A Man of Shadows


Jeff Noon - 2017
    His quest takes him from Dayzone into the permanent dark of Nocturna. As the vicious, seemingly invisible serial killer known only as Quicksilver haunts the streets, Nyquist starts to suspect that the runaway girl holds within her the key to the city’s fate. In the end, there’s only one place left to search: the shadow-choked zone known as Dusk.

Light


M. John Harrison - 2002
    John Harrison’s dangerously illuminating new novel, three quantum outlaws face a universe of their own creation, a universe where you make up the rules as you go along and break them just as fast, where there’s only one thing more mysterious than darkness.In contemporary London, Michael Kearney is a serial killer on the run from the entity that drives him to kill. He is seeking escape in a future that doesn’t yet exist—a quantum world that he and his physicist partner hope to access through a breach of time and space itself. In this future, Seria Mau Genlicher has already sacrificed her body to merge into the systems of her starship, the White Cat. But the “inhuman” K-ship captain has gone rogue, pirating the galaxy while playing cat and mouse with the authorities who made her what she is. In this future, Ed Chianese, a drifter and adventurer, has ridden dynaflow ships, run old alien mazes, surfed stellar envelopes. He “went deep”—and lived to tell about it. Once crazy for life, he’s now just a twink on New Venusport, addicted to the bizarre alternate realities found in the tanks—and in debt to all the wrong people.Haunting them all through this maze of menace and mystery is the shadowy presence of the Shrander—and three enigmatic clues left on the barren surface of an asteroid under an ocean of light known as the Kefahuchi Tract: a deserted spaceship, a pair of bone dice, and a human skeleton.

The Traveler


John Twelve Hawks - 2005
    A world that exists in the shadows of our own. A conflict we will never see. One woman stands between those determined to control history and those who will risk their lives for freedom.A world that exists in the shadows of our own.A conflict we will never see.One woman stands between those determined to control history and those who will risk their lives for freedom.Maya is hiding in plain sight in London. The twenty-six-year-old has abandoned the dangerous obligations pressed upon her by her father, and chosen instead to live a normal life. But Maya comes from a long line of people who call themselves Harlequins—a fierce group of warriors willing to sacrifice their lives to protect a select few known as Travelers.Gabriel and Michael Corrigan are brothers living in Los Angeles. Since childhood, the young men have been shaped by stories that their late father was a Traveler, one of a small band of prophets who have vastly influenced the course of history. Travelers are able to attain pure enlightenment, and have for centuries ushered change into the world. Gabriel and Michael, who may have inherited their father's gifts, have always protected themselves by living “off the Grid”—that is, invisible to the real-life surveillance networks that monitor people in our modern society.Summoned by her ailing father, Maya is told of the existence of the brothers. The Corrigans are in severe danger, stalked by powerful men known as the Tabula—ruthless mercenaries who have hunted Travelers for generations. This group is determined to inflict order on the world by controlling it, and they view Travelers as an intolerable threat. As Maya races to California to protect the brothers, she is reluctantly pulled back into the cold and solitary Harlequin existence. A colossal battle looms—one that will reveal not only the identities of Gabriel and Michael Corrigan but also a secret history of our time.Moving from the back alleys of Prague to the heart of Los Angeles, from the high deserts of Arizona to a guarded research facility in New York, The Traveler explores a parallel world that exists alongside our own. John Twelve Hawks' stunningly suspenseful debut is an international publishing sensation that marks the arrival of a major new talent.

Dark Eden


Chris Beckett - 2012
    Beyond the Forest lie the mountains of the Snowy Dark and a cold so bitter and a night so profound that no man has ever crossed it. The Oldest among the Family recount legends of a world where light came from the sky, where men and women made boats that could cross the stars. These ships brought us here, the Oldest say—and the Family must only wait for the travelers to return. But young John Redlantern will break the laws of Eden, shatter the Family and change history. He will abandon the old ways, venture into the Dark…and discover the truth about their world.Already remarkably acclaimed in the UK, Dark Eden is science fiction as literature; part parable, part powerful coming-of-age story, set in a truly original alien world of dark, sinister beauty--rendered in prose that is at once strikingly simple and stunningly inventive.

Bring the Jubilee


Ward Moore - 1953
    Trapped in 1877, a historian writes an account of an alternative history of America in which the South won the Civil War. Living in this alternative timeline, he was determined to change events at Gettysburg.When he's offered the chance to return to that fateful turning point his actions change history as he knows it, leaving him in an all too familiar past.

The Outside


Ada Hoffmann - 2019
    But when she activates it, reality warps, destroying the space station and everyone aboard. The AI Gods who rule the galaxy declare her work heretical, and Yasira is abducted by their agents. Instead of simply executing her, they offer mercy – if she’ll help them hunt down a bigger target: her own mysterious, vanished mentor. With her homeworld’s fate in the balance, Yasira must choose who to trust: the gods and their ruthless post-human angels, or the rebel scientist whose unorthodox mathematics could turn her world inside out.

Little Fuzzy


H. Beam Piper - 1962
    Their charter was for a Class III uninhabited planet, which Zarathustra was, and it meant they owned the planet lock stock and barrel. They exploited it, developed it and reaped the huge profits from it without interference from the Colonial Government. Then Jack Holloway, a sunstone prospector, appeared on the scene with his family of Fuzzies and the passionate conviction that they were not cute animals but little people.

Quarantine


Greg Egan - 1992
    It has people dancing in the streets and leaping off skyscrapers. And it's all because of the impenetrable gray shield that slid into place around the solar system on the night of November 15, 2034.Some see the bubble as the revenge of an insane God. Some see it as justice. Some even see it as protection. But one thing is for certain -- now there is the universe, and the earth. And never the twain shall meet.Or so it seems. Until a bio-enhanced PI named Nick Stavrianos takes on a job for an anonymous client: find a girl named Laura who disappeared from a mental institution by the most direct possible method -- walking through the walls.

Doctor Who: Shada


Gareth Roberts - 2012
    But now he needs help from the Doctor, Romana and K-9. When he left Gallifrey he took with him a few little souvenirs—most of them are harmless. But one of them is extremely dangerous.The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey isn’t a book for Time Tots. It is one of the Artifacts, dating from the dark days of Rassilon. It must not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. The sinister Skagra most definitely has the wrong hands. He wants the book. He wants to discover the truth behind Shada. And he wants the Doctor’s mind...Based on the scripts for the original television series by the legendary Douglas Adams, Shada retells an adventure that never made it to the screen.

A Thousand Words for Stranger


Julie E. Czerneda - 1997
    The mysterious Captain Morgan has a starship. But if she goes with him, who will be at risk? Meet the Clan, shadowy figures of unfathomable power. Meet Huido, the lobster-like restauranteur. Meet the Trade Pact Enforcers, who have their own intentions. For events are beginning to unfold that will affect them all.Originally the first of the Trade Pact Universe Trilogy, THOUSAND is now book 4 of The Clan Chronicles. The three books of the Stratification Cycle, REAP THE WILD WIND, RIDERS OF THE STORM, and RIFT IN THE SKY tell the story of the Clan through the eyes of Sira's direct ancestor. The series will conclude with the Reunification Cycle, currently pestering the author.

Star Maker


Olaf Stapledon - 1937
    The book describes a history of life in the universe, dwarfing in scale Stapledon's previous book, Last and First Men (1930), a history of the human species over two billion years. Star Maker tackles philosophical themes such as the essence of life, of birth, decay and death, and the relationship between creation and creator. A pervading theme is that of progressive unity within and between different civilizations. Some of the elements and themes briefly discussed prefigure later fiction concerning genetic engineering and alien life forms. Arthur C. Clarke considered Star Maker to be one of the finest works of science fiction ever written.

The Wanderer


Fritz Leiber - 1964
    Only a few scientists even suspected its presence, and then, suddenly and silently, it arrived, dwarfing and threatening the Moon and wreaking havoc on Earth's tides and weather. Though the Wanderer is stopping in the solar system only to refuel, its mere presence is catastrophic. A tense, thrilling, and towering achievement. Winner of the Hugo Award for Best SF Novel of the Year!

Agyar


Steven Brust - 1993
    Now he goes from woman to woman, and decade to decade, finding himself at last in an Midwestern college town, where he must choose between the seductions of salvation--and of destruction.

Psychoshop


Alfred Bester - 1998
    It will probably be there on the last day of the cosmos. This is the Psychoshop, where you can dump any unwanted aspect of your spirit as long as you exchange it for something else -- arcane knowledge, a change of luck, or a sixth sense. Just remember: All sales are final.Half finished upon Bester's death, and completed by Zelazny, Psychoshop envisions a commercial establishment that attracts customers from Edgar Allan Poe to a sorcerer intent on fabricating the Beast of Revelations. Brimming with wit and imagination, scandalously sexy and fabulously strange, Psychoshop is science fiction as you've never read it before.

The Grays


Whitley Strieber - 2006
    Millions of people are confronting aliens that authorities say do not exist. Whitley Strieber--author of the legendary, #1 bestselling book Communion, which details his own close encounters--now returns to the riddle of aliens with The Grays. A triumvirate of Grays, known as the Three Thieves, has occupied a small Kentucky town for decades--abducting its residents and manipulating fates and bloodlines in hopes of creating an ultra-intelligent human being. Nine-year-old Conner Callahan will face the ultimate terror as he struggles to understand who he has been bred to be and what he must do to save humanity.Though the Grays have slowly begun to make themselves known, Colonel Michael Wilkes, the head of a select group of government and military officials that have been monitoring the aliens, will do anything in his power to keep them a secret. Wilkes will set in motion a sinister plan to ensure the survival of humanity,but at what cost? The fate of the human race lies with one woman, Lauren Glass. Her uncanny ability to communicate with the aliens and her relationship with the last remaining captive gray may be the only way to save humankind.The Grays is a mind-bending journey behind the curtain of secrecy that surrounds the subject of aliens, written by the field's great master. If you've never so much as thought about the subject before, this book will make you think deeply, not only about the mystery of who the Grays are, but who exactly we are.