Manhattan Transfer


John E. Stith - 1993
    . . and to save the dozens of other cities which the aliens have stolen from other planets. A stunning tour-de-force of science fiction storytelling, with gripping action, believable characters, and a plot that will keep you on the edge of your seat! ?Considerable ingenuity . . . Think of it as a visually spectacular movie . . . and a really outstanding, imaginative, and professional production staff and special effects crew working to bring off the big set-pieces and guarantee the thrills.? ?Locus ?Fascinating, intelligent account of people?some ordinary, some extraordinary?struggling to define and confront events that are beyond anything they have dared to imagine. One of the better surprise endings to come down the cosmos in light-years.? ?Chicago Tribune

The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy


Douglas Adams - 1996
    "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"Seconds before the Earth is demolished for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is saved by Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised Guide. Together they stick out their thumbs to the stars and begin a wild journey through time and space."The Restaurant at the End of the Universe"Facing annihilation at the hands of warmongers is a curious time to crave tea. It could only happen to the cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his comrades as they hurtle across the galaxy in a desperate search for a place to eat."Life, the Universe and Everything"The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky- so they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals can avert Armageddon: mild-mannered Arthur Dent and his stalwart crew."So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish"Back on Earth, Arthur Dent is ready to believe that the past eight years were all just a figment of his stressed-out imagination. But a gift-wrapped fishbowl with a cryptic inscription conspires to thrust him back to reality. So to speak."Mostly Harmless"Just when Arthur Dent makes the terrible mistake of starting to enjoy life, all hell breaks loose. Can he save the Earth from total obliteration? Can he save the Guide from a hostile alien takeover? Can he save his daughter from herself?Also includes the short story "Young Zaphod Plays It Safe".

I, Jedi


Michael A. Stackpole - 1998
    Stackpole presents a stirring new tale set in the Star Wars® universe: the dramatic story of a heroic X-wing pilot on the razor's edge between the Force--and the dark side.Corran Horn has distinguished himself as one of the best and brightest of Rogue Squadron's elite fighting force. Then his wife, Mirax, vanishes on a covert mission for the New Republic, and Corran vows to find her. To do so, he knows he must develop the latent Force powers inherited from his grandfather, a legendary Jedi hero. He joins Luke Skywalker's famed Jedi academy to begin training, only to quit in frustration at Skywalker's methods. Now Corran is on his own. Using his Corellian undercover experience, he must infiltrate, sabotage, and destroy a ruthless organization in order to find his wife. But to succeed, Corran will have to come to terms with his Jedi heritage--and make a terrible choice: surrender to the dark side...or die.Features a bonus section following the novel that includes a primer on the Star Wars expanded universe, and over half a dozen excerpts from some of the most popular Star Wars books of the last thirty years!© 1999 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TMAll rights reserved. Used under authorization.

Subspace Explorers


E.E. "Doc" Smith - 1965
    Five space travelers trapped in a wrecked liner -- a debutante, a female oil wildcatter, a famous mathematician and two hard-biscuit spacemen -- are attacked by a deadly energy field, and make a discovery that saves the Universe!

There Will Be Dragons


John Ringo - 2003
    The world is a paradise - and then, in a moment, it ends. The council that controls the Net falls out and goes to war. Everywhere people who have never known a moment of want or pain are left wondering how to survive.

The Slaves of Heaven


Edmund Cooper - 1974
    No one could say if they were ghosts or gods or devils. They only knew they came from the sky, silver clad, ominous, with a Medusa glance that could freeze a man in his tracks. They stole women and carried them off to heaven, decimating the Earth's population and threatening the survival of the human species.Berry, chief of the Londos clan, frustrated by the uselessness of his tribes' primitive weapons, ventures into the inner circle of the Night Comers and is spirited away in their ship to their home in the stars. There, Berry's fight for survival holds the key to the existence of his own world and that of the Night Comers as well.

The Road to Mars: A Post-Modem Novel


Eric Idle - 1990
    And with The Road to Mars he reaffirms this with a raucously sidesplitting vengence.Muscroft and Ashby are a comedy team on "The Road to Mars," an interplanetary vaudeville circuit of the future. Accompanied by Carlton, a robot incapable of understanding irony but driven to learn the essence of humor, Alex and Lewis bumble their way into an intergalactic terrorist plot. Supported by a delicious cast, including a micropaleontologist narrator (he studies the evolutionary impact of the last ten minutes) and the ultra-diva Brenda Woolley, The Road to Mars is a fabulous trip through Eric Idle's inimitable world, a "universe expanding at the speed of laughter."

Raft


Stephen Baxter - 1991
    A spaceship from Earth accidentally crossed through a hole in space-time to a universe where the force of gravity is one billion times as strong as the gravity we know. Somehow the crew survived, aided by the fact that they emerged into a cloud of gas surrounding a black hole, which provided a breathable atmosphere. Five hundred years later, their descendants still struggle for existence, divided into two main groups. The Miners live on the Belt, a ramshackle ring of dwellings orbiting the core of a dead star, which they excavate for raw materials. These can be traded for food from the Raft, a structure built from the wreckage of the ship, on which a small group of scientists preserve the ancient knowledge which makes survival possible. Rees is a Miner whose curiosity about his world makes him stow away on a flying tree—just one of the many strange local lifeforms—carrying trade between the Belt and the Raft.

Lacey and His Friends


David Drake - 1986
    Tells the stories of Jed Lacey, a twenty-first century policeman, Carl, a young man who joins the crew of an airship, and Vickers, a hunting guide who leads time travellers in search of dinosaurs.

Armor


John Steakley - 1984
    The military sci-fi classic in a striking new packageFelix is an Earth soldier, encased in special body armor designed to withstand Earth's most implacable enemy-a bioengineered, insectoid alien horde. But Felix is also equipped with internal mechanisms that enable him, and his fellow soldiers, to survive battle situations that would destroy a man's mind.This is a remarkable novel of the horror, the courage, and the aftermath of combat--and how the strength of the human spirit can be the greatest armor of all.

The Engines of God


Jack McDevitt - 1994
    Now, as faster-than-light drive opens the stars to exploration, humans are finding other relics of the race they call the Monument-Makers - each different, and each heartbreakingly beautiful. But except for a set of footprints on Jupiter's moon Iapetus, there is no trace of the enigmatic race that has left them behind. Then a team of scientists working on a dead world discover an ominous new image of the Monument-Makers. Somehow it all fits with other lost civilizations, and possibly with Earth's own future. And distant past. But Earth itself is on the brink of ecological disaster - there is no time to search for answers. Even to a question that may hold the key to survival for the entire human race...

The Masters of Solitude


Marvin Kaye - 1978
    And I am alone. His parents came from two very different worlds. And Singer was an outcast. a misfit who belonged to neither world... a master of solitude.". The City stood alone beyond the forest. Through the Self-Gate, annihilator of the unwary, none could gain entry alive, and none came out.

Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue


Hugh Howey - 2009
    A dull future seems to await, until a marvelous discovery changes everything. Her father's old starship, missing for a decade, turns up halfway across the galaxy. Its retrieval launches Molly and Cole on the adventure of a lifetime, one that will have lasting consequences for themselves and billions of others. What starts off as a simple quest to reconnect with her past, ends up forging a new future. And the forgotten family she hoped to uncover becomes one she never foresaw: a band of alien misfits and runaways-the crew of the starship Parsona.