Not on purpose; he never meant to hurt anyone. But when Mick gets angry, people die, even the people he loves the most. Now he's on the run from his own terrible talent, and from those who would use his power for their own obscene purposes. But Mick is not alone. There are others like him. And if he will not join them, they will make him pay.Orson Scott Card is one of the world's best-loved writers, winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards two years in a row. He is author of Ender's Game and many New York Times bestsellers. Card's latest novels are Shadow of the Giant and Magic Street. This recording features Stefan Rudnicki, narrator on numerous audiobooks and recipient of an Audie for his solo narration on Orson Scott Card's Lost Boys and an Earphones Awards for his productions of Card's Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead and Crystal City.

    The advanced AI system was supposed to protect a fleet of survivors who’d escaped the deadly attack on Kerenza IV. AIDAN was supposed to be infallible. But in the chaotic weeks and months that followed, it became clear that something was terribly, terribly wrong with AIDAN…

    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

    Who guides our fate? And can we ever hope to wrest control for ourselves? In this novella, "The Loom of Thessaly" , classical mythology merges with impudent modern spirit into a science fiction legend that speculates upon the nature of reality.

    (1976)(92 pages)Houston, HoustonThe astronauts had the "right Stuff" to deal with . . . almost anything...Houston isn't there any moreLorimer comes through to the command module in time to hear a girl's voice over the speaker, "--Dinko trip. What did Lorna say? Gloria over!"He starts up the Lurp and begins scanning. No results this time. "They're either in line behind us or on the sunward quadrant," he tells Dave and Bud. "I can't isolate their position."Presently the speaker holds another thin thread of sound. A hard soprano says suddenly, "--should be outside your orbit. Try around Beta Aries."The first girl's voice comes back. "We see them, Margo! But they're so small, how can they live in there. Maybe they're tiny aliens. Over."Bud chuckles. "Dave, this is screwy, it's all in English. It has to be some UN thingie."Dave massages his elbows, flexes his fists; thinking. The three astronauts wait. In thirteen minutes the voice from Earth says, "Judy, call the others, will you? We're going to play you the conversation, we think you should all hear. Oh, while you're waiting, Zebra wants to tell Connie the baby is fine. And we have a new cow.""Code," says Dave.SoulsThe Vikings thought the pickings would be easy--but the Abbess was more than she seemed.The woman who had been Radegunde did not change; it was still Radegunde's gray hairs and wrinkled face and old body in the peasant woman's brown dress, and yet at the same time it was a stranger who stepped out of the Abbess Radegunde as out of a gown dropped to the floor. This stranger was without feeling, though Radegunde's tears still stood on her cheeks, and there was no kidness or joy in her. She said in a voice I had never heard before, one with no feeling in it, as if I did not concer her or Thorvald Einarsson either, as if neither of us were worth a second glance:"Thorvald, turn around.:Far up the hall something stirred."Now come back. This way."There were footsteps, coming closwer. Then the big Norseman walked clumsily into the room--jerk! jerk! jerk! at ever step as if he were being pulled by a rope. Sweat beaded his face. He said, "You--how?""By my nature," she said.(From the blurb in each novella)

    For years she's been longing to go back up there, to once more explore the stars. But there are few opportunities for an aging astronaut, even the famous Lady Astronaut of Mars. When her chance finally comes, it may be too late. Elma must decide whether to stay with her sickening husband in what will surely be the final years of his life, or to have her final adventure and plunge deeper into the well of space.

    When an accident causes the ship to crash, Falcon is badly injured and takes over a year to fully recover.The story was the inspiration for The Medusa Encounter, the fourth novel in the Venus Prime series by Paul Preuss.The pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, entitled "Encounter at Farpoint" (1987), features a large, sentient, space-dwelling jellyfish-like creature similar to the Medusa creature in Clarke's story.The concept of life on Jupiter was explored in the second episode of Carl Sagan's PBS series Cosmos, which featured lifeforms similar in concept to those in this story.Clarke himself revisited the notion of giant lifeforms in the atmosphere of Jupiter in his 1982 novel 2010: Odyssey Two.A sequel, The Medusa Chronicles, will be published in 2016 via a collaborative effort between Alastair Reynolds and Stephen Baxter.

    An image of humankind escaping into space. An image of human merchants trading and cheating, of human tyrants capturing the Varvax, Tenasi, and Hommar. Images of wars, of fighting, of a paradise destroyed."Oddly enough, the ones who made first contact were an outdated, nearly bankrupt phone company. Second contact was made by the United Governments Military when they accidentally shot down a Tenasi ambassadorial vessel. The Phone Company negotiated Earth out of danger following the Tenasi incident. The Phone Company had brought FTL communication to humankind.And Phone Company operative Jason Write has sworn to keep the galaxy safe from the barbaric humans who would ruin the Elysium that the galactic races currently enjoy.

    This new double volume from Subterranean Press stands squarely in that distinguished tradition, offering a pair of colorful, fast-paced stories from the reigning master of the intergalactic space opera: Alastair Reynolds. Thousandth Night, the genesis for the epic novel House of Suns, is quintessential Reynolds. A visionary account of intrigue, ambition, and technological marvels set within a beautifully realized far-future milieu, it combines world-class storytelling with a provocative meditation on the mystery, grandeur, and inconceivable immensity of the universe.The masterful novella Minla s Flowers features Merlin, a familiar figure to Reynolds s readers. Diverted by technical difficulties to a planet known as Lecythus, Merlin finds himself forced to play a part in the moral and military dilemmas of a world on the verge of extinction.

    Nobody talks about what happened. Such are the silo taboos.Now, nearly two hundred years later, the people of the Silo will get a chance to learn more about that distant uprising.They'll get to start one of their own...

    Senior Agent Hamed al-Nasr shows his new partner Agent Onsi the ropes of investigation when they are called to subdue a dangerous, possessed tram car. What starts off as a simple matter of exorcism, however, becomes more complicated as the origins of the demon inside are revealed.

    More than 1,000 pages, including nine novellas, unpublished teleplays, rare, never before collected short stories, and a small volume's worth of introductions and commentary.Each of the more than 30 stories will feature a full-page black and white illustration commissioned especially for this volume by Tim Truman, Mark A. Nelson, Janet Aulisio, Ron Brown and other fine artistsGRRM will be available only from Subterranean Press, in three editions:Trade: fully cloth bound sewn hardcover
Limited: 400 signed numbered hardcover copies housed in a handcrafted slipcase
Lettered: 52 signed leatherbound copies, housed in a handcrafted traycase, with original art not in the Limited or Trade editionsContents:ONE: A FOUR-COLOR FANBOY • Only Kids Are Afraid of the Dark • The Fortress • And Death His LegacyTWO: BREAKING THROUGH • The Hero • The Exit to San Breta • The Second Kind of Loneliness • With Morning Comes MistfallTHREE: THE LIGHT OF DISTANT STARS • A Song for Lya • This Tower of Ashes • And Seven Times Never Kill Man • The Stone City • Bitterblooms • The Way of Cross and DragonFOUR: SWORDS OF TURTLE CASTLE • The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr • The Ice Dragon • In the Lost LandsFIVE: HYBRIDS AND HORRORS • Meathouse Man • Remembering Melody • Sandkings • Nightflyers • The Monkey Treatment • The Pear-Shaped ManFIVE: A TASTE OF TUF • A Beast for Norn (original version) • GuardiansSIX: HURRAH FOR HOLLYWOOD • The Road Less Travelled (Twilight Zone teleplay) • DOORWAYS pilot/ first draft (unproduced teleplay)SEVEN: WILD CARDS • Shell Games • The Journal of Xavier DesmondEIGHT: THE HEART IN CONFLICT • Bat Durston, the Bard, and Me (speech) • Under Siege • The Skin Trade • Unsound Variations • The Glass Flower • The Hedge Knight • Portraits of His Children

    Abbey knows, there are difficulties in running an underground virology lab in a post-Rising America.And unwanted guests must be dealt with.

    Left to their own devices, however, the claws develop robots of their own. II-V, the second variety, remains unknown to the few humans left on Earth. Or does it?Second Variety was adapted into the film Screamers.

    Kiernan Dunne abandoned his family ties to help Kate fight the Cyrists, and he's never regretted that for one moment. But he doesn't understand why Kate can't remember that night in 1893 Chicago, when she turned back to face the killer chasing them through the smoky corridors of the World's Fair Hotel. Kate placed the CHRONOS key around his neck and made his eight year old self promise to wear it always, and that's a promise Kiernan has never broken.When Kate suddenly vanishes after a Cyrist-engineered time shift, that hidden medallion is Kiernan's only hope for finding her. He returns to the Cyrist fold to look for clues, but his search will lead him back to the question that has haunted him for years--what really happened after he left Kate at the World's Fair Hotel?This digital novella gives Timebound readers a glimpse at Kate in another timeline and helps set the stage for Time's Edge, the second book in The CHRONOS Files Series, coming from Skyscape in October.