Book picks similar to
Shield by Poul Anderson
science-fiction
fiction
sci-fi
scifi
A Stainless Steel Rat is Born
Harry Harrison - 1985
The book opens with Jim bungling a bank job so that he can be arrested and sent to prison, where he plans to learn the art of being a master criminal. Deciding that the Bishop should be his mentor, Jim sets about proving himself worthy of the master's attention. He eventually has to flee his home planet of Bit O' Heaven with the Bishop, but Garth, the Captain of the ship who promised them safe passage, sells them into slavery. The latter part of the book details Jim's adventures on the planet Spiovente, a semi-industrial world fighting feudal wars with weapons smuggled in (against League regulations) by Captain Garth.
Breaking Strain
Paul Preuss - 1987
As the secrets of the artifact are revealed, Sparta uncovers a mystery that may lead her to the truth about her own identity.
Tuf Voyaging
George R.R. Martin - 1986
So how is it that, in competition with the worst villains the universe has to offer, he's become the proud owner of the last seedship of Earth's legendary Ecological Engineering Corps? Never mind, just be thankful that the most powerful weapon in human space is in good hands-hands which now control cellular material for thousands of outlandish creatures. With his unique equipment, Tuf is set to tackle the problems human settlers have created in colonizing far-flung worlds: hosts of hostile monsters, a population hooked on procreation, a dictator who unleashes plagues to get his own way...and in every case the only thing that stands between the colonists and disaster is Tuf's ingenuity - and his reputation as an honest dealer in a universe of rogues...Tuf Voyaging features interior illustrations by Janet Aulisio. Included in it will be her original eight illustrations, along with 28 newly commissioned ones.
Jack the Bodiless
Julian May - 1991
Leading humanity was the powerful Remillard family, but somebody--or something--known only as "Fury" wanted them out of the way.Only Rogi Remillard, the chosen tool of the most powerful alien being in the Milieu, and his nephew Marc, the greatest metapsychic yet born on Earth, knew about Fury. But even they were powerless to stop it when it began to kill off Remillards and other metapsychic operants--and all the suspects were Remillards themselves.Meanwhile, a Remillard son was born, a boy who could represent the future of all humanity. His incredible mind was more powerful even than his brother Marc's--but he was destined to be desroyed by his own DNA...unless Fury got to him first!From the Paperback edition.
The Reality Dysfunction 1: Emergence
Peter F. Hamilton - 1997
The Edenists are genetically engineered space-dwellers with telepathic affinity for their biotechnological homes and ships. The Adamists, effectively the Luddites of the future, are willing to pioneer new worlds, much as their ancestors did hundreds of years ago. The two groups, peopled by fascinating characters, clash on a primitive world called Lalonde, setting in motion a tale of adventure unparalleled in this universe.
Hammered
Elizabeth Bear - 2004
Once she was somebody’s enemy. Now the former Canadian special forces warrior lives on the hellish streets of Hartford, Connecticut, in the year 2062. Racked with pain, hiding from the government she served, running with a crime lord so she can save a life or two, Jenny is a month shy of fifty, and her artificially reconstructed body has started to unravel. But she is far from forgotten. A government scientist needs the perfect subject for a high-stakes project and has Jenny in his sights. Suddenly Jenny Casey is a pawn in a furious battle, waged in the corridors of the Internet, on the streets of battered cities, and in the complex wirings of her half-man-made nervous system. And she needs to gain control of the game before a brave new future spins completely out of control.
The Mask of the Sun
Fred Saberhagen - 1981
But still, Tim is -- or was -- his brother, and Mike must do what he can.For Mike this is the beginning of an adventure beyond imagining, an adventure that will put him in constant peril of his life as he shuttles between past, present and future of an alternate reality, fighting beside the descendants of the Incas as they battle to erase Pizarro's bloody footprints from the New World, and secure the reality of their own existence.But is the "alternate reality" really an alternate, or is Mike actually struggling to erase the very future that gave him birth? The answer lies in the source of all his troubles and his only hope of survival: THE MASK OF THE SUN
The Jupiter Theft
Donald Moffitt - 1977
Within hours after the Lunar observatory picked up a strange new X-ray source in Cygnus, the disastrous picture was clear. An immense object was hurtling toward the Solar System at nearly the speed of light...and its intense radiation would surely wipe Earth free of all life within six months.There was nothing anyone could do.Then, incredibly, the rogue that had appeared out of nowhere suddenly changed its trajectory and stopped in the area of Jupiter.And that was flatly impossible!
R is for Rocket
Ray Bradbury - 1962
feel things that no flesh-and-blood creature has ever felt. He can create visions so compelling that they literally seem to dance before your eyes. He can push you back to the beginnings of time and then suddenly, without warning, thrust you forward t the outmost limits of the future. He can make you so much a part of his strange worlds that you literally scream to get out.Seventeen breathtaking stories by the master of the weird and wonderful, including the space-age classic, FROST AND FIRE.
Breakaway
E.C. Tubb - 1975
Self-sufficient and fully computerized, the fantastic lunar colony is Earth's global watchdog, silently guarding against sneak alien attack. The dark side of the moon -- once so mysterious, so unattainable -- now stores in its womb containers of smoldering radioactive waste, refuse from Earth.Then, in the year of Our Lord 1999, the serene satellite is ripped apart by thermonuclear explosion. And the 311 inhabitants of Alpha whirl through space on a runaway moon -- in an orbit of jarring adventure where survival is a game of chance with the life forces of the universe!Contains the episodes "Breakaway", "Matter of Life and Death", "Ring Around the Moon", and "The Black Sun"
Dawn for a Distant Earth
L.E. Modesitt Jr. - 1987
E. Modesitt, Jr's first major work was The Forever Hero trilogy of SF adventure novels published as paperback originals in the 1980s, of which Dawn for a Distant Earth was the first title in the series. Thousands of years in the future, Earth is a desolate ruin. The first human ship to return in millennia discovers an abandoned wasteland inhabited only by a few degenerate or mutated human outcasts. But among them is a boy of immense native intelligence and determination who is captured, taken in, and educated, and disappears--to grow up to become the force behind a plan to make Earth flower again. He is, if not immortal, at least very long-lived, and he plans to build an independent power base out in the galaxy and force the galactic empire to devote centuries and immense resources to the restoration of the ecology of Earth.