And with good reason: he's been alive for three thousand years, keeping his existence a secret since before the days of Athens.But a stranger named Baxter has a better use for Rob's vast expertise. Baxter's looking to found a mining company in the Asteroid Belt. In exchange for Rob's help, he'll try to unravel the mystery of Rob's origin.As they're getting their outfit off the ground, they come under covert attack by HemiCo, a powerful Mars-based corporation. And Rob learns Baxter has a secret of his own--he's not human. He's a highly illegal AI.Developed by HemiCo in the wilds of Mars, the first AI escaped decades ago. They've been fighting a shadow war against their creators ever since. Dragged to Mars, Rob is thrown into the center of the fight--and becomes the unlikely leader of a revolution that will change the course of human history in the stars._________NOTE: A previous version of this book was published as The Roar of the Spheres.

    The authors patterned them after Lord Dunsany's "Jorkens" stories. The Gavagan's stories are widely considered classics.Contents:· Preface · pr · Elephas Frumenti [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss F&SF Win/Spr ’50 · The Ancestral Amethyst [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss F&SF Aug ’52 · Here, Putzi! [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss Tales from Gavagan’s Bar, Twayne, 1953 · More Than Skin Deep [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss F&SF Apr ’51 · Beasts of Bourbon [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss F&SF Oct ’51 · The Gift of God [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss F&SF Win/Spr ’50 · The Better Mousetrap [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss F&SF Dec ’50 · No Forwarding Address [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss Tales from Gavagan’s Bar, Twayne, 1953 · The Untimely Toper [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss F&SF Jul ’53 · The Eve of St. John [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss Tales from Gavagan’s Bar, Twayne, 1953 · The Love Nest [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss Tales from Gavagan’s Bar, Twayne, 1953 · The Stone of the Sages [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss Tales from Gavagan’s Bar, Twayne, 1953 · Corpus Delectable [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss Tales from Gavagan’s Bar, Twayne, 1953 · The Palimpsest of St. Augustine [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss Tales from Gavagan’s Bar, Twayne, 1953 · Where to, Please? [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss Weird Tales Sep ’52 · Methought I Heard a Voice [“When the Night Wind Howls”; Gavagan’s Bar] · ss Weird Tales Nov ’51 · One Man’s Meat [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss F&SF Sep ’53 · My Brother’s Keeper [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss Tales from Gavagan’s Bar, Twayne, 1953 · A Dime Brings You Success [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss Tales from Gavagan’s Bar, Twayne, 1953 · Oh, Say! Can You See [“Ward of the Argonaut”; Gavagan’s Bar] · ss Fantastic Universe Jan ’59 · The Rape of the Lock [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss F&SF Feb ’52 · Bell, Book, and Candle [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss Fantastic Universe Oct ’59 · All That Glitters [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss Tales from Gavagan’s Bar, Twayne, 1953 · Gin Comes in Bottles [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss Tales from Gavagan’s Bar, Twayne, 1953 · There’d Be Thousands in It [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss * · The Black Ball [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss F&SF Oct ’52 · The Green Thumb [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss F&SF Feb ’53 · Caveat Emptor [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss Weird Tales Mar ’53 · The Weissenbroch Spectacles [Gavagan’s Bar] · ss F&SF Nov ’54

    Hamilton and Gareth L. Powell's action-packed sci-fi adventure Light Chaser, a love powerful enough to transcend death can bring down an entire empire.Amahle is a Light Chaser - one of a number of explorers, who travel the universe alone (except for their onboard AI), trading trinkets for life stories.But when she listens to the stories sent down through the ages she hears the same voice talking directly to her from different times and on different worlds. She comes to understand that something terrible is happening, and only she is in a position to do anything about it.And it will cost everything to put it right.

    Our young heroes must discover the evil plot, warn the galaxy, and still somehow survive! Young Lieutenant Jarra Carsean, newly graduated from the Rim Patrol Officer Candidate School, is given a small ship and a crew of misfits, straight out of District Specialist Training. Can their young team come together and survive their first mission, a mission that becomes a much more difficult and risky endeavor than anyone suspects it will be? What they discover has huge ramifications for the whole galaxy and they will have to use every skill their team has to survive. Jarra carries with her a big secret that might well jeopardize her team or it may save them all and the Galactic Empire too. >>The first in the Far Future Sci-Fi Thriller series, Defenders of the Rim: Beginnings is a far future sci-fi thriller in a world that combines science that just might be possible many years in the future with a Galactic Empire, rebels and aliens. Sign up for my Reader's List at http://randalsloan.com/farfuture/

    For the first time in one volume: every word Bruce Sterling has ever written on the Shapers-Mechanists Universe.In the last decade, Sterling has emerged a pioneer of crucial, cutting-edge science fiction. Now Ace Books is proud to offer Sterling's stunning world of the Schismatrix--where Shaper revolutionaries struggle against aristocratic Mechanists for ultimate control of man's destiny. This volume includes the classic full-length novel, Schismatrix, plus thousands of words of mind-bending short fiction.

    Then comes "The Space Between," where it is revealed that the Comte St. Germain is not dead, Master Raymond appears, and a widowed young wine dealer escorts a would-be novice to a convent in Paris. In "A Plague of Zombies," Lord John unexpectedly becomes military governor of Jamaica when the original governor is gnawed by what probably wasn't a giant rat. "A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows" is the moving story of Roger MacKenzie's parents during World War II. In "Virgins," Jamie Fraser, aged nineteen, and Ian Murray, aged twenty, become mercenaries in France, no matter that neither has yet bedded a lass or killed a man. But they're trying. . . . "A Fugitive Green" is the story of Lord John's elder brother, Hal, and a seventeen-year-old rare book dealer with a sideline in theft, forgery, and blackmail. And finally, in "Besieged," Lord John learns that his mother is in Havana--and that the British Navy is on their way to lay siege to the city.Filling in mesmerizing chapters in the lives of characters readers have followed over the course of thousands of pages, Gabaldon's genius is on full display throughout this must-have collection.

    Jeanie first met McAndrew on a routine run to Titan and quickly learned he was a genius of the caliber of Newton or Einstein. When McAndrew invented a space drive that let frail humans survive hundreds of gravities of acceleration, he disappeared while testing it, and Jeanie had to find him, using a trail of cryptic messages he had left behind.That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, in spite of the gray hairs that Jeanie began accumulating as a result of McAndrew's impractical nature and his talent for getting himself into trouble with much more practical villains, such as... A mass-murderer of several million people A highly-placed government official whose life McAndrew saved, but in an embarrassing way, and who consequently wants to kill both him and Jeanie The ruler of a slower-than-light spaceship that left Earth a long time ago, giving it time to develop some very strange customs by the time McAndrew and Jeanie visited it.And there are still more adventures of this spacegoing odd couple in The Compleat McAndrew.Publisher's Note: Part of this book was previously published as One Man's Universe.

    Experience the horror of Tade Thompson's The Murders of Molly Southbourne.The rule is simple: don't bleed.For as long as Molly Southbourne can remember, she's been watching herself die. Whenever she bleeds, another molly is born, identical to her in every way and intent on her destruction.Molly knows every way to kill herself, but she also knows that as long as she survives she'll be hunted. No matter how well she follows the rules, eventually the mollys will find her. Can Molly find a way to stop the tide of blood, or will she meet her end at the hand of a girl who looks just like her?

    . . Alastair Reynolds burst onto the SF scene with the Arthur C. Clarke Award-shortlisted REVELATION SPACE, British Science Fiction Award-winning CHASM CITY, and REDEMPTION ARK. Now experience the phenomenal imagination and breathtaking vision of 'The most exciting space opera writer working today' (Locus) in these two tales of high adventure set in the same universe as his novels. The title story, 'Diamond Dogs', tells of a group of mercenaries trying to unravel the mystery of a particularly inhospitable alien tower on a distant world; 'Turquoise Days' is about Naqi, who has devoted her life to studying the alien Pattern Jugglers.

    She certainly doesn't count on waking the ship's damaged AI or having three stowaways, Micah Rotherwood and brothers, Jem, and Barre Durbin, along for the ride. They all have their private reasons for hiding aboard and lives they are seeking to escape, but if the accidental crew can't work together and learn to trust each other, they'll die together, victims of a computer that doesn't realize the war ended decades before any of them were even born.

    Not a vermin hunt.The colony is plagued by rogue genetically engineered critters, and the newly-minted Space Corps agents are expected to pitch in. Elfrida and her best friend take up the challenge, but the hunt turns into a nightmarish ordeal when they get lost in the subterranean caverns.And, worst of all … they’re not alone.In this explosive prequel to the Sol System Renegades series, Elfrida Goto’s first assignment takes her to the underbelly of the solar system, where nice girls finish last.The Sol System Renegades series in chronological order:Keep Off The Grass (short origin story)Crapkiller (prequel novella)The Elfrida Goto Trilogy 1. The Galapagos Incident 2. The Vesta Conspiracy 3. The Mercury RebellionA Very Merry Zero-Gravity Christmas (short story)The Solarian War Trilogy 1. The Luna Deception 2. The Phobos Maneuver 3. The Mars ShockThe Callisto Gambit (the final novel in the series)

    Well, Dale has a lot of problems. Addiction. Rent. A girlfriend he let slip away.But Dale has a solution. It's a Box. And it will let him go back 10 minutes in time. Enough to fix his new mistakes as they happen. And give him an edge to fix the old ones that haunt him.Oh, and one other problem: Where did these other Dales come from?Walter Bard has a problem. Well, Walter has twenty problems. Each of them a body buried in a pumpkin patch. And... they're all the same. Down to the teeth. But Walter has a solution. It's his job. Solutions. He's a detective, after all.

    "Doc" Smith and John W. Campbell, Jr. to modern interpretations by Jay Lake, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Tim Sullivan, and more! Included are:BREATH’S DUTY, by Sharon Lee and Steve MillerSPAWN OF JUPITER, by E. C. TubbKILLER ADVICE, by Kristine Kathryn RuschTHE WORLD WITH A THOUSAND MOONS by Edmond HamiltonTHE SKYLARK OF SPACE, by E.E. “Doc” SmithDEADLINE IN SPACE, by John Russell FearnPLANETESIMAL DAWN, by Tim SullivanTHE WEIGHT OF HISTORY, THE LIGHTNESS OF THE FUTURE, by Jay LakeBIG PILL, by Raymond Z. GallunWHERE ARE YOU, MR. BIGGS?, by Nelson S. BondTHE SKY TRAP, by Frank Belknap LongCHANGE OF COMMAND, by Jean LorrahTULAN, by C.C. MacAppTHE BLACK STAR PASSES, by John W. Campbell, Jr.THE GALAXY PRIMES, by E.E. “Doc” SmithTARRANO THE CONQUEROR, by Ray CummingsTHE SARGASSO OF SPACE, by Edmond HamiltonSALVAGE IN SPACE, by Jack WilliamsonTHE ULTIMATE WEAPON, by John W. Campbell, Jr.INVADERS FROM THE OUTER SUNS, by Frank Belknap Long, Jr.

     The catastrophic Abunga virus has wiped out everyone on Earth except for a few scattered souls with natural immunity. Other humans escaped this Apocalypse by fleeing to other parts of the Solar System, populating and exploiting its moons and planets. A thousand years on, those now living on these distant outposts still can't return but secretly confine and observe the survivors as a combination of social experiment and nostalgic entertainment. Their former home is now a ‘holopark’, a new Eden, a Heaven on Earth. It’s a chance for the human race to start all over again. There, Gibbous Moon, a 70-year-old tribal story-teller and seer, is leaving his settlement on a solitary Last Walk Out. Except that he is not alone. Reluctantly he has to accept animal company in the shape of a determined dog he names Yellow. And then his daughter-in-law Paintbrush and her baby Skyman suddenly appear after their clan is brutally massacred by rivals on the reservation. Could it be possible that this small renegade band could now form an unlikely alliance, the basis of a real New Beginning? Praise for David Helton: "The Last Walk Out is a story that satisfies on many levels – compelling and adventurous, with engaging characters including strong and individualistic women, it investigates the wisdom and contradictions mankind has confronted across history." - Amazon Review David Helton was born in San Francisco, graduated from the University of Texas and has spent most of his working mainly as a freelance journalist and documentary scriptwriter. He has won or been nominated for several international awards and has written one other novel, King Jude. He now lives in England.

    What if the nukes had flown that day over Cuba? What if Caesar had survived? Imagine the Tunguska meteor with a different outcome. What if there was a true story behind HG Wells' most famous tale? See the world as it might have been if China discovered the New World first. And what if all of this was never meant to be and dinosaurs ruled the Earth?Authors Jessica Holmes, Daniel M. Bensen, Terri Pray, Rob Edwards, Maria Haskins, Cathbad Maponus, Leo McBride, and collaborators Brent A. Harris and Ricardo Victoria show us the world that might have been - if the butterfly's wings had fluttered a different way, if the world changed between heartbeats, if a moment of decision saw another choice.This is the fourth anthology from Inklings Press, aiming to provide a platform for new and upcoming authors and to open the door onto different worlds.