A vampire living in modern-day America, Dr. Edward Weyland discovers that it is a world he can manipulate with ease, despite a stoic South African widow who discovers his true identity and an occultist who seeks to acquire his power. Reprint.
A futuristic tale set in a world where reading is forbidden, citizens are drugged from childhood on and machines dominate humans, focuses on two people who teach themselves how to read and how to think independently
'This is what literature is meant to be' Anthony Burgess 'O what we ben! And what we come to...' Wandering a desolate post-apocalyptic landscape, speaking a broken-down English lost after the end of civilization, Riddley Walker sets out to find out what brought humanity here. This is his story. 'Funny, terrible, haunting and unsettling, this book is a masterpiece' Observer 'A timeless portrayal of the human condition ... frightening and uncanny' Will Self 'A book that I could read every day forever and still be finding things' Max Porter
Haywood Floyd, director of the original Discovery mission, sets out to discover what happened to HAL 9000 and comes face to face with something claiming to be Dave Bowman
Episcopal bishop Timothy Archer is haunted by the suicides of his son and mistress and must cope with the implications of the discovery of a religious artefact. These events drive him into a quest for the identity of Christ. THE TRANSMIGRATION OF TIMOTHY ARCHER is Philip K Dick's last completed novel and a learned, moving investigation of the paradoxes of belief.
In the skies over Oakland, California, a DC-10 and a 747 are about to collide. But in the far distant future, a time travel team is preparing to snatch the passengers, leaving prefabricated smoking bodies behind for the rescue teams to find. And in Washington D.C., an air disaster investigator named Smith is about to get a phone call that will change his life...and end the world as we know it.
Welcome aboard the sex-drive void ship . . . Captain Genro commands the giant spaceship Dragon Zephyr - on board are ten thousand passengers in electrocoma, a smaller number of conscious passengers eagerly utilising the ship's dream chambers - and a Pilot. In the context of space travel, the Pilot is merely a biological component in the machine. Always a woman, her function is to launch the ship into the Jump by means of a cosmic orgasm. She is a pariah, shunned by all. Void Captain Genro should never even have spoken to his Pilot, let alone tried to embark on a relationship with her. When he did so, the result was every space traveller's nightmare. A Blind Jump into the Void . . .
A gripping, masterfully written adventure set against the violent beauty of a planet in the throes of cataclysmic transformation, Against Infinity is Gregory Benford's timeless portrait of a young man's coming of age. -- On the icelands of Ganymede, a man and a boy hunt for the Aleph-an alien artifact that ruled Ganymede for countless millenia, Infinitely dangerous, the Aleph haunts men's dreams and destroys all efforts to terraform Ganymede into a habitable planet. Now an ancient struggle is joined, as a boy seeks manhood, a man seeks enlightenment, and a society seeks to survive. Reviews of Against Infinity "Likely to be considered one of the best SF novels of the year...a powerfully evocative book."-Algis Budrys "Benford is a rarity: a scientist who writes with verve and insight not only about black holes and cosmic strings, but about human desires and fears."-The New York Times Book Review "Typical Benford virtues...a gritty, three-dimensional future, a believable hero, a real flair for the alien."-Publishers Weekly "A confident grasp of the workings and consequences of bio technics, a gift for action scenes and an ability to conceive of a creature as awesome and wondrous as his Aleph. A worthy successor to Timescape."-Booklist
The Family had never seen a manhunter like it. And when its machine-mind engulfed Cap'n Fanny, they knew Mantis was no simple killing-mech. A collector of human minds, a plunderer of living personalities, Mantis was a weaver of complex, murderous illusions. But why, Killeen wondered, did it indulge in such elaborate variations on slaughter when in a single blast it could destroy the remnants of Mankind? His answer lay waiting in Mantis's extraordinary sensorium, in the museum of living ghosts and defiled spirits which drove the heart of the machine . . .
Years ago, Eddie Yates disappeared into the rainforests of the Yucatan, a burned-out visionary in search of cosmic truth. A mysterious photo sends Lindsey, his ex-wife, on a quest to bring him back and puts her on a collision course with Eddie's brother Thomas, whose desire for Lindsey has never faded. Their search leads them to the ruined Mayan temples of NaChan, deep in the jungle, where mushrooms grow that can send you back through time – or kill you. NaChan is sacred to the Landon Indians, and their enigmatic shaman Chan Ma'ax. But the ruins have also become a nexus for the political forces that are tearing Mexico apart. Lindsey, Thomas, and Eddie are soon caught between Carla's rebel army and the secret US paramilitary group known as the Fighting 666th as they face off in the first battle of the end of the world.
The Hugo Award–winning author returns to the futuristic, high-tech Middle East setting of When Gravity Falls in this “major science fiction epic” (Locus). In a world filled with so many puppets, strings tend to get tangled. In this follow-up to the groundbreaking cyberpunk novel When Gravity Fails, the Budayeen is still a very dangerous place, a high-tech Arabian ghetto where power and murder go hand in hand. Marid Audran used to be a low-level street hustler, relying on his wits and independence. Now he’s a cop planted in the force by Friedlander Bey, the powerful “godfather” of the Budayeen. Marid is supposed to simply be Bey’s envoy into the police, but as a series of grisly murders piles up—children, prostitutes, a fellow officer—he is drawn deeper and deeper into the city’s chaos. Would Marid give up all his newfound money and power to get out of this mess? Absolutely. If only he could. But answers are never that easy and choices are never completely one’s own in the Budayeen.
Nebula Award Finalist: A long-awaited savior joins forces with her dark twin to confront the evil threatening their land in the second book of the acclaimed epic fantasy the Great Alta Saga Grown to young womanhood in the mountain region of the Dales and trained for combat by the all-female followers of the goddess Great Alta, Jenna reluctantly accepts the fact that she might well be the Anna, the warrior queen who has long been prophesied. Orphaned three times while still a small child, the now-teenage Jenna is compelled to lend her support and skills to the Dales’ rightful king and his brother, Carum, who holds her heart, for the reign of evil usurper Lord Kalas threatens the future of every worshipper of Alta. But Jenna does not ride alone. Whenever darkness falls, she and her companions—a young priestess in training and an aging warrior—are joined by Skada, white-haired Jenna’s dark sister, who shares her destiny and her soul. But even their combined powers may not be enough to defeat the entrenched malevolence that means to destroy everything and everyone they hold dear. A finalist for the Nebula Award for best novel, Jane Yolen’s White Jenna is a wondrous tale of duty, destiny, peril, romance, and fantasy. Interspersed with the myths and poetry the story engendered, it is a brilliantly imaginative creation of a world, a culture, and their enduring lore.
The computer age has arrived a century ahead of time with Charles Babbage's perfection of his Analytical Engine. The Industrial Revolution, supercharged by the development of steam-driven cybernetic Engines, is in full and drastic swing. Great Britain, with her calculating-cannons, steam dreamnoughts, machine-guns and information technology, prepares to better the world's lot . . .
After crashing on Earth, four stranded aliens must try to blend into the primitive society they find, but when one of them sells technological secrets to an influential congressman, they are all suddenly in grave danger. Reprint.
In the third volume in the Book of the Long Run series, young Silk, inspired by the gods, fights for survival against the shadowy rulers of the city of Viron, who command the technological wonders of the future.
For seventeen-year-old Danny Boles, a 5' 5" shortstop out of Tenkiller, Oklahoma, the summer of 1943 would be a season to remember. The country's at war, and professional baseball needs able-bodied men. Danny's headed for Highbridge, Georgia - home of the Goober Pride peanut butter factory and the Highbridge Hellbenders, a Class C farm club in the Chattahoochee Valley League. He's a scrappy player with one minor quirk: a violent encounter on the train to Georgia has rendered him mute, his vocal cords tied up in knots. Danny's idiosyncrasy, however, is nothing compared to that of his new Hellbender roommate, an erudite seven-foot giant by the name of Jumbo Hank Clerval. With his yellow eyes, strangely scarred face, and sausage-sized fingers, Hanks seems to have been put together in a meat-packing plant. But he plays a mean first base and can hit the ball a mile. With the Hellbenders in a pennant race as hot as the relentless Georgia sun, the eloquent Clerval forms a special kinship with the speechless kid from Oklahoma. Danny soon realizes that Hank is not an ordinary man but something more complex . . . more mysterious than he'd imagined.
In the centuries after the planet Jijo is abandoned for the sake of restoring ecological balance, six different species secretly colonize the planet and live in ongoing fear of being discovered and punished by the Five Galaxy patrollers.