A collection of 13 wonderfully witty, superb suspense, and seriously sad fiction tales; situated in various locations from Japan, Australia, Philippines and New Zealand. The themes in the stories are as varied as the locations, with comedy, romance and suspense, sometimes in the one story. Lengths vary from 750 words to a 15,000 novella. Easily readable without a dictionary by your side.For people who enjoy a variety in the type of stories they read, this collections stories vary from light-hearted, to stories that will grab you by the heart. The length also varies, which means a story can be selected according to the reading time available. A 15,000 word novella has a mixture of all moods. The 13 fictional stories aree situated in various countries including Japan, Australia, Philippines and New Zealand, sometimes with comedy, romance and suspense all in the one story. The lengths vary from 750 words to a 15,000 word novella. Written with the intention of allowing the reader to relax in their reading without struggling over the meaning of words. Views: 786
A collection of all of James Welsh's poems from 2008 to 2012.Hilbert SpaceHilbert Space, a very special region of the universe, is a rather unique place. Inhabited by dozens of space faring civilizations and spanning hundreds of systems, it is home to thousands of stories worth telling. While the laws of physics, which lead to the rest of space being quite dull and boring for the most part, are acknowledged here, Hilbert Space is known to find many workarounds, loopholes, and compromises that ensure that it is a dangerous, yet also extremely entertaining domain. Pirate TheoryIn this short story, former smuggler and renowned adventurer Peppita and her crew decide to transport one last passenger, before seeking out bigger challenges. However, this one job turns out to be more involved than anyone could anticipate. In order to succeed, Captain Peppita must learn to think like a pirate, find out what true wealth really is, and discover which chemical substances are suitable for close-quarters combat. Views: 786
Retired from his fighting days, John Perry is now village ombudsman for a human colony on distant Huckleberry. With his wife, former Special Forces warrior Jane Sagan, he farms several acres, adjudicates local disputes, and enjoys watching his adopted daughter grow up.
That is, until his and Jane's past reaches out to bring them back into the game--as leaders of a new human colony, to be peopled by settlers from all the major human worlds, for a deep political purpose that will put Perry and Sagan back in the thick of interstellar politics, betrayal, and war. Views: 785
If you want an omnibus of short fiction by Arthur C. Clarke, a Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master, then you want The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke. If you're looking for a representative sample of Clarke's short stories, or for some examples of the creative and extrapolative abilities that established Clarke as one of science fiction's greatest and most important writers, then check out Tales from Planet Earth.
Tales from Planet Earth ranges widely across time, but the stories are centered on our home world. Many SF writers confine their visions of earth to its flatlands, but Clarke is three-dimensional; his stories "Hate," "The Deep Range," and "The Man Who Ploughed the Sea" plunge into the ocean, while "The Cruel Sky" ascends the Himalayas. Some stories, like "The Other Tiger" and "'If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth...'," end on chilling twists. "The Road to the Sea" spans centuries and millennia to explore how humanity's exodus to the stars may affect the world left behind. "Hate" considers how transcendence of the Earth's atmosphere may affect ancient enmities. "The Parasite" demonstrates a scary nastiness not usually associated with Clarke. "The Wall of Darkness" is set on an alternate-universe earth so different from ours, and "The Lion of Comarre" is set in a future so far away, that both stories feel like fantasy; but both are rigorously extrapolated from scientific theory. Two lighthearted entertainments, "The Next Tenants" and "The Man Who Ploughed the Sea," are from Tales of the White Hart. All of the stories in Tales from Planet Earth are recommended.
The iBooks 2001 Anniversary Edition of Tales from Planet Earth collects 14 SF stories first published between 1950 and 1987, including the satire "On Golden Seas," which has "never before [been] collected in any Clarke book." --Cynthia Ward Views: 784
Arthur C. Clark, creator of one of the world's best-loved science fiction tales, revisits the most famous future ever imagined in this NEW YORK TIMES bestseller, as two expeditions into space become inextricably tangled. Heywood Floyd, survivor of two previous encounters with the mysterious monloiths, must again confront Dave Bowman, HAL, and an alien race that has decided that Mankind is to play a part in the evolution of the galaxy whether it wishes to or not. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Views: 781
Join Splot, the Floating Pink Blob as he travels on adventures to fight evil! In this collection, he’ll go up against an evil mantis, a mischievous mushroom, a hooligan hermit crab, an octopus, and a shinobi snowball. Does the young pink blob have what it takes to battle these foes? Read on to find out!Join Splot, the Floating Pink Blob as he travels on adventures to fight evil! In this collection, he’ll go up against an evil mantis who wants to take over a castle, a mischievous mushroom who challenges Splot to a treasure hunt, a hooligan hermit crab who wants to steal a young clam’s birthday cake, an octopus who challenges Splot and a frog to battle it out for some treasure, and a shinobi snowball who steals a princess. Does the young pink blob have what it takes to battle these foes? Read on to find out! Views: 781
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of The Emperor of All Maladies—a magnificent history of the gene and a response to the defining question of the future: What becomes of being human when we learn to "read" and "write" our own genetic information?The extraordinary Siddhartha Mukherjee has a written a biography of the gene as deft, brilliant, and illuminating as his extraordinarily successful biography of cancer. Weaving science, social history, and personal narrative to tell us the story of one of the most important conceptual breakthroughs of modern times, Mukherjee animates the quest to understand human heredity and its surprising influence on our lives, personalities, identities, fates, and choices. Throughout the narrative, the story of Mukherjee's own family—with its tragic and bewildering history of mental illness—cuts like a bright, red line, reminding us of the many questions that hang over our ability to translate the... Views: 777
From outside it was simply an ordinary looking London pub, a place you'd have to be guided to more than once before you memorized it's location, somewhere between Fleet Street & the Embankment. But, if by chance, an insider led you to the White Hart on a Wednesday night, you would have found yourself in the midst of a select gathering or writers, editors, scientists & interested layman--drinking, swapping odd bits of information, &, like as not, listening to Harry Purvis' memorable stories.
A scientist by profession, Harry Purvis has had or heard about some of the most astonishing experiences--like the story of the carnivorous orchid that was used in a murder plot, or the one about the military computer that was converted to pacifism. There's SILENCE PLEASE, involving a spurned lover & a device that was supposed to destroy sound; & BIG GAME HUNT, in which an ambitious researcher becomes so wrapped up in his latest projest--controlling animal behavior with electrical impulses-- that he overlooks one tiny important detail. Such stories may challenge your powers of logic & strain your imagination. Yet even if you doubt their veracity, they're guaranteed to provide you with hours of SF reading. Baron Munchausen, step aside.
Contains: Silence Please; Big Game Hunt; Patent Pending; Armaments Race; Critical Mass; The Ultimate Melody; The Pacifist; The Next Tenants; Moving Spirit; The Man Who Ploughed the Sea; The Reluctant Orchid; Cold War; What Goes Up; Sleeping Beauty & The Defenestration of Ermintrude Views: 772
This is the first book that I wrote, and it took me three full years to write and is called “Gwarcheidial.” This word translated from the ancient Welsh language means Guardian. And is about an old Wizard, and then along comes those that have the knowing of all things and decide that it’s time for him to do what he was born to do. Witches, Sorcerers and Demons summoned from the depths.A ship of explorers has crash-landed onto K24B, a planet full of vast plains and lush forests teaming with countless new species. The knowledge-hungry survivors soon discover that danger lurks in the shadows. People are taken in the night and some simply disappear without a trace – a heightened sense of desperation sets in with each person lost. Every breath becomes a matter of survival for those that remain. “A Matter of Survival” is the second story in “The Extraterrestrial Anthology, Volume I: Temblar.” The anthology contains ten short stories to make you think and tremble. Views: 771
Albert Birnbaum was once one of the biggest political talk show hosts around, but these days hes watching his career enter a death spiral. A stranger offers a solution to his woes, promising to put him back on top. Its everything Birnbaum wants, but is there a catch? And does Birnbaum actually care if there is? Views: 770
Lisa Molin is a freelance Swedish assassin working for the Russian mafia in Europe. Lisa travels to Interlaken in Switzerland to carry out an assassination contracted for the Russian mafia in Zurich. There is a difference to this kill. The man due to be assassinated has put this hit on himself and he wants to spend the day with Lisa before she kills him.Lisa Molin is a freelance Swedish assassin working for the Russian mafia in Europe. When a male assassin can’t do the job the Russian mafia sends in Lisa. Her favorite method of execution is the garrote and she also uses the Japanese jutte which is a foot long bar of solid iron with two hooks on the side that can be used to rip flesh and dislocate joints. She is an expert in taekwondo and has killed many men that way. In Korean “tae” means to strike or break with the foot and “kwon” means to strike or break with the fist and she is an expert at both. She is the last person that more than 120 men have seen before they departed this Earth and usually they departed the planet by extremely violent means.Lisa Molin travels to Interlaken in Switzerland to carry out an assassination contracted for the Russian mafia in Zurich. There is a difference to this kill. The man due to be assassinated has put this hit on himself and he wants to spend the day with Lisa before she kills him. She is meeting him in the Japanese Gardens next to the Hotel Interlaken at dawn. There will be nobody about at that hour. Should she just dispatch him in the Japanese Gardens or should she acquiesce to his wishes and spend the day with him. Read on and find out. Views: 768
Full of spleen, this is a hilarious, invigorating and informative journey through the world of Bad Science. When Dr Ben Goldacre saw someone on daytime TV dipping her feet in an 'Aqua Detox' footbath, releasing her toxins into the water, turning it brown, he thought he'd try the same at home. 'Like some kind of Johnny Ball cum Witchfinder General', using his girlfriend's Barbie doll, he gently passed an electrical current through the warm salt water. It turned brown. In his words: 'before my very eyes, the world's first Detox Barbie was sat, with her feet in a pool of brown sludge, purged of a weekend's immorality.' Dr Ben Goldacre is the author of the Bad Science column in the Guardian. His book is about all the 'bad science' we are constantly bombarded with in the media and in advertising. At a time when science is used to prove everything and nothing, everyone has their own 'bad science' moments from the useless pie-chart on the back of cereal packets to the use of the word 'visibly' in cosmetics ads. Views: 767
In the next hour, I would die. Either burnt to a crisp during Vela’s nosedive into Earth’s atmosphere or blown to a thousand pieces when the Vela explodes in space. The first would make me a Ku’wahine warrior, the second an Earther hero. My now dead sister Haunani had chosen the warrior route. Captain Tim Jones would do everything he could to be the hero. I didn’t care for either choice.In the next hour, I would die. Either burnt to a crisp during Vela’s nosedive into Earth’s atmosphere or blown to a thousand pieces when the Vela explodes in space. The first would make me a Ku’wahine warrior, the second an Earther hero. My now dead sister Haunani had chosen the warrior route. Captain Tim Jones would do everything he could to be the hero. I didn’t care for either choice.So begins Nalani’s Choice, a top ten selection in a Preditors and Editors readers short story poll. Views: 765
The second novel of six that describe mysteries solved by the Black Widowers, based on a literary dining club he belonged to known as the Trap Door Spiders. It collects twelve stories by Asimov, nine reprinted from mystery or science fiction magazines and three previously unpublished, together with a general introduction, and an afterword following each story by the author. Each story involves the club members' knowledge of trivia.
Contents
1 When No Man Pursueth
2 Quicker Than the Eye
3 The Iron Gem
4 The Three Numbers
5 Nothing Like Murder
6 No Smoking
7 Season's Greetings
8 The One and Only East
9 Earthset and Evening Star
10 Friday the Thirteenth
11 The Unabridged
12 The Ultimate Crime Views: 764
