In the new millennium, what secrets lay beyond the far reaches of the universe? What mysteries belie the truths we once held to be self evident? The world of science fiction has long been a porthole into the realities of tomorrow, blurring the line between life and art. Now, in the very best SF authors explore ideas of a new world. This venerable collection brings together short stories from award winning authors and masters of the field such as Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, Damien Broderick, Elizabeth Bear, Paul McAuley and John Barnes. And with an extensive recommended reading guide and a summation of the year in science fiction, this annual compilation has become the definitive must-read anthology for all science fiction fans and readers interested in breaking into the genre.In this collection of thirty-five science fiction stories from 2011, Gardner Dozois once again identifies the best stories of the year.
This fourth volume of the year's best science fiction and fantasy features thirty stories by some of the genre's greatest authors, including Jonathan Carroll, Neil Gaiman, Kij Johnson, Kelly Link, Paul McAuley, RJ Parker, Robert Reed, Rachel Swirsky, Catherynne M. Valente, and many others.Selecting the best fiction from Asimov's, F&SF, Strange Horizons, Subterranean, Tor.com, and other top venues, is your guide to magical realms and worlds beyond tomorrow.
In the future there is no want, no war, no disease or ill-timed death. The world is a paradise — and then, in a moment, it ends. The council that controls the Net fragments and goes to war, leaving people who have never known a moment of want or pain wondering how to survive.
Jack Havig, a man born with the ability to move at will through the past and the future of mankind, must save the world from a doomed future of tyranny before his time runs out.Nominated for Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1973.
THIS IS NOT A GAME is a novel built around the coolest phenomenon in the world.That phenomenon is known as the Alternate Reality Game, or ARG. It's big, and it's getting bigger. It's immersive and massively interactive, and it's spreading through the Internet at the speed of light.To the player, the Alternate Reality Game has no boundaries. You can be standing in a parking lot, or a shopping center. A pay phone near you will ring, and on the other end will be someone demanding information.You'd better have the information handy.ARGs combine video, text adventure, radio plays, audio, animation, improvisational theater, graphics, and story into an immersive experience.Now, one of science fiction's most acclaimed writers, Walter Jon Williams, brings this extraordinary phenomenon to life in a pulse-pounding thriller. This is not a game. This is a novel that will blow your mind.
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 traveler 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.Attention: the text lacks aithor’s italic.
The novel concerns a trio of alien explorers, each one surgically altered so that they outwardly appear human, who find themselves separated, and permanently stranded on Earth, after their ship explodes while hovering in low orbit. Each of the aliens is injured during the accident, and all are taken in and nursed back to health by kindly human beings.
In Thomson’s The Color of Distance (1995), Dr. Juna Saari was accidentally abandoned on the planet Tiangi. Despite life-threatening allergic reactions to that world’s life-forms, she managed to survive thanks to the biological wizardry of the Tendu, Tiangi’s intelligent native species, who radically altered her body to thrive in their environment. Now, returned to human form, Juna comes back to Earth accompanied by two Tendu. They must learn aboard ship, while visiting a series of Earth orbital habitats, and then on Earth to adapt to a human environment, but it isn’t clear whether humanity will accept ...
A novelization of the 1971 film directed by George Lucas.The perfectly controlled society.Its citizens are conceived in test tubes, nourished in vats, educated intravenously, watched by monitors, made docile by drugs.The Adam of this 25th century Eden is THX 1138; the Eve is his beautiful roommate LUH 3417. Having yielded to the temptation not to take her state-prescribed drugs, she lures THX into committing the same crime. How could anyone know? she argues.But the electronic monitor is all-seeing; instead of archangels with flaming swords there are police robots with cattle prods—and if there are any gates to this Eden, no one knows where…
Planeta Tiamat nale?y do konfederacji skolonizowanych przez ludzko?? ?wiat?w, zwanej Hegemoni?. Faktyczn? w?adz? dzier?y technokracja z planety Kharemough. Tiamat jest cywilizacyjnie zacofana, pokryta w wi?kszo?ci oceanem, z osadnictwem rozlokowanym na licznych archipelagach. Na Tiamat wyst?puje jednak wielkie bogactwo — woda ?ycia, wyci?g z krwi mer?w — morskich zwierz?t. Jej za?ywanie pozwala przed?u?a? ?ycie.Ze wzgl?d?w astronomicznych Tiamat ma tylko dwie pory roku, trwaj?ce po oko?o 150 lat — Lato i Zim?. Podczas Lata rz?dz? Letniacy, lud zabobonny, odrzucaj?cy technik?, a Zim? Zimacy, lud ...
En Borthan, un planeta colonizado cientos de a?os atr?s, la humanidad vive en paz, sin embargo el precio pagado parece demasiado elevado: nada es considerado m?s obsceno que el compartir los propios sentimientos con otro humano, y se ha prohibido el uso de la palabra “yo”. Kinnall Darival es un hombre que lo tiene todo en la vida para ser feliz. Solo una cosa le perturba: las convenciones sociales le impiden expresar sus sentimientos a la persona amada. Cuando conoce a Scxhweiz, un comerciante de la Tierra, este le ofrece una sustancia m?gica capaz de derribar los muros entre las almas de los hombres. El sistema de valores de Darival se trastoca y experimenta cada vez m?s dudas que le conducir?n a ser un proscrito entre los suyos y a provocar el dolor entre aquellos a los que ama.
