Search Worlds Without End

When a nuclear missile launched by a rogue North Korean faction explodes in space the resulting shockwave destroys the world's satellites, throwing global communication into chaos. The United States military satellites, designed to withstand such an assault, show that two more missiles are sitting on the launch pad in North Korea, ready to be deployed. Faced with the threat of a thermonuclear attack, the United States has only one possible defense: Able One.

ABL-1, or Able One, is a modified 747 fitted with a high-powered laser able to knock out missiles in flight. But both the laser's technology and the jet's crew are untested. What was originally to be a training flight with a skeleton crew turns into a desperate race to destroy the two remaining nukes. Will Able One's experimental technology be enough to prevent World War III-especially when it becomes clear that a saboteur is onboard?

Able One is a timely thrill-ride by one of science fiction's most respected novelists.

A team of scientists has gone to Titan, Saturn's largest moon, to study alien structures that were abandoned thousands of years ago.

Ben Bova sets forth his vision of a future where conflicting military forces work together to colonize the stars. Driven by the desire to preserve world peace and eliminate economic need, these future settlers and soldiers represent the best of mankind.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword (Battle Station) - essay
• Battle Station - novella
• Space Weapons - (1985) - essay
• Nuclear Autumn - (1985) - shortstory
• Freedom from Fear - (1984) - essay
• Béisbol - (1985) - shortstory
• The Jefferson Orbit - (1985) - essay
• Isolation Area - (1984) - novelette
• Space Station - (1985) - essay
• Primary - (1985) - shortstory
• MHD - (1987) - essay
• Born Again - (1984) - shortstory
• Laser Propulsion - (1984) - essay
• The Sightseers - (1973) - shortstory
• Telefuture - (1985) - essay
• Foeman - (1969) - novella
• Symbolism in Science Fiction - (1984) - essay

Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, August 1970. The story can also be found in the Partners in Wonder (1971, Ellison) and Future Crime (1990, Bova).

Seventeen hard science fiction tales by today's top authors

Hard science fiction is the literature of change, rigorously examining the impact--both beneficial and dangerous--of science and technology on humanity, the future, and the cosmos. As science advances, expanding our knowledge of the universe, astounding new frontiers in storytelling open up as well.

In Carbide Tipped Pens, over a dozen of today's most creative imaginations explore these frontiers, carrying on the grand tradition of such legendary masters as Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and John W. Campbell, while bringing hard science fiction into the 21st century by extrapolating from the latest scientific developments and discoveries. Ranging from ancient China to the outer reaches of the solar system, this outstanding collection of original stories, written by an international roster of authors, finds wonder, terror, and gripping human drama in topics as diverse as space exploration, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, climate change, alternate history, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, interplanetary war, and even the future of baseball.

From tattoos that treat allergies to hazardous missions to Mars and beyond, from the end of the world to the farthest limits of human invention, Carbide Tipped Pens turns startling new ideas into state-of-the art science fiction.

Includes stories by Ben Bova, Gregory Benford, Robert Reed, Aliette de Bodard, Jack McDevitt, Howard Hendrix, Daniel H. Wilson, and many others!

Table of Contents:

• Preface - essay by Eric Choi
• The Blue Afternoon That Lasted Forever - shortstory by Daniel H. Wilson
• A Slow Unfurling of Truth - novelette by Aliette de Bodard
• Thunderwell - novelette by Doug Beason
• The Circle - novelette by Cixin Liu
• Old Timer's Game - shortstory by Ben Bova
• The Snows of Yesteryear - novelette by Jean-Louis Trudel
• Skin Deep - novelette by Leah Petersen and Gabrielle Harbowy
• Lady with Fox - novelette by Gregory Benford
• Habilis - novelette by Howard V. Hendrix
• The Play's the Thing - (2013) - shortstory by Jack McDevitt
• Every Hill Ends with Sky - shortstory by Robert Reed
• She Just Looks that Way - novelette by Eric Choi
• Siren of Titan - novelette by David DeGraff
• The Yoke of Inauspicious Stars - novelette by Kate Story
• Ambiguous Nature - novelette by Carl Frederick
• The Mandelbrot Bet - shortstory by Dirk Strasser
• Recollection - shortstory by Nancy Fulda
• About the Contributors - essay by uncredited

Bova offers a new collection of wide-ranging science fiction stories, essays about the onrushing future, and observations about the craft of SF itself.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword - (1993) - essay
• The Man Who Hated Gravity - (1989) - shortstory
• Crisis of the Month - (1988) - shortstory
• Sepulcher - (1992) - novelette
• Fitting Suits - (1990) - shortstory
• To Touch a Star - (1987) - shortstory
• Brothers - (1987) - shortstory
• Interdepartmental Memorandum - shortstory
• World War 4.5 - (1990) - shortstory
• Answer, Please Answer - (1962) - shortstory
• The Mask of the Rad Death - (1993) - shortstory
• Bushido - (1992) - shortstory
• Thy Kingdom Come - (1993) - novella
• 2042: A Cautiously Pessimistic View - (1991) - essay
• Science in Science Fiction - (1990) - essay
• Will Writing Survive? - (1989) - essay
• What Works for Me - And What I Work for - (1991) - essay
• John Campbell and the Modern SF Idiom - (1986) - essay
• Science, Fiction and Faith - (1990) - essay

He's passed his college entrance exams with flying colors. He can do pretty much whatever he wants. But what teenager Ron Morgan wants most is for his father to quit telling him what to do. Quit running his life. What better way to unwind than having a last blowout on Labor Day in the domed playground of Fun City: Manhattan.

Inside the dome, however, Ron loses his wallet and identity card. Worse, he's trapped when the dome closes for the season. There's no way out. Gangs roam the street. Food is scarce. Ron is on his own.

All Ron wanted was some fun. He'll be lucky to escape New York alive....

In the Future, Everything is Different. But Nothing Has Changed.

The Earth has been poisoned by pollution, choked by overpopulation, and ravaged by the mindless greed of power-hungry corporations. A fragile peace is threatened by landless revolutionaries and global anarchy seems imminent.

Yet a single ray of hope remains. . .

Island One is a celestial utopia, and David Adams is its most perfect creation - a man with a brain as advanced as any computer and a body free of human frailties. But David is a prisoner -- a captive of the colony that created him -- destined to spend the days of his life in an island-sized cylinder that circles a doomed and desperate home planet. Thousands of miles below him, a world trembles; its people cringe in terror and despair in anticipation of an impending apocalypse. And as Earth's boundaries, fate has cast one extraordinary human in the role of savior. For David Adams has a plan -- one that will ultimately ensure the salvation of his species . . . or its annihilation.

Computer genius Carl Lewis has invented the "Cyberbook", an electronic device that instantly and inexpensively brings the written word to the masses. But not everyone warms to Carl's ideas. Add corporate spies, authors threatening to strike, and a wave of mysterious murders, and you have Ben Bova at his best.

In a USAF lab in Ohio, combat veteran and test pilot Jerry Adair experiences for the first time flight simulation enhanced by Virtual Reality. He dies.

At school in Orlando, Florida, twelve-year-old Angela, gliding through the VR underwater wonderland, finds the mermaid princess watching over her father. He is dead.

Jace Lowrey is the brilliant one. Dan Santorini, the quiet, regular guy. As a team they are unbeatable. Their ideas work. Up into beyond-the-state-of-the-art reality.

Ideas that a corporation - or a government agency - would kill for. Realities that can overwhelm...

No one could move without being followed.

No one could speak without being overheard.

The almost sentient computer system was everywhere.

The prison was billed as "escape-proof," and sofar that was true.

But Danny Romano was not about to believe it... the jail hadn't been built that could hold him. Danny would escape.

Even if he had to permanently change his identity to do it.

Table of Contents:

• Forecast: The Worlds Modeler - (1984) - essay
• Escape! (introduction) - (1984) - essay
• Escape! - (1970) - novella
• A Slight Miscalculation - (1971) - shortstory
• Vince's Dragon (introduction) - (1984) - essay
• Vince's Dragon - (1981) - shortstory
• The Last Decision (introduction) - (1984) - essay
• The Last Decision - (1978) - novelette
• Men of Good Will - (1964) - shortstory with Myron R. Lewis
• Blood of Tyrants (introduction) - (1984) - essay
• Blood of Tyrants - (1970) - novelette
• The Next Logical Step - (1962) - shortstory
• The Shining Ones (introduction) - (1984) - essay
• The Shining Ones - (1974) - novelette
• Sword Play - (1975) - shortstory
• A Long Way Back (introduction) - (1984) - essay
• A Long Way Back - (1960) - shortstory
• Stars, Won't You Hide Me? - (1966) - shortstory

Danny wasn't a bad kid at heart, but the government put Danny in prison for a long list of crimes, with no end to his sentence. He had to get back to his girl. He had to get back to Laurie. Watched over at all times by a Big Brother-like sentient computer, there was no way out of the escape-proof prison except to... Escape!

What would you do if you found yourself face to face with:

--A computer that you fear may drive you insane?

--A mathematical equation that proves you are about to die?

--A seductive siren who promises you sex and death in outer space?

--A brainwashing technique that will turn you either into a superman or a monster?

--A machine that lets you fight imaginary duels-until someone programs it for real-life murder?

These are just some of the future shocks in--FORWARD IN TIME

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (Forward in Time) - essay
• Zero Gee - (1972) - novelette
• Test in Orbit - (1965) - shortstory
• The Weathermakers - (1966) - novelette
• A Slight Miscalculation - (1971) - shortstory
• Fifteen Miles - (1967) - shortstory
• Stars, Won't You Hide Me? - (1966) - shortstory
• The Next Logical Step - (1962) - shortstory
• Men of Good Will - (1964) - shortstory with Myron R. Lewis
• Blood of Tyrants - (1970) - novelette
• The Perfect Warrior - (1963) - novella with Myron R. Lewis

No matter what strange forms the future takes, says Ben Bova in his introduction, crime and criminals will always be with us--and with them, the need for law enforcement. Included with many other stories are the full-length novel City of Darkness and Brillo--the famous collaboration between Bova and Harlan Ellison.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword - essay
• Introduction - essay
• City of Darkness - (1976) - novel
• Introduction - essay
• Vince's Dragon - (1981) - shortstory
• Introduction (Brillo) - essay
• Brillo - (1970) - novelette with Harlan Ellison
• Introduction - essay
• Out of Time - (1984) - shortstory
• Introduction - essay
• Test in Orbit - (1965) - shortstory
• Stars, Won't You Hide Me? - (1966) - shortstory
• Introduction - essay
• Introduction - essay
• Diamond Sam - (1988) - novelette
• Introduction - essay
• Escape! - (1970) - novella

Ben Bova, Frederik Pohl, Jerry Pournelle, and Charles Sheffield share a collection of original stories and essays that speculate on what the world will be like fifty years from now and discuss the sociological and technological implications of their expectations.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Charles Sheffield
• 2042: A Cautiously Pessimistic View - (1991) - essay by Ben Bova
• Thy Kingdom Come - (1993) - novella by Ben Bova
• A Visit to Belinda - essay by Frederik Pohl
• What Dreams Remain - novella by Frederik Pohl
• Report on Planet Earth - essay by Charles Sheffield
• The Price of Civilization - (1992) - novelette by Charles Sheffield
• Democracy in America in the Year 2042 - essay by Jerry Pournelle
• Higher Education - novella by Jerry Pournelle and Charles Sheffield

Several hundred years ago a band of explorers were marooned on Planet Earth. Alas, the Little People are not strong on gadgetry, and they have had to while away the centuries of their youth, living for the day when they could get off this god forsaken mudball, this most benighted, desolate--and boring!--planetary slum in the Known Universe.

At last, the time has come.

All they need now is a human--a young one will do--to help them hijack a Shuttle to take them to where their rescue awaits. And that shouldn't be too hard, for what All-American boy could resist giving a hand to a friendly leprechaun?

Hour Of The Horde by Gordon R. Dickson: The voracious and merciless Horde roved the galaxies, stripping whole star systems of all life. As they advance on the Milky Way, a galaxy-wide force is hastily arrayed to stop them. But Miles Vander, the warrior sent by Earth to join the defence, must first convince his alien crewmembers that he is just as good a soldier as they.

Wolfing by Gordon R. Dickson: Earth was only a primitive outpost, its people dubbed primitive "wolfings" by the rulers of the galactis empire. Jim Kell was sent to the High-Born rulers' Throne World, with orders only to observe - until he cast away his orders from Earth and proved himself a Wolfling indeed.

Gremlins Go Home by Gordon R. Dickson and Ben Bova: Suppose that elves, gremlins, and leprechauns are really tiny aliens marooned on Earth for hundreds of years. They want to go home, and human technology finally can make it possible - it they can get aboard NASA's Mars rocket and hijack it! Pity the poor human who has to help them with the big heist...

Table of Contents:

• Gremlins Go Home - (1974) - novel by Gordon R. Dickson and Ben Bova
• Hour of the Horde - (1970) - novel by Gordon R. Dickson
• Wolfling - (1969) - novel by Gordon R. Dickson

Nebula Award nominated short story. It was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1994. It can be found in the anthology Nebula Awards 30 (1996), as well as the collections Twice Seven (1998) and New Frontiers: A Collection of Tales About the Past, the Present, and the Future (2014).

Read the full story for free at the Baen website.

Ben Bova, best-selling and award-winning author of the "Grand Tour" and "Asteroid Wars" series, takes a sardonic look at the humorous possibilities of future technology.

The Starcrossed: Bill Oxnard, a young technological genius, had perfected true three-dimensional television, making ordinary TV obsolete. He thought he would be rich and famous-but he hadn't realized how deranged the executives running the industry were; nor what sort of programs they were planning to broadcast using the new process in the maniacal quest for ratings.

Cyberbooks: Carl Lewis has a dream-to make books accessible and affordable to every person in the country, and thinks his "cyberbook," about as large and as cheap as a pocket calculator, will make it possible for anyone to download books directly and cheaply. But he has no idea what he's about to get into, nor does his contact at Bunker Books, lovely but naïve aspiring editor Lori Tashkajian. Will they survive this foray into the cut-throat world of big publishing? And just who is suddenly murdering all those nice elderly people on the streets of New York, anyway?

These two full-length novels of twistedly comic, but very possible futures, plus six shorter but equally witty works, add up to a generous volume of futuristic fun and hilarious high-tech.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay
• The Starcrossed - (1975) - novel
• Cyberbooks - (1989) - novel
• Crisis of the Month - (1988) - shortstory
• The Great Moon Hoax or A Princess of Mars - (1996) - shortstory
• The Supersonic Zeppelin - (2005) - novelette
• Vince's Dragon - (1981) - shortstory
• The Angel's Gift - (1983) - shortstory
• A Slight Miscalculation - (1971) - shortstory

A new novel from Ben Bova, creator of the New York Times best-selling Grand Tour science fiction series. Bova is a six time Hugo award winner, and past president of the National Space Society. Here, Bova returns to his most popular and best-selling subject: the quest for Mars!

How do you get to the Red Planet? Not via a benighted government program trapped in red tape and bound by budget constrictions, that's for sure. No, what it will take is a helping of adventure, science, corporate powerplays, a generous dollop of seduction--both in and out of the boardroom--and money, money, money!

Art Thrasher knows this. He is a man with a driving vision: send humans to Mars. The government has utterly failed, but Thrasher has got the plan to accomplish such a feat: form a "club" or billionaires to chip in one billion a year until the dream is accomplished. But these are men and women who are tough cookies, addicted to a profitable bottom-line, and disdainful of pie-in-the-sky dreamers who want to use their cash to make somebody else's dreams come true.

But Thrasher is different from the other dreamers in an important regard: he's a billionaire himself, and the president of a successful company. But it's going to take all his wiles as a captain of industry and master manipulator of business and capital to overcome setbacks and sabotage--and get a rocket full of scientist, engineers, visionaries, and dreamers on their way to the Red Planet.

The man for the job has arrived. Art Thrasher is prepared to do whatever it takes to humans on Mars--or die trying!

We stand poised on the brink of godhood.

The knowledge and wisdom that modern scientific research offers can help us to take the next evolutionary step, and transform ourselves into a race of intelligent beings who truly understand themselves and the universe around them...

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: The Hero as Sociopath - (1978) - essay
• What Chariots of Which Gods? - (1974) - essay
• The Great Supersonic Zeppelin Race - (1974) - novelette
• Foeman, Where Do You Flee? - (1969) - novelette
• The Sightseers - (1973) - shortstory
• To Be or Not - shortstory
• The Lieutenant and the Folksinger - (1978) - shortstory
• The Secret Life of Henry K. - (1973) - shortstory
• The Man Who Saw "Gunga Din" Thirty Times - (1973) - shortstory
• The Man Who... - (1978) - novelette
• Priorities - (1971) - shortstory
• Those Who Can - (1978) - shortstory
• Build Me a Mountain - (1974) - shortstory
• The System - (1968) - shortstory
• Orion - (1977) - novelette
• The Future of Science: Prometheus, Apollo, Athena - (1974) - essay

This short story originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, February 1999. It can also be found the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Seventeenth Annual Collection (2000), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Hard SF Renaissance (2002), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.

In this new collection, Ben Bova has compiled fourteen of his favorite short stories. Each story includes an all-new introduction with compelling insight into the narrative.

Exploring the boundaries of the genre, Bova not only writes of spaceships, aliens, and time travel in most of his titles, but also speculates on the beginnings of science fiction in "Scheherazade and the Storytellers," as well as the morality of man in "The Angel's Gift." Stories such as "The Café Coup" and "We'll Always Have Paris" dip into speculative historical fiction, asking questions about what would happen if someone could change history for the better. This expansive collection is a key addition for Bova fans and sci-fi lovers alike!

Contents:

• Monster Slayer (2003) - short story
• Muzhestvo (1992) - short story
• We'll Always Have Paris (2014) - short story
• The Great Moon Hoax, or A Princess of Mars (1996) - short story
• Inspiration (1994) - short story
• Scheherazade and the Storytellers (2010) - short story
• The Supersonic Zeppelin (2005) - novelette
• Mars Farts (2013) - short story
• The Man Who Hated Gravity (1989) - short story
• Sepulcher (1992) - novelette
• The Café Coup (1997) - short story
• The Angel's Gift (1984) - short story
• Waterbot (2008) - novelette
• Sam and the Flying Dutchman (2003) - novelette

New Frontiers, fourteen startling visions of yesterday, today, and tomorrow from Ben Bova, six-time winner of the Hugo Award

Frontiers can be found in all directions. Frontiers of time and space, as well as frontiers of courage, devotion, love, hate, and the outer limits of the human spirit. This outstanding collection of stories by one of science fiction's premier talents spans the length and breadth of history and the universe, while exploring thought-provoking new ideas and dilemmas.

From the Baghdad of the Arabian Nights to a vast interstellar empire thousands of years in the future, from the Vatican to a one-man vessel drifting in the vast emptiness of the Asteroid Belt, from virtual reality duels to the subtle intricacies of time travel and a golf tournament on the Moon, here are tales of scoundrels and heroes, scientists and explorers, aliens and artificial intelligences, and even a young Albert Einstein. Each of them stands at the border of a new frontier and must venture out into unexplored territory--thanks to the limitless imagination of Ben Bova.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay
• Introduction to "Sam Below Par" - essay
• Sam Below Par - (2012) - novelette
• Introduction to "A Country for Old Men" - essay
• A Country for Old Men - (2012) - novelette
• Introduction to "In Trust" - essay
• In Trust - (1995) - shortstory
• Introduction to "The Question" - essay
• The Question - (1998) - novelette
• Introduction to " 'We'll Always Have Paris' " - essay
• "We'll Always Have Paris" - shortstory
• Introduction to "Waterbot" - essay
• Waterbot - (2008) - novelette
• Introduction to "Moon Race" - essay
• Moon Race - (2008) - shortstory
• Introduction to "Scheherazade and the Storytellers" - essay
• Scheherazade and the Storytellers - (2010) - shortstory
• Afterword to "Scheherazade and the Storytellers" - essay
• Introduction to "Duel in the Somme" - essay
• Duel in the Somme - (2006) - shortstory
• Afterword to "Duel in the Somme" - essay
• Introduction to "Bloodless Victory" - essay
• Bloodless Victory - shortstory
• Introduction to "Mars Farts" - essay
• Mars Farts - (2013) - shortstory
• Introduction to "A Pale Blue Dot" - essay
• A Pale Blue Dot - shortstory
• Afterword to "A Pale Blue Dot" - essay
• Introduction to "Inspiration" - essay
• Inspiration - (1994) - shortstory
• Introduction to "The Last Decision" - essay
• The Last Decision - (1978) - novelette

The editor of a science-fiction magazine offers advice to prospective authors on the theoretical and practical aspects of character, background, conflict, and plot development in short stories.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: The Slushpile - (1975) - essay
• Character: Theory - (1975) - essay
• Fifteen Miles - [Kinsman] - (1967) - short story
• Character: Practice - (1975) - essay
• Background: Theory - (1975) - essay
• Men of Good Will - (1964) - short story with Myron R. Lewis [as]
• Background: Practice - (1975) - essay
• Conflict:: Theory - (1975) - essay
• Stars, Won't You Hide Me? - (1966) - short story
• Conflict: Practice - (1975) - essay
• Plot: Theory - (1975) - essay
• The Shining Ones - (1974) - novelette
• Plot: Practice - (1975) - essay
• The Science Fiction Market - (1980) - essay
• Thinking and Doing - (1975) - essay
• Bibliography (Notes to a Science Fiction Writer) - (1975) - essay

Three, virtually indestructible, fighter planes crash and scientist-detective Paul Sarko is asked to find out the reason.

In the next century, the United States and Russia have joined forces to form the International Peacekeeping Force. The IPF is charged with controlling the satellite network and preventing nuclear missile launches. But many factions resent this orbital police force - and attempt to seize control of the satellites.... and the IPF itself.

America Has Ceded The Heavens To The Tyrants -- And The Renegades.

The U.S. has abandoned its quest for the stars, and an old enemy has moved in to fill the void. The potential wealth of the universe is now in malevolent hands. Rebel billionaire Dan Randolph -- possessor of the largest privately owned company in space -- intends to weaken the stranglehold the new despotic masters of the solar system have on the lucrative ore industry. But when the mineral-rich asteroid he sets in orbit around the Earth is commandeered by the enemy, and his unarmed workers are slaughtered in cold blood, the course of Randolph's life is changed forever.

Now cataclysm is aimed at the exposed heart of America -- a potential catastrophe that Randolph himself inadvertently set in motion. And the maverick entrepreneur must use his skills, cunning, and vast resources to strike out at his foes hard, fast and with ruthless precision -- and wear proudly the mantle that fate thrust upon him: space pirate!

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1986) - essay
• Sam Gunn - (1983) - short story
• Private Enterprise Goes into Orbit - (1983) - essay
• Vision - (1980) - short story
• Meteorites - (1984) - essay
• Zero Gee - (1972) - novelette
• Living and Loving in Zero Gravity - (1986) - essay
• A Small Kindness - (1983) - short story
• Galactic Geopolitics - (1972) - essay
• Priorities - (1971) - short story
• SETI - (1983) - essay
• The Great Supersonic Zeppelin Race - (1974) - novelette
• Blessed Be the Peacemakers - (1985) - essay
• The Weathermakers - (1966) - novelette
• Man Changes the Weather - (1973) - essay
• The Man Who... - (1978) - novelette
• The Seeds of Tomorrow - (1977) - essay

Gritty and scientifically accurate science fiction adventure from New York Times best-selling author Ben Bova and NASA space scientist Les Johnson.

The first human mission to Mars meets with near-disaster when a meteoroid strikes the spacecraft, almost destroying it. The ship is too far from Earth to simply turn around and return home. The eight-person crew must ride their crippled ship to Mars while they desperately struggle to survive.

On Earth, powerful political forces that oppose human spaceflight try to use the accident as proof that sending humans into space is too dangerous to continue. The whole human space flight program hangs in the balance. And if the astronauts can't nurse their ship to Mars and back, the voyagers will become either the first Martian colonists--or the first humans to perish on another planet.

When an ultra-rich space tourist visits the orbiting International Space Station, NASA expects a $100 million win-win: his visit will bring in much needed funding and publicity. But the tourist venture turns into a scheme of terror. Together with an extremist cosmonaut, the tourist slaughters all the astronauts on board the million-pound ISS--and prepares to crash it into New York City at 17,500 miles an hour, causing more devastation than a hundred atomic bombs. In doing so, they hope to annihilate the world's financial system.

All that stands between them and their deadly goal is the lone survivor aboard the ISS, Kimberly Hasid-Robinson, a newly divorced astronaut who has barricaded herself in a secure area.

A small group of survivors fight to rebuild civilization after the Earth is devastated by a huge solar flare.

Cities became ovens. Grasslands became seas of flame. As the touch of dawn swept westward across the spinning planet Earth, its fiery finger killed everything in its path. Glaciers in Switzerland began to melt, floodwaters poured down on the burning, smoking villages dotting the Alpine meadows. Paris became a torch, then London. North of the Arctic Circle, Lapplanders in their summer furs burst into flame as their reindeer collapsed and roasted on the smoking tundra.

The line of dawn raced westward across the Atlantic Ocean, but as it did the brightness diminished. The sun dimmed as quickly as it had brightened.

The Americas escaped the Sun's wrath. Almost.

"What you are about to read deals with the stars, the wide galactic future that lies at our fingertips today... both factual articles and fictional stories. In a world where robots are causing human unemployment, spaceflight is so commonplace the news media regard it as dull, and science fiction has become a mainstay of the bestseller lists... nonfiction has become just as exciting as the fiction.

"So here are a dozen and a half views of the world, past present and future, as seen through the Astral Mirror...."

Table of Contents:

• The Astral Mirror - (1985) - essay
• Starflight - (1973) - essay
• Free Enterprise - (1984) - shortstory
• Robot Welfare - (1985) - essay
• The Angel's Gift - (1983) - shortstory
• The Secret Life of Henry K. - (1973) - shortstory
• Science Fiction - (1985) - essay
• Love Calls - (1982) - shortstory
• Amorality Tale - (1985) - shortstory
• Out of Time - (1984) - shortstory
• Science Fiction and Reality - (1979) - essay
• To Be or Not - (1978) - shortstory
• The Man Who Saw "Gunga Din" Thirty Times - (1973) - shortstory
• The System - (1968) - shortstory
• Cement - (1984) - shortstory
• Building a Real World - (1981) - essay
• It's RIGHT Over Your Nose! - (1968) - essay
• The Perfect Warrior - (1963) - novella
• The Future of Science: Prometheus, Apollo, Athena - (1974) - essay

Fifteen stories from 1972-78. Favorites: "Child Of All Ages"-P.J.Plauger.-Melissa is twelve years old. She claims to be twenty-four hundred years old. "A Thing Of Beauty"-Norman Spinrad.- America has been destroyed by an insurrection. Mr.Ito of Japan wants to buy an artifact of historical interest to take back to his estate. He turns down a headless Statue of Liberty. His hunt continues. "Home Is The Hangman"-Roger Zelazny.-An A.I. robot named The Hangman is designed to explore other planets. It's later thought his ship has come back to Earth empty. Then it looks like he's back to kill the four who designed him. This story won the Hugo and Nebula awards. Other authors in the anthology are: Scott W. Schumack, David Lewis, Alfred Bester, Gene Wolf, George R.R. Martin, Hayford Peirce, Joe Haldeman, Gordon R. Dickson, Larry Niven, Vonda N. McIntyre, Joe Allred and Tim Joseph.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: The Best and the Brightest - essay by Ben Bova
• Persephone and Hades - (1973) - shortstory by Scott W. Schumack
• Common Denominator - (1972) - novelette by David Lewis
• The Four-Hour Fugue - (1974) - shortstory by Alfred Bester
• How I Lost the Second World War and Helped Turn Back the German Invasion - (1973) - shortstory by Gene Wolfe
• A Song for Lya - (1974) - novella by George R. R. Martin
• Unlimited Warfare - (1974) - shortstory by Hayford Peirce
• Tricentennial - (1976) - shortstory by Joe Haldeman
• The Present State of Igneos Research - (1975) - shortstory by Gordon R. Dickson
• Child of All Ages - (1975) - shortstory by P. J. Plauger
• The Hole Man - (1974) - shortstory by Larry Niven
• Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand - (1973) - novelette by Vonda N. McIntyre
• A Thing of Beauty - (1973) - shortstory by Norman Spinrad
• When I Was in Your Mind - (1972) - shortstory by Joe Allred
• Unified Field Theory - (1975) - poem by Tim Joseph
• Home is the Hangman - (1975) - novella by Roger Zelazny

The Science Fiction Writers of America's Nebula Award--now celebrating its silver anniversary--is presented each year. Collected here are the ten best Nebula Award-winning works. Each author has contributed a new essay about his or her book.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: The Nebulas: Clouds Among the Stars? - (1989) - essay by Ben Bova
• The Mystery of Dune - (1989) - essay by Brian Herbert
• Editor's Appreciation of Flowers for Algernon - (1989) - essay by Ben Bova
• On The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed - (1989) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Ringworld Retrospective - (1989) - essay by Larry Niven
• On Rendezvous with Rama - (1989) - essay by Arthur C. Clarke
• On The Forever War - (1989) - essay by Joe Haldeman
• On Gateway - (1989) - essay by Frederik Pohl
• On Timescape - (1989) - essay by Gregory Benford
• Notes on Ender's Game - (1989) - essay by Orson Scott Card
• The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth - (1965) - novelette by Roger Zelazny
• "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman - (1965) - shortstory by Harlan Ellison
• He Who Shapes - (1965) - novella by Roger Zelazny
• Aye, and Gomorrah... - (1967) - shortstory by Samuel R. Delany
• Passengers - (1968) - shortstory by Robert Silverberg
• Behold the Man - (1966) - novella by Michael Moorcock
• When It Changed - (1972) - shortstory by Joanna Russ
• Gonna Roll the Bones - (1967) - novelette by Fritz Leiber
• Dragonrider - (1967) - novella by Anne McCaffrey
• Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death - (1973) - shortstory by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones - (1968) - novelette by Samuel R. Delany
• A Boy and His Dog - (1969) - novella by Harlan Ellison
• The Day Before the Revolution - (1974) - shortstory by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Slow Sculpture - (1970) - novelette by Theodore Sturgeon
• Houston, Houston, Do You Read? - (1976) - novella by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Catch That Zeppelin! - (1975) - shortstory by Fritz Leiber
• Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand - (1973) - novelette by Vonda N. McIntyre
• The Persistence of Vision - (1978) - novella by John Varley
• Grotto of the Dancing Deer - (1980) - shortstory by Clifford D. Simak
• Sandkings - (1979) - novelette by George R. R. Martin
• Jeffty Is Five - (1977) - shortstory by Harlan Ellison

Microbiologist Michael Cochrane has been murdered. His brother Paul wants to find out who did it... and why.

Accompanied by a beautiful industrial spy, Elena Sandoval, Paul follows the trail from California to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Along the way, a lot of people seem to be interested in getting in their way, or discovering what they know. It's clear that Michael was working with cyanobacteria, the bacteria that crack water molecules and release free oxygen. It's less clear why this would get anybody killed. Or why oil billionaire Lionel Gould wants to pay Paul and Elena big money for the details of Michael's work.

Then the truth emerges: Michael had found a way to get cyanobacteria to crack hydrogen out of simple water molecules. A process that could be industrialized, producing enough hydrogen to cleanly power the world. Practically free fuel, out of one of the planet's most abundant resources: water.

No wonder everyone, from Middle Eastern heavies to hired domestic muscle, suddenly seems to be trying to get in Paul and Elena's way.

As the world's secrets--and their own--teeter in the balance, both Paul and Elena must decide what to do before it's too late.

Contemporary, topical, and exciting, The Green Trap is a thriller of today's energy skulduggery--both the kind you read about in the headlines, and the kind you don't.

This is the tale of Lukka, the Hittite soldier who traveled across Greece in search of the vicious slave traders who kidnapped his wife and sons. He tracks them all the way to war-torn Troy. There he proves himself a warrior to rank with noble Hector and swift Achilles. Lukka is the man who built the Trojan horse for crafty Odysseus, who toppled the walls of Jericho for the Isrealites, who stole beautiful Helen--the legendary face that launched a thousand ships--from her husband Menaleus after the fall of Troy and fought his way across half the known world to bring her safely to Egypt.

Provocative, gripping, startling: bestselling author Ben Bova delivers a knockout read with his trademark blend of cutting edge science and unrelenting suspense....

Some see stem-cell research as mankind's greatest scientific breakthrough. Others see a blasphemous attempt to play God. Suddenly, the possibility of immortality exists. Two brothers, both doctors, stand on opposite sides of the controversy. To Dr. Arthur Marshak, his work is a momentous gift to humanity. To Dr. Jessie Marshak, it is a curse. Between them stands a beautiful, remarkable woman both brothers will do anything to save.

Somehow, before it's too late, Arthur and Jessie Marshak must bridge the gap that divides them... on an issue that could mean nothing less than life or death for millions.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1971) - essay by Ben Bova
• The Blue Mouse - (1971) - shortstory by Gene Wolfe
• Hot Potato - (1971) - shortstory by Burt K. Filer
• All Cats Are Gray - (1953) - shortstory by Andre Norton
• The Law-Twister Shorty - [Dilbia] - (1971) - novelette by Gordon R. Dickson
• Three Blind Mice - (1971) - novelette by Keith Laumer
• Daughter - [Nora Fenn] - (1971) - shortstory by Anne McCaffrey
• Something Wild Is Loose - (1971) - novelette by Robert Silverberg
• Silent in Gehenna - (1971) - shortstory by Harlan Ellison

As the President gives a speech in Boston, Meric Albano, the President's Press Secretary discovers a body in an alley outside: The body of the President.

Meric is suddenly drawn into a deadly mystery: Who is the real President? Who is the body? How did someone create a copy of the President? Who's behind it, and why?

A thriller by the six-time Hugo Award winning master.

A stinging SFnal, futuristic satire on the TV industry, based on Ben's and Harlan Ellison's involvement in a real TV series, THE STARLOST.

(Bova dedicates the novel to "Cordwainer Bird", the pen name Harlan Ellison uses when he does not want to be associated with a television or film project.)

Television in the 21st century, where ratings are everything... Physicist Bill Oxford has just developed a device that can make the networks even more powerful, and now he is caught in the most vicious battle of the future: the ratings war!

A delightful bit of fun in the future, poking fun at those who should be poked.

In the near future: Earth is an ecological nightmare, and humanity may well go the way of the dinosaurs. But overhead orbits salvation. A vast metallic island in space, Trikon conducts research too risky to be held on earth--research which could save the planet.

Yet Commander Dan Tighe discovers that the Trikon's major project is espionage. Its crew is split into warring factions; its scientists--consumed by greed, lust and drugs--run the lab for their own gain.

Only Commander Tighe can save the Trikon--and only Trikon can save the earth.

With Earth struggling with too few resources for too many people, Jeff Holman heard the call to colonize the stars. Jeff signed up hoping for adventure, and hoping he could help save Earth's teeming masses by creating a new world: Altair VI. Jeff is determined to make Altair a haven for the human race before Earth collapses.

But Altair VI isn't making it easy. The atmosphere needs to be terraformed, and the plant has a flourishing ecology that isn't giving in. Living in a space station orbiting the planet, the scientists atttempt to wrest control of the planet by directly controlling the toughest beast at the top of the food chain: the Wolfcat. Jeff's job is to take over the mind of a wolfcat and bend it to his will.

Only Jeff learns a heart-wrenching secret from the wolfcat, a secret that leads to even deeper secrets that could unravel the entire plan to save humanity.

Visit the future where love is the ultimate crime. Meet the nameless man who dares to pit himself against the state. Star Wars director-author George Lucas's original story of man's war for humanity in the 25th century.

Six-time Hugo Award-winner Ben Bova presents Transhuman.

Luke Abramson, a brilliant cellular biologist who is battling lung cancer, has one joy in life, his ten-year-old granddaughter, Angela. When he learns that Angela has an inoperable brain tumor and is given less than six months to live, Abramson wants to try a new enzyme, Mortality Factor 4 (MORF4), that he believes will kill Angela's tumor.

However, the hospital bureaucracy won't let him do it because MORF4 has not yet been approved by the FDA. Knowing that Angela will die before he can get approval of the treatment, Abramson abducts Angela from the hospital with plans to take her to a private research laboratory in Oregon.

Luke realizes he's too old and decrepit to flee across the country with his sick granddaughter, chased by the FBI. So he injects himself with a genetic factor that will stimulate his body's production of telomerase, an enzyme that has successfully reversed aging in animal tests.

As the chase weaves across the country from one research facility to another, Luke begins to grow physically younger, stronger. He looks and feels the way he did thirty or forty years ago. Yet his lung cancer is not abating; if anything the tumors are growing faster.

And Angela is dying.

In the tradition of Fatherland and SS-GB, Hugo Award-winning author Ben Bova unveils a fascinating tale of an alternate history - in which one bold, top secret plan changes forever the shape of the world.

1945: As the War in Europe winds to its bloody close, and a crazed Adolf Hitler awaits the end in an underground bunker in Berlin, the Allied forces - led by FDR, Churchill, and Stalin - look warily at the post-war world - and at each other. Once the war is over, who will control Berlin, as well as the future of Eastern Europe?

In the world we know, the Red Army marched on Berlin and the Cold War began. In Triumph, however, Bova imagines another possible twist of fate, whose consequences result in both a new world order and gripping human drama that will keep you turning pages until the powerful conclusion.

Convinced that Stalin poses a threat to democracy as great as Hitler, Churchill launches a risky, covert operation involving a ceremonial sword, future cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, and a small dose of lethal plutonium. Mixing startling fictional surprises with genuine historical figures such as General George S. Patton and British spy Kim Philby, Triumph is an irresistible and compelling peek at a world that might been.

Ben Bova's universe is always more than the sum of its parts...

In TWICE SEVEN, "Conspiracy Theory" reveals the startling truth about those so-called Martian canals and a patch of New Mexico know as Roswell.

In "Appointment in Sinai," the technology of virtual telepresence allows people all over the world to share the experience of the first manned Mars landing... with results as poignant as they are unexpected.

An amnesiac android finds himself feasting with King Hrothgar, Queen Wealhtheow and a warrior by the name of Beowulf in "Legendary Heroes."

In "Life as We Know It," the eternal question "Are we alone?" gets a startling, never-to-be-forgotten answer.

An expatriate woman with a secret fights an exclusionary bureaucracy to return to her home and son in "Re-Entry Shock."

Plus much more!

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: The Art of Plain Speech - (1998) - essay
• Inspiration - (1994) - shortstory
• Appointment in Sinai - (1996) - shortstory
• Conspiracy Theory - (1993) - shortstory
• The Great Moon Hoax or A Princess of Mars - (1996) - shortstory
• Life as We Know It - (1995) - shortstory
• Legendary Heroes - [Orion] - (1996) - shortstory
• The Café Coup - (1997) - shortstory
• Re-Entry Shock - (1993) - shortstory
• In Trust - (1995) - shortstory
• Risk Assessment - (1996) - novelette
• Delta Vee - (1995) - shortstory
• Lower the River - [Probability Zero] - (1997) - shortstory
• Remember, Caesar - (1998) - shortstory
• The Babe, the Iron Horse, and Mr. McGillicuddy - (1997) - novelette and Rick Wilber

Born heir to the Moon, born by a father that deserted them for the lure of conquest on Earth, torn between them, which of his parents was offering him the key to the survival of humankind?

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1973) - essay by Ben Bova
• Answer "Affirmative" or "Negative" - (1972) - shortstory by Barbara Paul
• The Gold at the Starbow's End - (1972) - novella by Frederik Pohl
• The Plague - (1970) - novelette by Keith Laumer
• The Missing Man - (1971) - novella by Katherine MacLean
• Out, Wit! - (1972) - shortstory by Howard L. Myers
• Hero - (1972) - novella by Joe Haldeman

Hero or Killer?

In a startling future that's coming closer every year, Chet Kinsman is an astronaut ace who has done everything in space--including committying the first murder. It's a secret he can never escape, not even on the Moon, where he's head of the first U.S. lunar colony.

But suddenly, a series of shocking yet strangely inevitable circumstances forces Kinsman to confront his hidden past and decide Earth's destiny. In a desperate countdown to nuclear annihilation, Kinsman struggles against a deadly paradox: if he rescues the world, he may end up destroying himself.Hero or Killer?

In a startling future that's coming closer every year, Chet Kinsman is an astronaut ace who has done everything in space---including committing the first murder. It's a secret he can never escape, not even on the Moon, where he's head of the first U.S. lunar colony.

But suddenly, a series of shocking yet strangely inevitable circumstances forces Kinsman to confront his hidden past and decide Earth's destiny. In a desperate countdown to nuclear annihilation, Kinsman struggles against a deadly paradox: if he rescues the world, he may end up destroying himself.

All Kinsman wanted was the moon...

It was the threshold to space and the stars, to new industries, new worlds, and a new destiny for mankind. It was vital that the United States establish a Moon colony - and Chet Kinsman was determined to lead it.

But the opposition was fierce, well-financed, and politically powerfull. To fight and win, Kinsman would have to use - to betray and perhaps destroy - the woman he loved, his oldest friend, and - if it came to that - himself.

A stirring novel of character and human confilic as well as adventurous technology, Kinsman brings to vivid life the near-future epic of the newest and widest frontier of all.

A harrowing tale of brinkmanship--on Earth & on the Moon!

You are thrust into the terrifying world of the future in this chilling novel about people and politics in the year 1999. The Earth's population has soared to eight billion. The two major powers are on the brink of nuclear war as they vie for control of the planet's dwindling supply of natural resources.

Meanwhile, a few hundred kilometers above the Earth's surface, on their respective moon colonies, the United States and Soviet Russia feverishly race to complete networks of ABM satellites to protect themselves from missile attack.

Each side knows that if it can complete its own satellite ABM network before the other side does, the decades-long nuclear stalemate of terror will be broken. A decisive advantage would be obtained. A preemptive nuclear strike could be hurled at the enemy, with the ABM satellites blunting the inevitable counterstrike.

Two men are deeply involved in this potential holocaust: the heads of the American and Russian colonies. Fortunately, for the sake of humanity, they are both idealistic men of good will, determined to work together to establish a world in which co-existence is possible.

Whether or not Ted Marrett would be able to harness the weather for the good of man depended upon some stiff opposition...

In an age of cross-country rockets and undersea mining, weather is the last frontier of man, the one resource which remains untamed. An elemental power which can roar through the land with hurricane force, leaving death and destruction in its wake...

But Dr. Rossman didn't believe in weather control unless he could get the credit for it; and the President and his Science Advisor didn't want to fight hurricanes in an election year; and the Pentagon felt that weather control should be a military weapon....

When all the best of Earth's scientists are forced into exile to a space station to prevent their work from upsetting the status quo, they decide to embark on an even grander adventure to the stars. An epic three-volume saga from a science fiction master, all in one book:

• Exiled From Earth
• Flight of Exiles
• End of Exile

A powerful world government has scientists transported from an overpopulated earth to a satellite on the eve of their discovery of a method to modify the human embryo.

A group of scientists and other space travellers face life and death decisions after their spacecraft is damaged by fire.

Born and brought up on a space ship that is slowly deteriorating, Linc discovers its secrets and the way to get the remaining occupants to their ultimate destination.

Ben Bova, six-time winner of the Hugo Award, brings us a fascinating look at the future in Power Play.

Astronomer Jake Ross wants nothing more than to teach a few university classes each semester and continue his research. However, Frank Tomlinson, an ambitious politician with his eye on the U.S. senate, is determined to land Dr. Ross as his science advisor.

Tomlinson is in need of an edge that will allow him to defeat his opponent at the polls, and Dr. Ross can contribute just that edge with a new innovation that will allow electricity to be generated at less than half the price of nuclear power. But the technology is still in its infancy, and although the outlook is extremely promising, there are great---and deadly---risks.

Dr. Ross soon discovers that the world of politics carries its own dangers. Nothing has prepared Dr. Ross for the extreme tactics that desperate and powerful people are willing to use.

Six-time Hugo winner Ben Bova brings us Power Surge, a gripping political thriller on the cutting-edge of science and technology

Dr. Jake Ross came to Washington, D.C., to make a difference. As the science advisor to a newly-elected freshman senator, Jake has crafted a comprehensive energy plan that employs innovative new technologies to make America the world's leader in energy production while simultaneously boosting the economy and protecting the environment. The facts--and the science--are on Jake's side, but his plan soon runs afoul of entrenched special interests, well-funded lobbies, cynical bureaucrats, pork-barrel politics, and one very powerful U.S. Senator.

To keep his plan alive and secure a sustainable future for America, Jake needs a crash course in the way Washington really works. Everyone keeps telling him that his plan has no hope of succeeding, but Jake is determined to prove them wrong even if it kills him... something that certain hostile parties may be all too happy to arrange.

Dr. Jake Ross came to Washington to try to make a difference, but he's learned the only way to get something done in Washington, assuming your ideals survive the corrosive atmosphere, is to gather power. Ross has gathered a great deal, riding in the wake of Frank Tomlinson. But now Tomlinson has decided to shoot for the moon. If they win, they get it all. If they lose, the game is over for Jake Ross.

In the Power trilogy, Bova's vision of a future powered by solar satellite transmission is tantalizingly within reach.

This annual tradition from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America collects the best of the year's stories, as well as essays and commentary on the current state of the genre and predictions for future science fiction and fantasy films, art, and more.

This year's award-winning authors include Jack McDevitt, James Patrick Kelly, Peter S. Beagle, Elizabeth Hand, and more. The anthology also features essays from celebrated science fiction authors Orson Scott Card and Mike Resnick.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (Nebula Awards Showcase 2008) - essay by Ben Bova
• Echo - (2005) - shortstory by Elizabeth Hand
• Burn - (2005) - novella by James Patrick Kelly
• The Books That Saved SFWA - [Anthopology 101 - 16] - (2007) - essay by Bud Webster
• Two Hearts - (2005) - novelette by Peter S. Beagle
• Science Fiction Poetry - essay by Joe Haldeman
• The Strip Search - (2005) - poem by Mike Allen
• The Tin Men - (2005) - poem by Kendall Evans and David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• Knowledge Of - (2005) - poem by Ruth Berman
• The State of Amazing, Astounding, Fantastic Fiction in the Twenty-First Century - essay by Orson Scott Card
• The Woman in Schrödinger's Wave Equations - (2005) - shortstory by Eugene Mirabelli
• James Gunn, Grand Master - essay by John Kessel
• The Listeners - (1968) - novelette by James E. Gunn
• Howl's Moving Castle: Book to Film - essay by Diana Wynne Jones
• Seeker (exceprt) - (2005) - shortfiction by Jack McDevitt
• I Have Seen the Future and It Ain't Got a Lot of Dead Trees In It - essay by Mike Resnick
• The Andre Norton Award: Magic or Madness - essay by Justine Larbalestier

John O'Ryan is not a god...not exactly. He is an eternal warrior destined to combat the Dark Lord through all time for dominion of the Earth. Follow him, servant of a great race, as he battles his enemy down the halls of time, from the caves of our ancestors to the final confrontation under the hammer of nuclear annihilation.

The immortal being who has become the champion of humankind must struggle to find the woman he loves in the mystical world of the Great Hunter.

A sequel to "Orion" and "Vengeance of Orion". At the end of the Cretaceous Period, Earth is in the grip of the dinosaurs. Their leader is a reptile, worshipped by the Egyptians as a powerful god for thousands of years. His mission is to destroy the Creators - Orion's masters - and rule the planet.

John O'Ryan is Orion--more than human, less than a god, cast away on the seas of Time to do battle among the Creators for the future of mankind.

Now the eternal warrior finds himself separated from his great love, Anya, and marooned in Macedonia under the reign of Phillip--fighting alongside the young Alexander, and at the mercy of a Queen Olympias who is far more than she seems.

More than human and less that a god, John O'Ryan is Orion, made by the Creators who rule outside of time. His purpose is to do their bidding. Now, Orion has becomee a key piece in a cosmic game between two of the Creators--Anya, the goddess he loves, and Aten, the god who toys with his destiny.

For the first time in more than 15 years, Ben Bova returns to the adventures of Orion - hunter, warrior, assassin, and time-traveler. Created by Aten, one of the god-like descendants of the human race 50,000 years in the future, Orion is forced to travel throughout space-time to do his Creator's malevolent bidding.

A hero without peer or scruples, Sam Gunn has a nose for trouble, money, and women--though not necessarily in that order. A man with the ego (and stature) of a Napoleon, the business acumen of a P. T. Barnum, and the raging hormones of a teenage boy, Sam is the finest astronaut NASA ever trained... and dumped.

More than money and women, Sam Gunn loves justice. Whether he's suing the Pope, helping twin sisters entangled in the virtual sex trade, or on trial for his life on charges of interplanetary genocide, you can be sure of one thing: this is one space jockey who'll meet every challenge with a smile on his lips, an ace up his sleeve... and a weapon in his pocket.

This Omnibus presents all of the tales of Sam Gunn to date, including three never before collected in book form. Here is the entire chronicle of Sam Gunn, trailblazer and scoundrel, as he scams his way from one end of the Solar System to the other, giving bold new meaning to the term venture capitalist.

Table of Contents:

• Author's Preface - essay
• Selene City - shortfiction
• The Sea of Clouds - shortfiction
• The Supervisor's Tale - shortfiction
• The Hospital and the Bar - shortfiction
• The Long Fall - (1991) - shortstory
• The Pelican Bar - shortfiction
• The Audition - shortfiction
• Diamond Sam - (1988) - novelette
• Decisions, Decisions - shortfiction
• Statement of Clark Griffith IV - (1998) - shortfiction
• Tourist Sam - (1998) - novella
• The Show Must Go On! - novelette
• Space Station Alpha - shortfiction
• Isolation Area - (1984) - novelette
• Lagrange Habitat Jefferson - shortfiction
• Vacuum Cleaner - (1991) - novelette
• Selene City [2] - shortfiction
• Armstrong Spaceport - shortfiction
• Nursery Sam - [Sam Gunn] - (1996) - novelette
• Selene City [3] - shortfiction
• Statement of Juanita Carlotta Maria Rivera y Queveda - shortfiction
• Sam's War - (1994) - novella
• Habitat New Chicago - shortfiction
• Grandfather Sam - shortstory
• Solar News Offices, Selene City - shortfiction
• Bridge Ship Golden Gate - shortfiction
• Two Years Before the Mast - novella
• Bridge Ship Golden Gate [2] - shortfiction
• Asteroid Ceres - shortfiction
• Space University - shortfiction
• A Can of Worms - (1989) - novelette
• Titan - shortfiction
• Einstein - (1990) - shortstory
• Surprise, Surprise - shortfiction
• Reviews - shortfiction
• Torch Ship Hermes - shortfiction
• Acts of God - (1995) - novella
• Torch Ship Hermes [2] - shortfiction
• Steven Achernar Wright - shortfiction
• The Prudent Jurist - (1997) - novella
• Pierre D'Argent - shortfiction
• Piker's Peek - (2005) - novelette
• Zoilo Hashimoto - shortfiction
• The Mark of Zorro - (1998) - novelette
• The Maitre d' - shortfiction
• The Flying Dutchman - (2003) - novelette
• Disappearing Act - shortfiction
• Takes Two to Tangle - (2006) - novelette
• Solar News Headquarters, Selene - shortfiction
• Orchestra(ted) Sam - novella

Sam Gunn--visionary, scoundrel, lover, liar, and the twenty-first century's biggest capitalist pig--vows to go where no one has gone before and bring back a profit.

Sam Gunn has a nose for trouble, money and women--though not necessarily in that order. He's a hero without peer... or scruples; a man with the ego and stature of a Napoleon, the business acumen of a P.T. Barnum, and the raging hormones of a newly pubescent teenage boy. He's Sam Gunn, the finest astronaut NASA ever trained... and dumped.

But more than money, more than women, Sam Gunn loves justice! (Though he does dearly love women and money.) Whether he's suing the Pope, coming to the aid of voluptuous twin sisters in the "virtual sex" trade, or on trial for his life on charges of interplanetary genocide, you can be sure of one thing: this pint-sized space jockey will meet every challenge with a smile on his lips, an ace up his sleeve... and a blaster in his pocket!

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: Aboard Torch Ship Hermes - shortfiction
• Statement of the Rt. Hon. Jill McD. Meyers - shortfiction
• Acts of God - (1995) - novella
• Statement of Juanita Carlotta Maria Rivera y Molina - shortfiction
• Sam's War - (1994) - novella
• Statement of Lawrence V. Karsh - shortfiction
• Nursery Sam - (1996) - novelette
• Statement of Clark Griffith IV - shortfiction
• Tourist Sam - (1998) - novella
• Statement of Steven Achernar Wright - shortfiction
• Sam and the Prudent Jurist - (1997) - novella
• Afterword: Aboard Torch Ship Hermes - shortfiction

VOLUME 1 IN A STERLING COLLECTION OF STORIES FROM LEGENDARY HARD SCIENCE FICTION MASTER BEN BOVA. Selected stories from Bova's amazing career at the center of science fiction and space advocacy. He is the creator of the New York Times best-selling Grand Tour science fiction series, a six time Hugo award winner, and past president of the National Space Society.

Volume #1 of 3 of the very best of Ben Bova, a grand master of science fiction storytelling. These stories span the five decades of Bova's incandescent career.

Here are tales of star-faring adventure, peril, and drama. Here are journeys into the mind-bending landscapes of virtual worlds and alternate realities. Here you'll also find stories of humanity's astounding future on Earth, on Mars, and in the Solar System beyond--stories that always get the science right. And Bova's gathering of deeply realized, totally human characters are the heroic, brave, tricky, sometimes dastardly engineers, astronauts, corporate magnates, politicians, and scientists who will make these futures possible--and those who often find that the problems of tomorrow are always linked to human values, and human failings, that are as timeless as the stars.

Table of Contents:

• A Long Way Back - (1960) - shortstory
• Inspiration - (1994) - shortstory
• Vince's Dragon - (1981) - shortstory
• The Last Decision - (1978) - novelette
• Fitting Suits - (1990) - shortstory
• A Small Kindness - (1983) - shortstory
• Born Again - (1984) - shortstory
• Blood of Tyrants - (1970) - novelette
• Bushido - (1992) - shortstory
• Sam Gunn - (1983) - shortstorya
• Amorality Tale - (1985) - shortstory
• A Country for Old Men - (2012) - novelette
• Priorities - (1971) - shortstory
• To Be or Not - (1978) - shortstory
• To Touch a Star - (1987) - shortstory
• Risk Assessment - (1996) - novelette
• Men of Good Will - (1964) - shortstory by Ben Bova and Myron R. Lewis
• Foeman, Where Do You Flee? - (1969) - novelette
• Old Timer's Game - (2014) - shortstory
• The Man Who Hated Gravity - (1989) - shortstory
• Zero Gee - (1972) - novelette
• Test in Orbit - (1965) - shortstory
• Fifteen Miles - (1967) - shortstory
• A Slight Miscalculation - (1971) - shortstory

VOLUME #2 IN A STERLING COLLECTION OF STORIES FROM LEGENDARY HARD SCIENCE FICTION MASTER BEN BOVA. Selected stories from Bova's amazing career at the center of science fiction and space advocacy. He is the creator of the New York Times best-selling Grand Tour science fiction series, a six time Hugo award winner, and past president of the National Space Society.

Volume #2 of 3 of the very best of Ben Bova, a grandmaster of science fiction storytelling. These stories span the five decades of Bova's incandescent career.

Here are tales of star-faring adventure, peril, and drama. Here are journeys into the mind-bending landscapes of virtual worlds and alternate realities. Here you'll also find stories of humanity's astounding future on Earth, on Mars and in the Solar System beyond--stories that always get the science right. And Bova's gathering of deeply realized, totally human characters are the heroic, brave, tricky, sometimes dastardly engineers, astronauts, corporate magnates, politicians, and scientists who will make these futures possible--and those who often find that the problems of tomorrow are always linked to human values, and human failings, that are as timeless as the stars.

VOLUME #3 IN A STERLING COLLECTION OF STORIES FROM LEGENDARY HARD SCIENCE FICTION MASTER BEN BOVA. Selected stories from Bova's amazing career at the center of science fiction and space advocacy. He is the creator of the New York Times best-selling Grand Tour science fiction series, a six time Hugo award winner, and past president of the National Space Society.

Volume #3 of 3 of the very best of Ben Bova, a grandmaster of science fiction storytelling. These stories span the five decades of Bova's incandescent career.

Here are tales of star-faring adventure, peril, and drama. Here are journeys into the mind-bending landscapes of virtual worlds and alternate realities. Here you'll also find stories of humanity's astounding future on Earth, on Mars and in the Solar System beyond--stories that always get the science right. And Bova's gathering of deeply realized, totally human characters are the heroic, brave, tricky, sometimes dastardly engineers, astronauts, corporate magnates, politicians, and scientists who will make these futures possible--and those who often find that the problems of tomorrow are always linked to human values, and human failings, that are as timeless as the stars.

In novels like Mars, and Moonbase, and Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn, as well as Privateers, The Precipice, and The Rock Rats, Ben Bova has been telling the stories of the wars and rivalries, the outsize individuals, public crusades, and private passions that will drive us as we expand into the Solar System and make use of its vast resources. And throughout, Bova has shown our cosmic neighborhood as we know it to be, giving us a sense of Venus and Jupiter and the Asteroid Belt and Mars that's as up-to-date as the latest observations. For the last two decades have been a golden age of near-Earth astronomy and observation, and Bova has made dramatic use of our newest knowledge.

Bova has written short fiction about some of the same characters and events--Sam Gunn, Martin Humphries, Klaus Fuchs, Dan Randolph, the Asteroid Wars. Now, in Tales of the Grand Tour, those stories are collected in book form for the first time, creating a volume that is a landmark of modern SF.

Two hundred thousand feet up, things go horribly wrong. An experimental low-orbit spaceplane breaks up on reentry, falling to earth over a trail hundreds of miles long. And it its wake is the beginning of the most important mission in the history of space.

America needs energy, and Dan Randolph is determined to give it to them. He dreams of an array of geosynchronous powersats, satellites which gather solar energy and beam it to generators on Earth, freeing America from its addiction to fossil fuels and breaking the power of the oil cartels forever. But the wreck of the spaceplane has left his company, Astro Manufacturing, on the edge of bankruptcy.

Worse, Dan discovers that the plane worked perfectly right up until the moment that saboteurs knocked it out of the sky. And whoever brought it down is willing and able to kill again to keep Astro grounded.

Now Dan has to thread a dangerous maze. The visible threats are bad enough: Rival firms want to buy him out and take control of his dreams. His former lover wants to co-opt his unlimited-energy idea as a campaign plank for the candidate she's grooming for the presidency. NASA and the FAA want to shut down his maverick firm. And his creditors are breathing down his neck.

Making matters even more dangerous, an international organization of terrorists sees the powersat as a threat to their own oil-based power. And they've figured out how to use it as a weapon in their war against the West.

A sweeping mix of space, murder, romance, politics, secrets, and betrayal, Powersat will take you to the edge of space and the dawning of a new world.

Dan Randolph never plays by the rules. A hell-raising maverick with no patience for fools, he is admired by his friends, feared by his enemies, and desired by the world's loveliest women. Acting as a twenty-first privateer, Randolph broke the political strangle-hold on space exploration, and became one of the world's richest men in the bargain.

Now an ecological crisis threatens Earth--and the same politicians that Randolph outwitted the first time want to impose a world dictatorship to deal with it.

Dan Randolph knows that the answer lies in more human freedom, not less--and in the boundless resources of space. But can he stay free long enough to give the world that chance?

Jamie Waterman is a young Navaho geologist who is picked for the ground team of the first manned expedition to Mars. He will be joining an international team of astronauts and scientists. But once the crew land on the red planet, they soon discover they must battle not only the alien land on which they have invaded but earthbound bureaucrats as well. When they come face to face with a chasm ten times as deep and large as the Grand Canyon, all twenty-five astronauts must face the most shocking discovery of all...

Six years after the first manned Martian expedition, a second has been announced -- one motivated purely by its profitable potential -- and half-Navajo, half-Anglo geologist Jamie Waterman's conflicted soul is beckoning him back to the eerie, unforgiving planet.

As commander of the new exploratory team, he will have to contend with a bitter and destructive rivalry, a disturbing new emotional attraction, and deadly, incomprehensible "accidents" that appear to be sabotage, all of which could doom the mission to failure.

But there is much more at stake than Waterman's personal redemption and the safety of his crew. For there are still great secrets to be uncovered on this cruel and enigmatic world -- not the least being something he glimpsed in the far distance during his first Martian excursion: an improbable structure perched high in the planet's carmine cliffs; a dwelling that only an intelligent being could have built.

Grant Archer only wanted to study astrophysics. But the forces of the "New Morality," the coalition of censorious do-gooders who run 21st-century America, have other plans for him.

To his distress, Grant is torn from his young bride and sent to a research station in orbit around Jupiter, to spy on the scientists who work there. Their work may lead to the discovery of higher life forms in the Jovian system-with implications the New Morality doesn't like at all.

What Grant's would-be controllers don't know is that his loyalty to science may be greater than his desire for a quiet life. But that loyalty will be tested in a mission as dangerous as any ever undertaken-a mission to the middle reaches of Jupiter's endless atmosphere, a place where hydrogen flows as a liquid, and cyclones larger than planets rage for centuries at a time.

What lurks there is more than anyone has counted on...and stranger than anyone could possibly have imagined.

Second in size only to Jupiter, bigger than a thousand Earths but light enough to float in water, home of crushing gravity and delicate, seemingly impossible rings, it dazzles and attracts us:

SATURN

Earth groans under the thumb of fundamentalist political regimes. Crisis after crisis has given authoritarians the upper hand. Freedom and opportunity exist in space, for those with the nerve and skill to run the risks.

Now the governments of Earth are encouraging many of their most incorrigible dissidents to join a great ark on a one-way expedition, twice Jupiter's distance from the Sun, to Saturn, the ringed planet that baffled Galileo and has fascinated astronomers ever since.

But humans will be human, on Earth or in the heavens-so amidst the idealism permeating Space Habitat Goddard are many individuals with long-term schemes, each awaiting the right moment. And hidden from them is the greatest secret of all, the real purpose of this expedition, known to only a few....

In Ben Bova's novel JUPITER, physicist Grant Archer led an expedition into Jupiter's hostile planetwide ocean, attempting to study the unusual and massive creatures that call the planet their home. Unprepared for the hostile environment and crushing pressures, Grant's team faced certain death as their ship malfunctioned and slowly sank to the planet's depths. However one of Jupiter's native creatures--a city-sized leviathan--saved the doomed ship. This creature's act convinced Grant that the huge creatures were intelligent, but he lacked scientific proof.

Now, several years later, Grant prepares a new expedition to prove once and for all that the huge creatures are intelligent. The new team faces dangers from both the hostile environment and from humans who will do anything to make sure the mission is a failure, even if it means murdering the entire crew.

Hugo Award-winning editor, author, scientist, and journalist, Ben Bova is a modern master of near-future science fiction and a passionate advocate of manned space exploration. For more than a decade, Bova has been chronicling humanity's struggles to colonize our solar system in a series of interconnected novels known as "The Grand Tour."

Now, with Titan, Ben Bova takes readers to one of the most intriguing destinations in near space: the extraordinary moon of Saturn which made international headlines last year when the Huygens probe sent back remarkable images of its strange landscapes.

2095. After long months of travel, the gigantic colony ship Goddard has at last made orbit around Saturn, carrying a population of more than of 10,000 dissidents, rebels, extremists, and visionaries seeking a new life. Among Goddard's missions is the study of Titan, which offers the tantalizing possibility that life may exist amid its windswept islands and chill black seas.

When the exploration vessel Titan Alpha mysteriously fails after reaching the moon's surface, long buried tensions surface among the colonists. Eduoard Urbain, the mission's chief scientist, is wracked with anxiety and despair as he sees his life's work unravel. Malcolm Eberly, Goddard's chief administrator, takes ruthless measures to hold onto power as a rash of suspicious incidents threaten to undermine his authority. Holly Lane, the colony's human-resources director, must confront the station's powerful leaders to protect the lives of its people. And retired astronaut Manuel Gaeta is forced to risk his life in a last, desperate attempt to salvage the lost probe.

Torn by intrigue, sabotage, and an awesome discovery that could threaten human space exploration, a handful of courageous men and women must fight for the survival of their colony, and for the destiny of the human race.

The planet closest to our Sun, Mercury is a rocky, barren, heat-scorched world. But there are those who hope to find wealth in its desolation.

Saito Yamagata thinks Mercury's position makes it an ideal place to generate power to propel starships into deep space. Astrobiologist Victor Molina thinks the water at Mercury's poles may harbor evidence of life. Bishop Elliot Danvers has been sent by the Earth-based "New Morality" to keep close tabs on Molina.

But all three of these men are blissfully unaware of their shared history, and of how it connects to the collapse of Mance Bracknell's geosynchronous space elevator a generation ago. Now they're about to find out, because Mance is determined to have his revenge...

Jamie Waterman discovered the cliff dwelling on Mars, and the fact that an intelligent race lived on the red planet sixty-five million years ago, only to be driven into extinction by the crash of a giant meteor. Now the exploration of Mars is itself under threat of extinction, as the ultraconservative New Morality movement gains control of the U.S. government and cuts off all funding for the Mars program.

Meanwhile, Carter Carleton, an anthropologist who was driven from his university post by unproven charges of rape, has started to dig up the remains of a Martian village. Science and politics clash on two worlds as Jamie desperately tries to save the Mars program and uncover who the vanished Martians were.

The surface of Venus is the most hellish place in the solar system. The ground is hot enough to melt aluminum. The air pressure is so high it has crushed spacecraft landers as though they were tin cans. The sky is perpetually covered with clouds of sulfuric acid. The atmosphere is a choking mixture of carbon dioxide and poisonous gases.

This is where Van Humphries must go. Or die trying.

His older brother perished in the first attempt to land a man on Venus, years before, and his father had always hated Van for surviving when his brother died. Now his father is offering a ten billion dollar prize to the first person to land on Venus and return his oldest son's remains.

To everyone's surprise, Van takes up the offer. But what Van Humphries will find on Venus will change everything--our understanding of Venus, of global warming on Earth, and his knowledge of who he is.

Farside, the side of the Moon that never faces Earth, is the ideal location for an astronomical observatory. It is also the setting for a tangled web of politics, personal ambition, love, jealousy, and murder.

Telescopes on Earth have detected an Earth-sized planet circling a star some thirty light-years away. Now the race is on to get pictures of that distant world, photographs and spectra that will show whether or not the planet is truly like Earth, and if it bears life.

Farside will include the largest optical telescope in the solar system as well as a vast array of radio antennas, the most sensitive radio telescope possible, insulated from the interference of Earth's radio chatter by a thousand kilometers of the Moon's solid body.

Building the Farside observatory is a complex, often dangerous task. On the airless surface of the Moon, under constant bombardment of hard radiation and infalling micrometeoroids, builders must work in cumbersome spacesuits and use robotic machines as much as possible. Breakdowns - mechanical and emotional - are commonplace. Accidents happen, some of them fatal.

What they find stuns everyone, and the human race will never be the same.

A wave of lethal gamma radiation is expanding from the core of the Milky Way galaxy at the speed of light, killing everything in its path. The countdown to when the death wave will reach Earth and the rest of the solar system is at two thousand years.

Humans were helped by the Predecessors, who provided shielding generators that can protect the solar system. In return, the Predecessors asked humankind's help to save other intelligent species that are in danger of being annihilated.

But what of Earth? With the Death Wave no longer a threat to humanity, humans have spread out and colonized all the worlds of the solar system. The technology of the Predecessors has made Earth a paradise, at least on the surface. But a policy of exiling discontented young people to the outer planets and asteroid mines has led to a deep divide between the new worlds and the homeworld, and those tensions are about to explode into open war.

There is a dream called Moonbase, nurtured by ex-astronaut Paul Stavenger and his wife, Joanna Masterson Stavenger, head of the powerful Masterson Corporation.

There is a future of astonishing possibilities and vital technological development waiting on a lifeless world of astonishing contrasts, where sub-frigid darkness abuts the blood-boiling light -- a future threatened by greed and jealousy, insanity and murder.

The Moon and its mysteries have captivated the Stavenger family, and it will continue to exert its pull upon subsequent generations. For all those who experience its magnificent desolation are haunted by it eternally. Some will be doomed by its pitiless aversion to human life.

And some can never leave.

Ben Bova's extraordinary Moonbase Saga continues with a breathtaking near-future adventure rich in character and incident. The action begins seven years after the indomitable Stavenger family has realized its cherished dream of establishing a colony on the inhospitable lunar surface.

Moonbase is now a thriving community under the leadership of Doug Stavenger, a marvel of scientific ahievement created and supported by nanotechnology: virus-size machines that can build, cure, and destroy. But nanotechnology has been declared illegal by the home planet's leaders. And a powerful despot is determined to lay claim to Stavenger's peaceful city... or obliterate it, if necessary. The people of Moonbase--a colony with no arms or military--must now defend themselves from earth-born aggression with the only weapon at their disposal: the astonishing technology that sustains their endangered home.

Once, Dan Randolph was one of the richest men on Earth. Now the planet is spiraling into environmental disaster, with floods and earthquakes destroying the lives of millions. Randolph knows the energy and natural resources of space can save Earth's economy, but the price may be the loss of the only thing he has left--the company he founded, Astro Manufacturing.

Martin Humphries, fabulously wealthy heir of the Humphries Trust, also knows that space-based industry is the way of the future. But unlike Randolph, he doesn't care if Earth perishes in the process. And he knows that the perfect bait to ensnare Dan Randolph--and take control of Astro--is his revolutionary new fusion propulsion system.

As Randolph--accompanied by two fascinating women who are also brilliant astronauts--flies out to the Asteroid Belt aboard a fusion-propelled spacecraft, Humphries makes his move. The future of mankind lies in Randolph's hands.

The Asteroid Wars have begun.

Visionary space industrialist Dan Randolph is dead-but his protégé, pilot Pancho Barnes, now sits on the board of his conglomerate. She has her work cut out for her. For Randolph's rival Martin Humphries still wants to control Astro and still wants to drive independent asteroid miners like Lars Fuchs out of business. Humphries wants revenge against Pancho-ands, most of all, he wants his old flame Amanda, who has become Lars Fuchs's wife.

In the struggle over the incalculable wealth of the Asteroid Belt, many will die-and many will achieve more than they ever dreamed was possible.

When corporations go to war, standard business practice goes out the window. Astro Corporation is led by indomitable Texan Pancho Lane, Humphries Space Systems by the rich and ruthless Martin Humphries, and their fight is over nothing less than resources of the Asteroid Belt itself. As fighting escalates, the lines between commerce and politics, boardroom and bedroom, blur--and the keys to victory will include physics, nanotechnology, and cold hard cash.

As they fight it out, the lives of thousands of innocents hang in the balance, including the rock rats who make their living off the asteroids, and the inhabitants of Selene City on Earth's moon. As if matters weren't complicated enough, the shadowy Yamagata corporation sets its sights on taking advantage of other people's quarrels, and space pirate Lars Fuchs decides it's time to make good on his own personal vendetta.

It's a breakneck finale that can end only in earth's salvation--or the annihilation of all that humankind has ever accomplished in space.

In the wake of the Asteroid Wars that tore across the solar system, Victor Zacharius makes his living running the ore-carrier Syracuse. With his wife and two children he plies the Asteroid Belt, hauling whatever cargo can be found. When the Syracuse stumbles into the middle of a military attack on the habitat Chrysalis, Victor flees in a control pod to draw the attacker's attention away from his family. Now, as his wife and children plunge into the far deeps of space, Victor has been rescued by the seductive Cheena Madagascar. He must do her bidding if he's to have a prayer of ever seeing his family again.

Elverda Apacheta is the solar system's greatest sculptor. The cyborg Dorn was formerly Dorik Harbin, the ruthless military commander responsible for the attack on Chrysalis. Their lives and destinies have been linked by their joint discovery of the alien artifact that had, earlier, profoundly affected industrialist Martin Humphries. Similarly transformed by the artifact's mysterious powers, Apacheta and Dorn now prowl the Belt, determined to find the bodies of the many victims of Harbin's atrocities so that they can be given proper burials.

Kao Yuan is the captain of Viking, owned by Martin Humphries, who's determined to kill Dorn and Elverda because they know too much about the artifact and its power over him. But Viking's second-in-command, Tamara Vishinsky, appears to have the real power on board ship. When Viking catches up to Apacheta and Dorn, their confrontation begins a series of events involving them, the Zacharius family, and Martin Humphries and his son in the transformation of the human solar system...

We've found an Earthlike planet, but what secrets does it hold?

In Ben Bova's New Earth, The world is thrilled by the discovery of an Earthlike planet. Advance imaging shows oceans of liquid water and a breathable, oxygen-rich atmosphere. A human exploration team is dispatched to explore the planet, now nicknamed New Earth. The explorers understand they're on a one-way mission. The trip takes eighty years one way, so even if they are able to return to Earth, nearly two hundred years will have passed. Their friends and family will be gone. The explorers are not the best available: they are expendable. Upon landing on the planet they find a group of intelligent creatures who look like humans. Are they native to this world or invaders? Moreover, the scientists begin to realize that the planet cannot be natural. Rather, could New Earth be an artifact?

In Ben Bova's previous novel New Earth, Jordan Kell led the first human mission beyond the solar system. They discovered the ruins of an ancient alien civilization. But one alien AI survived, and it revealed to Jordan Kell that an explosion in the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy has created a wave of deadly radiation, expanding out from the core toward Earth. Unless the human race acts to save itself, all life on Earth will be wiped out.

When Kell and his team return to Earth, many years after their departure, they find that their world has changed almost beyond recognition. Not only has a second wave of greenhouse flooding caused sea levels to rise, but society has been changed by the consequences of the climate shift. Few people want to face Jordan Kell's news. He must convince Earth's new rulers that the human race is in danger of extinction unless it acts to forestall the death wave coming from the galaxy's heart.

Six-time Hugo Award winner Ben Bova chronicles the saga of humankind's expansion beyond the solar system in Death Wave

Six-time Hugo Award winner Ben Bova chronicles the saga of humankind's expansion beyond the solar system in Apes and Angels, the last installment in the Star Quest Trilogy.

Humankind headed out to the stars not for conquest, nor exploration, nor even for curiosity. Humans went to the stars in a desperate crusade to save intelligent life wherever they found it.

A wave of death is spreading through the Milky Way galaxy, an expanding sphere of lethal gamma radiation that erupted from the galaxy's core twenty-eight thousand years ago and now is approaching Earth's vicinity at the speed of light. Every world it touched was wiped clean of all life. But it's possible to protect a planet from gamma radiation. Earth is safe.

Now, guided by the ancient intelligent machines called the Predecessors, men and women from Earth seek out those precious, rare worlds that harbor intelligent species, determined to save them from the doom that is hurtling toward them.

The crew of the Odysseus has arrived at Mithra Gamma, the third planet of the star Mithra, to protect the stone-age inhabitants from the Death Wave. But they'll also have to protect themselves.

Ben Bova continues his hard SF Star Quest series, which began with Death Wave and Apes and Angels. In Surivival, a human team sent to scout a few hundred lightyears in front of the death wave encounters a civilization far in advance of our own, a civilization of machine intelligences.

These sentient, intelligent machines have existed for eons, and have survived earlier "death waves," gamma ray bursts from the core of the galaxy. They are totally self-sufficient, completely certain that the death wave cannot harm them, and utterly uninterested in helping to save other civilizations, organic or machine.

But now that the humans have discovered them, they refuse to allow them to leave their planet, reasoning that other humans will inevitably follow if they learn of their existence.

On a privately financed orbital habitat above the planet Uranus, political idealism conflicts with pragmatic, and illegal, methods of financing. Add a scientist who has funding to launch a probe deep into Uranus's ocean depths to search for signs of life, and you have a three-way struggle for control.

Humans can't live on the gas giants, making instead a life in orbit. Kyle Umber, a religious idealist, has built Haven, a sanctuary above the distant planet Uranus. He invites "the tired, the sick, the poor" of Earth to his orbital retreat where men and women can find spiritual peace and refuge from the world.

The billionaire who financed Haven, however, has his own designs: beyond the reach of the laws of the inner planets Haven could become the center for an interplanetary web of narcotics, prostitution, even hunting human prey.

Meanwhile a scientist has gotten funding from the Inner Planets to drop remote probes into the "oceans" of Uranus, in search of life. He brings money and prestige, but he also brings journalists and government oversight to Haven. And they can't have that.

In the future, humanity has spread throughout the solar system, on planets and moons once visited only by robots or explored at a distance by far-voyaging spacecraft. No matter how hostile or welcoming the environment, mankind has forged a path and found a home.

In the far reaches of the solar system, the outer planets--billions of miles from Earth, unknown for millennia--are being settled. Neptune, the ice giant, is swathed in clouds of hydrogen, helium, and methane and circled by rings of rock and dust. Three years ago, Ilona Magyr's father, Miklos, disappeared while exploring the seas of Neptune. Everyone believes he is dead?crushed, frozen, or boiled alive in Neptune's turbulent seas.

With legendary space explorer Derek Humbolt piloting her ship and planetary scientist Jan Meitner guiding the search, Ilona Magyr knows she will find her father?alive?on Neptune.

Her plans are irrevocably altered when she and her team discover the wreckage of an alien ship deep in Neptune's ocean, a discovery which changes humanity's understanding of its future... and its past.

Eleven essential classics in one volume

This volume is the definitive collection of the best science fiction novellas published between 1929 and 1964, containing eleven great classics. No anthology better captures the birth of science fiction as a literary field.

Published in 1973 to honor stories that had appeared before the institution of the Nebula Awards, The Science Fiction Hall of Fame introduced tens of thousands of young readers to the wonders of science fiction and was a favorite of libraries across the country.

This volume contains novellas by Poul Anderson, John W. Campbell, Lester del Rey, Robert A. Heinlein, C.M. Kornbluth, Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, Eric Frank Russell, Cordwainer Smith, Theodore Sturgeon, H. G. Wells, and Jack Williamson.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1973) - essay by Ben Bova
• Call Me Joe - (1957) - novelette by Poul Anderson
• Who Goes There? - (1938) - novella by John W. Campbell, Jr.
• Nerves - (1942) - novella by Lester del Rey
• Universe - (1941) - novelette by Robert A. Heinlein
• The Marching Morons - (1951) - novelette by C. M. Kornbluth
• Vintage Season - (1946) - novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore
• ...And Then There Were None - (1951) - novella by Eric Frank Russell
• The Ballad of Lost C'Mell - (1962) - novelette by Cordwainer Smith
• Baby Is Three - (1952) - novella by Theodore Sturgeon
• The Time Machine - (1895) - novel by H. G. Wells
• With Folded Hands - (1948) - novelette by Jack Williamson

This volume is the definitive collection of the best science fiction novellas. It contains eleven great classics. There is no better anthology that captures the birth of science fiction as a literary field Published in 1973 to honor stories written before the institution of the Nebula Awards, the Science Fiction Hall of Fame introduced tens of thousands of young readers to the wonders of science fiction and was a favorite of libraries across the country.

This volume contains novellas by: Ray Bradbury, James Blish, Algis Budrys, Theodore Cogswell, E. M. Forster, Frederik Pohl, James H. Schmitz, T. L. Sherred, Wilmar H. Shiras, Clifford D. Simak, and Jack Vance.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1973) - essay by Ben Bova
• The Martian Way - (1952) - novella by Isaac Asimov
• Earthman, Come Home - (1953) - novelette by James Blish
• Rogue Moon - (1960) - novella by Algis Budrys
• The Spectre General - (1952) - novella by Theodore R. Cogswell
• The Machine Stops - (1909) - novelette by E. M. Forster
• The Midas Plague - (1954) - novella by Frederik Pohl
• The Witches of Karres - (1949) - novelette by James H. Schmitz
• E for Effort - (1947) - novelette by T. L. Sherred
• In Hiding - (1948) - novelette by Wilmar H. Shiras
• The Big Front Yard - (1958) - novella by Clifford D. Simak
• The Moon Moth - (1961) - novelette by Jack Vance

ANCIENT EARTH IS DOOMED...

Earth's Sun will explode, not millions of years hence but in mere lifetimes--violently enough to scour Earth clean and leave the Empire of the Hundred Worlds adrift.

The Empire's scientists deem that nothing can be done. The age of heroism is past: this is the long, stagnant afternoon of the human race.

Until--over massive opposition--a single young woman makes her way to the Emperor with that rarity, a new scientific insight... and a plan, flowing from its implications, to mobilize humanity's slumbering energies toward a thousand year effort of applied astrophysics. Of engineering carried out on the hearts of stars. A plan to save the Earth. To save the Sun.

Two hundred years ago, Adela de Montgarde, the brilliant astrophysicist, conceived the centuries-long plan to forestall the death of Earth's sun, thus preserving the original genetic material of the Empire of the Hundred Worlds-and of the Emperors who enabled her visionary plan.

Now Adela emerges from cold sleep to oversee the final stages of her great work. She awakens to an Empire transformed: her son Eric is Emporer, faster-than-light travel has finally been achieved, and humanity has spilled out to innumerable new planets, far beyond the Empire's Hundred Worlds.

In the twilight of the Empire, human and alien factions vie for advantage, while Adela's awesome feat of stellar engineering approaches its final fruition: the preservation and re-invigoration of the fearsome light at the heart of humanity's first solar system... the saving of Earth's Sun.

Keith Stoner, ex-astronaut turned physicist, knows the signal that his research station is receiving from space is not random. Whatever it is, it’s real.

And it’s headed straight for Earth.

He’ll do anything to be the first man to go out to confrint this enigma. Even lose the only woman he’s ever really loved.

And maybe start a world war.

Eighteen years ago, astronaut Keith Stoner had been the American member of a joint U.S.–Soviet mission to capture an alien ship that had entered the solar system. It was the greatest adventure in the history of Earth-but disaster struck when a bomb placed on the Soviet craft forced its recall. Stoner refused to return to Earth, staying behind in the strange ship alone where he fell into suspended animation.

Jo Camerata, the ambitious young student who fell in love with Stoner, is now head of Vanguard Industries. Jo’s dogged determination has forced the recovery of the alien ship, and now her company is in control of the vast new technology-and in control of Keith Stoner. What Camerata doesn’t know, however, is that when Stoner wakes, someone else awakens, too. The alien presence in Stoner’s mind that has kept him alive all these years is now free, and intends to explore the world.

And it will let nothing stand in its way.

Keith Stoner, the only man successfully revived from cryogenic storage, bears within him an alien gift that will change the hearts and minds of the world's most powerful rulers unless a group of influential and ruthless men finds him first. Bova's conclusion to his Voyagers' trilogy (Voyagers, LJ 8/81; Voyagers II, LJ 2/15/86) offers fast-paced action for fans of hard-core sf adventure. For large sf collections.

In the 1980s, an alien starship visited Earth. While investigating what appeared to be a sarcophagus bearing the preserved body of its builder, astronaut Keith Stoner was trapped and cryogenically frozen. After his body was eventually returned to Earth and revived, Stoner discovered that he had acquired alien powers. Using these new powers, he built a new starship and left Earth.

Now, after more than a century of exploring the stars, Keith Stoner returns to find that the world he has come back to does not match the one he left. The planet is suffering the consequences of disastrous greenhouse flooding. Most nations have been taken over by ultraconservative religion-based governments, such as the New Morality in the United States. With population ballooning and resources running out, Earth is heading for nuclear war.

Stoner, the star voyager, wants to save Earth’s people. But first he must save himself from the frightened and ambitious zealots who want to destroy this stranger—and the terrifying message he brings from the stars.

Geoffrey Knowland, brilliant young Star Watch officer, is in command of the Terran Confederation's all-out battle against the mysterious Masters, rulers of the Milky Way galaxy.

For untold millions of years the star clusters in galactic space have been under the Masters' control. Now, in an attempt to save Earth and the Terran Confederation, a desperate counterattack is underway to break the domination of the enemy.

Jeff knows that the Terrans fought and lost another interstellar war aginst an ancient enemy known only as the Others. The Terrans were crushed, their civilization wiped out, and Jeff fears the Masters are the Others, returned to conquer man again.

This unusual story takes you deep into the galaxy, far beyond our solar system, to worlds seldom explored by science fiction writers. Jeff and his friend Alan Bakerman, an escapee from life under the Masters, travel the vast distances of space and touch upon the homeworlds of many races, both human and nonhuman.

Emil Vorgens is a Junior Star Watch Officer who is torn between his desire to seek a peaceful resolution and obey his superior's instructions to use force when he is sent to the planet of Shinar to deal with rebellious activities.

At first, the dueling machine seemed like a benign or even a helpful invention, allowing people to blow off steam and solve conflicts in a virtual reality-like environment. But before long, an evil tyrant discovers a way to use the device to inflict real and lasting harm on participants. Will the intrepid scientist who invented the technology be able to stop him before it's too late?