Science fiction

Book SynopsisGeorge O'Connor is a Greek mythology buff and a classic superhero comics fan, and he's out to remind us how much our pantheon of superheroes (Superman, Batman, the X-Men, etc) owes to mankind's ORIGINAL superheroes: the Greek pantheon. In Olympians, O'Connor draws from primary documents to reconstruct and retell classic Greek myths. But these stories aren't sedate, scholarly works. They're action-packed, fast-paced, high-drama adventures, with monsters, romance, and not a few huge explosions. O'Connor's vibrant, kinetic art brings ancient tales to undeniable life, in a perfect fusion of super-hero aesthetics and ancient Greek mythology. Volume 1 of Olympians, Zeus: King of the Gods, introduces readers to the ruler of the Olympian Pantheon, telling his story from his boyhood to his ascendance to supreme power.

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Book SynopsisAlfred Bester's first science fiction novel since The Stars My Destination was a major event-a fast-moving adventure story set in Earth's future. A band of immortal-as charming a bunch of eccentrics as you'll ever come across-recruit a new member, the brilliant Cherokee physicist Sequoya Guess. Dr. Guess, with group's help, gain control of Extro, the supercomputer that controls all mechanical activity on Earth. They plan to rid Earth of political repression and to further Guess's researches-which may lead to a great leap in human evolution to produce a race of supermen. But Extro takes over Guess instead and turns malevolent. The task of the merry band suddenly becomes a fight in deadly earnest for the future of Earth.

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisThe definitive edition of the complete works of the grand dame of American science fiction begins with this volume gathering two novels and her collected storiesAn original and eerily prophetic writer, Octavia E. Butler used the conventions of science fiction to explore the dangerous legacy of racism in America in harrowingly personal terms. She broke new ground with books that featured complex Black female protagonists—“I wrote myself in,” she would later recall—establishing herself as one of thepioneers of the Afrofuturist aesthetic. In 1995 she became the first science fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, in recognition of her achievement in creating new aspirations for the genre and for American literature. This first volume in the Library of America edition of Butler’s collected works opens with her masterpiece,  Kindred, one of the landmark American novels of the last half century. Its heroine, Dana, a Black woman, is pulled back and forth between the present and the pre–Civil War past, where she finds herself enslaved on the plantation of a white ancestor whose life she must save to preserve her own. In Fledgling, an amnesiac discovers that she is a vampire, with a difference: she is a new, experimental birth with brown skin, giving her the fearful ability to go out in sunlight. Rounding out the volume are eight short stories and five essays—including two never before collected, plus a newly researched chronology of Butler’s life and career and helpful explanatory notes prepared by scholar Gerry Canavan. Butler’s friend, the writer and editor Nisi Shawl, provides an introduction.

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Book SynopsisTogether for the first time, all 5 standalone novels from the Hugo and Nebula award–winning writer who reinvented science fiction, including one restored to printSpans from the 1971 classic The Lathe of Heaven to her career-crowning 2008 masterpiece LaviniaThis 7th volume in the definitive Library of America edition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s works presents 5 remarkable standalone novels that showcase her boundless creativity and literary range.In the Locus Award–winning The Lathe of Heaven (1971), one of Le Guin’s most admired works of science fiction, George Orr begins have effective dreams: dreams that change reality itself. But when he turns to the sleep researcher William Haber for help, the doctor sees an opportunity to use Orr’s strange gift for his own ends.A former Terran prison colony on the planet Victoria seems destined for revolution in The Eye of the Heron (1978), when the authoritarian leaders in the City try to assert control over the peaceful farmers who have been sent to live around them.The Beginning Place (1980) is a parable-like story in which Hugh and Irena have both found their way to the Beginning Place, a gateway to another world. The two initially become enemies, but must learn to work together when the utopia they’ve found turns out to have a shadow.The long out-of-print Searoad: Chronicles of Klatsand (1991) is a Winesburg, Ohio-like series of linked stories set in a small vacation town on the Oregon coast, where some of the characters have come for a weekend and some for longer, but all are pilgrims in the grip of inexpressible longings.And Le Guin’s final, powerfully feminist novel, Lavinia (2008), reimagines Virgil's Aeneid from the perspective of a woman who, in poet's telling, never speaks a word. Special features include an appendix presenting three essays by Le Guin related to the novels, previously unseen hand-drawn maps by author herself, helpful annotation, and a chronology of Le Guin's life and career.Brought together here for the first time, these 5 remarkable standalone novels showcase a Hugo and Nebula Award–winning master at her very best.

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