Science Fiction Sci-Fi Books

Book SynopsisCarialle was born so physically disadvantaged that her only chance for life was as a shell person. Like others before her, she decided to become a spaceship. With her brawn Keff, they search for intelligent beings. When they arrive on the planet Ozran, nothing is as it seems.

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Book SynopsisCircling the Sun, under the caverns of Mercury, Expedition Sundiver prepares for the most momentous voyage in our history. A journey into the boiling inferno of the sun, to seek our destiny in the cosmic order of life.For in a universe in which no species can reach sentience without being 'uplifted' by a patron race, it seems that only mankind has reached for the stars unaided. And now, the greatest mystery of all may be explained...Sundiver is the first book in David Brin's magnificent Uplift series.Trade ReviewThe Uplift books are as compulsive reading as anything ever published in the genre. * John Clute, THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION *His best stories surge forward with tremendous energy, each one avid to find some extrapolated consequence of its premise which will startle and challenge the reader. * INTERZONE *

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Book SynopsisAs galactic armadas clash in quest of the ancient fleet of the Progenitors, a brutal alien race seizes the dying planet of Garth. The various uplifted inhabitants must battle their overlords of face ultimate extinction. At stake is the existence of Terran society and Earth and the fate of the entire Five Galaxies.THE UPLIFT WAR is the third book in David Brin's magnificent Uplift series. Winner of the Hugo award when it was first published, it is a sweeping, brilliantly crafted story of adventure and wonder from one of the greatest writers of science fiction.Trade ReviewBrin's storytelling abilites come to the fore in THE UPLIFT WAR. He handles a large cast extremely well, and the course of the war is laid out to make a thrilling, nail-biting storyline that moves at neckbreak speed. * VECTOR *

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Book SynopsisThe planet called Harmony had been settled by humans nearly forty years before. The colony had been placed under the care of an artificial intelligence, the Oversoul, high in orbit. This master computer had one overriding command: guard the people of Harmony.But now the Oversoul is itself in danger. Soon, within a thousand years, catastrophic war will break out on Harmony unless the Oversoul can be repaired. The master computer has determined that it must be taken back to lost Earth; someone on Harmony must be given back the knowledge of space travel in order to save the planet from destruction. For one family, about to be caught up in an approaching civil war, life will change for ever.More information on this book and others can be found on the Orbit website at www.orbitbooks.co.uk

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Book Synopsis'Science fiction's freshest new writer...MacLeod is a fiercely intelligent, prodigiously well-read author who manages to fill his books with big issues without weighing them down.' - SALON'Engaged, ingenious, and wittily partisan, Ken MacLeod is a one-man revolution, SF's Billy Bragg.' - Asimov's SFEllen May Ngwethu is a young woman with centuries of experience, no morality and the true knowledge. The world she knows is about to end.The Cassini Division, elite defence force of the Solar Union, sends her on a search for the man whose knowledge could save it. A search that takes her from space to the ruins of London, and back; from the margins of her socialist-anarchist world to its most dangerous edge. The Division's orbital forts around Jupiter are the front line in a centuries-long conflict with post-human AIs, whose intentions are unknown but whose powers once extended to shattering Ganymede and building a wormhole bridge to the far future. Their radio-borne viruses blanket the Solar System, keeping most of its resources from humanity's grasp.But are the post-humans less hostile than they seem?The acclaimed third novel from one of the genre's most exciting new talents.Books by Ken MacLeod:Fall RevolutionThe Star FractionThe Stone CanalThe Cassini DivisionThe Sky RoadEngines of LightCosmonaut KeepDark LightEngine CityCorporation Wars TrilogyDissidenceInsurgenceEmergenceNovelsThe Human FrontNewton's WakeLearning the WorldThe Execution ChannelThe Restoration GameIntrusionDescentTrade ReviewA rare but successful fusion of hard SF, space opera and serious political speculation -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLYDeliciously ironic, brilliantly imagined, MacLeod's witty and intelligent yarn packs a tremendous wallop. More, please! -- KIRKUS REVIEWSA brilliant novel of ideas, frequently funny, always ingenious. Ken MacLeod brings dramatic life to some of the core issues of technology and humanity. -- VERNOR VINGEFascinating...The kind of high-spirited and thought-provoking romp through the solar system unseen since the heyday of John Varley. And it reads at lightning speed. -- ROBERT CHARLES WILSONThis man's going to be a major writer. * Iain M. Banks *Prose sleek and fast as the technology it describes...Watch this man go global. * Peter F. Hamilton *Great sci-fi. * FOCUS *MacLeod still writes with charm and wit. * SFX *

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Book SynopsisIsaac Asimov's Foundation series is known to millions of readers throughout the world. Before he died, however, he made it clear that there were areas he had not explored. Greg Bear now takes up that challenge and an epic story of galactic intrigue and incredible science takes a staggering new twist. Hari Seldon's life's work is about to come to an end. The science of psychohistory he has developed can be refined no more, and the plans for the Foundation, which will steer mankind through the dark centuries ahead, are complete. But it may all be for nothing if the political factions on Trantor succeed in destroying Hari's work. Accused of treason against the Galactic Empire, the most important trial of all time is about to begin ...Trade ReviewIt took a long time for the future to get history. Robert Heinlein did a chart. Then, in 1942, Isaac Asimov began the Foundation series, and the future took shape: hills, chasms, paths, cities, dark ages and bright. It was a story we could walk into. Now it's time to take another step John Clute This is book number two in the new Second Foundation Trilogy being written by hard science-fiction authors Gregory Benford, Greg Bear and David Brin, otherwise known as the "Killer B's". In this book, Bear continues where Benford's Foundation's Fear left Craig Engler, AMAZON.CO.UK REVIEW

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Book Synopsis''He is writing revolutionary science fiction. A nova has appeared in our sky.'' - Kim Stanley Robinson''Engaged, ingenious, and wittily partisan, Ken MacLeod is a one-man revolution, SF''s Billy Bragg'' - ASIMOV''S SFIn a newer world order where the peace process is deadlier than the wars ...Moh Kohn is a security mercenary with a smart gun, reflexes to die for and memories he doesn''t want to reach.Jamis Taine is a scientist with a new line in memory drugs, anti-tech terrorists on her case and the STASIS cops on her trail.Jordan Brown is a teenage atheist with a guilty conscience, a wad of illicit cash and an urgent need to get a life.Between them they''ve started the countdown to the final confrontation, as the cryptic Star Fraction assembles its codes, the Army of the New Republic prepares its offensive and Space Defence lines up its laser weapons for the hour of the Watchmaker ...The debut novel from a major force in SF, the first of his novels to be shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award.Books by Ken MacLeod:Fall RevolutionThe Star FractionThe Stone CanalThe Cassini DivisionThe Sky RoadEngines of LightCosmonaut KeepDark LightEngine CityCorporation Wars TrilogyDissidenceInsurgenceEmergenceNovelsThe Human FrontNewton''s WakeLearning the WorldThe Execution ChannelThe Restoration GameIntrusionDescent

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Book SynopsisEon's infinitely long artifical universe, the Way, contains a multitude of worlds. In its early days a beautiful place, Lamarckia, has been found. Over four thousand dissidents emigrate there illegally and the young Hexamon agent, Olmy, is sent to investigate the people and their new world.Lamarckia's evolution is stunning and unimaginable. Like nothing Olmy has ever seen it leads him into the Heart of Darkness and beyond, to an understanding of Earth's legacy.Trade ReviewHe is the face of SF for the nineties. * FEAR *Greg Bear has majored in vastness. Infinity is his playground... Whatever Bear touches turns epic. * THE TIMES *

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Book Synopsis'Exciting...Accessible to the average reader as well as the hardcore SF fan. This is a work sure to keep the reader on the edge of her seat.' - Romantic Times Bookclub'For my money, Ken MacLeod is the current champion of the very smartest kind of New Space Opera... every variation on his themes produces something worth re-reading.' - LocusCenturies after its catastrophic Deliverance, humanity is again reaching into space. And one young scholar working in the space ship yard, Clovis colha Gree, could make the difference between success and failure. For his mysterious lover, Merrial, has seduced him into the idea of extrapolating the ship's future from the dark archives of the past.A past in which, centuries before, Myra Godwin faced the end of a different space age - her rockets redundant, her people rebellious, and her borders defenceless against the Sino-Soviet Union. As Myra appealed to the falling empires of the West for help, she found history turning on her own dubious past - and on her present decisions. Decisions which, centuries later, will determine the future of the new space age. Merrial's people, the itinerant computer engineers, know this. And they know that the truth they seek lies within the secret files left by Myra Godwin.Set hundreds of years in the future, THE SKY ROAD is the astonishing story of the dawn of a new space age, from the most exciting British SF author to have emerged in recent years.Books by Ken MacLeod:Fall RevolutionThe Star FractionThe Stone CanalThe Cassini DivisionThe Sky RoadEngines of LightCosmonaut KeepDark LightEngine CityCorporation Wars TrilogyDissidenceInsurgenceEmergenceNovelsThe Human FrontNewton's WakeLearning the WorldThe Execution ChannelThe Restoration GameIntrusionDescentTrade ReviewKen MacLeod doesn't just create believable futures--he breaks them down to explain what makes them tick. -- WIREDScience fiction's freshest new writer...MacLeod is a fiercely intelligent, prodigiously well-read author who manages to fill his books with big issues without weighing them down. -- SALONKen MacLeod brings dramatic life to some of the core issues of technology and humanity. -- VERNOR VINGEFor my money, Ken MacLeod is the current champion of the very smartest kind of New Space Opera: a relentlessly engaged thinker about nitty-gritty political-economic-social matters who also operates on the Romantic end of the genre by imagining worlds that offer vast (and even godlike) possibilities for humankind. -- LOCUSIn the sequence that started with The Star Fraction, MacLeod has created a future where the crucial historical event is left-wing students arguing about anarchism in the 70s. On this turns the destruction and renaissance of civilisation, here and elsewhere in the human galaxy. In his fourth book The Sky Road he productively fills in some of the gaps. This is the story of Myra, Trot turned entrepreneur, whose nuclear deterrence-for-hire is so crucial to the event known by some as the Fall and others as the Deliverance. It is also the story of young Clovis, part-time worker in the yard building the first spaceship for centuries, part-time scholar trying to find out what Myra the Deliverer was really like. MacLeod's quirky and intelligent take on the world of power politics--the paradoxes that arise when ideology is made praxis--and his charmingly cynical gift for engaging and engaged protagonists, are something to which the SF audience has become used. What this book also has is a profound sense of the beauty of a simpler and stiller world; MacLeod's real gift is his capacity to see all sides of a question, even when he is sure of the answer. * Roz Kaveney, AMAZON.CO.UK *MacLeod is up there with Banks and Hamilton as one of the British scifi authors you absolutely have to read * SFX *

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Book Synopsis''This series continues to impress.'' - Kirkus Reviews''As always, Mr. Card writes with energy and conviction.'' - The New York Times Book Review''The man''s versatility of style, subject and approach makes him unique in the SF field.'' - Anne McCaffreyAbove the planet Harmony, the computer Oversoul watches. But its systems are failing and the only hope of repair lies a thousand light-years away on the planet Earth, which was left forty million years ago ...Nafai and his family have been chosen to make the great journey home, but most of them do so grudgingly. Their anger and hatred will make the trek across the desert wastes to the long-abandoned spaceport both harder and more deadly.The third book in the acclaimed Homecoming series by Orson Scott Card, now reissued with stunning new artwork.Books by Orson Scott Card:Alvin Maker novelsSeventh SonRed ProphetPrentice AlvinAlvin JourneymanHeartfireThe Crystal CityEnder Wiggin SagaEnder''s GameSpeaker for the DeadXenocideChildren of the MindEnder in ExileHomecomingThe Memory of the EarthThe Call of the EarthThe Ships of the EarthEarthfallEarthbornFirst Formic War (with Aaron Johnston)Earth UnawareEarth AfireEarth Awakens

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Book SynopsisThere is great social tension in the aftermath of ‘Tiananmen Square’, uncertainty about political and economic policy and the constant burden of over-population. Serious flooding of the Yellow River adds more than a hundred million to the ‘floating population’ of destitute and semi-destitute peasant refugees. In addition, the rapid development of the market economy, and other reforms, have led to the prosperity of some but not in all provinces. The bastion of conservative opposition to reform remains in the Army, especially among the old revolutionaries. An ambitious Lieutenant-General (Wang Feng), backed by the highest-ranking officer of the Army, now retired, who still wields immense, informal power, arranges for the assassination of the reformist Secretary General of the Communist Party who is also President of China. Seven of the rich southern provinces subsequently declare independence because the anti-reform, anti-commercial new government threatens their prosperity… Taiwan sees this as an opportunity to ‘re-conquer the mainland’, but Wang Feng orders a pre-emptive nuclear attack on Taipei... Members of the Taiwanese army then capture a nuclear missile base in south China and fire a missile at Beijing, which lands in Russia by mistake…

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