books tagged “scifi”

English

3001
by Arthur C. Clarke

ISBN 0345423496 (0-345-42349-6)
Softcover, Ballantine Books

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Book summary:
One thousand years after the Jupiter mission to explore the mysterious Monolith had been destroyed, after Dave Bowman was transformed into the Star Child, Frank Poole drifted in space, frozen and forgotten, leaving the supercomputer HAL inoperable. But now Poole has returned to life, awakening in a world far different from the one he left behind--and just as the Monolith may be stirring once again . . . [via]
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American Gods
by Neil Gaiman

ISBN 1594970998 (1-59497-099-8)
Hardcover, Public Square Books

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Book summary:
Nota: En los titulos y nombres de autores, los marcos ortograficos han sido omitidos para facilitar las busquedas de Internet.
La vida en la cárcel es dura. Pero siempre queda un rayo de esperanza si sabes que, a la salida, te espera una mujer que te ama, un amigo que te quiere, un trabajo que adoras. . .Todo eso es lo que quiere Sombra, que está a punto de salir de la cárcel. . .Pero un día le comunican que su mujer y su mejor amigo han muerto en un accidente de coche. Entonces, contratado por un extraño anciano experto en timos y estafas que responde al nombre de Wednesday, Sombra empieza un interminable viaje a lo largo y ancho de América, perseguido por el espíritu de su esposa, en el que descubre el límite entre lo humano y los divino, y que las reglas que rigen el mundo de los hombres no son las mismas con las que lose dioses conducen el mundo.
Neil Gaiman vuelve con American Gods a dar lo major de sí mismo y crea una historia en la que dioses y héroes se dan la mano, en la que el destino de la misma alma de Norteamérica está en juego. Con American Gods, Neil Gaiman se ha consagrado como uno autores de terror más importantes del panorama internacional, se ha colocado en los primeros puestos de las listas de los más vendidos de todo el mundo y ha ganado el premio Hugo a Mejor Novela de Ciencia Ficción y el premio Stoker a Mejor Novela de Terror.
Amazon.com's Best of 2001 American Gods is Neil Gaiman's best and most ambitious novel yet, a scary, strange, and hallucinogenic road-trip story wrapped around a deep examination of the American spirit. Gaiman tackles everything from the onslaught of the information age to the meaning of death, but he doesn't sacrifice the razor-sharp plotting and narrative style he's been delivering since his Sandman days.
Shadow gets out of prison early when his wife is killed in a car crash. At a loss, he takes up with a mysterious character called Wednesday, who is much more than he appears. In fact, Wednesday is an old god, once known as Odin the All-father, who is roaming America rounding up his forgotten fellows in preparation for an epic battle against the upstart deities of the Internet, credit cards, television, and all that is wired. Shadow agrees to help Wednesday, and they whirl through a psycho-spiritual storm that becomes all too real in its manifestations. For instance, Shadow's dead wife Laura keeps showing up, and not just as a ghost--the difficulty of their continuing relationship is by turns grim and darkly funny, just like the rest of the book.
Armed only with some coin tricks and a sense of purpose, Shadow travels through, around, and underneath the visible surface of things, digging up all the powerful myths Americans brought with them in their journeys to this land as well as the ones that were already here. Shadow's road story is the heart of the novel, and it's here that Gaiman offers up the details that make this such a cinematic book--the distinctly American foods and diversions, the bizarre roadside attractions, the decrepit gods reduced to shell games and prostitution. "This is a bad land for Gods," says Shadow.
More than a tourist in America, but not a native, Neil Gaiman offers an outside-in and inside-out perspective on the soul and spirituality of the country--our obsessions with money and power, our jumbled religious heritage and its societal outcomes, and the millennial decisions we face about what's real and what's not. --Therese Littleton --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. [via]
More editions of American Gods:
- American Gods: ISBN 0931771021 (0-931771-02-1)
  Softcover, Hill House, Publishers
- American Gods: ISBN 1594970998 (1-59497-099-8)
  Hardcover, Public Square Books
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The Andromeda Strain
by Michael Crichton

ISBN 0060541814 (0-06-054181-4)
Softcover, Avon Books

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Book summary:
Some biologists speculate that if we ever make contact with extraterrestrials, those life forms are likely to be--like most life on earth--one-celled or smaller creatures, more comparable to bacteria than little green men. And even though such organisms would not likely be able to harm humans, the possibility exists that first contact might be our last.
That's the scientific supposition that Michael Crichton formulates and follows out to its conclusion in his excellent debut novel, The Andromeda Strain.
A Nobel-Prize-winning bacteriologist, Jeremy Stone, urges the president to approve an extraterrestrial decontamination facility to sterilize returning astronauts, satellites, and spacecraft that might carry an "unknown biologic agent." The government agrees, almost too quickly, to build the top-secret Wildfire Lab in the desert of Nevada. Shortly thereafter, unbeknownst to Stone, the U.S. Army initiates the "Scoop" satellite program, an attempt to actively collect space pathogens for use in biological warfare. When Scoop VII crashes a couple years later in the isolated Arizona town of Piedmont, the Army ends up getting more than it asked for.
The Andromeda Strain follows Stone and rest of the scientific team mobilized to react to the Scoop crash as they scramble to understand and contain a strange and deadly outbreak. Crichton's first book may well be his best; it has an earnestness that is missing from his later, more calculated thrillers. --Paul Hughes [via]
More editions of The Andromeda Strain:
- The Andromeda Strain: ISBN 0060541814 (0-06-054181-4)
  Softcover, Avon Books
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Children of God
by Mary Doria Russell

ISBN 044900483X (0-449-00483-X)
Softcover, Ballantine Books

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Mary Doria Russell's debut novel, The Sparrow, took us on a journey to a distant planet and into the center of the human soul. A critically acclaimed bestseller, The Sparrow was chosen as one of Entertainment Weekly's Ten Best Books of the Year, a finalist for the Book-of-the-Month Club's First Fiction Prize and the winner of the James M. Tiptree Memorial Award. Now, in Children of God, Russell further establishes herself as one of the most innovative, entertaining and philosophically provocative novelists writing today.

The only member of the original mission to the planet Rakhat to return to Earth, Father Emilio Sandoz has barely begun to recover from his ordeal when the So-ciety of Jesus calls upon him for help in preparing for another mission to Alpha Centauri. Despite his objections and fear, he cannot escape his past or the future.

Old friends, new discoveries and difficult questions await Emilio as he struggles for inner peace and understanding in a moral universe whose boundaries now extend beyond the solar system and whose future lies with children born in a faraway place.

Strikingly original, richly plotted, replete with memorable characters and filled with humanity and humor, Chil-dren of God is an unforgettable and uplifting novel that is a potent successor to The Sparrow and a startlingly imaginative adventure for newcomers to Mary Doria Russell's special literary magic. [via]
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A Clockwork Orange
by Anthony Burgess

ISBN 0091683815 (0-09-168381-5)
Softcover, Hutchinson

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- A Clockwork Orange: ISBN 0091683815 (0-09-168381-5)
  Softcover, Hutchinson
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Crystal Line
by Anne McCaffrey

ISBN 0345384911 (0-345-38491-1)
Softcover, Del Rey

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Book summary:
"A treat for long-time McCaffrey fans, a good read and a satisfying look at one of the most haunting facets of the crystal singers' profession."
LOCUS
When Killashandra Ree joined the mysterious Heptite Guild, she knew that she would be forever changed. Crystal singing brought ecstasy and pain, near-eternal life...and gradual loss of memory. What she hadn't counted on was the loneliness she felt when her heart still remembered what her mind had forgotten. Fortunately, someone still cared enough to try to salvage what was left of Killashandra's mind. But she would have to learn to open herself--to another person, and to all her unpleasant memories.

From the Paperback edition. [via]
More editions of Crystal Line:
- Crystal Line: ISBN 0345379845 (0-345-37984-5)
  Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
- Crystal Line: ISBN 0345384911 (0-345-38491-1)
  Softcover, Del Rey
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Crystal Singer
by Anne McCaffrey

ISBN 0727820222 (0-7278-2022-2)
Hardcover, Severn House Pub Ltd

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Book summary:
Her name was Killashandra Ree. And after ten grueling years of musical training, she was still without prospects. Until she heard of the mysterious Heptite Guild who could provide careers, security, and wealth beyond imagining. The problem was, few people who landed on Ballybran ever left. But to Killashandra the risks were acceptable.... [via]
More editions of Crystal Singer:
- Crystal Singer: ISBN 0727820222 (0-7278-2022-2)
  Hardcover, Severn House Pub Ltd
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The Demolished Man
by Alfred Bester

ISBN 0679767819 (0-679-76781-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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In a world policed by telepaths, Ben Reich plans to commit a crime that hasn't been heard of in 70 years: murder. That's the only option left for Reich, whose company is losing a 10-year death struggle with rival D'Courtney Enterprises. Terrorized in his dreams by The Man With No Face and driven to the edge after D'Courtney refuses a merger offer, Reich murders his rival and bribes a high-ranking telepath to help him cover his tracks. But while police prefect Lincoln Powell knows Reich is guilty, his telepath's knowledge is a far cry from admissible evidence. [via]
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Dragonquest
by Anne McCaffrey

ISBN 0345335082 (0-345-33508-2)
Softcover, Ballantine Books

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Book summary:
Another Turn, and the deadly silver Threads began falling again. So the bold dragonriders took to the air once more and their magnificent flying dragons swirled and swooped, belching flames that destroyed the shimmering strands before they reach the ground. But F'lar knew he had to find a better way to protect his beloved Pern, and he had to find it before the rebellious Oldtimers could breed anymore dissent... before his brother F'nor would be foolhardy enough to launch another suicide mission... and before those dratted fire-lizards could stir up any more trouble! [via]
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El hombre invisible / the Invisible Man
by H. G. Wells

ISBN 9507820760 (950-782-076-0)
Hardcover, Arte Grafico Editorial Argentino

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More editions of El hombre invisible / the Invisible Man:
- El hombre invisible / the Invisible Man: ISBN 9507820760 (950-782-076-0)
  Hardcover, Arte Grafico Editorial Argentino
Forward the Foundation
by Isaac Asimov

ISBN 0553565079 (0-553-56507-9)
Softcover, Bantam Books

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Book summary:
A stunning testament to his creative genius. Forward The Foundation is a the saga's dramatic climax -- the story Asimov fans have been waiting for. An exciting tale of danger, intrigue, and suspense, Forward The Foundation brings to vivid life Asimov's best loved characters: hero Hari Seldon, who struggles to perfect his revolutionary theory of psychohistory to ensure the survival of humanity; Cleon II, the vain and crafty emperor of the Galactic Empire,

From the Paperback edition. [via]
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Gateway
by Frederick Pohl

ISBN 0345475836 (0-345-47583-6)
Softcover, Ballantine Books

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Gateway opened on all the wealth of the Universe...and on reaches of unimaginable horror. When prospector Bob Broadhead went out to Gateway on the Heechee spacecraft, he decided he would know which was the right mission to make him his fortune. Three missions later, now famous and permanently rich, Robinette Broadhead has to face what happened to him and what he is...in a journey into himself as perilous and even more horrifying than the nightmare trip through the interstellar void that he drove himself to take!
THE HEECHEE SAGA
Book One:GATEWAY
Book Two:BEYOND THE BLUE EVENT HORIZON
Book Three: HEECHEE RENDEZVOUS
Book Four: THE ANNALS OF THE HEECHEE [via]
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The Invisible Man
by H. G. Wells

ISBN 1581180772 (1-58118-077-2)
Hardcover, Library Reproduction Services

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A quiet English country village is disturbed by the arrival of a mysterious stranger who keeps his face hidden and his back to everyone. [via]
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The Invisible Man
by Robert Wanless

ISBN 097372823X (0-9737282-3-X)
Softcover, Coscom Entertainment

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One wintry day, a stranger enters the town of Iping. He is clad from head to foot; no one sees his face. Soon after his arrival, bizarre events occur that cannot be explained. The violence and terror begins. "...stripping the work down to its bare bones...one will admit that the very concept itself is one of land marked proportions draped layer after compelling layer of ideology and vision which has been the subject of analysis and inspiration for the best of us ever since." - Nicholas Grabowsky, from his introduction [via]
More editions of The Invisible Man:
- The Invisible Man: ISBN 097372823X (0-9737282-3-X)
  Softcover, Coscom Entertainment
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Jennifer Government
by Max Barry

ISBN 1400030927 (1-4000-3092-7)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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In the horrifying, satirical near future of Max Barry's Jennifer Government, American corporations literally rule the world. Everyone takes his employer's name as his last name; once-autonomous nations as far-flung as Australia belong to the USA; and the National Rifle Association is not just a worldwide corporation, it's a hot, publicly traded stock. Hack Nike, a hapless employee seeking advancement, signs a multipage contract and then reads it. He discovers he's agreed to assassinate kids purchasing Nike's new line of athletic shoes, a stealth marketing maneuver designed to increase sales. And the dreaded government agent Jennifer Government is after him.
Like Steve Aylett, Alexander Besher, Douglas Coupland, Paul Di Filippo, Jim Munroe, Jeff Noon, and Chuck Palahniuk, Max Barry is an author of smartass, punky satire for the late capitalist era. It's a hip and happening field; before publication, Jennifer Government (Barry's second novel) was optioned by Stephen Soderbergh and George Clooney's Section 8 Films for a major motion picture. However, the level of literary accomplishment varies wildly among practitioners, from brilliant (Di Filippo and Palahniuk) to amateurish (Besher). This field is so hot, its writers needn't be nearly as accomplished as they'd have to become to break into any other form of fiction.
That said, like many of his fellow turn-of-the-millennium satirists, Barry is uneven. He has a lively imagination and a sharp eye for the absurdities and offenses of hypercorporate capitalism. But, with its sketchy characters and slow dialogue, Jennifer Government will disappoint anyone who believes the cover copy's grandiose claim that this is "a Catch-22 for the New World Order." --Cynthia Ward [via]
More editions of Jennifer Government:
- Jennifer Government : A Novel: ISBN 0385507593 (0-385-50759-3)
  Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing
- Jennifer Government: ISBN 1400030927 (1-4000-3092-7)
  Softcover, Random House Inc
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The Lathe of Heaven
by Ursula K. Le Guin

ISBN 0380791854 (0-380-79185-4)
Softcover, HarperCollins Publishers

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Book summary:
Ursula K. Le Guin is one of science fiction's greatest writers. She is also an acclaimed author of powerful and perceptive nonfiction, fantasy, and literary fiction. She has received many honors, including six Nebula and five Hugo Awards, the National Book Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Newbery, the Pilgrim, the Tiptree, and citations by the American Library Association. She has written over a dozen highly regarded novels and story collections. Her SF masterworks are The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), The Dispossessed (1974), and The Lathe of Heaven (1971).
George Orr has dreams that come true--dreams that change reality. He dreams that the aunt who is sexually harassing him is killed in a car crash, and wakes to find that she died in a wreck six weeks ago, in another part of the country. But a far darker dream drives George into the care of a psychotherapist--a dream researcher who doesn't share George's ambivalence about altering reality.
The Lathe of Heaven is set in the sort of worlds that one would associate with Philip K. Dick, but Ms. Le Guin's treatment of the material, her plot and characterization and concerns, are more akin to the humanistic, ethically engaged, psychologically nuanced fiction of Theodore Sturgeon. The Lathe of Heaven is an insightful and chilling examination of total power, of war and injustice and other age-old problems, of changing the world, of playing God. --Cynthia Ward [via]
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Look to Windward
by Iain M. Banks

ISBN 0743421922 (0-7434-2192-2)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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A classic in science fiction, Banks's novel is about a war so powerful it destroyed two suns and the billions of lives they supported. [via]
More editions of Look to Windward:
- Look to Windward: ISBN 0743421914 (0-7434-2191-4)
  Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
- Look to Windward: ISBN 0743421922 (0-7434-2192-2)
  Softcover, Simon & Schuster
The Lost World
by Michael Crichton

ISBN 0679419462 (0-679-41946-2)
Hardcover, Random House Inc

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Written in the wake of Jurassic Park's phenomenal box-office success, The Lost World seems as much a guidebook for Hollywood types hard at work on the franchise's followup as it is a legitimate sci-fi thriller. Which begs the inevitable questions: Is the plot a rehash of the first book? Sure it is, with the action unfolding on yet another secluded island, the mysterious "Site B." Is the cast of characters basically the same? Absolutely, from a freshly minted pair of cute, compu-savvy kids right down to the neatly exhumed chaos theorist Ian Malcolm (who was presumed dead at the close of JP). But is it fun to read? You betcha. Hollywood (and Michael Crichton) keeps telling us the same old stories for a very good reason: we like them. And the pulp SF formula Crichton has mastered with Jurassic Park and The Lost World is no exception. --Paul Hughes [via]
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Mountain of Black Glass
by Tad Williams

ISBN 0886778492 (0-88677-849-2)
Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated

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Otherland, the quartet of which Mountain of Black Glass is the powerful third part, combines some terrifying speculation on the future of virtual reality with adventures no less terrifying because they are technologized dreaming. These are dreams the adventurers cannot awaken from and in which, if they die, they are really dead.
An epidemic of comatose children has led Renie and her San friend !Xabbu into the net and to a series of dream worlds created as palaces by the corrupt aspiring immortals, the Grail Brotherhood. Two of those children, Orlando and Fredericks, have become adventurers in their own right, while their parents' lawyer Ramsey follows real-world money and lesbian cop Calliope tracks a serial killer with serious ambitions to become an angry god. In this volume, adventures take place in a mythic ancient Egypt and a rambling Gormenghastlike house before all the virtual adventurers meet where they were always destined to, before the walls of Troy.

"All around, death. It was not a quiet presence during the long day--not a pale-faced maiden bringing surcease from pain, not a skillful reaper with a scalpel-sharp blade.... Death on the Trojan plain was a crazed beast that roared and clawed and smashed, which was everywhere at once, and which in its unending fury showed that even armored men were terribly frail things."
Tad Williams takes the gameworld and turns it on its head, passionately; how do we know that what bleeds does not feel pain? He writes a classic of cyberspace adventure that has a sorrowful heart. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk [via]
More editions of Mountain of Black Glass:
- Mountain of Black Glass: ISBN 0886778492 (0-88677-849-2)
  Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
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Olympos
by Dan Simmons

ISBN 0380817934 (0-380-81793-4)
Softcover, Harpercollins

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Welcome back to the Trojan War gone 'round the bend. Hector and Achilles have joined forces against the Olympic Gods. Back on a future Earth, assorted creatures from Shakespeare's The Tempest get ready to rumble in a winner-takes-the-universe battle royale. And amid it all, a group of confused mere mortals with their classically trained robot allies (from Jupiter no less) race across time and space to keep from getting squashed as the various Titans of the Western Canon square off. Confused? It's all part of Dan Simmons's Olympos, a novel one part fun-with-quantum-physics and two parts through-the-looking-glass survey of Western Literature. Picking up where he left off in the high-wire act Ilium, Simmons doesn't disappoint. Not only is Olympos excellent hard science fiction and grand space opera, it's a riveting and fast-paced book that is alternately shocking, thrilling, and often deftly hilarious as his hapless human creations wrestle the forces of literary history itself. Be sure to read Ilium first, though. That and a more than passing familiarity with The Illiad might come in handy for the journey to Mars, Ilium's far-off shores, and the Earth that might be. --Jeremy Pugh
Amazon.com Exclusive Content
Master of the Universes: An Exclusive Interview with Dan Simmons
Changing genres as easily as others change clothes, bestselling author Dan Simmons has written horror, mystery, historical fiction, thrillers, fantasy, and science fiction. In this Amazon.com exclusive interview, he talks about his latest SF triumph, Olympos, a tale of Mars, the Greek gods, and survival in a posthuman world.
[via]
More editions of Olympos:
- Olympos: ISBN 0380978946 (0-380-97894-6)
  Hardcover, Harpercollins
- Olympos: ISBN 0380817934 (0-380-81793-4)
  Softcover, Harpercollins
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Otherland
by Tad Williams

ISBN 0886778441 (0-88677-844-1)
Softcover, Daw Books

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Book summary:
Otherland, the quartet of which Mountain of Black Glass is the powerful third part, combines some terrifying speculation on the future of virtual reality with adventures no less terrifying because they are technologized dreaming. These are dreams the adventurers cannot awaken from and in which, if they die, they are really dead.
An epidemic of comatose children has led Renie and her San friend !Xabbu into the net and to a series of dream worlds created as palaces by the corrupt aspiring immortals, the Grail Brotherhood. Two of those children, Orlando and Fredericks, have become adventurers in their own right, while their parents' lawyer Ramsey follows real-world money and lesbian cop Calliope tracks a serial killer with serious ambitions to become an angry god. In this volume, adventures take place in a mythic ancient Egypt and a rambling Gormenghastlike house before all the virtual adventurers meet where they were always destined to, before the walls of Troy.

"All around, death. It was not a quiet presence during the long day--not a pale-faced maiden bringing surcease from pain, not a skillful reaper with a scalpel-sharp blade.... Death on the Trojan plain was a crazed beast that roared and clawed and smashed, which was everywhere at once, and which in its unending fury showed that even armored men were terribly frail things."
Tad Williams takes the gameworld and turns it on its head, passionately; how do we know that what bleeds does not feel pain? He writes a classic of cyberspace adventure that has a sorrowful heart. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk [via]
More editions of Otherland:
- Otherland: ISBN 0886779065 (0-88677-906-5)
  Softcover, Daw Books
- Otherland: ISBN 0886778441 (0-88677-844-1)
  Softcover, Daw Books
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Pandora's Star
by Peter F. Hamilton

ISBN 0345479211 (0-345-47921-1)
Softcover, Del Rey

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Book summary:
paperback, vg++ [via]
More editions of Pandora's Star:
- Pandora's Star: ISBN 0345461622 (0-345-46162-2)
  Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
- Pandora's Star: ISBN 0345479211 (0-345-47921-1)
  Softcover, Del Rey
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The past through Tomorrow
by Robert A. Heinlein

ISBN 0441653049 (0-441-65304-9)
Softcover, Putnam Berkley

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Book summary:
This is the second half of what was published in the USA as the Past Through Tomorrow, as the American book was divided into two halves for the British hardcover edition(s) [via]
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Pastwatch
by Orson Scott Card

ISBN 0812508645 (0-8125-0864-5)
Softcover, Tor Books

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Book summary:
Anyone who's read Lies My Teacher Told Me : Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong knows about the devastating consequences that Columbus's voyage and ensuing colonization had on the native people of the Americas and Africa. In a thought-provoking work that is part science fiction, part historical drama, Orson Scott Card writes about scientists in a fearful future who study that tragic past, then attempt to actually intervene and change it into something better.
Tagiri and Hassan are members of Pastwatch, an academic organization that uses machines to see into the past and record it. Their project focuses on slavery and its dreadful effects, and gradually evolves into a study of Christopher Columbus. They eventually marry and their daughter Diko joins them in their quest to discover what drove Columbus west.
Columbus, with whom readers become acquainted through both images in the Pastwatch machines and personal narrative, is portrayed as a religious man with both strengths and weaknesses, a charismatic leader who sometimes rose above but often fell beneath the mores of his times. As usual, Orson Scott Card uses his formidable writing skills to create likable, complex characters who face gripping problems; he also provides an entertaining and thoughtful history lesson in Pastwatch. --Bonnie Bouman [via]
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Perdido Street Station: Lettered Edition
by China Mieville

ISBN 1597800244 (1-59780-024-4)
Hardcover, Nightshade Book

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More editions of Perdido Street Station: Lettered Edition:
- Perdido Street Station: Lettered Edition: ISBN 1597800244 (1-59780-024-4)
  Hardcover, Nightshade Book
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The Player of Games
by Iain M. Banks

ISBN 0061000981 (0-06-100098-1)
Softcover, HarperCollins Publishers Limited

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In The Player of Games, Iain M. Banks presents a distant future that could almost be called the end of history. Humanity has filled the galaxy, and thanks to ultra-high technology everyone has everything they want, no one gets sick, and no one dies. It's a playground society of sports, stellar cruises, parties, and festivals. Jernau Gurgeh, a famed master game player, is looking for something more and finds it when he's invited to a game tournament at a small alien empire. Abruptly Banks veers into different territory. The Empire of Azad is exotic, sensual, and vibrant. It has space battle cruisers, a glowing court--all the stuff of good old science fiction--which appears old-fashioned in contrast to Gurgeh's home. At first it's a relief, but further exploration reveals the empire to be depraved and terrifically unjust. Its defects are gross exaggerations of our own, yet they indict us all the same. Clearly Banks is interested in the idea of a future where everyone can be mature and happy. Yet it's interesting to note that in order to give us this compelling adventure story, he has to return to a more traditional setting. Thoughtful science fiction readers will appreciate the cultural comparisons, and fans of big ideas and action will also be rewarded. --Brooks Peck [via]
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Redemption Ark
by Alastair Reynolds

ISBN 044101173X (0-441-01173-X)
Softcover, Ace Books

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Late in the twenty-sixth century, the human race accidentally triggers the Inhibitors. Fifty years later, these alien killing machines-designed to detect intelligent life and destroy it-are fast approaching.

The only hope for humanity lies in the recovery of a secret cache of doomsday weapons-and a renegade named Clavain is determined to find them. But other factions want the weapons for their own devices.

And the weapons themselves have another agenda altogether... [via]
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Revolt in 2100
by Robert A. Heinlein

ISBN 0671655892 (0-671-65589-2)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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- Revolt in 2100: ISBN 0671655892 (0-671-65589-2)
  Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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River of Blue Fire
by Tad Williams

ISBN 0886777771 (0-88677-777-1)
Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated

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Book summary:
Tad Williams began his Otherland series with the massive City of Golden Shadow and continues it with the equally hefty River of Blue Fire. Williams says it will require four (big) books to tell his complex, multithreaded tale, and at the rate that the plot of this second novel moves, readers will see what he means. Not that the book is a slow read; in fact, River is as much a suspenseful page-turner as the first book.
As River opens, we join up again with the ragtag bunch of searchers trapped in an astoundingly detailed and frightfully dangerous virtual world known as Otherland. Lurking in disguise among the group is the brutally vicious serial killer Dread, trying to find information that will help him overthrow his Grail Brotherhood masters. The group follows a ubiquitous river through world after world, unable to go offline, and subject to the increasingly terrifying certainty that things in this supposedly virtual place are all too real. Meanwhile, Paul Jonas, an amnesic (but somehow pivotal) character fleeing from two sinister beings, finds more and more of his memory as he does his own Huck Finn river trip. As in the first novel, each new world that the characters enter, from Paleolithic Ice Age to something suspiciously like Oz, is fully realized and completely unpredictable.
Williams is a master at parceling out information to the reader in dribs and drabs, which is frustrating yet tantalizing, like a particularly good computer game. When the group is split up and the adventure divides further, the reader senses the author as a puppet master, following some incredibly complex flows of information. The best course is just to hang on and enjoy Williams's deft characterizations, lush descriptions, and wildly divergent plot. If you've ever been white-water rafting, you'll recognize the feeling. --Therese Littleton [via]
More editions of River of Blue Fire:
- River of Blue Fire: ISBN 0886777771 (0-88677-777-1)
  Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
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Sea of Silver Light
by Tad Williams

ISBN 0756400309 (0-7564-0030-9)
Softcover, Daw Books

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Book summary:
With Sea of Silver Light, Tad Williams completes his massive Otherland quartet, one of SF's more intriguing explorations of the eroding boundaries of the human and the nonhuman, the living and the dead. Otherland is a sequence that contains many secrets, and Williams plays fair by unpacking all of them in the final book. A group of adventurers searching for a cure for comatose children find themselves trapped in a sequence of virtual worlds, the only opponents of a conspiracy of the rich to live forever in a dream. Now, they are forced to make an uneasy alliance with their only surviving former enemy against his treacherous sidekick Johnny Wulgaru, a serial killer with a chance to play God forever.
Williams manages a vast cast of emotionally involving characters with considerable panache, but the real strength of the book is its endlessly questing intelligence; it is, among other things, an enquiry into the nature of storytelling as a way for human beings to give structure to their perceptions of the universe around them. It is as story that Sea of Silver Light ultimately works so well--involving us in the grueling descent of a vast mountain, the siege of an underground fortress, gun battles in a nightmare Wild West. Williams never neglects to tell us how things feel. He efficiently ties up every plot strand and convincingly reveals every secret in this large, complex plot. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk [via]
More editions of Sea of Silver Light:
- Sea of Silver Light: ISBN 0886779774 (0-88677-977-4)
  Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
- Sea of Silver Light: ISBN 0756400309 (0-7564-0030-9)
  Softcover, Daw Books
A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born
by Harry Harrison

ISBN 0553279424 (0-553-27942-4)
Softcover, Bantam Books

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- A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born: ISBN 0553279424 (0-553-27942-4)
  Softcover, Bantam Books
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Starman Jones
by Robert A. Heinlein

ISBN 1416505504 (1-4165-0550-4)
Softcover, Pocket Books

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Book summary:
Where were they? In fact, when were they? and how could they get back?

It's easy to stow away on an intergalactic spaceship, if you're a smart lad like Max Jones. But it's quite another thing when the spaceship touches down on an unknown planet after passage through a time warp...perhaps an unknown century. Especially when the spaceship's pilot dies, and his charts and are destroyed. Now survival was up to Max... [via]
More editions of Starman Jones:
- Starman Jones: ISBN 1567231578 (1-56723-157-8)
  Hardcover, Amereon Ltd
- Starman Jones: ISBN 1416505504 (1-4165-0550-4)
  Softcover, Pocket Books
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The Time Machine and the Invisible Man
by H. G. Wells, Alfred Mac Adam

ISBN 1593083254 (1-59308-325-4)
Hardcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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Book summary:
The Time Machine and The Invisible Man, by H. G. Wells, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

The Time Machine, H. G. Wellss first novel, is a tale of Darwinian evolution taken to its extreme. Its hero, a young scientist, travels 800,000 years into the future and discovers a dying earth populated by two strange humanoid species: the brutal Morlocks and the gentle but nearly helpless Eloi.

The Invisible Man mixes chilling terror, suspense, and acute psychological understanding into a tale of an equally adventurous scientist who discovers the formula for invisibilitya secret that drives him mad.

Immensely popular during his lifetime, H. G. Wells, along with Jules Verne, is credited with inventing science fiction. This new volume offers two of Wellss best-loved and most critically acclaimed scientific romances. In each, the author grounds his fantastical imagination in scientific fact and conjecture while lacing his narrative with vibrant action, not merely to tell a ripping yarn, but to offer a biting critique on the world around him. The strength of Mr. Wells, wrote Arnold Bennett, lies in the fact that he is not only a scientist, but a most talented student of character, especially quaint character. He will not only ingeniously describe for you a scientific miracle, but he will set down that miracle in the midst of a country village, sketching with excellent humour the inn-landlady, the blacksmith, the chemists apprentice, the doctor, and all the other persons whom the miracle affects.

Alfred Mac Adam teaches literature at Barnard College-Columbia University. He is a translator and art critic.
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More editions of The Time Machine and the Invisible Man:
- The Time Machine and the Invisible Man: ISBN 1593083254 (1-59308-325-4)
  Hardcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc
Ubik
by Philip K. Dick

ISBN 0679736646 (0-679-73664-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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More editions of Ubik:
- Ubik: ISBN 0839824785 (0-8398-2478-5)
  Hardcover, Gregg Press
- Ubik: ISBN 0679736646 (0-679-73664-6)
  Softcover, Random House Inc
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The White Dragon
by Anne McCaffrey

ISBN 0345341678 (0-345-34167-8)
Softcover, Ballantine Books

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Book summary:
A LEGEND? , A MYTH? , A FAIRY TALE? A NICE SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURE. [via]
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Zodiac
by Neal Stephenson

ISBN 0553573861 (0-553-57386-1)
Softcover, Bantam Books

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Book summary:
Believe it or not, some readers find Zodiac even more fun than Neal Stephenson's defining 1990s cyberpunk novel, Snow Crash. Zodiac is set in Boston, and hero Sangamon Taylor (S. T.) ironically describes his hilarious exploits in the first person. S. T. is a modern superhero, a self-proclaimed Toxic Spiderman. With stealth, spunk, and the backing of GEE (a non-profit environmental group) as his weapons, S. T. chases down the bad guys with James Bond-like Zen.
Cruising Boston Harbor with lab tests and scuba gear, S. T. rides in with the ecosystem cavalry on his 40-horsepower Zodiac raft. His job of tracking down poisonous runoff and embarrassing the powerful corporations who caused them becomes more sticky than usual; run-ins with a gang of satanic rock fans, a deranged geneticist, and a mysterious PCB contamination that may or may not be man-made--plus a falling-out with his competent ("I adore stress") girlfriend--all complicate his mission.
Stephenson/S. T.'s irreverent, facetious, esprit-filled voice make this near-future tale a joy to read. [via]
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