His body was deformed at birth, leaving him with a face so ugly people didn't want to look at him, and crippled legs that would never let him be as other men. But his mind was one in a billion - gifted with the ability to send and receive thoughts more powerfully than any other person on the face of the globe.At first Howson thought his peculiar ability was odd, and then he thought he might be able to get a little extra money by snooping on people. But when his ability finally was discovered by others, he became so powerful that he could use his gift to heal the minds of those who suffered from terrible emotional or psychological trauma...or he could withdraw into a phatasmagoric wonderland of psychic imagining, never to emerge into the real world of human experience again. Whichever decision he made, his life and the lives of countless others would never be the same again.The Whole Man is one of the most brilliantly original and colorfully told adventures of inner space ever written. Hugo Award winner John Brunner makes utterly real a fantastic concept that most writers can't even write about.

    "One is ultimately awed... it may be the most ambitious novel I've ever read." -- Washington Post Book World

    The story continues when the daughter of the anthropologist who studied the Asadi, a hominid-like race on the planet Bosk’veld, investigates his disappearance. In the journal Foundation, John Clute writes that the novel is "a fever of explanation. Hypothesis builds on hypothesis [as more data is added to the original observations], & much of the resulting construction is beautifully crafted, almost hallucinatory it is so plausible. But of course these explanations are never enough–-& the intellectual tact by which Bishop makes them almost but not quite fit the data they are meant to make transparent is perhaps the strongest part of this extremely dense and carefully thought-through novel." Legendary science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon writes "Michael Bishop’s Transfigurations is as complex, as carefully thought-out, & as compelling an sf novel as you’ll find anywhere, ever."

    (Jun 1986, Norman Spinrad, Bantam Spectra, 0-553-25289-5, $3.95, 256pp, pb) Cover: Catherine Huerta

    Ron Hubbard's 1.2-million-word-ten-volume MISSION EARTH dekalogy brilliantly blends science fiction and action/adventure on a vast interstellar scale with stinging satire -- in the literary tradition of Voltaire, Swift and Orwell -- on the world's foibles and fancies.A true publishing phenomenon -- precedent-setting when each volume, in turn, became a New York Times and then an international bestseller -- MISSION EARTH has already sold more than five million copies and continues to appear on bestseller lists in contries throghout the world.Winner of France's Cosmos 2000 Award and the Nova Science Fiction Award in Italy, and nominated for a Hugo Award, MISSION EARTH is an epic narrative of a secret invasion of Earth as seen-and vividly recounted -- by the aliens who, unrecognized, already live and work among us. It is a novel crowded with sharply memorable characters and with places and events cloaked in splendor, menace and mystery: Palace City, Joy City, the forbidden prison fortress of Spiteos, the violent fall of the Voltar Confederation.The Voltar Confederation has a long-range plan to use Earth as a strategic staging area in its continuing conquest of the galaxy. However, with the discovery that Earth is being destroyed by pollution, drugs and other menaces, Combat Engineer Jettero Heller is sent on a top-secret mission to save the planet from self-destruction. Unknown to Heller, another Voltarian faction (the Coordinated Information Apparatus) has secretly been using Earth as a supply base for drugs. It dispatches its own counter mission to thwart Heller's plans.

    He co-authored, with William Gibson, the critically acclaimed novel "The Difference Engine." He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and daughter.

    This reborn civilization is one in which every individual is incorporated at birth, and spends many years trying to attain control over his or her own life by getting a majority of his or her own shares. Life extension has made life very long indeed.Now the incredible has happened: a billionaire businessman from our time, frozen in secret in the early twenty-first century, is discovered and resurrected, given health and a vigorous younger body. Justin Cord is the only unincorporated man in the world, a true stranger in this strange land. Justin survived because he is tough and smart. He cannot accept only part ownership of himself, even if that places him in conflict with a civilization that extends outside the solar system to the Oort Cloud.  People will be arguing about this novel and this world for decades.

    Smart, dedicated, gorgeous, and, thanks to her last movie before she hung up on Hollywood, rich, she's a pleasure to oblige when she says Rob has to witness this channeler Ariaura's act--on her, not the Eye's, nickel--despite channelers being so last year. It's quite a show, all right, for in the midst of Ariaura's particular ancient wise guy's basso spiel, a gravelly baritone interrupts (both voices emanate from the channeler's female mouth) to berate the audience as "yaps" and the act as "claptrap." Why is Ariaura undermining herself? Or is she? After all, she angrily accuses Rob and Kildy of scheming to destroy her. Could the baritone belong to a genuine channeled spirit? Willis, one of sf's most spirited writers, rounds on the New Age; pays tribute to a great, skeptical journalist; and affectionately parodies pulp fiction at its best in this irresistible entertainment.

    He's lost his freedom, his girlfriend, and his hidden island fortress. Over the years he's tried to take over the world in every way imaginable: doomsday devices of all varieties (nuclear, thermonuclear, nanotechnological) and mass mind control. He's traveled backwards in time to change history, forward in time to escape it. He's commanded robot armies, insect armies, and dinosaur armies. Fungus army. Army of fish. Of rodents. Alien invasions. All failures. But not this time. This time it's going to be different... Fatale is a rookie superhero on her first day with the Champions, the world's most famous superteam. She's a patchwork woman of skin and chrome, a gleaming technological marvel built to be the next generation of warfare. Filling the void left by a slain former member, Fatale joins a team struggling with a damaged past, trying to come together in the face of unthinkable evil. Soon I Will Be Invincible is a thrilling first novel; a fantastical adventure that gives new meaning to the notions of power, glory, responsibility, and (of course) good and evil.

    Contents:Frame story that follows Miles' time on Earth in Brothers in ArmsThe Mountains of Mourning (1989)Labyrinth (1989)The Borders of Infinity (1987)

    Its wealth is beyond measure; its port is open to all the merchants of the world, and its ruler, the Khai Saraykeht, commands forces to rival the Gods. Commerce and trade fill the streets with a hundred languages, and the coffers of the wealthy with jewels and gold. Any desire, however exotic or base, can be satisfied in its soft quarter. Blissfully ignorant of the forces that fuel their prosperity, the people live and work secure in the knowledge that their city is a bastion of progress in a harsh world. It would be a tragedy if it fell.Saraykeht is poised on the knife-edge of disaster.At the heart of the city's influence are the poet-sorcerer Heshai and the captive spirit, Seedless, whom he controls. For all his power, Heshai is weak, haunted by memories of shame and humiliation. A man faced with constant reminders of his responsibilities and his failures, he is the linchpin and the most vulnerable point in Saraykeht's greatness.Far to the west, the armies of Galt have conquered many lands. To take Saraykeht, they must first destroy the trade upon which its prosperity is based. Marchat Wilsin, head of Galt's trading house in the city, is planning a terrible crime against Heshai and Seedless. If he succeeds, Saraykeht will fall.Amat, House Wilsin's business manager, is a woman who rose from the slums to wield the power that Marchat Wilsin would use to destroy her city. Through accidents of fate and circumstance Amat, her apprentice Liat, and two young men from the farthest reaches of their society stand alone against the dangers that threaten the city.

    Ranging from the prophetic to the surreal, these stories demonstrate Stanislaw Lem's vast talent and remarkable ability to blend meaning and magic into a wholly entertaining and captivating work.

    His only clues point to a conspiracy that reaches far beyond his own murder, and survival lies in discovering other fugitives who know the truth about the ultimate weapon of chaos and salvation. Reprint.

    The three short novels in The Steampunk Trilogy are all set in a very alternative nineteenth century, and feature a mixture of historical and imaginary figures. In "Victoria," a young and lissome Queen Victoria disappears from her throne and is replaced by a sexy human/newt clone. The race is on to find the original Victoria and to hide the terrible secret from the nation. In "Hottentots," Massachusetts is threatened by monsters from the deep; in "Walt and Emily," Emily Dickinson hooks up with a robust and lusty Walt Whitman, loses her virginity, and travels to a dimension beyond time where she meets the future Allen Ginsberg.

    Regularly appears on "Greatest science fiction" lists.