The Years of the City


Frederik Pohl - 1984
    In Pohl's prophetic novel, a woman awakes in another century, a man's eyes are replaced by radar, criminals are frozen for future justice, and hang gliders soar above Central Park.New York - long the symbol of turmoil, tragedy and brilliance, becomes a dazzling metaphor for mankind's future - and for the promise of civilizaton.

Radiomen


Eleanor Lerman - 2015
    First, if there are aliens interacting with our world they are likely just as confused about who or what God is as human beings are; and second, whoever they are, they’re probably just as fond of dogs as we are.Laurie works at a bar at Kennedy airport and doesn't remember that when she was a child, she met an alien on the fire escape of a building where her uncle kept a shortwave radio. The radio is part of a universal network of repeaters that is maintained by an unknown alien race; they use the network to broadcast prayers into the universe.She meets a psychic, who is actually part of a Scientology-like cult called the "Blue Awareness," as well as a late-night radio host. All have their own reasons for unraveling the mystery of the lost radio network.Laurie is given a strange dog by her neighbor, an immigrant and a member of the Dogon tribe—people who believe they were visited by aliens long ago and repeat a myth about how the aliens brought a dog-like animal with them. All Dogon dogs are supposedly descended from that animal.As conflict develops between the Blue Awareness leader and the other characters, the Dogon acts as an intermediary between the humans, who want to understand why the aliens need the radio network, and the aliens, who need the humans to help them find a lost element of the universal network.

Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede


Bradley Denton - 1991
    Reprint. K.

In War Times


Kathleen Ann Goonan - 2007
    Afterwards, Sam promises that he will do anything he can to stop the war. During his training, Sam begins to show that he has a knack for science and engineering, and he is plucked from the daily grunt work of twenty-mile marches by his superiors to study subjects like code breaking, electronics, and physics in particular, a science that is growing more important to the war effort. While studying, Sam is seduced by a mysterious female physicist that is teaching one of his courses, and given her plans for a device that will end the war, perhaps even end the human predilection for war forever. But the device does something less, and more, than that.  After his training, Sam is sent throughout Europe to solve both theoretical and practical problems for the Allies. He spends his free time playing jazz, and trying to construct the strange device. It's only much later that he discovers that it worked, but in a way that he could have never imagined.

Against a Dark Background


Iain M. Banks - 1993
    On an island with a glass shore - relic of some even more ancient conflict - she discovers she is to be hunted by the Huhsz, a religious cult which believes she is the last obstacle before their faith's apotheosis. She has to run, knowing her only hope of finally escaping the Huhsz is to find the last of the ancient, apocalyptically powerful but seemingly cursed Lazy Guns. But that is just the first as well as the final step on a search that takes her on an odyssey through the exotic Golterian system and results in both a trail of destruction and a journey into her own past, as well as that of her family and the system itself; a journey that changes everything.

The City and the Stars


Arthur C. Clarke - 1956
    For millennia its protective dome shut out the creeping decay and danger of the world outside. Once, it held powers that rule the stars.But then, as legend has it, the invaders came, driving humanity into this last refuge. It takes one man, a Unique, to break through Diaspar's stifling inertia, to smash the legend and discover the true nature of the Invaders.

Revolt in 2100


Robert A. Heinlein - 1953
    But nothing endures forever. The smoldering embers of liberty have burst into flame again. It is time for a new beginning.Contents:· The Innocent Eye: An Introduction by Henry Kuttner· If This Goes On - originally published in Astounding Science Fiction February 1940· Coventry - originally published in Astounding Science Fiction July 1940 · Misfit - originally published in Astounding Science Fiction November 1939 · Concerning Stories Never Written: Postscript by Robert A. Heinlein

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.

Market Forces


Richard K. Morgan - 2004
    Guns to Guatemala. For the men and women of Shorn Associates, opportunity is calling. In the superheated global village of the near future, big money is made by finding the right little war and supporting one side against the other–in exchange for a share of the spoils. To succeed, Shorn uses a new kind of corporate gladiator: sharp-suited, hard-driving gunslingers who operate armored vehicles and follow a Samurai code. And Chris Faulkner is just the man for the job.He fought his way out of London’s zone of destitution. And his kills are making him famous. But unlike his best friend and competitor at Shorn, Faulkner has a side that outsiders cannot see: the side his wife is trying to salvage, that another woman–a porn star turned TV news reporter–is trying to exploit. Steeped in blood, eyed by common criminals looking for a shot at fame, Faulkner is living on borrowed time. Until he’s given one last shot at getting out alive. . . .

The Highest Frontier


Joan Slonczewski - 2011
    Now she returns with a spectacular tour de force of the college of the future, in orbit. Jennifer Ramos Kennedy, a girl from a rich and politically influential family (a distant relation descended from the famous Kennedy clan), whose twin brother has died in an accident and left her bereft, is about to enter her freshman year at Frontera College.Frontera is an exciting school built with media money, and a bit from tribal casinos too, dedicated to educating the best and brightest of this future world. We accompany Jenny as she proceeds through her early days at school, encountering surprises and wonders and some unpleasant problems. The Earth is altered by global warming, and an invasive alien species called ultraphytes threatens the surviving ecosystem. Jenny is being raised for great things, but while she's in school she just wants to do her homework, go on a few dates, and get by. The world that Jenny is living in is one of the most fascinating and creative in contemporary SF, and the problems Jenny faces will involve every reader, young and old.

Dogs of War


Adrian Tchaikovsky - 2017
    I am a good dog. Rex is also seven foot tall at the shoulder, bulletproof, bristling with heavy calibre weaponry and his voice resonates with subsonics especially designed to instil fear. With Dragon, Honey and Bees, he's part of a Multiform Assault Pack operating in the lawless anarchy of Campeche, south-eastern Mexico. Rex is a genetically engineered Bioform, a deadly weapon in a dirty war. He has the intelligence to carry out his orders and feedback implants to reward him when he does. All he wants to be is a Good Dog. And to do that he must do exactly what Master says and Master says he's got to kill a lot of enemies. But who, exactly, are the enemies? What happens when Master is tried as a war criminal? What rights does the Geneva Convention grant weapons? Do Rex and his fellow Bioforms even have a right to exist? And what happens when Rex slips his leash?

Mindstar Rising


Peter F. Hamilton - 1993
    Commando. Freedom fighter. Assassin. Now he's a freelance operative with a very special edge: telepathy. In the high-tech, hard-edged world of computer crime, zero-gravity smuggling, and artificial intelligence, Greg Mandel is the man to call when things get rough. But when an elusive saboteur plagues a powerful organization known as Event Horizon, Mandel must cut his way through a maze of corporate intrigue and startling new scientific discoveries. And nothing less than the future is at stake.

The Chronoliths


Robert Charles Wilson - 2001
    In early twenty-first-century Thailand, Scott is an expatriate slacker. Then, one day, he inadvertently witnesses an impossible event: the violent appearance of a 200-foot stone pillar in the forested interior. Its arrival collapses trees for a quarter mile around its base, freezing ice out of the air and emitting a burst of ionizing radiation. It appears to be composed of an exotic form of matter. And the inscription chiseled into it commemorates a military victory--twenty years in the future.Shortly afterwards, another, larger pillar arrives in the center of Bangkok-obliterating the city and killing thousands. Over the next several years, human society is transformed by these mysterious arrivals from, seemingly, our own near future. Who is the warlord "Kuin" whose victories they note? Scott wants only to rebuild his life. But some strange loop of causality keeps drawing him in, to the central mystery and a final battle with the future. The Chronoliths is a 2002 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel and the winner of the 2002 John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

Roadmarks


Roger Zelazny - 1979
    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!

Beyond Apollo


Barry N. Malzberg - 1972
    But no one knows the reason behind the tragedy.