But one of the galaxy's richest and most brilliant lunatics has designs on the universe - and has created something terrible to make his dastardly dreams a reality.It's high noon on a backrocket desert planet called Roget - and the Stellar Ranger is finally about to meet his match. Only this time, it's not human.

    Heinlein: two classic novellas and two short stories with speculation on what makes us human."Gulf": in which the greatest superspy of them all is revealed as the leader of a league of supermen and women who can't decide on quite what to do with the rest of us. The prequel to Heinlein's later New York Times best seller, Friday."Lost Legacy": in which it is proved that we are all members of that league of the superhuman–or would be, if we but had eyes to see.Plus two great short stories: Two of the master's finest: one on the nature of being, the other on what it means to be a Man. The second story, "Jerry Was a Man," was adapted for the TV series Masters of Science Fiction, and is now available on DVD.1 online resource (8 hr., 40 min.), MP3 audiobook in 9 parts

    He's a mastermind criminal who gave up his place at the head of the dark underworld to become a legitimate member of Evenwaith's cities. But soon he was reaching out to powerful enemies--the slimy aliens called the Nuel. Loo-Macklin negotiates an illusory peace agreement and gains precious alien secrets in the process. Is he after peace, power or pure evil? With enemy starships beginning to amass, we won't have to wait long to find out.

    The purpose of the project has never been revealed to her; she only knows she is in love with David Kadin, a man she has met only through the tachyon cyberlink. Desperate not to lose her chance at love, she conspires with a programmer friend to join her with Kadin through the tachyon transmitter. She succeeds--but the truth that awaits her at the end of the tachyon beam is one that will shatter not only her own ambitions of love, but the plans of a secret government program to establish contact with visitors from the stars. Trapped by her love for Kadin, and caught in a telepathic link with the ancient Talenki voyagers, Mozy's personal odyssey becomes irrevocably entwined with the fate of all of Humanity. Combining visionary scientific speculation with passionate human characters, The Infinity Link is an epic work of transcendent science fiction and an exploration into the very nature of humanity.

    Few of them are aware that their prosperous civilization is totally dependent upon the olz, a race of slaves owned by their god-emperor. The olz till the fields and work the forests and mines, and their reward is starvation and the vicious, caustic stroke of the zrilm whip.

    Humanity takes to the skies in its millions, with huge resultant problems for governments and police. Virtually all aircraft are grounded, because of the risk of collision with a stray flyer. Airborne delinquents and criminals are practically impossible to control and can be lethal. Robert Hasson is a good policeman. But a near-fatal airborne confrontation with a psychopath has left him shattered, both physically and mentally. Sent to Canada to recuperate (and to escape the attentions of a local businessman whose son he has put away), Hasson is a broken man, unable to face human company, haunted by nightmares and certain that he will never again put on an anti-gravity harness. But his Canadian host, police chief Al Werry, has a major problem on his hands in the shape of a towering unfinished hotel, the Chinook, whose upper levels are inaccessible from the ground, and are used as an illegal meeting place by local gangs of flyers. Worse, the hotel's owner, Buck Morlacher, intends to take the law into his own hands to deal with them. The violence that has been simmering in the town threatens to erupt and Werry seems powerless to stop it. Unwillingly, Hasson finds himself drawn into the conflict and forced to face his own problems. "Vertigo" is vintage Bob Shaw, fast-moving, intelligent and immenselyreadable.

    But he was no soldier in the military sense, for the enemies he fought were disease, corruption and the warped psychology that spread in the isolation of mankind's lost planetary colonies. Encountering double-dealing, mutation and the unexpected, Ole Doc and his unique, multi-armed companion Hippocrates share a series of astonishing adventures in their unending journey through the trackless galaxies.Contents:· Ole Doc Methuselah [as by René Lafayette] · nv Astounding Oct ’47 · Her Majesty’s Aberration [as by René Lafayette] · ss Astounding Mar ’48 · The Expensive Slaves [as by René Lafayette] · ss Astounding Nov ’47 · The Great Air Monopoly [as by René Lafayette] · nv Astounding Sep ’48 · Plague [as by René Lafayette] · nv Astounding Apr ’49 · A Sound Investment [as by René Lafayette] · nv Astounding Jun ’49 · Ole Mother Methuselah [as by René Lafayette] · nv Astounding Jan ’50

    Most of the planet's wild terrain was unexplored...and many of its peoples seclusive and secretive.But for Andrew Carr there was an attraction he could not evade. Darkover drew him, Darkover haunted him--and when his mapping plane crashed in unknown heights, Darkover prepared to destroy him.Until the planet's magic asserted itself--and his destiny began to unfold along lines predicted only by phantoms and wonder workers of the kind Terran science could never acknowledge.THE SPELL SWORD is a Darkover novel to stand with the great ones of the series.

    In this now-classic political thriller, he and fellow author J. Frederick George tell a savagely witty, chillingly topical tale set in the tense moments of the Gulf War. When a foreign exchange student is found murdered at an Iowa University, Deputy Sheriff Clyde Banks finds that his investigation extends far beyond the small college town--all the way to the Middle East. Shady events at the school reveal that a powerful department is using federal grant money for highly dubious research. And what it's producing is a very nasty bug.Navigating a plot that leads from his own backyard to Washington, D.C., to the Gulf, where his Army Reservist wife has been called to duty, Banks realizes he may be the only person who can stop the wholesale slaughtering of thousands of Americans. It's a lesson in foreign policy he'll never forget.

    THE MAKING OF A REBELAt thirteen, Bran Tregare was stripped of his home, his name and his family, and sent to the brutal space academy known as the Slaughterhouse.At seventeen, he'd survived the sadistic discipline of a starcaptain called the Butcher to become an ace pilot, crack gunner and hardened killer.At twenty, he escaped with an armed warship to begin a one-man war against Earth's imperial masters.

    A thinking person's collection of eight science fiction short stories by Blish first published in various magazines between 1953 and 1959.Tomb Tapper • (1956) • noveletteKing of the Hill • (1955) • shortstoryCommon Time • (1953) • shortstoryA Work of Art • (1956) • noveletteTo Pay the Piper • (1956) • shortstoryNor Iron Bars (expanded) • (1957) • noveletteBeep • (1954) • noveletteThis Earth of Hours • (1959) • novelette

    His worst fears were realized when the Terran authorities decided to grant the Ishkurians self-government and withdrew their protective forces from the planet.It turned out that he was right - as soon as the last troops left the "crocs" went on a killing rampage.Cut off from the remaining fortified outposts by miles of jungle and armies of crocs, Rees knew that his only chance for survival was to outwit the cunning reptiles. He had to learn to think like a croc, feel like a croc...and see through the eye of the monster!

    They find themselves in an area made to look like a town--it contains a stocked store, a hotel, a inoperable car & plastic coffins, each containing a passenger from an international flight, each apparently snatched out of midair, since there's no flight wreckage & all seem alive & unharmed. The people slowly gather in the hotel & find themselves able to understand one another, even tho they don't all speak the same language. None of them has an idea what they're doing in this new place & there isn't anything for miles around their little settlement except a seemingly endless expanse of grass. After weeks of waiting for rescue that never arrives, a few of them explore & discover this mysterious land is also populated by a group of what appear to be medieval people & a group of what seems to be cavemen. That accounts for the human population on the island. The only other creatures around are sinister metal spiders. This story is as much mystery as it is sf, because these people must figure out how they got to this place, & why they were chosen. But they also have to survive.--Kaduzy (edited)

    All of the stories in this collection had been previously published in magazines. This collection consists of:The Tactful SaboteurCommittee of the WholeOld Rambling HouseMating CallA-W-F UnlimitedThe FeatherbeddersThe GM EffectEscape Felicity

    An early (1979) Cherryh novel about colonists on an alien world and their interactions with the catlike natives, centering on a young engineer sent to solve the colonists' problems, and his relationship with one of the natives. Major themes in this novel include sexual liberation, sexual aberration, hypocrisy of social mores, and responsibility toward indigenous peoples.