Kaer's family has volunteered to emigrate through a world-gate to Linnea, a world known for horses as large as houses and dangerously mistrustful natives, in this new young adult novel from David Gerrold. Kaer and his mothers, fathers, siblings, and cousins embark on a training program in the Linnea dome designed to teach them to blend in with their new home's prior inhabitants in an environment free from the risk of discovery. The dome itself should be safe, but in a setting designed to be like Linnea in every conceivable way - from the long, harsh winters to the kacks, wolf-like creatures as tall as men - Kaer finds that even the simplest training exercises can be fraught with risk.

The essential companion to one of the most celebrated science fiction series of all time. Beginning with the novel Sundiver , David Brin introduced one of the most inventive, thought-provoking, and richly-imagined universes in all of science fiction. Now, Brin collaborates with acclaimed artist Kevyn Lenagh to present the definitive guide to the societies, technology, and species of his epic, award-winning series. Written as a handbook for Terran field agents, Contacting Aliens offers a detailed and comprehensive look at Uplift 's many alien races--from the friendly Tymbrimi to the warlike Tandu, the wise Kanten to the reptilian Soro, and the bureaucratic Hoon to the manipulative Thennanin. Readers will discover fascinating information about their physiology, psychology, and history; their clans and alliances; and their shifting attitudes toward Earth and its representatives. The volume also includes a history of Earth's contact with the Civilization of Five Galaxies, a look at its institutions, languages, and customs, plus a timeline of momentous events going back three billion years. Contacting Aliens is an essential reference work for Uplift fans, filled with never-before-seen illustrations that reveal the keys to the ambitious vision and bold speculation of the Uplift universe.

"A wildly inventive, funny, and ultimately quite heartfelt novel, The Unraveling is a chaotic romp of gender deconstruction packaged up in a groovy science-fictional coming-of-age tale." — Chicago Review of Books In the far-off future, Fift is a Staid-gendered youth–working towards logic and thoughtfulness–just trying to figure out zir life in the bustling, but rigid social system of Fullbelly. And as if mastering zir three bodies and making zir twelve parents proud weren’t enough to handle, Fift’s growing relationship with Shria, an at-times emotional and passionate Vail-gendered bioengineer, is a controversy waiting to happen. When Fift and Shria wind up at the center of a scandalous art spectacle that sparks off a multilayered Unraveling of society, Fift is torn between zir attraction to Shria and the safety of zir family, between staying true to zir feelings and social compliance . . . all while zir personal crises suddenly take on global significance. What’s a young Staid to do when the whole world is watching? In his intricate and thoughtful debut novel, Benjamin Rosenbaum brings warmth, heart, and humor to this story of growing up in the distant future, interrogates exactly who a utopia is for, and how social structures only change when everyone has a voice. Like Chana Porter’s The Seep and Monica Byrne’s The Actual Star, Benjamin Rosenbaum’s The Unraveling is the latest in a line of science fiction that challenges gender, society, and culture, while showcasing an inclusive, expansive, and creative vision of what the future can be.

" What if time could be taken from us-the minutes, the hours, the years of our lives, extracted like organs taken for transplant? What would it mean for the world? And what would it do to the person from whom it's taken? Grace Berney is a mid-level bureaucrat in the Food and Drug Administration, a woman who once brimmed with purpose but somehow turned into a middle-aged single mom with a dull government job and a melancholy sense that life has passed her by. Until the night a strange photo comes across her desk, of a young woman in a hospital bed who has been subjected to a mysterious procedure. Against orders and against common sense, Grace sets out to bring the girl to safety, and finds herself risking her job, her future, and her life on whether she can find the missing girl before an obsessive and violent mercenary who's also looking. Big Time is a fast-paced thriller and a metaphysical mystery about the very nature of our lives." -- Amazon.

Eleven outrageous tales of pasts and futures, aliens and Earthlings, humors and horrors. The general theme of this collection is an ironic and sometimes bitter comment on man's stupidity to man. But Tenn's humor is irrepressible and bursts forth in a joyous political satire on the wars of the sexes titled "The Masculinist Revolt", which may yet bring codpieces back into fashion. Contents: * Author's Note (The Wooden Star) (1968) essay by William Tenn * Generation of Noah (1951) / short story by William Tenn * Brooklyn Project (1948) / short story by William Tenn * The Dark Star (1957) / short story by William Tenn * Null-P (1951) / short story by William Tenn * Eastward Ho! (1958) / short story by William Tenn * The Deserter (1953) / short story by William Tenn * Betelgeuse Bridge (1951) / short story by William Tenn * "Will You Walk a Little Faster" (1951) / short story by William Tenn * It Ends with a Flicker (1956) / short story by William Tenn * Lisbon Cubed (1958) / novelette by William Tenn * The Masculinist Revolt (1965) / novelette by William Tenn . This is the 3rd Ballantine printing. Cover Artist: H. R. Van Dongen

In an Earth far into the future, the human race has reverted to a rigid Guild system where every citizen is classified according to function and mandated to strictly abide by the Guild's set of rules. Those who are Guildless are not considered men; they are at the lowest rung of the social ladder and shunned by all. In this universe of specialized citizens, genetic engineering had been done to those who needed special attributes; Fliers had wings and Watchers had the ability to use their minds to scan the outer space for invaders. When a Flier, a Watcher, and a Guildless man decide to travel together, they witness the end of an era as the invasion of enemies from the stars begins. This Hugo-award winning novella, "Nightwings," is only one of the five award contenders included in this new collection of Robert Silverberg's stories. Full of lyricism and melancholic descriptions of the Earth as it was and the Earth as it had been, "Nightwings" had captivated readers when it was first published in the late 1960s and continues to captivate new readers until the present. Those who have read it could not easily forget the images and the emotions evoked by the characters that Silverberg so expertly created. The other stories in this collection--nominated for a Hugo, a Nebula, and Locus awards--highlight the author's mastery of the language and his capacity to engage the reader fully in worlds of his own making. We get to see the irony of the characters' experiences in "When We Went to See the End of the World," sympathize and feel proud of the time traveler in "House of Bones," and quietly applaud the gumption and cleverness of the young girl in "Amanda and the Alien." Like "Nightwings," the story "Beauty in the Night" also haunts with its brutal portrayal of a child's life at a time when the aliens arrived and took over the Earth. Rich in detail and waxing lyrical at some point, it is a quintessential Silverberg story--full of drama of human failures and yet replete as well with instances of great courage that enable the people in his worlds to transcend their fate.

THE LIFE EXPECTANCY OF A NEW ARRIVAL ON OMEGA AVERAGED THREE EARTH YEARS Barrent had been tried, convicted, and memory-washed on Earth - an Earth strangely altered and stratified by fear of the radical and non-conformist. Now he was serving his sentence on Omega - a prison planet walled by a ring of hovering guard-ships from which there was no escape. Omega was a world of horror, a savage, ruthless way of life. But it was only a momentary ordeal, a prelude to a return to Earth and the subtle terrors of its own status civilization. Robert Sheckley was a Hugo and Nebula-nominated American author. He was first published in science fiction magazines of the 1950's. His numerous quick-witted stories and novels were famously unpredictable, absurdist and comical. Sheckley was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2001.

"January fifteenth - the day all Americans receive their annual Universal Basic Income payment. For Hannah, a middle-aged mother, today is the anniversary of the day she took her two children and fled her abusive ex-wife. For Janelle, a young, broke journalist, today is another mind- numbing day interviewing passersby about the very policy she once opposed. For Olivia, a wealthy college freshman, today is 'Waste Day', when rich kids across the country compete to see who can most obscenely squander the government's money. For Sarah, a pregnant teen, today is the day she'll journey alongside her sister-wives to pick up the payments that undergird their community - and perhaps embark on a new journey altogether. In this near-future science fiction novella by Rachel Swirsky, the fifteenth of January is another day of the status quo, and another chance at making lasting change."--

DAVID GERROLD-Hugo & Nebula Award winner-presents: Praxis Makes Permanent , the thrilling conclusion to the extraordinary journey of Jamie and José to the colony world Praxis! "This sequel completely fulfills the promise of the first volume, creating a vision of the future that feels plausible and full of hope, despite that future's gritty, messy imperfection." -Nigel Suckling, Hugo Award-winning author Praxis Makes Permanent is the highly anticipated conclusion to Praxis ! Jamie and José have hurtled headlong into a world where nothing is what it's supposed to be. Praxis is in rebellion, but who are the players and what do they want to achieve? If everything is chaotic, where do Jamie and José fit in? And guess what? They're the biggest part of the problem! "Only David Gerrold could deliver a novella this sharp, this smart, and this deeply human. Gerrold doesn't just write science fiction-he builds futures with heart, wit, and razor-edged insight. Praxis Makes Permanent is bold, unflinching and hard to put down." -K. Pimpinella, author of the Time Ranger series

Captivating and thought-provoking, THE STOCHASTIC MAN is another outstanding novel by award-winning Robert Silverberg. Lew Nichols is been in the business of stochastic prediction--surveys and high-powered guesswork. Nichols has also been the administrative assistant to the mayor of New York City, the contented husband of Sundara Shastri, and a disciple of Martin Carvajal--an odd little man who is capable of seeing the future. But Nichols' life is changing. While under the influence of Carvajal, Nichols seeks the secrets of developing second sight, so he can manipulate the future. With unrivaled skill, Silverberg has created characters with great complexity, whose dilemmas have a strange air of future reality.

One of SF's most beloved rogues: the Stainless Steel Rat! Slippery Jim DiGriz is the Stainless Steel Rat: the galaxy's greatest interstellar thief and con artist. For novel upon novel, the Rat has outfoxed the forces of conventionality, cutting a stylish swathe through dozens of star systems-and stealing the hearts of thousands of readers. Now three of the Rat's greatest exploits are collected in a single volume. In A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born , we see the origin and early days of Jim DiGriz's brilliant criminal career, as our underworld hero is forced to work for the Good Guys. Conscripted again in The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted , this time into a planetary army, the Rat must avenge the murder of his mentor-in-crime. And in The Stainless Steel Rat Sings the Blues , Slippery Jim must retrieve a missing alien artifact, while disguised as a futuristic rock-and-roller...or forfeit his life.

"An eclectic collection...contemporary classics and some fine-lesser known works as well. As good an introduction to contemporary Science Fiction and its possibilities as one could wish" 753 Pages, 15 shorter important Science Fiction Novels - Contents: Introduction by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg * Beyond Bedlam - Wyman Guin * Equinoctial - John Varley * By His Bootstraps - Robert A. Heinlein * The Golden Helix - Theodore Sturgeon * Born With the Dead - Robert Silverberg * Second Game - Charles V. De Vet and Katherine MacLean * The Dead Past - Isaac Asimov * The Road to the Sea - Arthur C. Clarke * The Star Pit - Samuel R. Delany * Giant Killer - A. Bertram Chandler * A Case of Conscience - James Blish * Dio - Damon Knight * Houston, Houston, Do You Read? - James Tiptree, Jr. * On the Storm Planet - Cordwainer Smith * The Miracle Worker's - Jack Vance

Armchair Fiction presents extra-large editions of classic science fiction double novels with original illustrations. The first novel, "Secret of Marracott Deep" is a tale of an undersea race rising from the depths to menace mankind. What was the secret of beautiful woman on the beach who found herself constantly threatened by monsters from below? Look out for giant lobsters! The second novel, "Pawn of the Black Fleet" is a tale of pending invasion. A massive alien fleet hovered in the skies above America. For days the grim, threatening spaceships of the invading armada were seen simultaneously over every major city, washing the earth below with a stinking miasma of evil dread. Then suddenly, the pattern stopped and the world waited silently and fearfully for the next move. Both novels are terrific thrillers penned by two well-known '60s sci-fi specialists, Henry Slesar and Mark Clifton

For the first in over 50 years, Harlan Ellison's second novel returns to print in a substantially revised and expanded form. Also included are three of Ellison's best long-form stories. This 336-page paperback features: The Sound of a Scythe, Harlan Ellison's never-before-republished second novel-appearing for the first time under the author's preferred title (the original publisher renamed it The Man With Nine Lives without Ellison's consent)-expanded by 25% from its 1960 publication and extensively rewritten by Ellison for this appearance. Virtually every page has been finessed by the author. "Mefisto in Onyx"-The Bram Stoker Award-winning novel of a telepath who's asked by his best friend to journey into the mind of a serial killer on death row. "All the Lies That Are My Life"-Ellison's novella about a world-famous writer who overshadows his best friend from beyond the grave. "The Resurgence of Miss Ankle-Strap Wedgie"-A Veronica Lake-inspired tale of a rediscovered silver-screen star's brutal return to Hollywood. An introduction by Emmy-nominated tv writer Ronald D. Moore, creator of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica and writer/producer of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Roswell, and HBO's critically acclaimed Carnivale. And a beautiful new cover by World Fantasy Award-nominated artist Jill Bauman.

Marc Mathieu is a brilliant creator -- a scientist whose experiments have led him to the very essence of man's life-energy. Leading a team of top French physicists, Mathieu develops a method to capture and harness this incredible life-force as it escapes from a man's body at the moment of death. The result is the gasp: a pulsating sphere of energy that looks as harmless as a ping-pong ball but contains a power source that makes the atom obsolete.

Science fiction novel set in the year 2011 (about 40 year when book was written). Because capital punishment has been deemed too harsh, violent criminals are subjected to coercive therapy that effectively erases their memories and replaces them with artificially constructed memories to form a new personality deemed useful to society. Protagonist Paul Macy, a rehabilitated criminal, finds his original personality, a serial rapist named Nat Hamlin, reasserting itself in defiance of the mental conditioning.

"A dark, menacingly brilliant tale, tinged with the erotic . . . a kind of film noir between covers directed by Fellini." ― LA Times"Brilliant, funny, hallucinatory." ― Joyce Carol Oates"More engaging than 96 percent of the fiction published in France or North America today." ― Artform"The story and the art are both eerie and erotic." ― Publishers WeeklySpanning multiple decades and continents, this phantasmagorical epic is the result of a unique collaboration between an award-winning American author and the famous French illustrator of Alexandro Jodorowsky's Bouncer series. Writer Jerome Charyn and artist François Boucq combine their talents to recount a surrealistic tale about the wife of a philandering magician and her struggles with terrifying demons, both real and imaginary.Originally published as La Femme du magicien, The Magician's Wife was awarded the 1986 Prix Alfred (Angoulême) and the Grand Prix (Sierre). The English-language version has been out of print for three decades, during which time the graphic novel has developed a deep cult following ― this new edition promises to mesmerize a new generation of readers. Suggested for mature readers.

An extraordinary novel of an alternate America by the author of The Guns of the South. Can it be called slavery if the slaves are ape-men, little more than animals? Slavery had come to this New World in a manner totally different from our own--but when the Sims learn to speak, matters become more complicated.

"Although the wombat is real and the dragon is not, nobody knows what a wombat looks like and everyone knows what a dragon looks like."Not a novel, not a book of short stories, Adventures in Unhistory is a book of the fantastic-a compendium of magisterial examinations of Mermaids, Mandrakes, and Mammoths; Dragons, Werewolves, and Unicorns; the Phoenix and the Roc; about places such as Sicily, Siberia, and the Moon; about heroic, sinister, and legendary persons such as Sindbad, and Aleister Crowley, and Prester John; and-revealed at last-the Secret of Hyperborea.

"This future history of the next thirty years, imagined by bestselling author Thomas Harding, is surprising, compelling and disturbingly believable. In 2020, a researcher is shocked to find a set of notebooks detailing the history of the next thirty years. Is this a hoax? Or could it be real? The notebooks, written in the year 2050, contain interview transcripts between teenage Billy and Gran Nancy. We learn about the great climate SHOCK, when global temperatures rise much faster than anticipated, resulting in catastrophic consequences for humanity. We learn about a shift away from democracy, toward unelected "ethnarchs" -- heads of corporations who use their access to our personal data to competently run the world. We learn about the giant city towers where most people live, work and play inside -- where it's safe from natural disasters and viral outbreaks. And between these interviews, we learn more about Billy, whose interest in the history that has been erased from the official record is causing trouble in 2050. Is it too late to change the past to save the future?"--Publisher's description.