There have been a thousand tales of future Utopias and possible civilizations. They have been ruled by benevolent dictatorships and pure democracies, every form of government from extreme right to absolute left. All over the world, financial and governmental systems have collapsed under the weight of their own red tape and bureaucracy. Most of the world had regressed into savagery. The hopelessly corrupt old North American government had been driven literally into the sea, but made occasional forays onto the mainland from bases on the coastal fringes of a Europe that had returned to the Dark Ages. In the U.S.A., it was a bit different, the dawning of a new age, due to the Syndic and the Mob.East of the Mississippi, was the unique easy-going semi-anarchistic society ruled by the SYNDIC, that supplied liquor, gambling, women, loans, employment, and it's own harsh justice, in other words, everything the public needed, at prices everyone could afford. Here was a totally hedonistic society, moral inhibitions had gone the way of the horse. (Polo was played in jeeps with 50-caliber machine guns.) The Syndic operated as a sort of gigantic protective league. West of the Mississippi was Mob territory, a society whose entire system of values was totally opposed to the Syndic. Here morality ruled with an iron hand. The ever-resourceful Mob made America it's ultimate racket. It was, for awhile, the best of all possible worlds...until the bad old U.S. Government begins to re-emerge. Then, it was Syndic versus Mob! When a wave of assassinations broke out in New York, it was clearly time to take action against the Mob! It was not until February 14th that the Government declared a state of unlimited emergency. The precipitating incident was the aerial bombardment and destruction of B Company, 27th Armored Regiment, on Fort George Hill in New York City. Local Syndic leaders had occupied and fortified George Washington High School, with the enthusiastic co-operation of students, faculty and neighborhood. Chief among them was Thomas 'Numbers' Cleveland, displaying the same coolness and organizational genius which had brought him to pre-eminence in the metropolitan policy-wheel organization by his thirty-fifth year..

    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!

    . . but he found himself shipped across space to a brutal prison-planet. On Omega, his only chance to advance himself -- and stay alive -- is to commit an endless series of violent crimes. The average inmate's life expectancy from time of arrival is three years. Can Barrett survive, escape, and return to Earth to clear his name?

      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

    to restore their freedom in a world run mad.Nickie Halflinger, the only person to escape from Tarnover—where they raise hyper-intelligent children to maintain the political dominance of the USA in the 21st century—is on the run, dodging from loophole to crevice to crack in the computerised data-net that binds the continent like chains. After years of flight and constant changes of identity, at the strange small town called Precipice he discovers he is not alone in his quest. But can his new allies save him when he falls again into the sinister grasp of Tarnover...?

    But if that is the case, what is his real world like, and what is he actually doing every day when he thinks he is guessing 'Where Will The Little Green Man Be Next?'

    But even Blaine was unprepared for what happened when he communed with the soul of an utterly alien being lightyears from Earth. After recovering from his experience, he becomes a dangerous man: not only has he gained startling new powers—but he now understands that humankind must share the stars.Hunted through time and space by those who he used to trust, Blaine undergoes a unique odyssey that takes him through a nightmarish version of small-town America as he seeks to find others who share his vision of a humane future. Blaine has mastered death and time. Now he must master the fear and ignorance that threatened to destroy him!

    Now the only hope resides in a mountain redoubt where six men work in secret on a plan to rock the planet. . . .

    There are permanent populations established on the Moon, Venus and Mars. Outer space inhabitants have formed a new political entity, the Federation, and between the Federation and Earth a growing rivalry has developed. EARTHLIGHT is the story of this emerging conflict.

    the Oversoul watches Its task. programmed so many millennia ago. is to guard the human settlement on this planet-. -to protect this fragile remnant of Earth from all threats. To protect them. most of all. from themselves. The Oversoul has done its job well. There is no war on Harmony. There are no weapons of mass destruction. There is no technology that could lead to weapons of war. By control of the data banks. and subtle interference in the very thoughts of the people. the artificial intelligence has fulfilled its mission. But now there is a problem. In orbit. the Oversoul realizes that it has lost access to some of its memory banks. and some of its power systems are failing. And on the planet. men are beginning to think about power. wealth. and conquest.

    The other six days they're in suspended animation. The focus is on Jeff Caird, a daybreaker living more than a day a week. He's not like most daybreakers. He belongs to the radical Immer group working to create a better government. Not all Immers are daybreakers, but send information from one day to the next they've daybreakers like Jeff. Immer daybreakers assume seven different personalities & jobs, slipping from culture to culture in seven different worlds. While Jeff & the other six go day to day, they run into problems while working as Immer daybreakers. They must cover their tracks while trying to keep up with seven different lives, families & jobs. It could drive a man crazy. It does & the Immers must dispose of Jeff to keep the rest safe. Jeff, wanting to live, tries to escape, but they have undercover Immers in every job & government level. Jeff is caught & put in an asylum, classified with multiple personality disorder. If considered incurable he'll be killed. But Jeff has an escape plan. The sequels are Dayworld Rebel, '87 & Dayworld Breakup, '90.

    Why the Dragons of Bel'kwinith made the Road--or who they are--no one knows. But the Road has always been there and for those who know how to find it, it always will be!

    Hellstrom's Project 40 was a cover for a secret laboratory, a special team of agents was immediately dispatched to discover its true purpose and its weaknesses—it could not be allowed to continue. What they discovered was a nightmare more horrific and hideous than even their paranoid government minds could devise.First published in Galaxy magazine in 1973 as "Project 40," Frank Herbert's vivid imagination and brilliant view of nature and ecology have never been more evident than in this classic of science fiction.

    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.

    Kids, including her brother Stephen, have logged into the net, and cannot escape. Clues point to a mysterious golden city called Otherland, but investigators all end up dead.