Cities in Flight


James Blish - 1970
    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

Ambush at Corellia


Roger MacBride Allen - 1995
    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.

The Devil's Heart


Carmen Carter - 1993
    Worlds that believe in magic consider it Darkness's mightiest talisman; and worlds of science consider it a lost artifact of some ancient and forgotten race. Some say the Heart enables its possessor to control people's minds and to amass wealth enough for a dozen lifetimes, while others think it capable of raising the dead, perhaps even changing the flow of time itself. But to all, the location of this fabled object has remained a mystery, until now. An isolated archaeological outpost has suddenly stopped responding to repeated requests for information. Sent to discover why, the "U.S.S. Enterprise" TM crew finds a devastated outpost and a dying scientist, whose last words fall on disbelieving ears: the Devil's Heart has been found. As the quest for the Heart unfolds, Captain Jean-Luc Picard discovers that beyond all the legends and age-old secrets lies an awful truth: whoever holds the Devil's Heart possesses power beyond imagining.

Virtual Light


William Gibson - 1993
    He finds himself on a collision course that results in a desperate romance, and a journey into the ecstasy and dread that mirror each other at the heart of the postmodern experience.

Prime Directive


Judith Reeves-Stevens - 1991
    Its most honored captain is in disgrace, its most celebrated starship in pieces, and the crew of that ship scattered among the thousand worlds of the Federation... Thus begins Prime Directive, an epic tale of the Star Trek universe. Following in the bestselling tradition of Spock's World and The Lost Years, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens have crafted a thrilling tale of mystery and wonder, a novel that takes the Star Trek characters from the depths of despair into an electrifying new adventure that spans the galaxy. Journey with Spock, McCoy, and the rest of the former crew of the Starship Enterprise to Talin—the planet where their careers ended. A world once teeming with life that now lies ruined, its cities turned to ashes, its surface devastated by a radioactive firestorm—because of their actions. There, they must find out how—and why—this tragedy occurred and discover what has become of their captain.

Greybeard


Brian W. Aldiss - 1964
    The sombre story of a group of people in their fifties who face the fact that there is no younger generation coming to replace them; instead nature is rushing back to obliterate the disaster they have brought on themselves.

Shadowrun 14: Nosferatu


Carl Sargent - 1994
    It is a near-future world where magic has run amuck. Technology combines with mystical power to create a new land of danger, monsters, and adventure. The masters of this battle-scarred landscape are the Shadowrunners, men and women assassins with the power to take out anyone and anything--for a price.

T2: Infiltrator


S.M. Stirling - 2000
    A great cat-and-mouse game ensues before she realizes he′s an actual man, an ex-counter-terrorist named Dieter, the man the T-100 will be modeled on. After she tells him her story, he tells her another. He′s discovered that Cyberdyne is still active, and about to create Skynet. So she, John, and Dieter set off to finish the job. But first they must face the most insidious Terminator unit yet, one that can easily pass as human and who has all the resources of Cyberdyne, as well as several Terminators, at its command.

Stellar Ranger


Steve Perry - 1994
    But one of the galaxy's richest and most brilliant lunatics has designs on the universe - and has created something terrible to make his dastardly dreams a reality.It's high noon on a backrocket desert planet called Roget - and the Stellar Ranger is finally about to meet his match. Only this time, it's not human.

The Witling


Vernor Vinge - 1976
    If the anthropologists can't help resolve the conflict between the feuding alien factions, no one will survive.This edition features sixteen full-page illustrations by Doug Beekman.

All the Sounds of Fear


Harlan Ellison - 1973
    Contents:Introduction: The Song of the Soul (1971) essayI Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (1967)The Discarded (1959)Deeper Than the Darkness (1957)Blind Lightning (1956)All the Sounds of Fear (1962)The Silver Corridor (1956)"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman (1965)Bright Eyes (1965)

The Cold Cash War


Robert Lynn Asprin - 1977
    International conglomerates plot a complete domination of the free world, facing off against world governments, who want only freedom, in a calculated and vicious battle of wits and blood.

A Fighting Man of Mars / Swords of Mars


Edgar Rice Burroughs - 1991
    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.

Legends of Dune Trilogy


Brian Herbert - 2006
    Anderson. Working from Frank Herbert's own notes, the acclaimed authors reveal the chapter of the Dune saga most eagerly anticipated by readers: the Butlerian Jihad.Throughout the Dune novels, Frank Herbert frequently referred to the war in which humans wrested their freedom from "thinking machines." In Dune: The Butlerian Jihad, Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson bring to life the story of that war, a tale previously seen only in tantalizing hints and clues. Finally, we see how Serena Butler's passionate grief ignites the struggle that will liberate humans from their machine masters; here is the amazing tale of the Zensunni Wanderers, who escape bondage to flee to the desert world where they will declare themselves the Free Men of Dune. And here is the backward, nearly forgotten planet of Arrakis, where traders have discovered the remarkable properties of the spice melange. . . . Dune: The Machine Crusade More than two decades have passed since the events chronicled in Dune: The Butlerian Jihad. The crusade against thinking robots has ground on for years, but the forces led by Serena Butler and Irbis Ginjo have made only slight gains; the human worlds grow weary of war, of the bloody, inconclusive swing from victory to defeat.The fearsome cymeks, led by Agamemnon, hatch new plots to regain their lost power from Omnius--as their numbers dwindle and time begins to run out. The fighters of Ginaz, led by Jool Noret, forge themselves into an elite warrior class, a weapon against the machine-dominated worlds. Aurelius Venport and Norma Cenva are on the verge of the most important discovery in human history-a way to "fold" space and travel instantaneously to any place in the galaxy.And on the faraway, nearly worthless planet of Arrakis, Selim Wormrider and his band of outlaws take the first steps to making themselves the feared fighters who will change the course of history: the Fremen.Here is the unrivaled imaginative power that has put Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson on bestseller lists everywhere and earned them the high regard of readers around the globe. The fantastic saga of Dune continues in Dune: The Machine Crusade. Dune: The Battle of Corrin It has been fifty-six hard years since the events of Dune: The Machine Crusade. Following the death of Serena Butler, the bloodiest decades of the Jihad take place. Synchronized Worlds and Unallied Planets are liberated one by one, and at long last, after years of victory, the human worlds begin to hope that the end of the centuries-long conflict with the thinking machines is finally in sight.Unfortunately, Omnius has one last, deadly card to play. In a last-ditch effort to destroy humankind, virulent plagues are let loose throughout the galaxy, decimating the populations of whole planets . . . and once again, the tide of the titanic struggle shifts against the warriors of the human race. At last, the war that has lasted many lifetimes will be decided in the apocalyptic Battle of Corrin.In the greatest battle in science fiction history, human and machine face off one last time. . . . And on the desert planet of Arrakis, the legendary Fremen of Dune become the feared fighting force to be discovered by Paul Muad'Dib in Frank Herbert's classic, Dune.

Helix


Eric Brown - 2007
    Daylight brings the discovery that the planet is one of thousands arranged in a vast spiral wound about a central sun. They set off to discover a more habitable, Earth-like world and come across strange races of aliens, and life-threatening perils, on their way.