Search Worlds Without End

All it takes to change
the world is one visionary--and a team
of people to keep him alive.

Kevin Heber had it good. He had his own lab, a colleague he could trust, and an idea that could make him millions. Using his father's breakthrough technology in direct neural interfacing, he and his friend Taki have created a new entertainment media--live action adventure in micro mechanical scale. Bug Park: The ultimate out of body experience. And Taki's uncle wants to take it public.

Two problems:

Kevin and Taki are teenagers.

Somebody wants to squash Bug Park dead, and Kevin's father along with it.

When you're a teenager, even a teenager with a rich, indulgent parent, you don't have a lot of power. But when things get very small, the rules change. Physics changes. What every body knows, ain't so, the weak are mighty, and the mighty and the powerful can be brought down by those they thought they've already trodden underfoot. And even those who think they own the world can learn the hard way that innocence is not another word for "stupid."

A guided tour though the many worlds of a New York Times best-selling master of authentic science fact and riveting science fiction.

James P. Hogan stands among the foremost writers of science fiction today, and is renowned for his ability to combine accurate science from the cutting edge of present-day research with living, breathing characters in fast-paced, suspenseful stories. Catastrophes, Chaos & Convolutions gives Hogan's thousands of avid readers both a solid-chunk of high-quality science fiction and a look behind the scenes, as Hogan describes how his work came to be written, with biographical details. Add a dash of science fact articles, often on controversial topics (suppose, for example, that Velikovsky was right and the orthodox scientists wrong), and you have a volume that is an essential purchase for Hogan fans everywhere.

Table of Contents:

• The Guardians - (2005) - novelette
• Getting Better Connected - essay
• Impossible Rhymes - (1998) - poem
• Frog Fantasies - (1998) - essay
• Convolution - (2001) - novelette
• The Modern Medievalism - essay
• Global Flooding - (2000) - essay
• Word Games - (2000) - essay
• The Tree of Dreams - (2005) - novella
• Nuclear Waste - (1998) - essay
• Who Will Remember the Deep End? - (2003) - essay
• The Trouble With Utopias - essay
• Decontamination Squad - (2005) - shortfiction
• The Cosmic Power Grid - essay
• Sword of Damocles - novella
• Cryptic Crossword - (2000) - essay
• More Globes Warming - (2003) - essay
• Animal Quackers - (2004) - essay
• Take Two - (2001) - novelette
• Intelligence Test - essay
• Old, Unimproved Model - essay
• Children Need to Get Out and Play - (2003) - essay
• Pioneer 10 Signing Off - (2003) - essay
• The Falcon - (2005) - novelette
• Crossword Solution - essay

Eighteen years have passed since the first manned mission to Earth arrived from Venus. With the first colonists already establishing themselves across the bright, sunny world of clear blue skies and wonderlands of towering mountains and ice deserts, Kyal Reen arrives to join the Venusian scientific and archeological teams that are working to reconstruct the story of the mysterious and enigmatic extinct Terran race that once flourished there. Studies of Terran geology, scientific works, and ancient records show that Earth's early peoples witnessed terrifying cataclysmic cosmic events in skies very different from those seen today. In his travels among the Terran ruins, Kyal meets a biologist called Lorili, who is attempting to explain certain baffling similarities between some Terran and Venusian life forms that are irreconcilable with the established fact that Venus is a far younger planet than Earth. Formerly aligned with the "Progressive" activists back on Venus, Lorili admires the qualities of tenacity and determination written through Terran history. She constructs a theory of Venusians being descended from Terran ancestors. However, even allowing for the greatly exaggerated time scales that Terran science assigned to the processes of biological and planetary evolution, further research shows that there could have been no overlap. The Terrans were extinct long before life emerged on Venus. But there is a different, unexpected answer to the riddle. Lorili and Kyal will have to fight for their theory and their lives.

Early in the 21st century, Russia has heroically gathered its dwindling resources to build Valentina Tereshkova, a space station a mile in diameter. The orbiting space city is outwardly a peaceful Utopian experiment, but intelligence reports raise the ominous possibility that the space colony is actually a weapon built by the last heirs of the Soviet dictators.When scientist Paula Bryce and agent Lew McCain travel to the station to investigate, they become prisoners in the station's high-tech prison facilities. Escape seems impossible--but if they can't escape, Armageddon is inevitable....

THE KNIGHT IS A SAINT
(with a twist!)

At least you might think so if you read his curriculum vitae. You would swear in fact that this private eye of the future is honest, paying for what he gets, getting what he's paid for, with somehow a little extra for everybody to go around. Take this case, involving a matter transmitter which the inventor tested on himself--then found his bank accounts empty and his credit cards overflowing, all done by someone whose DNA looks just like that of the rightful owner...

But that wasn't all. There was also an archaeological expedition which had uncovered ruins that might solve the mystery of the Martian race that had vanished from the planet eons ago--except that a greedy interplanetary corporation was all set to bulldoze them over in pursuit of the bottom line unless a gallant knight--or Knight--could come galloping up on his charger. Then there were some people who were not amused at how the Knight had foiled a sure-fire scheme worth billions, and were looking for him with heavy muscle and heavier artillery...

People in trouble and people who are trouble just seem to populate his life--and thank goodness, because they are the very thing the Knight needs to keep his life from getting boring. And the bad guys never seem to know what hits them...

The world of the past eventually died in the conflagration toward which it had been doggedly heading. A more fragmented and diversified order has emerged from the ruins and technology has reappeared to a greater or lesser degree in some places and not at all in others.

Unique among them is the nation-state of Sofi, with an exceptional population that has rediscovered advanced science. However, as the old patterns that led to ruin before begin to reassert themselves across the rest of the world, a scientific-political movement within Sofi embarks on a years-long project to build a generation starship that will enable them to create their own world elsewhere.

The circumstances and thinking of future generations growing up in the totally unknown situation of a space environment cannot be known. Accordingly, the mission will include different groups of idealists, reformers, misfits, and dissidents who are not satisfied with the world-in-miniature that constitutes the original mother ship, to go out and build whatever they want. Hence, what arrives at the distant star generations hence will be a flotilla of variously run city states, frontier towns, religious monasteries, pleasure resorts, urban crushes, rural spreads, academic retreats, and who-knows what else.

The trouble began, of course, when all the old patterns that they thought they were getting away from started reappearing...

One of science fiction's foremost writers, James R Hogan here gives his thousands of readers a generous serving of high-quality SF, along with a look behind the scenes. Read how a young girl raised by robots learned her true destiny. Travel in time to learn that inventors are always misunderstood, even Og, the caveman. Worried about the idea of cloning? Hogan will really have you worrying. And much more.

Table of Contents:

• Silver Shoes for a Princess - (1979) - novelette
• Inside Story - essay
• Getting Here from There - essay
• The Pacifist - (1988) - shortstory
• Minds, Machines, and Evolution - (1981) - essay
• Discovering Hyperspace - essay
• Till Death Us Do Part - (1981) - novelette
• Fortune Cookie - essay
• More on Replication - essay
• Code of the Lifemaker: Prologue (excerpt) - (1988) - shortfiction
• The Revealed Word of God - essay
• Making Light - (1981) - shortstory
• How Long Should a Piece of String Be? - essay
• Assassin - (1978) - novelette
• Going Full-Time - essay
• Neander-Tale - (1980) - shortstory
• Know Nukes - essay
• All in a Name - essay
• Down to Earth - shortstory
• Merry Gravmas - shortstory
• Knowledge Is a Mind-Altering Drug - essay
• Earth Models--On a Plate - essay
• Generation Gap - shortstory
• Rules Within Rules - shortstory
• The Absolutely Foolproof Alibi - novelette

There's Something About Cyrene...

Two development teams have utterly vanished planet-side. A third is on the way to set things back on track. But ruthless mercenary "facilitator" Myles Callen and his crew are in for a surprise--for they about to encounter a planet as magnificently strange as the vast alien artifacts of Arthur C. Clarke or Stanislaw Lem's sentient oceans. And behind it all a new physical law so unexpected and fundamental that it may change the universe forever!

New York Times best-seller James P. Hogan delivers another stunningly visionary tale in the grandest tradition of SF!

Joe Kopeksky consults with physicists, psychics, and priests in his desperate attempt to discover why time has gone awry all over New York City.

In the early 21st century, the nations of the world have realigned themselves into new power blocs. The centers of new totalitarian empires are China and Japan, both bent on world domination. Unable to learn from the mistakes of the past, they are bound to repeat them in a new war that will make all earlier ones seem tame. Nor can the United States and Europe - both of which have become police states in their own right as a result of unending conflict with totalitarians - permit either Japan or China to win an outright victory, because for both sides the ultimate goal is the annihilation of the oppressor races of the West.

But in this nightmare world without a future, there may yet be a way out, thanks to quantum mechanics, a secret mechanism that dwells in the heart of human DNA, and a handful of dedicated scientists. A top-secret U.S. government program is initiated, involving a strange realm of physics uncovered following new insights to the fundamentals of quantum mechanics. Those in charge of the project care only for the political power the discovery might bring.

But a small maverick group of scientists work secretly on their own in pursuit of a vision they have glimpsed, a vision of a universe staggeringly more vast than anything previously imagined, made up of worlds where history takes every course conceivable, where the wars of the 20th century were fought with curiously different outcomes... And even a world where they never happen at all.

Who was he? He didn't know where he was, and had a strange feeling that the walls around him were stage props with nothing behind. A man in a doctor's smock entered and said, "Good morning, Joe. How are you feeling today?" So his name was Joe?Where was he? He was planting a vegetable patch. But when he turned over the first fork of soil there was nothing underneath -- just empty blackness.... What was he? He stared at himself in the mirror. He was twelve years younger and a good fifteen pounds leaner. He felt his face, ran fingers through his hair. This was insane....

Hogan is in the top rank of writers who write real science fiction about "real" science, and now he offers enthusiastic readers a special treat, giving them a guided tour through his many worlds. Learn new possibilities for smuggling through space travel; let Hogan explain how he personally brought about the fall of the Soviet Union; see what it would be like to rent-a-body of your choice; and much more.

Table of Contents:

• Madam Butterfly - (1997) - novelette
• How They Got Me at Baycon - essay
• Identity Crisis - (1981) - novelette
• Uprooting Again - essay
• Leapfrog - (1989) - novelette
• Boom and Slump in Space - essay
• What Really Brought Down Communism? - essay
• Last Ditch - (1992) - shortstory
• Sorry About That - essay
• AIDS Heresy and the New Bishops - essay
• Evolution Revisited - essay
• Zap Thy Neighbor - (1995) - novelette
• Ozone Politics - (1993) - essay
• Fact-Free Science - [Science Fact (Analog)] - (1995) - essay
• Out of Time - (1993) - novella

The girl had always been called Taya.Her companion Kort had always been with her. She accepted these things, and why not- they were her world. But Taya wondered why everything she could see beyond the Window was so different from all the things inside. She also wondered why the stars never changed if her world was really moving the way her metal friend Kort said it was...

Could Kort be wrong? That would be very strange, because Kort knew everyrhing, and he was sure they were moving-just as she was sure the stars were not.

In an America becoming repressive in the face of world tensions, Brad Clifford, a young mathematical physicist, had been virtually drafted from academia to work on defense projects. But Brad's true dedication was to bring about the unification of all fields and forces, and his theory was too wild for his superiors to take seriously. So he defied the political authorities and went AWOL to work with a fellow maverick scientist. They built the machine that his theory made possible - but the machine made all weapons impotent, and could either wreck the world or save it. And the Powers That Be wanted to control it for their own benefit...

Bernard Fallon is a former agent for British intelligence who has gone freelance. He is approached by his retired boss, Col. Marlow, who himself has joined Infinity Limited, a private group that works to liberate oppressed peoples from dictators and encourage them in the pursuit of capitalism.

Fallon refuses the colonel's request that he help unseat the corrupt government of the African nation of Zugenda, until an attempt on his life convinces him otherwise. Once in Africa, he embarks on an elaborate mission of cross and double-cross, appearing to serve scheming government factions while collaborating with an idealistic band of rebels.

Earth first! Terra for Terrans!

They've eased our problems. They've raised our standards of living. Their science has shown us that everything we thought we knew about the universe was wrong. And now the alien Hyadeans' high-tech gifts and their flair for social order promise to make a paradise of planet Earth.

To us, the Hyadeans seem a model of efficiency and clear thinking. But in Hyadean eyes, Earth's culture wallows in imagination and dreams, art forms, and concepts which would never have occurred to a citizen of their world. To some of the aliens, this demonstrates Earth's backwardness; others are increasingly fascinated by us.

But when a political assassination plunges his life into chaos, wealthy socialite and "fixer" Roland Cade discovers the dark underbelly of the alien presence. Our government obeys them. Our economy serves their wealthy masters. And the CounterAction "terrorists" on the news are truly fighting for freedom for Terrans and Hyadeans alike - and one of them is his ex-wife.

Soon Cade is caught up in a terrifying adventure that will take him around the globe, and a conflict that will threaten to destroy the world as it turns American against American - and Hyadean against Hyadean. Cade will find friends in unexpected places - among the agents of CounterAction, and among the aliens themselves. But he will also face deadly enemies closer than he ever could have feared....

In the apocalyptic year 2000, a United States safe beneath her web of defense lasers prepares to meet the future. The Constitutionals, a newly formed third party, have succeeded in uniting the country around a goal shared by all: unrestrained freedom. But all is not as simple as it seems, for with the loss of an air-to-ground missile and the attempted assassination of a brilliant young physicist, it becomes clear that a sinister power is determined to keep America from this glorious golden age.

Stephanie Carne has always felt that America's new direction was worth any price. But, when her look-alike sister is killed in an obvious case of mistaken identity, she realizes that the price may well be her very life. Plunged into a nightmare tangle of international deception and deceit, it is up to her to make sense of the myriad reflections that are The Mirror Maze. At stake is not only her life and the future of her country, but quite possibly much, much more...

Who is Richard Jarrow? Is he the unassuming, mild-mannered teacher he thinks himself to be or something much more? And how does the brilliant scientist named Ashling fit into the picture?

The Multiplex Man (winner of The Prometheus Award) is an intriguing thriller set in a future where every aspect of life on Earth is micromanaged by authorities who consider any deviation from the proscribed path as dangerous. Off-world colonies are considered dangerous enemies threatening to take Earth's precious resources. Jarrow must find Ashling who holds the key, not only to Jarrow's own identity, but to freedom itself.

When malcontents from a utopian 21st century use their time gate to transform Hitler into an invincible conqueror, a band of freedom-fighting Americans launches the Proteus project and builds a second time gate.

Midway through the 21st century, an integrated global computer network manages much of the world's affairs. A proposed major software upgrade - an artificial intelligence - will give the system an unprecedented degree of independent decision-making, but serious questions are raised in regard to how much control can safely be given to a non-human intelligence. In order to more fully assess the system, a new space-station habitat - a world in miniature - is developed for deployment of the fully operational system, named Spartacus. This mini-world can then be "attacked" in a series of escalating tests to assess the system's responses and capabilities. If Spartacus gets out of hand, the system can be shut down and the station destroyed... unless Spartacus decides to take matters into its own hands and take the fight to Earth.

When Murdoch was summoned to his grandfather's isolated Scottish castle, he had no idea of the old man's latest discovery -- nor where it would lead him. Sir Charles, a genius in far-out physics, had found a flew in the law of conservation of energy; in any process, an incredibly tiny increment of energy escaped -- back through time! Using this "tau" radiation, he could send messages into the past.

But Murdoch discovered records of messages he knew he had never sent. Were many futures possible? Could a message from Future X alter the past -- and thus wipe out Future X? But who would be foolish enough to send a message that could eliminate his own existence?

Then disaster struck. An advanced fusion reactor threatened to destroy all Earth. Grimly, Murdoch sat down to send back the words that would destroy everything he had learned to love.

The colonists on Chiron were educated entirely by robots, and really believe that stuff about liberty. Then ships from Earth arrive to take over - and find that those damned colonials have such an attitude...

Once, long ago, a robot factory-ship flew too near a star unexpectedly gone nova. After suffering extensive damage, it continued blindly for millennia.

A million years passed.... Then, in the 21st century, a colony ship destined for Mars was surreptitiously rerouted to Titan... and only the leaders of the military industrial complex knew why.

In addition to its flight crew, the interplanetary transport carried parapsycholoy researchers, linguists, psychologists, representatives of industry, an ambassador... and elite military units from several Western nations. Clearly something was up.

But no one was talking!

In this spectacular sequel to the acclaimed Code of the Lifemaker, James Hogan returns to the strange world of Titan, inhabited by bizarre self-conscious robots.

Little is known about the civilization that gave birth to these machine intelligences until scientists discover blocks of embedded computer code that appear to be strangely out of place. Reactivating the computer codes results in the re-awakening of ancient alien beings, creators of the strange robot culture, totally alien and immensely powerful. And they are unhappy at being restrained within the narrow confines of the machines they find themselves in. They would much rather be the masters of all.

But while the scientists are helpless against these mighty beings, Karl Zambendord, the media-star "psychic" and his support team prepare to meet the challenge.

The alien intelligences might be intellectually superior and super rational, but this also makes them hyper-materialistic and mechanistic in their outlook and hence, totally unprepared for such "higher" concepts as the spiritual, the mystical, and the transcendental. And selling such notions is precisely Zambendorf's stock in trade....

Among the Saturnian moons, farsighted individuals, working without help or permission from any government, have established a colony. They call themselves the Kronians, after the Greek name for Saturn. Operating without the hidebound restrictions of bureaucratic Earth, the colony is a magnet, attracting the best and brightest of the home world, and has been making important new discoveries.

But one of their claims - that they have found proof that the Solar System has undergone repeated cataclysms, and as recently as a few thousand years ago - flies in the face of the reigning dogma, and is under attack by the scientific establishment. Then the planet Jupiter emits a white-hot protoplanet as large as the Earth, which is hurtling sunwards like a gigantic comet that will obliterate civilization...

After a near miss by a white-hot protoplanet, Earth is devastated, civilisation as we know it has ended, and the survivors are reverting to barbarism. Only the Kronian colony on Saturn's moons preserves technology and human culture.

Landen Keene, taken off the Earth before the disaster, is a key figure in the Kronian efforts to rebuild civilization on Earth. Then he finds that other survivors from Earth miss the power they once wielded, and are bent on restoring the old privileges and hierarchy, with themselves at the top. And if subtle methods fail, they won't hesitate to use the violent tactics that served them well back on Earth...

Fifteen-year-old Linc Marani is from the wrong side of twenty-second century L.A.'s tracks. Everyone he knows is addicted to dope, booze, and the violence that masquerades as bravado in life on the streets. When a chance at some cold hard cash is offered to him by a slick associate in a fancy Cadillac, Linc jumps at the bait, only to find himself sentenced to a juvenile labor camp when the heist goes sour.

Labor camp, to Linc, means an aching, dawn-to-dusk bootcamp-style grind with no hope of escape or parole. He is about to give up and head out for a precisely regimented and miserable future when a mysterious psychologist offers him the chance of a lifetime. Can Linc overcome one of the worst neighborhoods on Earth by proving his worth on a mission beyond the stars?

Outward Bound is the sixth book in the Jupiter series. Patterned after the inspiring coming-of-age novels that Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov used to write, the Jupiter series has laid claim to that same imaginative drive and skillful storytelling that has delighted generations of science fiction readers worldwide.

The Minervan Experiment is an omnibus of the Giants series: Inherit the Stars, The Gentle Giants of Ganymede and Giants' Star.

Giants is a series of five sf books by James P. Hogan beginning in '77. The story follows several scientists who discover how humans originated on a planet named Minerva which orbited the Sol System between Mars and Jupiter. When Minerva was destroyed during a civil war a handful of people migrated from a lunar colony to Earth and colonized it. The colonists' descendants soon forgot their technology and where their ancestors had come from and began our current view of history.

The man on the moon was dead. They called him Charlie. He had big eyes, abundant body hair, and fairly long nostrils. His skeletal body was found clad in a bright red spacesuit, hidden in a rocky grave. They didn't know who he was, how he got there, or what had killed him. All they knew was that his corpse was fifty thousand years old -- and that meant this man had somehow lived long before he ever could have existed.

Long before the world of the Ganymeans blew apart millennia ago, the strange race of giants had already vanished. All that remained of them was a wrecked ship abandoned on a frozen moon of Jupiter. Now Earth's scientists are there, determined to ferret out the secret of the lost race. But when suddenly the Ganymeans return, they bring with them answers that will reveal the secret of our own as well.

Eons ago, a gentle race of giants fled the planet Minerva, leaving the ancestors of man to fend for themselves. Fifty thousand years ago, Minerva exploded, hurling its moon into an orbit about Earth.

In the twenty-first century, scientists Victor Hunt and Chris Danchekker, doing research on Ganymede, attract a small band of friendly aliens who are lost in time - and who begin to reveal something of the origin of mankind. Finally, man believed that he comprehended his place in the universe... until he learned of the Watchers in the stars. Now Earth finds itself in the middle of a power struggle between a benevolent alien empire and an off-shoot group of upstart humans who hate Earth more than any alien ever could.

Human society on Jevlen was falling apart -- and it looked as if JEVEX, the immense super-computer that managed all Jevlenese affairs, was at the heart of the matter. Except that the problems didn't stop when JEVEX was shut down. People were changing -- or being changed. It was almost as if the Jevlenese were being possessed...

Meanwhile, in a very different universe, where magic worked and nothing physical was predictable, holy men caught glimpses of another place, a place where the shape of objects remained unchanged by motion, and cause led directly and logically to effect. And the best part was that when the heart was pure, the mind was focused, and circumstances were right, some lucky souls could actually make the transition to that other universe. If only they all could...

TRANSPORTED ACROSS THE MUILTIVERSE.

Over light-years of space and 50,000 years back in time, to create a new history.... Only to find there was no way back.

Earth is adapting to a future of amicable coexistence with the advanced aliens from Thurien, descended from ancestors who once inhabited Minerva, a vanished planet of the Solar System. The plans of the distantly related humans on the rogue world Jevlen to eliminate their ancient Terran rivals and take over the Thurien system of worlds have been thwarted, but the mystery remains of how it was possible for the fleeing Jevlenese leaders to have been flung back across space and time to reappear at Minerva before the time of its destruction.

Victor Hunt and a group of his colleagues travel to Thurien to conduct a joint investigation with the alien scientists into the strange physics of interconnectedness between the countless alternate universes that constitute ultimate reality. When their discoveries lead first to bizarre communication with bewildered counterparts in other universes, and thence to the possibility of physical travel, the notion is conceived of sending a mission back to the former world of Minerva with the startling objective of creating a new family of realities in which its destruction is avoided. But Imares Broghuilio, the deposed Jevlenese leader, along with several thousand dedicated followers with five heavily armed starships, are already there. And they have a score to settle.