Looking for a new world to call their own, they brought with them a rich mélange of cultures, religions, and dialects from a far-off planet called Earth. Mighty were the old-fathers, with the power to shape the world to their liking—but that was many generations ago, and what was once known has long been lost. Steamboats and gas-filled blimps now traverse the planet, where people once looked up to see great silver cities in the sky.Like his world, John deBrun has forgotten more than he remembers. Twenty-seven years ago, he washed up onto the shore of Nanagada with no memory of his past. Although he has made a new life for himself among the peaceful islanders, his soul remains haunted by unanswered questions about his own identity.These mysteries take on new urgency when the fearsome Azteca storm over the Wicked High Mountains in search of fresh blood and hearts to feed their cruel, inhuman gods. Nanagada's only hope lies in a mythical artifact, the Ma Wi Jung, said to be hidden somewhere in the frozen north. And only John deBrun knows the device's secrets, even if he can't remember why or how!Crystal Rain is the much-anticipated debut novel by one of science fiction's newest and most promising talents.

    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

    Anderson * Doug Beason * M. Shayne Bell * David Bischoff * A.C.Crispin * Kenneth C. Flint * Barbara Hambly * Rebecca Moesta * Daniel KeysMoran * Jerry Oltion * Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens * Jennifer Roberson* Kathy Tyers * Tom Veitch & Martha Veitch * Dave Wolverton * TimothyZahn

    Peter Hamilton takes us on a journey from a murder mystery in an alternative Oxford in the 1800s to a story featuring Paula Myo, Deputy Director of the Intersolar Commonwealth's Serious Crimes Directorate.

    2105, September: Intelligence Analyst Caine Riordan uncovers a conspiracy on Earth’s Moon—a history-changing clandestine project—and ends up involuntarily cryocelled for his troubles. Twelve years later, Riordan awakens to a changed world. Humanity has achieved faster-than-light travel and is pioneering nearby star systems. And now, Riordan is compelled to become an inadvertent agent of conspiracy himself. Riordan’s mission: travel to a newly settled world and investigate whether a primitive local species was once sentient—enough so to have built a lost civilization.However, arriving on site in the Delta Pavonis system, Caine discovers that the job he’s been given is anything but secret or safe. With assassins and saboteurs dogging his every step, it's clear that someone doesn't want his mission to succeed. In the end, it takes the broad-based insights of an intelligence analyst and a matching instinct for intrigue to ferret out the truth: that humanity is neither alone in the cosmos nor safe. Earth is revealed to be the lynchpin planet in an impending struggle for interstellar dominance, a struggle into which it is being irresistibly dragged. Discovering new dangers at every turn, Riordan must now convince the powers-that-be that the only way for humanity to survive as a free species is to face the perils directly—and to fight fire with fire.

    For the bookish academics of the Sixth, every secret is a mystery, and every mystery is a puzzle to be solved or a paper to be published. Deep in the bowels of their house, one such secret is about to reveal itself. The study of the famed academic Donald Sex, sealed since the moment of his death, is about to open, and archivists are ready to dissect what he left behind. They are not ready for the macabre surprise that awaits them.Enter Palamedes Sextus and Camilla Hect, age thirteen.

    The same two ghosts who have now approached him on the school playground, ghosts who look older and actually smell bad. Paavo's cry for help brings the authorities, a few lawyers, and Retrieval Artist Miles Flint, who learns some secrets about the ghosts--and about Paavo's parents. This short stand-alone science fiction novel in the Retrieval Artist series received a Special Mention from the prestigious international UPC contest.This stand-alone short novel fits after the full novel Duplicate Effort in the timeline.

    In this first collaboration by science fiction masters Larry Niven (Ringworld) and Gregory Benford (Timescape), the limits of wonder are redrawn once again as a human expedition to another star system is jeopardized by an encounter with an astonishingly immense artifact in interstellar space: a bowl-shaped structure half-englobing a star, with a habitable area equivalent to many millions of Earths…and it's on a direct path heading for the same system as the human ship.A landing party is sent to investigate the Bowl, but when the explorers are separated--one group captured by the gigantic structure's alien inhabitants, the other pursued across its strange and dangerous landscape--the mystery of the Bowl's origins and purpose propel the human voyagers toward discoveries that will transform their understanding of their place in the universe.

    Rated: R. Restricted. Contains space battles, killer AI, intergalactic ass-kicking. Read at own risk.She is programmed to kill.He’ll do anything to survive. Ex-con Captain Caleb Shepperd believes being good is overrated. All he wants is to smuggle illegal cargo through the nine systems and live a prosperous (likely short) life on the wrong side of the law.But there's a problem with that plan. The priceless synthetic stowaway on his ship is a distraction he doesn't need.Torn between selling her and tossing her out the airlock, Shepperd fails to realize the synth is a killer, and he's the one locked in her sights.In a world where only one thousand synthetics were built, synthetic number One Thousand and One should not exist. She is no ordinary synth. Memories locked inside her code could bring Shepperd—and the entire nine systems—to its knees.Captain Shepperd and the oppressive corporations are about to learn that you can't hide from the sins of your past, especially when that past has orders to kill.WARNING: 18+ only. Contains adult content, including sex, drug use, violence, and swearing.Older cover editions of this ASIN can be found here & here.

    A dire warning from futures past... A desperate search for salvation… Captain Mitchell “Ares” Williams is a Space Marine and the hero of the Battle for Liberty, whose Shot Heard ‘Round the Universe saved the planet from a nearly unstoppable war machine. He’s handsome, charismatic, and the perfect poster boy to help the military drive enlistment. Pulled from the war and thrown into the spotlight, he’s as efficient at charming the media as he was at shooting down enemy starfighters. After an assassination attempt leaves Mitchell critically wounded, he begins to suffer from strange hallucinations that carry a chilling and oddly familiar warning: They are coming. Find the Goliath or humankind will be destroyed. Convinced that the visions are a side-effect of his injuries, he tries to ignore them, only to learn that he may not be as crazy as he thinks. The enemy is real and closer than he imagined, and they’ll do whatever it takes to prevent him from rediscovering the centuries lost starship. Narrowly escaping capture, out of time and out of air, Mitchell lands at the mercy of the Riggers - a ragtag crew of former commandos who patrol the lawless outer reaches of the galaxy. Guided by a captain with a reputation for cold-blooded murder, they’re dangerous, immoral, and possibly insane. They may also be humanity’s last hope for survival in a war that has raged beyond eternity.

    This collection shows Miles and Ekaterin meeting (Komarr), getting to know each other as Miles tries to court her (A Civil Campaign), and the wedding (Winterfair Gifts), and, of course, Miles dealing with assorted family relationships. Miles deals with political problems along the way plus recounts the loves of his life to Ekaterin. ...none of them would marry him; they all went on to lead successful lives--so unlike her life on Komarr. The last on his list was Rian: "And what does she do now?" ... "Now, She's an empress" ... "Can I take a number and get in line?" ... "The next number up", he breathed, "is one".Contents:Komarr: Miles Vorkosigan is sent to Komarr, a planet that could be a garden with a thousand more years of terraforming; or an uninhabitable wasteland, if the terraforming project fails. The solar mirror vital to the project has been shatteredby a ship hurtling off course, and Miles Vorkossigan has been sent to find out if it was an accident, or sabotage. Miles uncovers a plot that could exile him from Barrayar forever - and discovers an unexpected ally, one with wounds as deep and honor as beleaguered as his own.A Civil Campaign: On Komarr, Miles met the beautiful Vor widow Ekaterin Vorsoisson, who has no intention of getting married after the heartbreak and betrayal of her first experience. But Miles has a cunning plan to change her mind. Unfortunately his clone-brother Mark and his cousin Ivan have cunning plans of their own, and the three-way collision of cunning plans threatens to undo Miles' brilliant romantic strategy."Winterfair Gifts": Miles and Ekaterin make elaborate preparations for their wedding. But Miles has an enemy who is plotting to turn the romantic ceremony into a festival of death.

    When Admiral Absen and the crew of EarthFleet's most powerful dreadnought Conquest are sent on a mission forty light years from Earth, none of them expect to return. But to find a home and keep humanity safe from hostile aliens, they must fight to seize a new world, initiating EarthFleet's first conquest of another star system.First Conquest is Book 1 of the Plague Wars: Stellar Conquest series, which carries the Plague Wars series forward a century into the future when humanity turns to the stars to find its destiny. It tells of a bitter battle as EarthFleet smashes into an alien star system in a desperate first strike to save humanity. Follow the starship Conquest as its captain and crew take the fight to Earth's enemies, finding allies and making heroic sacrifices in order to secure the future of Earth's solar system against a hostile universe.

    But one Sangaree survived - the young Norborn heir, the man who swore vengeance on the Storm family and their soldiers, in a carefully mapped plot that would take generations to fulfill. Now Mouse's father Gneaus must fight for an El Dorado of wealth on the burning half of the planet Blackworld. As the great private armies of all space clash on the narrow Shadowline that divides inferno from life-sheltering shade, Gneaus' half- brother Michael plays his traitorous games, and a man called Deeth pulls the deadly strings that threaten to entrap them all - as the Starfishers Trilogy begins.

    A disrespected ship, exiled to lonely patrol in the dark corners of the solar system.A crew of screw-ups, written off by the entire fleet.They're about to change everything.If they don't blow themselves up first.Join the Endurance's crew - a trigger-happy first officer, a hyperactive engineer, a shy covert operative, a conspiracy-spouting physicist, and a captain trying to earn his way back into his superiors' good graces - as they explore the galaxy by accident and trip their way into saving the world.This anthology includes all five Endurance novellas, as well as two bonus short stories.

    Surrounded by the wrong sort of trees, and animals never featured in any nature documentary, Cass is only sure of one thing: alone, she will be lucky to survive. The sprawl of abandoned blockish buildings Cass discovers offers her only more puzzles. Where are the people? What is the intoxicating mist which drifts off the buildings in the moonlight? And why does she feel like she's being watched? Increasingly unnerved, Cass is overjoyed at the arrival of the formidable Setari. Whisked to a world as technologically advanced as the first was primitive, where nanotech computers are grown inside people's skulls, and few have any interest in venturing outside the enormous whitestone cities, Cass finds herself processed as a 'stray', a refugee displaced by the gates torn between worlds. Struggling with an unfamiliar language and culture, she must adapt to virtual classrooms, friends who can teleport, and the ingrained attitude that strays are backward and slow. Can Cass ever find her way home? And after the people of her new world discover her unexpected value, will they be willing to let her leave?