In one dimension lies the universe and all of its multitude of varied life forms. In another exists an element made not of earth, air, fire or water, but of an anti-energy, anti-life. This "thing", this darkness, waits patiently at the threshold of the universe for an opportunity to extinguish all life and all light. Every five thousand years, the universe needs a hero, and in New York City of the 23rd Century, a good hero is hard to find. The Fifth Element, a timeless story about love and survival, heroes and villains, good and evil, set in a strangely familiar yet intoxicatingly different 23rd Century. The film stars Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, Ian Holm, Milla Jovovich. The Fifth Element is written directed by Luc Besson, the visually innovative director of La Femme Nikita and The Professional.

    But now as Dev is about to roll out a major new expansion to Omnitopia, there are people preparing to play a different game-one that is meant to strike at the heart of Omnitopia and bring the entire system crashing down.

    The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he's jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade's devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world's digital confines, puzzles that are based on their creator's obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them. But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade's going to survive, he'll have to win—and confront the real world he's always been so desperate to escape.

    THEY’RE NOT FROM AROUND HERE.   Welcome to the Big Apple, son. Welcome to the city that never sleeps: invaded by monstrous fusions of meat and machinery, defended by a private army that makes Blackwater look like the Red Cross, ravaged by a disfiguring plague that gifts its victims with religious rapture while it eats them alive. You’ve been thrown into this meat grinder without warning, without preparation, without a clue.Your whole squad was mowed down the moment they stepped onto the battlefield. And the chorus of voices whispering in your head keeps saying that all of this is on you: that you and you alone might be able to turn the whole thing around if you only knew what the hell was going on.You’d like to help. Really you would. But it’s not just the aliens that are gunning for you. Your own kind hunts you as a traitor, and your job might be a bit easier if you didn’t have the sneaking suspicion they could be right. . . .

    In this landmark volume, America's preeminent storyteller offers us one hundred treasures from a lifetime of words and ideas. The stories within these pages were chosen by Bradbury himself, and span a career that blossomed in the pulp magazines of the early 1940s and continues to flourish in the new millennium. Here are representatives of the legendary author's finest works of short fiction, including many that have not been republished for decades, all forever fresh and vital, evocative and immensely entertaining.

    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

    That alien beings are here--now--walking among us in human form. These men are members of an agency dedicated to tracking and policing the movements of these aliens--a top secret organization known only as...Men in Black.James Edwards is a tenacious, streetwise NYPD cop who's recruited by Agent Kay of the Men in Black. He will step into a world where his identity will be erased, where nothing is what it seems on the surface. His first case will threaten to make Earth the battleground for two warring races...and end humanity's rule in a fiery apocalypse.

    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.

    Dick—that unfolds in the near future, in parallel worlds.In his youth, Richard “Dodge” Forthrast founded Corporation 9592, a gaming company that made him a multibillionaire. Now in his middle years, Dodge appreciates his comfortable, unencumbered life, managing his myriad business interests, and spending time with his beloved niece Zula and her young daughter, Sophia. One beautiful autumn day, while he undergoes a routine medical procedure, something goes irrevocably wrong. Dodge is pronounced brain dead and put on life support, leaving his stunned family and close friends with difficult decisions. Long ago, when a much younger Dodge drew up his will, he directed that his body be given to a cryonics company now owned by enigmatic tech entrepreneur Elmo Shepherd. Legally bound to follow the directive despite their misgivings, Dodge’s family has his brain scanned and its data structures uploaded and stored in the cloud, until it can eventually be revived. In the coming years, technology allows Dodge’s brain to be turned back on. It is an achievement that is nothing less than the disruption of death itself. An eternal afterlife—the Bitworld—is created, in which humans continue to exist as digital souls. But this brave new immortal world is not the Utopia it might first seem . . . Fall, or Dodge in Hell is pure, unadulterated fun: a grand drama of analog and digital, man and machine, angels and demons, gods and followers, the finite and the eternal. In this exhilarating epic, Neal Stephenson raises profound existential questions and touches on the revolutionary breakthroughs that are transforming our future. Combining the technological, philosophical, and spiritual in one grand myth, he delivers a mind-blowing speculative literary saga for the modern age.

    But instead of acclaim, Grady’s lab is locked down by a covert organization known as the Bureau of Technology Control.The bureau’s mission: suppress the truth of sudden technological progress and prevent the social upheaval it would trigger. Because the future is already here. And it’s rewards are only for a select few.When Grady refuses to join the BTC, he’s thrown into a nightmarish high-tech prison housing other doomed rebel intellects. Now, as the only hope to usher humanity out of its artificial dark age, Grady and his fellow prisoners must try to expose the secrets of an unimaginable enemy—one that wields a technological advantage half a century in the making.

    J. Kincaid's fast-paced sci-fi adventure trilogy perfect for fans of Ender's Game.The planet's natural resources are almost gone, and war is being fought to control the assets of the solar system. The enemy is winning. The salvation may be Tom Raines. Tom doesn't seem like a hero. He's a short fourteen-year-old with bad skin. But he has the virtual-reality gaming skills that make him a phenom behind the controls of the battle drones.As a new member of the Intrasolar Forces, Tom's life completely changes. Suddenly, he's someone important. He has new opportunities, friends, and a shot at having a girlfriend. But there's a price to pay. . . .

    "Brilliant . . . fascinating . . . exciting . . . a full complement of thrills."--The New York Review of Science Fiction.In an era when life expectancies stretch 100 years or more and adhering to healthy habits is the only way to earn better medical treatments, ancient "post humans" dominate society with their ubiquitous wealth and power. By embracing the safe and secure, 94-year-old Mia Ziemann has lived a long and quiet life. Too quiet, as she comes to realize, for Mia has lost the creative drive and ability to love--the holy fire--of the young. But when a radical new procedure makes Mia young again, she has the chance to break free of society's cloying grasp.

    Kendra, an art-school dropout, brands herself for a nanotech marketing program; Lerato, an ambitious AIDS baby, plots to defect from her corporate employers; Tendeka, a hot-headed activist, is becoming increasingly rabid; and Toby, a roguish blogger, discovers that the video games he plays for cash are much more than they seem. On a collision course that will rewire their lives, this story crackles with bold and infectious ideas, connecting a ruthless corporate-apartheid government with video games, biotech attack dogs, slippery online identities, a township soccer school, shocking cell phones, addictive branding, and genetically modified art. Taking hedonistic trends in society to their ultimate conclusions, this tale paints anything but a forecasted utopia, satirically undermining the reified idea of progress as society's white knight.

    He finds himself on a collision course that results in a desperate romance, and a journey into the ecstasy and dread that mirror each other at the heart of the postmodern experience.

    The Amulet of Power reveals the never-before shown events that took place between “The Last Revelation” and “Angel of Darkness.” Trapped beneath the ruins of an Egyptian tomb, Lara faces certain death . . . until fate intervenes and sets her on the trail of an ancient talisman of power. Archaeologist and explorer Lara Croft travels the world in search of ancient relics, forgotten crypts, and lost cities. Highly trained for combat and possessing an insatiable appetite for adventure, she answers to no one and goes wherever the quest takes her–heedless of the danger.When Lara turns up in the Middle East, despite the rumors of her death, religious fanatics believe she has located the coveted Amulet of Mareish. Lost since the siege of Khartoum, the amulet is rumored to grant the wearer untold power. Some long to possess it, others want to see it destroyed, and both sides pursue Lara relentlessly. While she fights trained warriors and ruthless mercenaries, and desperately searches for the jewel they all seek, one thing becomes clear: the fate of the world rests in the hands of . . .LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER.