24 stories, by the Master...

    Stealing the bodies of the living, they are grouping together into powerful consortiums led by leaders from history. An increasingly desperate Confederation Navy is struggling to stem the tide as the race for the universe's most powerful weapon begins. But if the dead can return to life, who will be the ultimate victors?

    The only problem is that the Confederacion needs him as one of its twelve Prime Operators for its secret service, the TBII. The TBII wants him as a spy, thief & assassin. It's not, of course, a problem for the Confederacion, which simply uses immersion therapy & hypnotic personality overlay for Otto's training, then sends him out in deep cover, encased in plastiflesh, on a variety of dangerous missions on a number of bizarre worlds. But for him, it's a different matter: what he has to witness & what he's forced to do take a terrible toll. Always he returns to his original self--his conscience stabbed by the memory of all those he'd killed in the service of interstellar harmony.

    Now humans must confront this deadly expansion. Tchicaya, aboard a starship trawling the border of the vacuum, has allied himself with the Yielders-- those determined to study the vacuum while allowing it to grow unchecked. But when his fiery first love, Mariama, reenters his life on the side of the Preservationists-- those working to halt and destroy the vacuum-- Tchicaya finds himself struggling with an inner turmoil he has known since childhood.However, in the center of the vacuum, something is developing that neither Tchicaya and the Yielders nor Mariama and the Preservationists could ever have imagined possible: life.

    Science Fiction, Fantasy, Adventure

    Other nations (primarily cold war America and Soviet Union) try to acquire this technology, providing much of the tension and the climax of the novel.

    As the Soviet menace collapses, China and India join forces and launch a devastating nuclear attack on America. And in the lawless anarchy that follows, one young man learns the hard way that the man most likely to survive is the one who learns to kill. . . .

    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.

    Each sought his own brand of happiness. But none could have guessed what awaited them. Not even in a million years....

    A few human beings were left on the deserted earth along with countless robots. The human beings--including a small tribe of American Indians--made do. The Indians returned to ancient tribal ways, the others stubbornly tried to rebuild technology. The robots--some stayed with the humans performing their service functions, some went off to create a religiously-based society of their own. Millennia later, a star-traveler returns from the center of the universe. The people of earth had been found and were planning to return. But something else had been found, too--the central intelligence of the universe!

    Sealed behind an impenetrable barrier in the south of Ireland, the Industrial Corporation of Eire startles the rest of the world with its efficiency, its brilliance ... and its utter ruthlessness.To penetrate the barrier is to invite a swift and silent death. Scientific reports on its methods of operation are found to be faked.One man is sent to challenge this mysterious and invincible syndicate. His name is Thomas Sherwood...

    A proposed major software upgrade - an artificial intelligence - will give the system an unprecedented degree of independent decision-making, but serious questions are raised in regard to how much control can safely be given to a non-human intelligence. In order to more fully assess the system, a new space-station habitat - a world in miniature - is developed for deployment of the fully operational system, named Spartacus. This mini-world can then be "attacked" in a series of escalating tests to assess the system's responses and capabilities. If Spartacus gets out of hand, the system can be shut down and the station destroyed... unless Spartacus decides to take matters into its own hands and take the fight to Earth.

    Still, how do you plan the ambush and capture of a tremendously capable telepath?The intended victim, the weird genius from an uncharted world and the right arm of the enemy's general staff, not only knew everything thought nearby, he could read minds a a distance. So the problem posed to Dominic Flandry, Captain of Terran Intelligence, was a real killer.To make matters worse, the telepath in question was equally interested in putting Flandry out of commission. The fate of many planets might depend on which of the two triumphed.

    For aeons this golden-skinned, golden-eyed race had provided the universe mercenary soldiers of almost unimaginable ability. But now the mri have faced an enemy unlike any other - an enemy whose only way of war is widespread destruction. These "humans" are mass fighters, creatures of the herd, and the mri have been slaughtered like animals.Now, in the aftermath of war, the mri face extinction. It will be up to three individuals to save whatever remains of this devastated race: a warrior - one of the last survivors of his kind; a priestess of this honorable people; and a lone human - a man sworn to aid the enemy of his own kind. Can they retrace the galaxy-wide path of this nomadic race back through millennia to reclaim the ancient world which first gave them life?

    Now the fate of the galaxy lies in the hands of five senior citizens and their faithful food processor. An unusual new novel from the bestselling author of Quozl.