Search Worlds Without End

Entered by a thousand unsuspected gateways -- built by a race lost in the clouds of time -- the planet its dwellers called the Well World turned beings of every kind into something else. There spacefarer Nathan Brazil found himself companioned by a batman, an amorous female centaur and a mermaid -- all once as human as he.

Yet Nathan Brazil's metamorphosis was more terrifying than any of those...and his memory was coming back, bringing with it the secret of the Well World.

For at the heart of the bizarre planet lay the goal of every being that had ever lived -- and Nathan Brazil and his comrades were...lucky?...enough to find it!

Stephen R. Donaldson's thrilling Gap series--The Real Story, Forbidden Knowledge, A Dark and Hungry God Arises, and Chaos and Order--introduced us to an adventure as vast as the galaxy and unpredictable as the human heart. It is the work of a storytelling genius with more than ten million copies of his books in print worldwide. Now in this dark, intense story, Donaldson delivers the thrilling conclusion to one of the most powerful science fiction stories ever told.

The countdown has begun. The battleworn crew of Trumpet is in disarray, as they attempt to pursue the pirate ship Soar and her captain Sorus Chatelaine. With one crew member infected by the Amnion and another stranded in the vacuum of space, all their hopes lie with Angus Thermopyle, once a bloodthirsty pirate, now a cyborg working against his will for the United Mining Companies Police--the strongest, most rapacious force in all of human space. As Angus, Morn Hyland, and her force-grown son Davies race for home across the vast reaches of forbidden space, they have no way of knowing that the final confrontation between Warden Dios and The Dragon has begun. Or that the fate of all humankind hangs in the balance.

This collection of short stories by H. G. Wells is the most comprehensive yet, and showcases the hugely fertile imagination of the great author, whose ideas and storylines remain hugely relevant to this day.

Table of Contents:

• 3 - The Stolen Bacillus - (1894) - short story
• 9 - The Flowering of the Strange Orchid - (1894) - short story
• 16 - In the Avu Observatory - (1894) - short story
• 22 - The Triumphs of a Taxidermist - (1894) - short story
• 26 - A Deal in Ostriches - (1894) - short story
• 30 - Through a Window - (1894) - short story
• 37 - The Temptation of Harringay - (1895) - short story
• 42 - The Flying Man - (1895) - short story
• 48 - The Diamond Maker - (1894) - short story
• 55 - Aepyornis Island - (1894) - short story (variant of Æpyornis Island)
• 65 - The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes - (1895) - short story
• 74 - The Lord of the Dynamos - non-genre - (1894) - short story
• 82 - The Hammerpond Park Burglary - (1894) - short story
• 89 - The Moth - (1895) - short story
• 98 - The Treasure in the Forest - (1894) - short story
• 107 - The Plattner Story - (1896) - short story
• 124 - The Argonauts of the Air - (1895) - short story
• 135 - The Story of the Late Mr Elvesham - (1896) - short story (variant of The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham)
• 150 - In the Abyss - (1896) - short story
• 164 - The Apple - (1896) - short story
• 171 - Under the Knife - (1896) - short story
• 183 - The Sea Raiders - (1896) - short story (variant of The Sea-Raiders)
• 192 - Pollock and the Porroh Man - (1895) - short story
• 206 - The Red Room - (1896) - short story
• 214 - The Cone - non-genre - (1895) - short story
• 224 - The Purple Pileus - (1896) - short story
• 234 - The Jilting of Jane - (1894) - short story
• 241 - In the Modern Vein: An Unsympathetic Love Story - (1894) - short story
• 250 - A Catastrophe - (1895) - short story
• 258 - The Lost Inheritance - (1896) - short story
• 264 - The Sad Story of a Dramatic Critic - (1895) - short story
• 272 - A Slip Under the Microscope - (1896) - short story
• 291 - The Crystal Egg - (1897) - short story
• 306 - The Star - (1897) - short story
• 316 - A Story of the Stone Age - (1897) - novella
• 363 - A Story of the Days to Come - (1899) - novella
• 436 - The Man Who Could Work Miracles - (1898) - short story
• 453 - Filmer - (1901) - short story
• 468 - The Magic Shop - (1903) - short story
• 478 - The Valley of Spiders - (1903) - short story
• 488 - The Truth About Pyecraft - (1903) - short story
• 497 - Mr Skelmersdale in Fairyland - (1903) - short story
• 509 - The Inexperienced Ghost - (1902) - short story
• 520 - Jimmy Goggles the God - (1898) - short story
• 531 - The New Accelerator - (1901) - short story
• 543 - Mr Ledbetter's Vacation - (1898) - short fiction (variant of Mr. Ledbetter's Vacation)
• 558 - The Stolen Body - (1898) - short story
• 572 - Mr Brisher's Treasure - (1899) - short fiction (variant of Mr. Brisher's Treasure)
• 581 - Miss Winchelsea's Heart - (1898) - short story
• 596 - A Dream of Armageddon - (1901) - short story
• 621 - The Door in the Wall - (1906) - short story
• 636 - The Empire of the Ants - (1905) - short story
• 650 - A Vision of Judgment - (1899) - short story (variant of A Vision of Judgement)
• 656 - The Land Ironclads - (1903) - novelette
• 675 - The Beautiful Suit - non-genre - (1909) - short story
• 679 - The Pearl of Love - (1925) - short story
• 683 - The Country of the Blind - (1904) - novelette
• 704 - The Reconciliation - (1895) - short story
• 710 - My First Aeroplane - [Little Mother - 1] - (1910) - short story
• 720 - Little Mother Up the Mörderberg - [Little Mother - 2] - (1910) - short story
• 730 - The Story of the Last Trump - (1915) - short story
• 743 - The Grisly Folk - (1921) - essay
• 757 - A Tale of the Twentieth Century: For Advanced Thinkers - (1887) - short fiction (variant of A Tale of the Twentieth Century)
• 762 - Walcote - (1898) - short story
• 769 - The Devotee of Art - (1888) - short fiction
• 779 - The Man with a Nose - (1894) - short fiction
• 783 - A Perfect Gentleman on Wheels - (1897) - short fiction
• 793 - Wayde's Essence - (1895) - short fiction
• 802 - A Misunderstood Artist - (1894) - short fiction
• 806 - Le Mari Terrible - (1895) - short story
• 810 - The Rajah's Treasure - (1896) - short story
• 821 - The Presence by the Fire - (1897) - short story
• 827 - Mr Marshall's Doppelganger - (1897) - short fiction (variant of Mr. Marshall's Doppelganger)
• 837 - The Thing in No. 7 - (1894) - short story
• 843 - The Thumbmark - (1894) - short story
• 850 - A Family Elopement - (1894) - short fiction
• 855 - Our Little Neighbour - (1895) - short fiction
• 863 - How Gabriel Became Thompson - (1894) - short fiction
• 872 - How Pingwill Was Routed - (1895) - short fiction
• 876 - The Loyalty of Esau Common: A Fragment - (1902) - short fiction (variant of The Loyalty of Esau Common)
• 891 - The Wild Asses of the Devil - (1915) - short story
• 901 - Answer to Prayer - (1937) - short story
• 904 - The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper - (1932) - short story
• 921 - The Country of the Blind (Revised Version) - (1939) - short fiction (variant of The Country of the Blind (revised))
• 951 - Introduction to The Country of the Blind and Other Stories - (1911) - essay (variant of Introduction (The Country of the Blind and Other Stories))
• 956 - Introduction to Revised Version of "The Country of the Blind" - (1939) - essay (variant of Introduction (The Country of the Blind))

We are not alone.

The alien protomolecule is clear evidence of an intelligence beyond human reckoning. No one knows what exactly is being built on Venus, but whatever it is, it is vast, powerful, and terrifying.

When a creature of unknown origin and seemingly impossible physiology attacks soldiers on Ganymede, the fragile balance of power in the Solar System shatters. Now, the race is on to discover if the protomolecule has escaped Venus, or if someone is building an army of super-soldiers.

Jim Holden is the center of it all. In spite of everything, he's still the best man for the job to find out what happened on Ganymede. Either way, the protomolecule is loose and Holden must find a way to stop it before war engulfs the entire system.

CALIBAN'S WAR is an action-packed space adventure following in the footsteps of the critically acclaimed Leviathan Wakes.

James S. A. Corey is a collective pseudonym for authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck.

He was a riot of rockets and fountains and people, in such intricate detail and color that you could hear the voiced murmuring, small and muted, from the crowds that inhabited his body.

Ray Bradbury brings wonders alive. A peerless American storyteller, his oeuvre has been celebrated for decades--from The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451 to Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes.

The Illustrated Man is classic Bradbury --a collection of tales that breathe and move, animated by sharp, intaken breath and flexing muscle. Here are eighteen startling visions of humankind's destiny, unfolding across a canvas of decorated skin--visions as keen as the tattooist's needle and as colorful as the inks that indelibly stain the body.

The images, ideas, sounds and scents that abound in this phantasmagoric sideshow are provocative and powerful: the mournful cries of celestial travelers cast out cruelly into a vast, empty space of stars and blackness ... the sight of gray dust settling over a forgotten outpost on a road that leads nowhere ... the pungent odor of Jupiter on a returning father's clothing. Here living cities take their vengeance, technology awakens the most primal natural instincts, Martian invasions are foiled by the good life and the glad hand, and dreams are carried aloft in junkyard rockets.

Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man is a kaleidoscopic blending of magic, imagination, and truth, widely believed to be one of the Grandmaster's premier accomplishments: as exhilarating as interplanetary travel, as maddening as a walk in a million-year rain, and as comforting as simple, familiar rituals on the last night of the world.

Critics have compared the engrossing space operas of Peter F. Hamilton to the classic sagas of such sf giants as Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert. But Hamilton's bestselling fiction--powered by a fearless imagination and world-class storytelling skills--has also earned him comparison to Tolstoy and Dickens. Hugely ambitious, wildly entertaining, philosophically stimulating: the novels of Peter F. Hamilton will change the way you think about science fiction. Now, with Pandora's Star, he begins a new multivolume adventure, one that promises to be his most mind-blowing yet.

The year is 2380. The Intersolar Commonwealth, a sphere of stars some four hundred light-years in diameter, contains more than six hundred worlds, interconnected by a web of transport "tunnels" known as wormholes. At the farthest edge of the Commonwealth, astronomer Dudley Bose observes the impossible: Over one thousand light-years away, a star... vanishes. It does not go supernova. It does not collapse into a black hole. It simply disappears. Since the location is too distant to reach by wormhole, a faster-than-light starship, the Second Chance, is dispatched to learn what has occurred and whether it represents a threat. In command is Wilson Kime, a five-time rejuvenated ex-NASA pilot whose glory days are centuries behind him.

Opposed to the mission are the Guardians of Selfhood, a cult that believes the human race is being manipulated by an alien entity they call the Starflyer. Bradley Johansson, leader of the Guardians, warns of sabotage, fearing the Starflyer means to use the starship's mission for its own ends,.

Pursued by a Commonwealth special agent convinced the Guardians are crazy but dangerous, Johansson flees. But the danger is not averted. Aboard the Second Chance, Kime wonders if his crew has been infiltrated. Soon enough, he will have other worries. A thousand light-years away, something truly incredible is waiting: a deadly discovery whose unleashing will threaten to destroy the Commonwealth... and humanity itself.

Could it be that Johansson was right?

Peter F. Hamilton's superbly imagined, cunningly plotted interstellar adventures are conceived on a staggeringly epic scale and filled with fully realized human and alien characters as complex as they are engaging. No mere world builder, Hamilton creates entire universes–and he does so with irresistible flair and intelligence. His previous novel, the acclaimed Pandora's Star, introduced the Intersolar Commonwealth, a star-spanning civilization of the twenty-fourth century. Robust, peaceful, and confident, the Commonwealth dispatched a ship to investigate the mystery of a disappearing star, only to inadvertently unleash a predatory alien species that turned on its liberators, striking hard, fast, and utterly without mercy.

The Prime are the Commonwealth's worst nightmare. Coexistence is impossible with the technologically advanced aliens, who are genetically hardwired to exterminate all other forms of life. Twenty-three planets have already fallen to the invaders, with casualties in the hundreds of millions. And no one knows when or where the genocidal Prime will strike next.

Nor are the Prime the only threat. For more than a hundred years, a shadowy cult, the Guardians of Selfhood, has warned that an alien with mind-control abilities impossible to detect or resist–the Starflyer–has secretly infiltrated the Commonwealth. Branded as terrorists, the Guardians and their leader, Bradley Johansson, have been hunted by relentless investigator Paula Myo. But now evidence suggests that the Guardians were right all along, and that the Starflyer has placed agents in vital posts throughout the Commonwealth–agents who are now sabotaging the war effort. Is the Starflyer an ally of the Prime, or has it orchestrated a fight to the death between the two species for its own advantage?

Caught between two deadly enemies, one a brutal invader striking from without, the other a remorseless cancer killing from within, the fractious Commonwealth must unite as never before.

This will be humanity's finest hour–or its last gasp.

Earth is reeling from the revelation of a coming alien invasion—in just four centuries' time. The aliens' human collaborators may have been defeated, but the presence of the sophons, the subatomic particles that allow Trisolaris instant access to all human information, means that Earth's defense plans are totally exposed to the enemy. Only the human mind remains a secret. This is the motivation for the Wallfacer Project, a daring plan that grants four men enormous resources to design secret strategies, hidden through deceit and misdirection from Earth and Trisolaris alike. Three of the Wallfacers are influential statesmen and scientists, but the fourth is a total unknown. Luo Ji, an unambitious Chinese astronomer and sociologist, is baffled by his new status. All he knows is that he's the one Wallfacer that Trisolaris wants dead.

Translated by Joel Martinsen

Note: first published in China in 2008.

Half a century after the Doomsday Battle, the uneasy balance of Dark Forest Deterrence keeps the Trisolaran invaders at bay. Earth enjoys unprecedented prosperity due to the infusion of Trisolaran knowledge. With human science advancing daily and the Trisolarans adopting Earth culture, it seems that the two civilizations will soon be able to co-exist peacefully as equals without the terrible threat of mutually assured annihilation. But the peace has also made humanity complacent.

Cheng Xin, an aerospace engineer from the early 21st century, awakens from hibernation in this new age. She brings with her knowledge of a long-forgotten program dating from the beginning of the Trisolar Crisis, and her very presence may upset the delicate balance between two worlds. Will humanity reach for the stars or die in its cradle?

Centuries in the future, Francis Sandow is the only man alive who was born as long ago as the 20th century. His body is kept young and in perfect health by advanced scientific methods; he has amassed such a fortune that he can own entire planets; and he has become a god. No, not a god of Earth, but one of the panetheon of the alien Pei'ans: he is Shimbo of Darktree, Shrugger of Thunders. Yet he doesn't believe that his personality has merged with the ancient consciousness of Shimbo, that he really can call down the skies upon his enemies. The time comes, however, when Francis Sandow must use these powers against the most dangerous antagonist in the universe: another Pei'an god -- Shimbo's own enemy, Belion. And Belion has no doubt whatever of his own powers....

First there were good times: humankind reached glorious heights, even immortality. Then there were bad times: Earth was occupied by the faceless, brutal Qax. Immortality drugs were confiscated, the human spirit crushed. Earth became a vast factory for alien foodstuffs.

Into this new dark age appears the end of a tunnel through time. Made from exotic matter, it is humanity's greatest engineering project in the pre-Qax era, where the other end of the tunnel remains anchored near Jupiter. When a small group of humans in a makeshift craft outwit the Qax to escape to the past through the tunnel, it is not to warn the people of Earth against the Qax, who are sure to follow them. For these men and women from the future are themselves dangerous fanatics in pursuit of their own bizarre quantum grail.

Michael Poole, architect of the tunnel, must boldly confront the consequences of his genius.

Timelike Infinity: the strange region at the end of time where the Xeelee, owners of the universe, are waiting...

Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion.

Translation by Ken Liu.

Hugo and Nebula-winning and BSFA, BFA, and Locus-nominated Novella

Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs.

Knowledge comes at a cost, one that Binti is willing to pay, but her journey will not be easy. The world she seeks to enter has long warred with the Meduse, an alien race that has become the stuff of nightmares. Oomza University has wronged the Meduse, and Binti's stellar travel will bring her within their deadly reach.

If Binti hopes to survive the legacy of a war not of her making, she will need both the the gifts of her people and the wisdom enshrined within the University, itself - but first she has to make it there, alive.

The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2016, edited by Paula Guran, Nebula Awards Showcase 2017, edited by Julie E. Czerneda, and Infinite Stars (2017), edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt.

Iain M. Banks, the international bestselling author of The Player of Games and Consider Phlebas, is a true original, a literary visionary whose brilliant speculative fiction has transported us into worlds of unbounded imagination. Now, in his acclaimed new novel, Banks presents an engrossing portrait of an alien world, and of two very different people bound by a startling and mysterious secret.

On a backward world with six moons, an alert spy reports on the doings of one Dr. Vosill, who has mysteriously become the personal physician to the king despite being a foreigner and, even more unthinkably, a woman. Vosill has more enemies than she first realizes. But then she also has more remedies in hand than those who wish her ill can ever guess.

Elsewhere, in another palace across the mountains, a man named DeWar serves as chief bodyguard to the Protector General of Tassasen, a profession he describes as the business of "assassinating assassins." DeWar, too, has his enemies, but his foes strike more swiftly, and his means of combating them are more direct.

No one trusts the doctor, and the bodyguard trusts no one, but is there a hidden commonality linking their disparate histories? Spiraling around a central core of mystery, deceit, love, and betrayal. Inversions is a dazzling work of science fiction from a versatile and imaginative author writing at the height of his remarkable powers.

The United States government stands warned that sterilization procedures for returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere. When a probe satellite falls to the earth two years later, and lands in a desolate area of northeastern Arizona, the bodies that lie heaped and flung across the ground, have faces locked in frozen surprise. The terror has begun.

Phssthpok the Pak had been traveling for most of his thirty-two thousand years. His mission: save, develop, and protect the group of Pak breeders sent out into space some two and a half million years before...

Brennan was a Belter, the product of a fiercely independent, somewhat anarchic society living in, on, and around an outer asteroid belt. The Belters were rebels, one and all, and Brennan was a smuggler. The Belt worlds had been tracking the Pak ship for days -- Brennan figured to meet that ship first...

He was never seen again -- at least not by those alive at the time.

After centuries trapped inside the Void, the planet Bienvenido--along with its inhabitants, both human and Faller--has been expelled into normal space. But the survivors are millions of light-years from the Commonwealth, which knows nothing of their existence. As the two races plunge into mortal conflict for sole possession of the planet, the humans seem destined to lose--despite the assistance of the mysterious Warrior Angel, who possesses forbidden Commonwealth technology.

With the Fallers' numbers growing, and their ability to mimic humans allowing them to infiltrate all levels of society, it's only a matter of time before they surge to victory. Then, on a routine space flight, Major Ry Evine inadvertently frees a captive vessel that crash-lands on Bienvenido carrying the last, best hope for human survival: a baby. But a far from ordinary one.

The child not only ages at a remarkable rate but demonstrates knowledge and abilities far beyond those of Bienvenido's humans. Hunted by Fallers and humans alike, she is a crucial link to humanity's lost past--and a glorious future already almost out of reach.

Nebula-nominated novella

Aliens have landed in New York. After several months of no explanations, they finally reveal the reason for their arrival.

The news is not good.

Geneticist Marianne Jenner is having a career breakthrough, yet her family is tearing itself apart. Her children Elizabeth and Ryan constantly bicker, agreeing only that an alien conspiracy is in play. Her youngest, Noah, is addicted to a drug that keeps temporarily changing his identity. The Jenner family could not be further apart. But between the four of them, the course of human history will be forever altered.

Earth's most elite scientists have ten months to prevent a disaster--and not everyone is willing to wait.

Anthologized in Paula Guran's The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2015.

Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide; the third expedition in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.

The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.

They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers--they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding--but it's the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.

STEP INTO THE FOLD.

IT'S PERFECTLY SAFE.

The folks in Mike Erikson's small new England town would say he was just your average, everyday guy. And that's exactly how Mike likes it. Sure, the life he's chosen isn't much of a challenge to someone with his unique gifts, but he's content with his quiet and peaceful existence.

That is, until an old friend presents him with an irresistable mystery, one that Mike is uniquely qualified to solve: far out in the California desert, a team of DARPA scientist has invented a device they affectionately call the Albuquerque Door. Using a cryptic computer equation and magnetic fields to "fold" dimensions, it shrinks distances so a traveler can travel hundreds of feet in a single step.

The invention promises to make mankind's dreams of teleportation a reality. And, the scientists insist, travelling through the Door is completely safe.

Yet evidence is mounting that this miraculous machine isn't quite what it seems -- and that its creators are harboring a dangerous secret.

As his investigation draws him deeper into the puzzle, Mike begins to fear there is only one answer that makes sense, And if he's right, it may be only a matter of time before the project destroys... everything.

An American frigate, tracking down a ship-sinking monster, faces not a living creature but an incredible invention -- a fantastic submarine commanded by the mysterious Captain Nemo. Suddenly a devastating explosion leaves just three survivors, who find themselves prisoners inside Nemo's death ship on an underwater odyssey around the world from the pearl-laden waters of Ceylon to the icy dangers of the South Pole . . .as Captain Nemo, one of the greatest villians ever created, takes his revenge on all society.

More than a marvelously thrilling drama, this classic novel, written in 1870, foretells with uncanny accuracy the inventions and advanced technology of the twentieth century and has become a literary stepping-stone for generations of science fiction writers.

Robert Heinlein called it "possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read." The San Francisco Chronicle declared that "as science fiction, The Mote in God's Eye is one of the most important novels ever published." Now Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, award winning authors of such bestsellers as Footfall and The Legacy of Heorot, return us to the Mote, and to the universe of Kevin Renner and Horace Bury, of Rod Blaine and Sally Fowler.

There, 25 years have passed since humanity quarantined the mysterious aliens known as Moties within the confines of their own solar system. They have spent a quarter century analyzing and agonizing over the deadly threat posed by the only aliens mankind has ever encountered-- a race divided into distinct biological forms, each serving a different function. Master, Mediator, Engineer. Warrior. Each supremely adapted to its task, yet doomed by millions of years of evolution to an inescapable fate. For the Moties must breed-- or die. And now the fragile wall separating them and the galaxy beyond is beginning to crumble.

This masterpiece of science fiction is the fascinating story of Griffin, a scientist who creates a serum to render himself invisible, and his descent into madness that follows.

Falk was a fully grown man, alone in the dense forest, with no trail to show where he had come from and no memory to tell who - or what - he was.

The forest people took him in and raised him almost as a child, teaching him to speak, training him in forest lore, giving him all the knowledge they had.

But they could not solve the riddle of his past, and finally he had to set out on a perilous quest to Es Toch, the City of the Shing, the Liars of Earth, the Enemy of Mankind.

There he would find his true self - and a universe of danger....

The mining ship El Cavador is far out from Earth, in the deeps of the Kuiper Belt, beyond Pluto. Other mining ships, and the families that live on them, are few and far between this far out. So when El Cavador's telescopes pick up a fast-moving object coming in-system, it's hard to know what to make of it. It's massive and moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

El Cavador has other problems. Their systems are old and failing. The family is getting too big for the ship. There are claim-jumping corporate ships bringing Asteroid Belt tactics to the Kuiper Belt. Worrying about a distant object that might or might not be an alien ship seems...not important.

They're wrong. It's the most important thing that has happened to the human race in a million years. The first Formic War is about to begin.

SKYJACKED!

One minute Kip Russell is walking around his own backyard, testing out an old space suit and dreaming about going to the moon - the next he is the captive of a space pirate and on his way to the very place he had been dreaming of. At first, the events are so unreal he thinks he might be having a nightmare... but when he discovers other prisoners aboard the spaceship he knows the ordeal is all too real. Kip and his fellow abductees, the daughter of a world-renowned scientist and a beautiful creature from an alien planet, have been skyjacked by a monstrous extraterrestrial who is flying them to the moon on a journey toward a fate worse than death....

The story of The First Formic War continues in Earth Awakens.

Nearly 100 years before the events of Orson Scott Card's bestselling novel Ender's Game, humans were just beginning to step off Earth and out into the Solar System. A thin web of ships in both asteroid belts; a few stations; a corporate settlement on Luna. No one had seen any sign of other space-faring races; everyone expected that First Contact, if it came, would happen in the future, in the empty reaches between the stars. Then a young navigator on a distant mining ship saw something moving too fast, heading directly for our sun.

When the alien ship screamed through the solar system, it disrupted communications between the far-flung human mining ships and supply stations, and between them and Earth. So Earth and Luna were unaware that they had been invaded until the ship pulled into Earth orbit, and began landing terra-forming crews in China. Politics and pride slowed the response on Earth, and on Luna, corporate power struggles seemed more urgent than distant deaths. But there are a few men and women who see that if Earth doesn't wake up and pull together, the planet could be lost.

This debut novel from preeminent science-fiction writer Ursula LeGuin introduces her brilliant Hainish series, set in a galaxy seeded by the planet Hain with a variety of humanoid species, including that of Earth. Over the centuries, the Hainish colonies have evolved into physically and culturally unique peoples, joined by a League of All Worlds.

Earth-scientist Rocannon has been leading an ethnological survey on a remote world populated by three native races: the cavern-dwelling Gdemiar, the elvish Fiia, and the warrior clan, Liuar. But when the technologically primitive planet is suddenly invaded by a fleet of ships from the stars, rebels against the League of All Worlds, Rocannon is the only survey member left alive. Marooned among alien peoples, he leads the battle to free this newly discovered world and finds that legends grow around him as he fights.

The Earth colony of Landin has been stranded on Werel for ten years, and ten of Werel's years are over 600 terrestrial years, and the lonely and dwindling human settlement is beginning to feel the strain. Every winter, a season that lasts for 15 years, the Earthmen have neighbors: the humanoid hilfs, a nomadic people who only settle down for the cruel cold spell. The hilfs fear the Earthmen, whom they think of as witches and call the farborns. But hilfs and farborns have common enemies: the hordes of ravaging barbarians called gaals and eerie preying snow ghouls. Will they join forces or be annihilated?

Wildly praised by readers and critics alike, Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin won science fiction’s highest honor, the Hugo Award for Best Novel.

Now, in Spin’s direct sequel, Wilson takes us to the "world next door"--the planet engineered by the mysterious Hypotheticals to support human life, and connected to Earth by way of the Arch that towers hundreds of miles over the Indian Ocean. Humans are colonizing this new world--and, predictably, fiercely exploiting its resources, chiefly large deposits of oil in the western deserts of the continent of Equatoria.

Lise Adams is a young woman attempting to uncover the mystery of her father's disappearance ten years earlier. Turk Findley is an ex-sailor and sometimes-drifter. They come together when an infall of cometary dust seeds the planet with tiny remnant Hypothetical machines. Soon, this seemingly hospitable world will become very alien indeed--as the nature of time is once again twisted, by entities unknown.

One hundred years before Ender's Game, the aliens arrived on Earth with fire and death. This is the story of the First Formic War.

Victor Delgado beat the alien ship to Earth, but just barely. Not soon enough to convince skeptical governments that there was a threat. They didn't believe that until space stations and ships and colonies went up in sudden flame.

And when that happened, only Mazer Rackham and the Mobile Operations Police could move fast enough to meet the threat.

In the middle of the South Pacific, a thousand feet below the surface of the water, a huge vessel is discovered resting on the ocean floor. It is a spaceship of phenomenal dimensions, apparently undamaged by its fall from the sky. And, most startling, it appears to be at least three hundred years old.

But even more fantastic—and frightening—is what waits inside . . .

A planet orbiting binary suns, Helliconia has a Great Year spanning three millennia of Earth time: cultures are born in spring, flourish in summer, then die with the onset of the generations-long winter.

Helliconia is emerging from its centuries-long winter. The tribes of the equatorial continent emerge from their hiding places and are again able to dispute possession of the planet with the ferocious phagors. In Oldorando, love, trade and coinage are being redisovered,

This is the first volume of the Helliconia Trilogy -- a monumental saga that goes beyond anything yet created by this master among today's imaginative writers.

Throughout history, man has been searching for better ways to gather information about his universe. But although they may have longed for it, not even the most brilliant minds could conceive of a device as infinitely powerful or as immeasurably precise as the macroscope, until the twenty-first century. By analyzing information carried on macrons, this unbelievable tool brought the whole universe of wonders to man's doorstep. The macroscope was seen by many as the salvation of the human race.

But in the hands of the wrong man, the macroscope could be immensely destructive-infinitely more dangerous than the nuclear bomb. By searching to know too much, man could destroy the very essence of his mind. This is the powerful story of man's struggle with technology, and also the story of his human struggle with himself. This novel takes us across the breathtaking ranges of space as well as through the most touching places in the human heart. It is a story of coming of age, of sacrifice, and of love. It is the story of man's desperate search for a compromise between his mind and his heart, between knowledge and humanity.

Caine Riordan, reluctant diplomatic and military intelligence operative, has just finished playing his part repulsing the Arat Kur's and Hkh'Rkh's joint invasion of Earth.

But scant hours after the attackers surrender, the mysterious but potentially helpful Slaasriithi appeal to Caine to shepherd a diplomatic mission on a visit to their very alien worlds. The possible prize: a crucial alliance in a universe where the fledgling Consolidated Terran Republic has very few friends.

But Caine and his legation aren't the only ones journeying into the unknown reaches of Slaasriithi space. A group of renegade K'tor are following them, hoping to destroy humanity's hopes for a quick alliance. And that means finding and killing Caine Riordan.

Assuming that the bizarre and dangerous Slaasriithi lifeforms don't do it first.

Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston return to their Ender's Game prequel series with this first volume of an all-new trilogy about the Second Formic War in The Swarm.

The first invasion of Earth was beaten back by a coalition of corporate and international military forces, and the Chinese army. China has been devastated by the Formic's initial efforts to eradicate Earth life forms and prepare the ground for their own settlement. The Scouring of China struck fear into the other nations of the planet; that fear blossomed into drastic action when scientists determined that the single ship that wreaked such damage was merely a scout ship.

There is a mothership out beyond the Solar System's Kuiper Belt, and it's heading into the system, unstoppable by any weapons that Earth can muster.

Earth has been reorganized for defense. There is now a Hegemon, a planetary official responsible for keeping all the formerly warring nations in line. There's a Polemarch, responsible for organizing all the military forces of the planet into the new International Fleet. But there is an enemy within, an enemy as old as human warfare: ambition and politics. Greed and self-interest. Will Bingwen, Mazer Rackam, Victor Delgado and Lem Juke be able to divert those very human enemies in time to create a weapon that can effectively defend humanity in the inexorable Second Formic War?

The final work from the brightest star in science fiction's galaxy. Arthur C Clarke, who predicted the advent of communication satellites and author of 2001: A Space Odyssey completes a lifetime career in science fiction with a masterwork.

30 light years away, a race known simply as the One Point Fives are plotting a dangerous invasion plan, one that will wipe humankind off the face of the Earth...

Meanwhile, in Sri Lanka, a young astronomy student, Ranjit Subramanian, becomes obsessed with a three-hundred-year-old theorem that promises to unlock the secrets of the universe. While Ranjit studies the problem, tensions grow between the nations of the world and a UN taskforce headed up by China, America and Russia code-named Silent Thunder begins bombing volatile regimes into submission.

On the eve of the invasion of Earth a space elevator is completed, helped in part by Ranjit, which will herald a new type of Olympics to be held on the Moon. But when alien forces arrive Ranjit is forced to question his own actions, in a bid to save the lives of not just his own family but of all of humankind.

Co-written with fellow grand master Frederik Pohl, The Last Theorem not only provides a fitting end to the career one of the most famous names in science fiction but also sets a new benchmark in contemporary prescient science fiction. It tackles with ease epic themes as diverse as third world poverty, the atrocities of modern warfare in a post-nuclear age, space elevators, pure mathematics and mankind's first contact with extra-terrestrials.