Set on a far future Earth moving toward extinction under a slowly dying sun, these baroque tales of wonder have exerted a profound influence on generations of writers. One of those writers is Dan Simmons, who acknowledges that influence in spectacular fashion in The Guiding Nose of Ulfant Banderoz, an informed and loving act of literary homage.The narrative begins at a critical moment in the Dying Earth's history, a moment when signs and portents indicate that the long anticipated death of the planet is finally at hand. Against this backdrop, Simmons's protagonist--Shrue the diabolist--learns of the death of Ulfant Banderoz, ancient magus and sole proprietor of the legendary Ultimate Library and Final Compendium of Thaumaturgical Lore. Determined to possess its secrets, Shrue sets out in search of the fabled library, guided by the severed nose of the deceased magician. The narrative that follows tells the story of that quest, a quest whose outcome will affect the fate of the entire dying planet.The result is a hugely engrossing novella filled with marvels, bizarre encounters, and an array of astonishing creatures--the pelgranes, daihaks, and assorted elementals of Jack Vance's boundless imagination. Written with wit, fidelity, and grace, and rooted in its author s obvious affection for his source material, The Guiding Nose of Ulfant Banderoz is something special, a collaborative gem in which the talents and sensibilities of two master storytellers come powerfully--and seamlessly--together.

    I hereby declare you Generation A, as much at the beginning of a series of astonishing triumphs and failures as Adam and Eve were so long ago.” — Kurt Vonnegut, Syracuse University commencement address May 8, 1994A brilliant, timely and very Couplandesque novel about honey bees and the world we may soon live in. Once again, Douglas Coupland captures the spirit of a generation….In the near future bees are extinct — until one autumn when five people are stung in different places around the world. This shared experience unites them in a way they never could have imagined.Generation A mirrors 1991’s Generation X. It explores new ways of looking at the act of reading and storytelling in a digital world.

    Now its fleet is crippled and stranded in enemy territory. Their only hope is a man who's emerged from a century-long hibernation to find he has been heroically idealized, beyond belief...Captain John "Black Jack" Geary's legendary exploits are known to every schoolchild. Revered for his heroic "last stand" in the early days of the war, he was presumed dead. But a century later, Geary miraculously returns from survival hibernation and reluctantly takes command of the Alliance fleet as it faces annihilation by the Syndics.Appalled by the hero-worship around him, Geary is nevertheless a man who will do his duty. And he knows that bringing the stolen Syndic hypernet key safely home is the Alliance's one chance to win the war. But to do that, Geary will have to live up to the impossibly heroic "Black Jack" legend...

    Contains CONCRETE JUNGLE, COLD WAR and BIG GAME

    Moments afterward, however, he watches Sophie get abducted by aliens in the middle of the New Mexico desert.Faced with a dateless prom (and likely kidnapping charges), Bennett does the only thing he can think of: he catches a ride into outer space with a band of extraterrestrial musicians to bring her back.Can he navigate alien concert venues, an extraterrestrial reality show, and the band's outlandish egos to rescue his date in time for the big dance? Fans of King Dork and Winger won't want to miss this!

    A group of scruffy mercenaries, the Alien Hunters travel the galaxy in their starship, a mechanical dragon that spits out plasma like dragonfire. If an alien has invaded your space station, asteroid mine, or lunar colony, the Alien Hunters will remove the pest for you. Low rates. No questions asked. Raphael "Riff" Starfire, a guitarist-turned-gunslinger, and Nova, a warrior-princess with an electric whip and a bad attitude, lead the Alien Hunters. They’re the solar system’s best pest controllers. Yet now they face a threat all their guns and grit might be unable to stop. The skelkrins, a race of apex predators from deep space, are swarming across the galaxy. Planets burn in their wake. As the skelkrins draw closer to Earth, will Riff and Nova be the ones hunting aliens... or will aliens hunt them?

    But when you’re a living ringer for one of the country’s best-loved historical figures, privacy is hard to come by—especially when your face is on money. Across town, Norma Greenberg, one of the world’s many Marilyn Monroe clones, is struggling with identity issues of a different sort. It’s not easy going through life as a copy of the beautiful Norma Jeane Baker! When Abe is taken away by government agents eager to discover the secrets of his illustrious ancestor, Norma could be Abe’s last hope of escape—or, thanks to her kleptomania, his worst chance of recapture. With only their wits, a cigarette lighter, a bottle of perfume, and the disembodied arm of Richard Nixon, can Abe and Norma make it back to safety and anonymity? Advance Praise: “A gorgeous, funny romp along the seam between reality and artifice, fame and obscurity, history and Disney, Roufa has a deft, hilarious touch. This is a wry, gleeful take on the choice between destiny, authenticity, love, and the eternal call of the stovepipe hat.” – Dahlia Lithwick, Senior Editor, Slate “A perfect gem with terrifically simple and funny twists.” – Josh Kilmer-Purcell, New York Times bestselling author of I Am Not Myself These Days and The Bucolic Plague

    He talks to the models, he reads hundreds of filthy readers' letters, he organises the photoshoots and even gets to direct the action. He has, according to his non-porn friends, "the best job in the world". But Godfrey Bishop has a problem. Godfrey Bishop is going through the sex drought to end all sex droughts. He hasn't been with a woman in over a year and this knee-twisting frustration is magnified a hundred times by his daily grind. He feels like Billy Bunter put in charge of the cake shop, only to have the Atkins diet forced upon him at gun point. Chuck into the mix a twelve girl orgy, a stable of alcoholic co-workers, an angry argumentative feminist, a naked run from justice and an obsessive nutty reader who thinks Godfrey is trying to scupper his chances of marrying the magazine's centre-spread girl and you have Danny King's filthiest and funniest novel yet – according to the back of the book. Godfrey Bishop has "the best job in the world" – and it's doing his f*cking head in.

    An expert in all things extraordinary, she’s approached to lead the formation of a new team into the West Virginia wilderness to evaluate reports of a giant spider, but her quest for answers leads her to the discovery of an eight-legged monstrosity no one could have prepared for. Existing for eons beneath our earth, these aren’t your garden variety spiders. They’re bloodthirsty monsters that will rip apart anything—and anyone—in their path, and while a town fights to survive Emily and her team will have to do everything they can to beat back the terror before there’s a new species at the top of the food chain!

    But Frampton and Carly are highly advanced (if bumbling) extraterrestrials. And boy, do they have news. The entire cosmos, they tell him, has been hopelessly hooked on humanity’s music ever since “Year Zero” (1977 to us), when American pop songs first reached alien ears. This addiction has driven a vast intergalactic society to commit the biggest copyright violation since the Big Bang. The resulting fines and penalties have bankrupted the whole universe. We humans suddenly own everything—and the aliens are not amused. Nick now has forty-eight hours to save humanity, while hopefully wowing the hot girl who lives down the hall from him.

    In three groupings, "Expedition to the Earth," "Tales from the White Hart," and "Reach for Tomorrow," the selections include such memorable tales as "Encounter at Dawn," "The Sentinel," "Armaments Race," "Jupiter Five" and "Time's Arrow."

    J. Kincaid's fast-paced sci-fi adventure trilogy perfect for fans of Ender's Game.The planet's natural resources are almost gone, and war is being fought to control the assets of the solar system. The enemy is winning. The salvation may be Tom Raines. Tom doesn't seem like a hero. He's a short fourteen-year-old with bad skin. But he has the virtual-reality gaming skills that make him a phenom behind the controls of the battle drones.As a new member of the Intrasolar Forces, Tom's life completely changes. Suddenly, he's someone important. He has new opportunities, friends, and a shot at having a girlfriend. But there's a price to pay. . . .

     Milton Frederick was originally abducted from his apartment to help defend one batch of pacifistic aliens called The Collective against another set of homicidal aliens called Heliothropes…but he never quite made it that far. Instead, during the process where his human consciousness was ripped from his body and inserted into a massive metal contraption called a Station Core, the ship that he was being transported on blew up and he was sent hurtling through space. Crash-landing on an unknown planet with just a foot-and-a-half tall, foul-mouthed, nanite-formed AI guide called ALANNA to tell him what happened, Milton has to come to terms with his new existence as a giant metal egg, defend his hazardously-in-need-of-repair outer shell from the dangerous local wildlife (including blood-thirsty squirrels), and manage the unique radiation spewing from his damaged internal reactor – all while figuring out how the heck to get off the planet. All of his work building a “dungeon” underground, defending it with makeshift traps, and filling it with small Combat Units may work well enough against the random beasts wandering around, but they’re next to useless when something else even more dangerous shows up knocking on his door: people. Not humans, of course, but the local equivalent – Proctans – who are similar enough to Milton’s original species…though with one major difference. They all have unique special abilities that looks suspiciously like “magic”. However, there is an even bigger threat that looms on the horizon not only for Milton, but all the Proctans as well… Contains LitRPG/GameLit elements such as level progression and experience, optional tables, no harems, and a heavy Dungeon Core emphasis. Note: The optional stat tables tend to skew the percentages toward the back of the eBook. The locations can be a tad deceptive; while this box set is 562,000 words, stat tables comprise less than 8% of that total word count.

    Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there.After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old “human error” are much more likely to kill him first. But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills — and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit — he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

    Green's agile imagination constantly wrong-foots the reader. A delight." -Peter Ingham, The Telegraph "The work of a talented writer having lots of very smart fun" -- S F Winser, Booksquawk.com Smallworld is like nothing you've ever read before... truly innovative space opera from Hugo-nominated Brit SF writer Dominic Green. Mount Ararat isn't your average extrasolar agrarian colony. A world the size of an asteroid yet having Earth-standard gravity, Mount Ararat plays host to a strangely confident family whose children are protected by the Devil, a mechanical killing machine, from such passers-by as Mr von Trapp (an escapee from a penal colony), the Made (manufactured humans being hunted by the State), and the super-rich clients of a gravitational health spa established at Mount Ararat's South Pole. But it soon transpires that the Devil is harbouring an ancient and deadly secret. Enjoyed Smallworld? Its sequel Littlestar hugely expands on the universe established in the first book, with a story arc that follows troopers Beguiled-of-the-Serpent and Only-Begotten as they become embroiled in the second star-spanning war against the Made. Find out more about the Smallworld and Littlestar universe in our 3D publisher room at: http://inkflash.com/Fingerpress