When Gravity Fails


George Alec Effinger - 1986
    Still, like everything else in the Budayeen, he’s available…for a price.For a new kind of killer roams the streets of the Arab ghetto, a madman whose bootlegged personality cartridges range from a sinister James Bond to a sadistic disemboweler named Khan. And Marid Audrian has been made an offer he can’t refuse.The 200-year-old “godfather” of the Budayeen’s underworld has enlisted Marid as his instrument of vengeance. But first Marid must undergo the most sophisticated of surgical implants before he dares to confront a killer who carries the power of every psychopath since the beginning of time.Wry, savage, and unignorable, When Gravity Fails was hailed as a classic by Effinger’s fellow SF writers on its original publication in 1987, and the sequence of “Marid Audrian” novels it begins were the culmination of his career.

Triplet


Timothy Zahn - 1987
    But a world of sinister secrets lurks just below the surface . . .Grad student Danae Panya’s dream assignment has been approved. She’ll study Triplet, the strange planetary system scarred by nuclear war and connected through portals. The most experienced Courier of Triplet, Ravagin, will lead her to its hidden worlds—Threshold, Shamsheer, and Karyx—and introduce her to their secrets, including their advanced technology, their dark magic, and the captivating demon culture of the innermost planet. But though they begin their journey with only scholarly research in mind, Danae and Ravagin quickly find themselves embroiled in the menacing dynamics roiling throughout Triplet. Will Ravagin be able to get them both out alive?

Man Plus


Frederik Pohl - 1976
    For according to computer predictions, Mars is humankind's only alternative to extinction. But beneath his monstrous exterior, Torraway still carries a man's capacity for suffering.

The Fall of Neskaya


Marion Zimmer Bradley - 2001
    Set in the tumultuous era of The Hundred Kingdoms, a terrible time of strife and war, this unique fantasy world is divided into a mutlitude of small belligerent domains vying for power and land. One ambitious and corrupt tyrant will stop at nothing to control Darkover-even wield the terrifying weapons of the matrix.

The Kraken Wakes


John Wyndham - 1953
    Strange fireballs race through the sky above the deepest trenches of the oceans. Something is about to show itself, something terrible and alien, a force capable of causing global catastrophe.

Bitterwood


James Maxey - 2007
    But he is getting old and the hate that he has carried in his heart since a group of dragon-soldiers killed his family is beginning to fade. When he kills the royal prince dragon, the king decides the only retribution is genocide of the human race. Bitterwood is forced to enter the Free City, the grand trap designed to eradicate mankind, with thousands of others. Can he lead from within, or can a select few dragons unite to stop the king's madness from becoming reality. Full of rich characters and drama, this is an amazingly astute vision of our own culture by way of a feudal kingdom where dragons rule, and humans are used as workers or pets.

The Ice Schooner


Michael Moorcock - 1969
    The world lay frozen under a thousand feet of ice - and only in the Eight Cities of the Matto Grosso did men still live, hunting the wary ice whales for meat and oil, following the creed of the Ice Mother which foretold the end of all life in ultimate cold.But legend told of a city far to the north - fabled New York - whose towers rose above the ice, whose crypts held the forgotten lore that might bring warmth to Earth once again.And, in the best ice ship in the Eight Cities, Konrad Arflane embarked on the impossible voyage to New York - an odyssey of incredible peril and adventure...with a shattering discovery at journey's end!

Triplanetary


E.E. "Doc" Smith - 1948
    The Arisians, using advanced mental technology, have foreseen the invasion of their galaxy by the corrupt and evil Eddorians, so they begin a breeding program on every planet in their universe. Their goal...to produce super warriors who can hold off the invading Eddorians.

Chasm City


Alastair Reynolds - 2001
    Now, with the entire city corrupted -from the people to the very buildings they inhabit- only the most wretched sort of existence remains. For security operative Tanner Mirabel, it is the landscape of nightmares through which he searches for a low-life postmortal killer. But the stakes are raised when his search brings him face to face with a centuries-old atrocity that history would rather forget.

The Trinity Vector


Steve Perry - 1996
    Three individuals obtain the control of three strange silver boxes of extraordinary power that, if combined, could unlock the secrets of the universe, and each owner battles private demons in their quest to unite the boxes.

Shadow & Claw


Gene Wolfe - 1994
    Shadow & Claw brings together the first two books of the tetralogy in one volume.

The Shockwave Rider


John Brunner - 1975
    to restore their freedom in a world run mad.Nickie Halflinger, the only person to escape from Tarnover—where they raise hyper-intelligent children to maintain the political dominance of the USA in the 21st century—is on the run, dodging from loophole to crevice to crack in the computerised data-net that binds the continent like chains. After years of flight and constant changes of identity, at the strange small town called Precipice he discovers he is not alone in his quest. But can his new allies save him when he falls again into the sinister grasp of Tarnover...?

Eastern Standard Tribe


Cory Doctorow - 2004
    He's doing the best work of his career and can guarantee that the system will be, without a question, the most counterintuitive, user-hostile piece of software ever pushed forth onto the world.Why? Because Art is an industrial saboteur. He may live in London and work for an EU telecommunications megacorp, but Art's real home is the Eastern Standard Tribe.Instant wireless communication puts everyone in touch with everyone else, twenty-four hours a day. But one thing hasn't changed: the need for sleep. The world is slowly splintering into Tribes held together by a common time zone, less than family and more than nations. Art is working to humiliate the Greenwich Mean Tribe to the benefit of his own people. But in a world without boundaries, nothing can be taken for granted-not happiness, not money, and most certainly not love.Which might explain why Art finds himself stranded on the roof of an insane asylum outside Boston, debating whether to push a pencil into his brain....

The Iron Dragon's Daughter


Michael Swanwick - 1993
    A slave in a dragon factory that manufactures flying fighting machines, Jane changes her destiny when a voice from a dragon promising freedom and revenge prompts her to escape and challenge the foundations of the world.

The Land That Time Forgot Collection


Edgar Rice Burroughs - 1918
    Works include:The Land That Time Forgot, The People That Time Forgot, Out of Time's Abyss