During their years-long voyage, Earth has developed a stargate and ended up in an interstellar war, waged by robot fighters far from Earth and commanded by the central artificial intelligence of the gnostic system owned by the McConwell Company. When the AI realizes the futility of the war it's engaged in, it sets out to chage its own program, engaging the conspiratorial help of a varied crew of humans and aliens and risking the ultimate destruction of all intelligent civilization.

    Freya Nakamichi 47 is a femmebot, one of the last of her kind still functioning. With no humans left to pay for the pleasures she provides, she agrees to transport a mysterious package from Mercury to Mars. Unfortunately for Freya, she has just made herself a moving target for some very powerful, very determined humanoids who will stop at nothing to possess the contents of the package.

    One thing is clear: the five inhabited worlds of the sector are on the brink of civil war and the once peaceful coexistence of the three leading races -- human, Selonian, and Drallan --  has come to an end.

    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...

    Ordered to destroy the comet, he instead discovers that it is actually the shell of a derelict space probe - a wreck with just enough power to emit a single electronic signal...2034: Then a reply is heard. Searching for the source of this signal that comes from outside the solar system, Nigel discovers the existence of a sentient ship. When the new vessel begins to communicate directly with him, the astronaut learns of the horrors that await humanity. For the ship was created by an alien race that has spent billions and billions of years searching for intelligent life...to annihilate it.In the Ocean of Night is a 1977 hard science fiction novel by Gregory Benford. It is the first novel in his Galactic Center Saga. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1977. It was first published as a novelette in the May/June 1972 edition of Worlds of If Science Fiction.

    For the first time in one volume: every word Bruce Sterling has ever written on the Shapers-Mechanists Universe.In the last decade, Sterling has emerged a pioneer of crucial, cutting-edge science fiction. Now Ace Books is proud to offer Sterling's stunning world of the Schismatrix--where Shaper revolutionaries struggle against aristocratic Mechanists for ultimate control of man's destiny. This volume includes the classic full-length novel, Schismatrix, plus thousands of words of mind-bending short fiction.

    Recently, Oloitokitok, the planet survey team's physicist was found dead. Was he killed? If so, by whom? One of his fellow surveyors? Or by one of the Sprookjes, the birdlike natives of Lassti? Are the Sprookjes intelligent? If so, then parties that want the planet for development will lose it. Why is the survey team having so much trouble finding out? Into this situation arrives Tocohl, a Hellspark trader who just wanted to have a vacation on Sheveschke at the St. Veschke festival. After being attacked, rescuing a young woman, and going before a judge, Tocohl has learned all she ever wanted to know about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now she is on her way to find Lasti to find answers to the mysteries there.

    The time of the Cold Peace, worse even than the Cold War. The bureaucratic regimes that rule from Washington and Moscow are indistinguishable in their passion for total repression. But in the West, a few dedicated individuals still struggle to find a way out of the trap of human history. Behind the screen of official research their desperate project is nearing completion . . .

    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.

    . .Their first destination was Kratos. It seemed almost ideally suited for colonization. But before interplanetary settlers could begin arriving, they had to know what caused the deep ruts and throbbing domes that marred the planet's surface.The Expendables hadn't reckoned with powerful creatures capable of constructing hills bigger than the pyramids of Egypt. Colossal snake-like beings that swayed and roared. Hostile life forms that could destroy their mission--and them.

    Did some cryptic patron race begin the job long ago, then abandon us? Or did we leap all by ourselves? That question burns, yet a greater mystery looms ahead, in the furnace of a star. Under the caverns of Mercury, Expedition Sundiver prepares for the most momentous voyage in our history – into the boiling inferno of the sun, seeking our destiny in the cosmic order of life.

    Earth has been dominated for 1,000 years by an alien invader—and man is an endangered species. From the handful of surviving humans a courageous leader emerges—Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, who challenges the invincible might of the alien Psychlo empire in a battle of epic scale, danger and intrigue with the fate of the Earth and of the universe in the tenuous balance.

    The beings who reside there wish to turn over to the New Republic the remnants of the doomed mission. Accepting the gesture will mean a long voyage into the treacherous cluster of stars where the thousands of souls aboard the Outbound Flight vessel met their grim fate.Embarking on the strange and solemn journey, Luke and Mara Jade Skywalker are unaware that the gravest danger lies within the derelict walls of Outbound Flight itself. As the marooned hulk yields up stunning revelations and unexpected terrors, Luke and Mara find all they stand for—and their very existence—brutally challenged. The ultimate test will be surviving the deathtrap carefully laid by foes who are legendary for their ruthlessness…and determined to complete the job Thrawn began: exterminating the Jedi.

    That moment of understanding drives the greatest science-fiction stories and lies at the heart of Engineering Infinity. Whether it's coming up hard against the speed of light - and, with it, the enormity of the universe - realising that terraforming a distant world is harder and more dangerous than you'd ever thought, or simply realizing that a hitchhiker on a starship consumes fuel and oxygen with tragic results, it's hard science-fiction where sense of wonder is most often found and where science-fiction's true heart lies.This exciting and innovative science-fiction anthology collects together stories by some of the biggest names in the field including Gwyneth Jones, Stephen Baxter and Charles Stross.Contents:- Beyond the Gernsback Continuum... by Jonathan Strahan- Malak by Peter Watts- Watching the Music Dance by Kristine Kathryn Rusch- Laika's Ghost by Karl Schroeder- The Invasion of Venus by Stephen Baxter- The Server and the Dragon by Hannu Rajaniemi- Bit Rot by Charles Stross- Creatures with Wings by Kathleen Ann Goonan- Walls of Flesh, Bars of Bone by Damien Broderick and Barbara Lamar- Mantis by Robert Reed- Judgement Eve by John C. Wright- A Soldier of the City by David Moles- Mercies by Gregory Benford- The Ki-anna by Gwyneth Jones- The Birds and the Bees and the Gasoline Trees by John BarnesCover illustration by Stephan Martiniere

    The planet provides a lush but inexplicable landscape--trees offer edible, addictive fruit one day and poison the next, while the ruins of an alien race are found entwined in the roots of a strange plant. Conflicts between generations arise as they struggle to understand one another and grapple with an unknowable alien intellect.