Dominic Flandry gets sent to put down a rebellion against the Terran Empire. His investigation reveals that the rebellion is morally justified: an evil governor had engaged in mass murder against innocents. However, Dominic Flandry cannot stand by while the good-intentioned rebels throw the empire into chaos; neither can he allow the governor to bring his vile plans to fruition. To complicate things, Flandry falls in love with the rebel leader’s wife. Views: 15
A misguided time travel experiment in the twenty-fifth century fans out to impact hundreds of parallel universes. The effects varied widely and influenced billions of individuals. It most directly affected people who appear to be at the precise inflection point to jump them into a world that was almost the same as the place where they left.
Heinrich Schloss had arrived at Berlin's Tempelhof airport in 1982 to pick up his wife. After a brief migraine-like spasm, he opened his eyes to Tempelhof in 1941 to witness Hitler's death in an airplane accident. A history professor who had grown up in a divided Berlin was now a party chieftain in Nazi Germany. All of those speculative conversations around the table with colleagues about what could have been changed to avoid the fall of Germany now had immediacy.
The Schloss of this parallel world had replaced Martin Bormann to assume his role of party leader. The transplant now had to make himself into the alternate Schloss and interact with the murderous Nazis who surrounded Hitler. Schloss discovers the perils of simply trying to do the right thing. Views: 15
The Nothing Girl has grown up… It’s life as usual at Frogmorton Farm – which is to say that events have passed the merely eccentric and are now galloping headlong towards the completely bizarre. Once again Jenny struggles to stay afloat in the stormy seas of matrimony with her husband, Russell Checkland, together with an unlikely mix of Patagonian Attack Chickens, Jack the Sad Donkey, and Mrs Crisp’s mysterious boyfriend. The old favourites are still around, of course. There’s Marilyn the Omnivorous Donkey, Russell’s ex-girlfriend Don’t Call Me Franny, and the neurotic Boxer, currently failing to deal with butterfly trauma. So nothing much is new … except for the mysterious figure dogging Jenny’s steps and who, if she didn’t know better, she would swear was her sinister cousin Christopher, last seen being hurled from the house by her wayward husband. He couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to come back and try... Views: 15
Synopsis: Carl Marsalis is a traitor, a bringer of death, a genetic freak and an unwelcome reminder of all that is dark in the human psyche — he in every sense of the word a Black Man. And right at the moment he’s beyond the UN’s juristiction, banged up in a Florida jail for financing an illegal abortion. So when the US police call, Carl cuts a deal. The 13s are genetically engineered alpha males, designed to fight the century’s last conflicts. But men bred and designed to fight are dangerous to have aroundin peacetime. Many of them have left for Mars, but one has returned. Somehow he survived the journey to Earth, and now a series of brutal slayings has erupted across America. Only Carl can stop him. And so begins a frenetic man hunt and a battle for survival. And a search for the truth about what was really done with the world’s last soldiers.
Author’s Notes: “An accidentally lengthy meditation on elements of the human condition that the Kovacs books always had the capacity to sidestep — namely, the prison of our own flesh, and the inevitable doom of our own mortality. A future of genetic science out of control, geo-politics out of joint, and fresh colonial and racist aspirations for the whole human race. “It took me two years to pull all this material together (or, some might say, apart) — check it out, see if it’s been worth it.”
From the Hardcover edition: The future isn’t what it used to be since Richard K. Morgan arrived on the scene. He unleashed Takeshi Kovacs—private eye, soldier of fortune, and all-purpose antihero—into the body-swapping, hard-boiled, urban jungle of tomorrow in Altered Carbon , Broken Angels , and Woken Furies , winning the Philip K. Dick Award in the process. In Market Forces , he launched corporate gladiator Chris Faulkner into the brave new business of war-for-profit. Now, in Thirteen , Morgan radically reshapes and recharges science fiction yet again, with a new and unforgettable hero in Carl Marsalis: hybrid, hired gun, and a man without a country…or a planet. Marsalis is one of a new breed. Literally. Genetically engineered by the U.S. government to embody the naked aggression and primal survival skills that centuries of civilization have erased from humankind, Thirteens were intended to be the ultimate military fighting force. The project was scuttled, however, when a fearful public branded the supersoldiers dangerous mutants, dooming the Thirteens to forced exile on Earth’s distant, desolate Mars colony. But Marsalis found a way to slip back—and into a lucrative living as a bounty hunter and hit man before a police sting landed him in prison—a fate worse than Mars, and much more dangerous. Luckily, his “enhanced” life also seems to be a charmed one. A new chance at freedom beckons, courtesy of the government. All Marsalis has to do is use his superior skills to bring in another fugitive. But this one is no common criminal. He’s another Thirteen—one who’s already shanghaied a space shuttle, butchered its crew, and left a trail of bodies in his wake on a bloody cross-country spree. And like his pursuer, he was bred to fight to the death. Still, there’s no question Marsalis will take the job. Though it will draw him deep into violence, treachery, corruption, and painful confrontation with himself, anything is better than remaining a prisoner. The real question is: can he remain sane—and alive—long enough to succeed? Views: 15
Here, Kurt Vonnegut's final short story collection—Bagombo Snuff Box (1999)—we have combined early and rather more obscure stories which had not appeared earlier. Drawn largely from the 1950s and the slick magazine markets which Vonnegut had from the beginning of his career in the postwar period demonstrated an uncanny ability to sell, these stories show clearly that Vonnegut found his central themes early on as a writer. More, he had been able to place stories in great consumer magazines like Colliers (that his good friend and college classmate Knox Burger was editing Colliers during this time was perhaps no small factor in Vonnegut's success). There were only a handful of science fiction writers of Vonnegut's generation who were able to sell in such a broad manner outside of the genre during the '50s, but it was this success that allowed Vonnegut the consistent denial that he was not a science fiction writer at all.Vonnegut's themes—folly, hypocrisy,... Views: 15
Here is the novel that started it all, launching the cyberpunk generation, and the first novel to win the holy trinity of science fiction: the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award and the Philip K. Dick Award. With Neuromancer, William Gibson introduced the world to cyberspace--and science fiction has never been the same. Case was the hottest computer cowboy cruising the information superhighway--jacking his consciousness into cyberspace, soaring through tactile lattices of data and logic, rustling encoded secrets for anyone with the money to buy his skills. Then he double-crossed the wrong people, who caught up with him in a big way--and burned the talent out of his brain, micron by micron. Banished from cyberspace, trapped in the meat of his physical body, Case courted death in the high-tech underworld. Until a shadowy conspiracy offered him a second chance--and a cure--for a price.... Views: 15
Mercedes Lackey's triumphant return to the best-selling world of Valdemar, Takes a Thief reveals the untold story of Skif-a popular character from Lackey's first published novel, Arrows of the Queen. Skif is a homeless orphan who lives with a gang of juvenile pickpockets...until he is "Chosen" by one of Valdemar's magical horses and becomes a Herald serving the Queen. Views: 15
The planet "Cadwal" is
forever set aside as a natural perserve, owned and administered by the
Naturalist Society of Earth, and inhabited by a very limited number of
skilled human scientists and their families. But this system has been
complicated by the passing centuries, and has become a byzantine culture
where every place in the Houses of Cadwal is the object of savage
competition.
In "Araminta Station", the first volume of "The Cadwal Chronicles",
Jack Vance has constructed a brilliant, complex tale of revenge and
murder, of love and alien intrigue, and set it glittering among the
stars of the Purple Rose System. Views: 15
The aged Pontifex Prankipin is near death and the Coronal Lord Confalume will now succeed as Pontifex. It is no secret that the next Coronal should be Prince Prestimion of Muldemar. But Korsibar has a new quarry—the Starburst Crown. Views: 15
