.HULL ZERO THREE is an edge-of-your-seat thrill ride through the darkest reaches of space.

    Gerald Livingston is an orbital garbage collector. For a hundred years, people have been abandoning things in space, and someone has to clean it up. But there’s something spinning a little bit higher than he expects, something that isn’t on the decades’ old orbital maps. An hour after he grabs it and brings it in, rumors fill Earth’s infomesh about an “alien artifact.” Thrown into the maelstrom of worldwide shared experience, the Artifact is a game-changer. A message in a bottle; an alien capsule that wants to communicate. The world reacts as humans always do: with fear and hope and selfishness and love and violence. And insatiable curiosity.

    When his annoying accountant suggests hypnotherapy might help him sleep, Joseph accidentally discovers he can time-travel and things get a little complicated. With the help of Vinny, a local record shop owner, Mark, his old school friend, and Alexia Finch, his hypno-time-travel guru, Joe sets out to change the course of his life. He needs to get back to 1992, the year his world fell apart, the year that Amy, his sister, went missing. The only problem (apart from his clothes disappearing) is that the further back he goes the less time he gets to stay there. Can Joe master his new-found gift before time catches up with him?

    A spaceship from Earth accidentally crossed through a hole in space-time to a universe where the force of gravity is one billion times as strong as the gravity we know. Somehow the crew survived, aided by the fact that they emerged into a cloud of gas surrounding a black hole, which provided a breathable atmosphere. Five hundred years later, their descendants still struggle for existence, divided into two main groups. The Miners live on the Belt, a ramshackle ring of dwellings orbiting the core of a dead star, which they excavate for raw materials. These can be traded for food from the Raft, a structure built from the wreckage of the ship, on which a small group of scientists preserve the ancient knowledge which makes survival possible. Rees is a Miner whose curiosity about his world makes him stow away on a flying tree—just one of the many strange local lifeforms—carrying trade between the Belt and the Raft.

    No one does monsters better than Neal Asher, so be prepared to revisit the lives and lifestyles of such favourites as the gabbleduck and the hooder, to savour alien poisons, the walking dead, the Sea of Death, and the putrefactor symbiont. Through these stories, welcome to a universe of unbridled imagination, each one of them a delight in itself.Contents: Softly Spoke the Gabbleduck [Polity Universe] (2005) / novelette by Neal Asher Putrefactors [Polity Universe] (1999) / novelette by Neal Asher Garp and Geronamid [Polity Universe] (2005) / novelette by Neal Asher (variant of Garp & Geronamid) The Sea of Death [Polity Universe] (2001) / short story by Neal Asher Alien Archaeology [Polity Universe] (2007) / novella by Neal Asher Acephalous Dreams [Polity Universe] (2005) / novelette by Neal Asher Snow in the Desert [Polity Universe] (2002) / novelette by Neal Asher Choudapt [Polity Universe] (2000) / novelette by Neal Asher Adaptogenic [Polity Universe] (1994) / short story by Neal Asher The Gabble [Polity Universe] (2006) / novelette by Neal Asher.

    . .[Clark] handles both ideas and characters with deftness and wit; in short, the outstanding living science fiction writers is romping".-- "Chicago Sun-Times". In the year 2110 technology has cured most of our worries. But even as humankind enters a new golden age, an amateur astronomer points his telescope at just the right corner of the night sky and sees disaster hurtling toward Earth: a chunk of rock that could annihilate civilization. While a few fanatics welcome the apocalyptic destruction as a sign from God, the greatest scientific minds of Earth desperately search for a way to avoid the inevitable. On board the starship Goliath Captain Robert Singh and his crew must race against time to redirect the meteor form its deadly collision course. Suddenly they find themselves on the most important mission in human history--a mission whose success may require the ultimate sacrifice."Clarke is still at the top of his game".-- "The Detroit News"."As good as any anything he's written. . .for a hard-science-fiction treat, I suspect "The Hammer Of God" won't be topped".-- "Star Tribune", Minneapolis."Classic Clarke. . .a good story".-- "The Denver Post".

    Ellen May Ngewthu has a plan to rid humanity of these beings, but she must first travel the entirety of the Solar Union, convincing others that post-humans are the threat she knows they are...The Sky Road: Her rockets redundant, her people rebellious, and her borders defenseless against the Sino-Soviet Union, Myra Godwin appeals to the crumbling West for help as she faces the end of the space age. And, centuries in the future, as humanity again reaches into space, a young scholar could make the difference between success and failure. For his mysterious new lover has seduced him into the idea of extrapolating the ship's future from the dark archives of the past.The Sky Road won the British Science Fiction Association Award.The Fall Revolution Series:1. The Star Fraction2. The Stone Canal3. The Cassini Division 4. The Sky Road

    Le Guin is one of the greatest science fiction writers and many times the winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Her career as a novelist was launched by the three novels contained in Worlds Of Exile And Illusion. These novels, Rocannon's World, Planet Of Exile, and City Of Illusions, are set in the same universe as Le Guin's ground-breaking classic, The Left Hand Of Darkness.Tor is pleased to return these previously unavailable works to print in this attractive new edition.

    But as the Skins invade bucolic Thallspring, Z-B's strategy is about to go awry, all because of: Sgt. Lawrence Newton, a dreamer whose twenty years as a Skin have destroyed his hopes and desires; Denise Ebourn, a school teacher and resistance leader whose guerrilla tactics rival those of Che Guevara and George Washington and Simon Roderick, the director who serves Z-B with a dedication that not even he himself can understand. Grimly determined to steal, or protect, a mysterious treasure, the three players engage in a private war that will explode into unimaginable quests for personal grace...or galactic domination

    Neither a soul nor a message returned. The fourth time, the Rulers sent a single man: Nils Hansen.Commissioner Hansen had a mind that saw the shortest path to each task's completion and a ruthless determination to do what the task required. The cost - to himself and whoever happened to be in the way - didn't matter. Hanson's Special Units had kept his planet safe from the most sophisticated and violent criminals in the galaxy. Now Hansen was being sent to penetrate a spacetime enigma which had made gods or demons of the first humans to discover it. He would succeed or die.Northworld: a place of slashing violence and mystic transformationNorthworld: a place of treachery and dazzling beautyNorthworld: a place of honor, of faith, and of love.Hansen's iron will and strong arm confront godlike power and godlike cunning while a galaxy trembles for the outcome. And if Hansen dies - he will not die alone!

    Just another day in the Dilemma Prison. Rescued by the mysterious Mieli and her flirtatious spacecraft, Jean is taken to the Oubliette, the Moving City of Mars, where time is a currency, memories are treasures, and a moon-turned-singularity lights the night. Meanwhile, investigator Isidore Beautrelet, called in to investigate the murder of a chocolatier, finds himself on the trail of an arch-criminal, a man named le Flambeur...Indeed, in his many lives, the entity called Jean le Flambeur has been a thief, a confidence artist, a posthuman mind-burgler, and more. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his deeds are known throughout the Heterarchy, from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of Mars. In his last exploit, he managed the supreme feat of hiding the truth about himself from the one person in the solar system hardest to hide from: himself. Now he has the chance to regain himself in all his power—in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed.The Quantum Thief is a breathtaking joyride through the solar system several centuries hence, a world of marching cities, ubiquitous public-key encryption, people who communicate via shared memory, and a race of hyper-advanced humans who originated as an MMORPG guild. But for all its wonders, The Quantum Thief is also a story powered by very human motives of betrayal, jealousy, and revenge.

    Read on for more from this exceptional character. Please note: This story includes language that some might find offensive.

    But that’s all in the past, part of a life half forgotten—a reality that vanished when he was attacked while camping and tossed aboard a starship bound for deep space.Desperately, Walker searches for explanations, only to realize he’s trapped in a horrifying nightmare that is all too real. Instead of being a rich hotshot at the top of the food chain, Walker discovers he’s just another amusing novelty, part of a cargo of “cute” aliens from primitive planets—destined to be sold as pets to highly advanced populations in “civilized” regions of the galaxy.Even if he weren’t constantly watched by his captors, Walker has few options. After all, there is no escape from a speeding starship. Another man might resign himself to the inevitable and hope to be sold to a kindly owner, but not Walker. This former college football star has plenty of American ingenuity and no intention of admitting defeat, now or ever. In fact, he’s only just begun to fight.

    . . and it promises to be a publication to remember.An ex-corporate enforcer, Hakan Veil, is forced to bodyguard Madison Madekwe, part of a colonial audit team investigating a disappeared lottery winner on Mars. But when Madekwe is abducted, and Hakan nearly killed, the investigation takes him farther and deeper than he had ever expected. And soon Hakan discovers the heavy price he may have to pay to learn the truth.

    Sentenced as a spy and condemned to suffer 'The Death', Hadron must prove that John Carter's warriors are not so easily destroyed. In Swords of Mars, the eighth adventure, we once again join John Carter himself. Disguised as a panthan (or mercenary), Carter sets out to end the curse of the Assassins of Zodanga-but he soon discovers that their threat is reaching out to the very heart of his own family. Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martian series continues to delight lovers of fantastic fi ction with heroic deeds, hairsbreadth escapes, duels and battles, all set in a strange and alien landscape. The complete John Carter of Mars adventures are published by Leonaur.