In one of the most powerful and thought-provoking novels of his remarkable career, Orson Scott Card's Pastwatch interweaves a compelling portrait of Christopher Columbus with the story of a future scientist who believes she can alter human history from a tragedy of bloodshed and brutality to a world filled with hope and healing.

    . . through quantum space–time.  Minor Universe 31 is a vast story-space on the outskirts of fiction, where paradox fluctuates like the stock market, lonely sexbots beckon failed protagonists, and time travel is serious business. Every day, people get into time machines and try to do the one thing they should never do: change the past. That’s where Charles Yu, time travel technician—part counselor, part gadget repair man—steps in. He helps save people from themselves. Literally. When he’s not taking client calls or consoling his boss, Phil, who could really use an upgrade, Yu visits his mother (stuck in a one-hour cycle of time, she makes dinner over and over and over) and searches for his father, who invented time travel and then vanished. Accompanied by TAMMY, an operating system with low self-esteem, and Ed, a nonexistent but ontologically valid dog, Yu sets out, and back, and beyond, in order to find the one day where he and his father can meet in memory. He learns that the key may be found in a book he got from his future self. It’s called How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and he’s the author. And somewhere inside it is the information that could help him—in fact it may even save his life.

    In the aftermath, a curious tradition was invented-something to cheer up everyone who was left and bring the shattered worlds together in the spirit of peace, unity, and understanding.Once every cycle, the civilizations gather for the Metagalactic Grand Prix - part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of the wars of the past. Instead of competing in orbital combat, the powerful species that survived face off in a competition of song, dance, or whatever can be physically performed in an intergalactic talent show. The stakes are high for this new game, and everyone is forced to compete.This year, though, humankind has discovered the enormous universe. And while they expected to discover a grand drama of diplomacy, gunships, wormholes, and stoic councils of aliens, they have instead found glitter, lipstick and electric guitars. Mankind will not get to fight for its destiny - they must sing.A one-hit-wonder band of human musicians, dancers and roadies from London - Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes - have been chosen to represent Earth on the greatest stage in the galaxy. And the fate of their species lies in their ability to rock.

    It all begins when Dave Lister is celebrating his twenty-fourth birthday on a Monopoly board pub crawl round London, and somehow ends up three million years from Earth, marooned in the wrong dimension of the wrong reality, and down to his last two cigarettes. Together with a dead man, a senile computer, a deranged sanitation mechanoid with an overactive guilt chip and the best-dressed entity in all six known universes, the last remaining member of the human race begins his epic journey home.

    For the most part, they are happy with their lot, living in a preserve at the bottom of a gravity well. Those who are unhappy have emigrated, joining one or another of the swarming densethinker clades that fog the inner solar system with a dust of molecular machinery so thick that it obscures the sun.The splintery metaconsciousness of the solar-system has largely sworn off its pre-post-human cousins dirtside, but its minds sometimes wander...and when that happens, it casually spams Earth's networks with plans for cataclysmically disruptive technologies that emulsify whole industries, cultures, and spiritual systems. A sane species would ignore these get-evolved-quick schemes, but there's always someone who'll take a bite from the forbidden apple.So until the overminds bore of stirring Earth's anthill, there's Tech Jury Service: random humans, selected arbitrarily, charged with assessing dozens of new inventions and ruling on whether to let them loose. Young Huw, a technophobic, misanthropic Welshman, has been selected for the latest jury, a task he does his best to perform despite an itchy technovirus, the apathy of the proletariat, and a couple of truly awful moments on bathroom floors.

    All of them possess time-travel technology—and all of them are trying to usurp various points in history, thus erasing their opponents from the timestream.Marking the first five decades of the cosmic-spanning conflict, The Book of the War is an A to Z self-contained complete guide to the Spiral Politic, from the beginning of recorded time to the fall of humanity. This book chronicles the rise of the Faction as a renegade House, the creation of a living timeship named Compassion, some brutal battles across all of time and space and more.All in all, The Book of the War serves as the No. 1 entry point into the Faction Paradox novel and comic lines.

    the story behind one of television's most successful, longest-running shows. Come with Doctor Who on a trip through time... to the early days of the programme when it all began... meet actors, authors and television staff... see inside a TV studio and watch a production take shape... learn the secrets of the monsters... relive every Doctor Who story since the beginning... follow the Doctor through four incarnations and — perhaps — begin to discover just who is Doctor Who?

    Together they can change the world…or put it in the destructive hands of a danger beyond imagination. Set in Stan Lee’s Alliances Universe, co-created by Lee, Luke Lieberman, and Ryan Silbert, and along with Edgar Award–nominated co-writer Kat Rosenfield, Stan Lee delivers a novel packed with the pulse-pounding, breakneck adventure and the sheer exuberant invention that have defined his career as the creative mastermind behind Marvel’s spectacular universe.

    At the urging of Whorl’s religious leader, Patera Silk, the people left the ship for an uncertain future on Blue – a world already inhabited by the inhumi, blood-drinking aliens who take human form.Now The Book of the Short Sun carries the story forward to the years after the great exodus, to let Horn, narrator of the earlier work, tell his own story.Horn and his family have made a decent life for themselves on Blue, though crime, pollution and poverty have become so rampant in the city of New Viron that he is called upon to find Patera Silk. Horn must go to the still-orbiting Whorl and convince his old friend and mentor to return to Blue, for the legendary hero is the only one who can restore order and lead them to prosperity. But Horn isn’t even sure Silk still lives.Setting sail in a small boat, the aging Horn embarks on a long and difficult journey across the planet, trying to get to the Whorl. With the undine Seawrack, his adopted inhumi son, Krait, and his eldest son, Sinew, Horn makes it to the last working lander – only to be highjacked to the jungles of Green, where the inhumi imprison the passengers as slaves. There, he encounters the mysterious alien Neighbors who were once native to Blue, but whom the inhumi have all but exterminated. Horn joins their fight for freedom, is fatally wounded… and finds himself on another world, wearing a different body.As his inability to find Silk weighs heavily on his mind, Horn is further tormented by the fact that his new body bears a striking resemblance to the lost Caldé. In the end, he will have to answer a troubling question: has he truly failed in his sworn task, or has he become the very man he sought?Includes:On Blue's WatersIn Green's JunglesReturn To The Whorl

    Don't miss this story that brings STAR TREK back to the big screen!

    Heinlein was such a one--his books are concise yet never rushed, richly plotted, never bloated. His '50s juveniles were among his best work. Here are 3: Tunnel in the Sky, Time for the Stars & Citizen of the Galaxy.Tunnel in the Sky: Just a test, but something went wrong. As part of a final exam, Rod Walker's Advanced Survival class was dropped thru a teleportation gate to an unknown location. A standard 10-day field exercise became an indefinite life-or-death struggle. Stranded beyond contact with Earth, divested of all luxuries & laws, they were forced to forge a future of their own--a future where sometimes not even the fittest survive.Time for the Stars: The ship Lewis & Clark sought worlds for overpopulated Earth to colonize. Twins Tom & Pat Bartlett participated. Scientists had discovered thoughts travel faster than light & the twins were telepathic. Pat remained on Earth, growing old, while Tom made a 70-year voyage. As the pioneer torchship discovered seemingly habitable new planets at Tau Ceti & Deneb Kaitos, messages Tom sent back spoke of disaster.Citizen of the Galaxy: Thorby had been taken from his parents & sold into slavery while young. His life had been under cruel masters on planets across the Terran Hegemony. His new owner was different. With the beggar, he found kindness & hope, not just for safety but for freedom. Baslim the Cripple was more than he seemed. He taught him a message that would take him to the stars. Thorby's true identity would stay secret thru his adventures with an odd society of traders, until service as a Terran Hegemony Guardsman brought him to his lost homeworld & destiny.

    Kirk is charged by the Klingon Empire for the comandeering of a Klingon starship. The Federation honors the Klingon demands for extradition, and Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise are drawn back to Earth. But their trip is interrupted by the appearance of a mysterious, all-powerful alien space probe. Suddenly, Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the rest of the crew must journey back through time to twentieth-century Earth to solve the mystery of the probe.

    Miranda, an air-head beauty who lives to shop. And Kerwin, a nerd who just wants to fit in.They're not friends, and they don't even particularly like each other. But now this unlikely trio is the key to saving the universe. And they're in for the adventure of a their lives.Speed-of-light starships, intergalactic shopping sprees, and frontline action in an all-out space war lead them down the GLORY LANE.(The above description is from the book's back cover.)

    Librarian Note: An alternative cover for this ISBN can be found here Dom Salabos had a lot of advantages.As heir to a huge fortune he had an excellent robot servant (with Man-Friday subcircuitry), a planet (the First Syrian Bank) as a godfather, a security chief who even ran checks on himself, and on Dom's home world even death was not always fatal.Why then, in an age when prediction was a science, was his future in doubt?

    If you're living in Germany in the 1930s, it probably isn't. But that's no consolation to Egon Loeser, whose carnal misfortunes will push him from the experimental theatres of Berlin to the absinthe bars of Paris to the physics laboratories of Los Angeles, trying all the while to solve two mysteries: whether it was really a deal with Satan that claimed the life of his hero, the great Renaissance stage designer Adriano Lavicini; and why a handsome, clever, charming, modest guy like him can't, just once in a while, get himself laid. From the author of the acclaimed Boxer, Beetle comes a historical novel that doesn't know what year it is; a noir novel that turns all the lights on; a romance novel that arrives drunk to dinner; a science fiction novel that can't remember what 'isotope' means; a stunningly inventive, exceptionally funny, dangerously unsteady and (largely) coherent novel about sex, violence, space, time, and how the best way to deal with history is to ignore it. LET'S HOPE THE PARTY WAS WORTH IT