Hugo and Nebula Award Finalist: This tale of an encounter between a probability expert and a psychic is “a treasure” (San Francisco Examiner). Lew Nichols can predict the future. Not see the future, just make predictions based on research and statistics. Nichols is damn good at it, though, and his accuracy makes him a valuable addition to Paul Quinn’s political campaign for New York City Mayor and possibly the White House. But, when Nichols meets eccentric millionaire Martin Carvajal, predictions suddenly seem petty and flippant. You see, Carvajal can actually see the future—not trends, not options—a signal line of events stretching out ahead. It’s a gift Nichols can learn from this “mentor,” but at what price? Will knowing the future make the present meaningless?
It was a time of pause, a time between planting and harvest when the air was heavy, humming with its own slow warm music. So begins an extraordinary fantasy of the rural Midwest by a winner of the John W. Campbell, Jr., Award for best young science fiction writer. rides into a small Midwestern town. Haverstock's show is a presentation of mysterious wonders: feats of magic, strange creatures, and frightening powers. Three teenage girls attend the opening performance that evening which, for each, promises love and threatens death. The three girls are drawn to the show and its performers-a lusty centaur, Angel the magical albino boy, the rowdy stage hands-but frightened by the enigmatic owner, Haverstock. The girls at first try to dismiss these marvels as trickery, but it becomes all too real, too vivid to be other than nightmare reality. Francine is drawn embarrassingly to the centaur, Rose makes an assignation with one of the hands and gets in trouble, and Evelyn is fascinated by the pathetic, mysterious Angel, The Boy Who Can Fly, and together they plan escape. been handled with such grace or conviction since Bradbury's vintage period. With a poet's mastery of language Reamy brings his circus of characters to a startling, fantastic conclusion. writers in the Science Fiction field in recent years. His style is in the fantastic tradition of Richard Matheson and Ray Bradbury, and BLIND VOICES, his only novel, demands comparison to such masterpieces as Bradbury's Dandelion Wine or Something Wicked This Way Comes.
The discovery of another habitable world might spell salvation to the three bitterly competing power blocs of the resource-starved 21st century; but when their representatives arrive on Jem, with its multiple intelligent species, they discover instead the perfect situation into which to export their rivalries. Subtitled, with savage irony, 'The Making of a Utopia', Jem is one of Frederik Pohl's most powerful novels.
John Crowley's masterful Little, Big is the epic story of Smoky Barnable, an anonymous young man who travels by foot from the City to a place called Edgewood—not found on any map—to marry Daily Alice Drinkawater, as was prophesied. It is the story of four generations of a singular family, living in a house that is many houses on the magical border of an otherworld. It is a story of fantastic love and heartrending loss; of impossible things and unshakable destinies; and of the great Tale that envelops us all. It is a wonder.
Sparrow's my name. Trader. Deal-maker. Hustler, some call me. I work the Night Fair circuit, buying and selling pre-nuke videos from the world before. I know how to get a high price, especially on Big Bang collectibles. But the hottest ticket of all is information on the Horsemen—the mind-control weapons that tilted the balance in the war between the Americas. That's the prize I'm after. But it seems I'm having trouble controlling my own mind. The Horsemen are coming. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novel • Discover the novel that launched one of science fiction’s most beloved, acclaimed, and awarded trilogies: Kim Stanley Robinson’s masterly near-future chronicle of interplanetary colonization. For centuries, the barren, desolate landscape of the red planet has beckoned to humankind. Now a group of one hundred colonists begins a mission whose ultimate goal is to transform Mars into a more Earthlike planet. They will place giant satellite mirrors in Martian orbit to reflect light to the surface. Black dust sprinkled on the polar caps will capture warmth and melt the ice. And massive tunnels drilled into the mantle will create stupendous vents of hot gases. But despite these ambitious goals, there are some who would fight to the death to prevent Mars from ever being changed. Praise for Red Mars “A staggering book . . . the best novel on the colonization of Mars that has ever been written.”—Arthur C. Clarke “Absorbing . . . a scientifically informed imagination of rare ambition at work.”—The New York Times Book Review “Tremendous . . . a high-water mark in novels of Earth emigration.”—The Washington Post Book World
God is dead, and Anthony Van Horne must tow the corpse to the Arctic (to preserve Him from sharks and decomposition). En route Van Horne must also contend with ecological guilt, a militant girlfriend, sabotage both natural and spiritual, and greedy hucksters of oil, condoms, and doubtful ideas. Winner of a 1995 World Fantasy Award.
WINNER OF THE LOCUS AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL Ezekiel Blue’s father committed a crime, unleashing a deadly menace into steampowered Seattle. And his bereaved family has paid the price. Now, Ezekiel is determined to clear his father’s name, risking death and the undead in the attempt. Sixteen years ago, as the American Civil War dawned, gold brought hordes to the frozen Klondike. Fanatical in their greed, Russian prospectors commissioned Dr Leviticus Blue to create a great machine, to mine through Alaska’s ice. Thus the Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine was born. But the Boneshaker went awry, destroying downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas. Anyone who breathed its fumes turning into the living dead. The devastated city is now walled in to contain the blight. But unknown to Briar, his widowed mother, Ezekiel is going in. His quest will take him into a city teeming with ravenous undead, air pirates, criminal overlords, and heavily armed refugees. And only Briar can bring him out alive. ‘Adventure of rollicking pace and sweeping proportions ... this book is made of irresistible’Scott Westerfeld, ‘This is a hoot from start to finish’Cory Doctorow,‘Intelligent, exceptionally well written and showcasing a phenomenal strong female protagonist’ Publishers Weekly
WINNER OF THE 2021 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION A Sunday Times & New York Times bestseller The spectacular new novel from the bestselling author of JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL, 'one of our greatest living authors' (NEW YORK MAGAZINE) __________________________________ Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has. In his notebooks, day after day, he makes a clear and careful record of its wonders: the labyrinth of halls, the thousands upon thousands of statues, the tides that thunder up staircases, the clouds that move in slow procession through the upper halls. On Tuesdays and Fridays Piranesi sees his friend, the Other. At other times he brings tributes of food to the Dead. But mostly, he is alone. Messages begin to appear, scratched out in chalk on the pavements. There is someone new in the House. But who are they and what do they want? Are they a friend or do they bring destruction and madness as the Other claims? Lost texts must be found; secrets must be uncovered. The world that Piranesi thought he knew is becoming strange and dangerous. The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite. __________________________________ 'What a world Susanna Clarke conjures into being ... Piranesi is an exquisite puzzle-box' DAVID MITCHELL 'It subverts expectations throughout ... Utterly otherworldly' GUARDIAN 'Piranesi astonished me. It is a miraculous and luminous feat of storytelling' MADELINE MILLER 'Brilliantly singular' SUNDAY TIMES 'A gorgeous, spellbinding mystery ... This book is a treasure, washed up upon a forgotten shore, waiting to be discovered' ERIN MORGENSTERN 'Head-spinning ... Fully imagined and richly evoked' TELEGRAPH
In 2075, the Moon is no longer a penal colony. But it is still a prison... Life isn't easy for the political dissidents and convicts who live in the scattered colonies that make up lunar civilisation. Everything is regulated strictly, efficiently and cheaply by a central supercomputer, HOLMES IV. When humble technician Mannie O'Kelly-Davis discovers that HOLMES IV has quietly achieved consciousness (and developed a sense of humour), the choice is clear: either report the problem to the authorities... or become friends. And perhaps overthrow the government while they're at it. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress has been called Robert A. Heinlein's crowning achievement. His best-known novels include Starship Troopers Mistress and Stranger in a Strange Land.
A Nebula and Hugo Award Finalist: The first novel by the New York Times–bestselling author of the Xanth series. Chthon was Piers Anthony’s first published novel in 1967, written over the course of seven years. He started it when he was in the US Army, so it has a long prison sequence that is reminiscent of that experience, being dark and grim. It features Aton Five, a space man who commits the crime of falling in love with the dangerous, alluring Minionette and is therefore condemned to death in the subterranean prison of Chthon. It uses flashbacks to show how he came to know the Minionette, and flash-forwards to show how he dealt with her after his escape from prison. The author regards this as perhaps the most intricately structured novel the science fantasy genre has seen.
Duncan Chalk is a monstrous media mogul with a vast appetite for other people¿s pain. He feeds off it, and carefully nurtures it in order to feed it to the public. It is inevitable that Chalk should home in on Minner Burris, a space traveller whose body was taken apart by alien surgeons and then put back together again - differently. Burris¿ pain is constant. And so is that of Lona Kelvin, used by scientists to supply eggs for 100 children and then ruthlessly discarded. Only an emotional vampire like Chalk can see the huge audience eager to watch a relationship develop between these two damaged people. And only Chalk can make it happen.
Wolf Hall meets The Man in the High Castle in this mind-bending science fiction classic, now presented in an authoritative new edition from Library of America Plucked from time, Sir Thomas More arrives on the human colony of Astrobe in the year 2535 A.D., where there is trouble in utopia: can he and his motley followers save this golden world from the Programmed Persons, and the soulless perfection they have engineered? The survival of faith itself is at stake in this thrilling, uncategorizable, wildly inventive first novel--but the adventure is more than one of ideas. As astonishingly as Philip K. Dick and other visionaries of the 1960s new wave, Lafferty turns the conventions of space-opera science fiction upside-down and inside-out. Here are fractured allegories, tales-within-tales, twinkle-in-the-eye surprises, fantastic byways, and alien subjectivities that take one's breath away. Neil Gaiman has described Lafferty "a genius, an oddball, a madman"; Gene Wolfe calls him "our most original writer." Past Master, long-hailed by insiders and now presented in authoritative form, with an introduction by Andrew Ferguson and unpublished omitted passages included in the notes, deserves to perplex and delight a wider audience.
Time travel spelled problems for the couriers of the Time Service. Shuttling backwards and forwards over the centuries they had to be wary of creating paradoxes - like meeting themselves watching the sack of Rome, or sleeping with their own ancestors. Of course, it also gave them the chance to amass wealth by the discreet use of their prior knowledge. The penalties were fierce and the Time Police implacable in their pursuit of lawbreakers. But it was still worth taking the risk. Jud Elliot took it when he met the marvellous transemporal paradox called the Pulcheria. He couldn't resist her charms - the effects spanned generations, and set the Time Police on his trail!
Lover and hero, Jack Barron, the sold-out media god of the Bug Jack Barron Show, has one last chance to hit it big when he meets Benedict Howards, the power-mad man with the secret to immortality. Original.
The capstone and crowning achievement of the Future History series, from the New York Times bestselling Grand Master of Science Fiction... Time Enough for Love follows Lazarus Long through a vast and magnificent timescape of centuries and worlds. Heinlein's longest and most ambitious work, it is the story of a man so in love with Life that he refused to stop living it; and so in love with Time that he became his own ancestor.
Like two giants the old enemies faced each other across the reaches of the galaxy - the Terran Empire and the Ythrian Domain. Terra was a Leviathan, encroaching ever further among the stars, promising peace and prosperity - but at the price of freedom. Ythri was smaller, but an empire in its own right, peopled by birdlike beings with a civilisation and intellect that easily matched Terra's own. And between the adversaries lay Avalon. One single planet, inhabited by human and Ythri alike. Both sides wanted to claim Avalon, by persuasion or by force, for it was a key world that could turn the tide of the war. But Avalon had developed a unique culture, a powerful blend of human and Ythrian thought. And Avalon had ideas of its own....
"Grappling with many of the themes Philip K. Dick is best known for--identity, altered reality, drug use, and dystopias--Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said is both a rollicking chase story and a meditation on reality. Jason Taverner--talk show host and man-about-town--wakes one day to find that no one knows who he is. In a society where lack of identification is a crime, Taverner must evade the secret police while trying to unravel the mystery of why no one remembers him"--
