Called the archetypical African novel, this book is very easy to read, and, though the prose are simple and direct, the story will swing you up and down emotionally. In the end, you are ashamed to be a white person. It follows the life of Okonkwo, from a boy with a father he is not proud of, to a proud member of his tribe with three wives. Okonkwo has a good handle on life, and how he will rise to be an important member of his tribe. He is half way there when… well.. things fall apart. He struggles, using everything he has learned, but as the world changes (and not really for the better) all his learning and knowledge does him no good. He watches as his world does fall apart.

This is an excellent read.

Things Fall Apart tells two intertwining stories, both centering on Okonkwo, a "strong man" of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first, a powerful fable of the immemorial conflict between the individual and society, traces Okonkwo's fall from grace with the tribal world. The second, as modern as the first is ancient, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo's world with the arrival of aggressive European missionaries. These perfectly harmonized twin dramas are informed by an awareness capable of encompassing at once the life of nature, human history, and the mysterious compulsions of the soul.

Read to long ago to rate.

Evan Larkspur dreamed of greater glory than his play writing could ever bring him. But his newfound career as officer on a star-survey mission ended in disaster almost as soon as it had begun. And when he returned home, the only survivor of a freak accident that had flung his ship out of known space, he found that a century had passed -- and though Larkspur the playwright was now famous, Larkspur the explorer was a wanted man.

Buried in his memory was the fate of his ship; hidden on his person was the star-access data that would have been worth several fortunes -- if it were not scrambled beyond repair. The repressive First Column government coveted that data and would not hesitate to strip Larkspur's mind in an attempt to decipher it.

There was nothing a deceased playwright or a vanished explorer could do against the Column. And so Larkspur fled to the fringe worlds, hiding his identity, intent only on survival -- until, on an obscure planet called Newcount Two, he discovered a powerful legacy he never knew he had . . .

Dirk Gently runs a detective agency that gets caught up in the strangest of cases. Unlike The Hitchhiker's Guide... all this take place on the same planet.

And yet, still hilarity ensues...

There is a long tradition of Great Detectives, and Dirk Gently does not belong to it. But his search for a missing cat uncovers a ghost, a time traveler, AND the devastating secret of humankind! Detective Gently's bill for saving the human race from extinction: NO CHARGE.

The earth is destroyed for a construction project and ONE man hitchs a ride with a passing ship. DON'T PANIC. Things have a strange way of working out. Really strange!

If you enjoy Prachett or insanity in general, you will love this famous bit of farce!

Together this dynamic pair begin a journey through space aided by quotes from The Hitchhiker's Guide ("A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have") and a galaxy-full of fellow travelers: Zaphod Beeblebrox--the two-headed, three-armed ex-hippie and totally out-to-lunch president of the galaxy; Trillian, Zaphod's girlfriend (formally Tricia McMillan), whom Arthur tried to pick up at a cocktail party once upon a time zone; Marvin, a paranoid, brilliant, and chronically depressed robot; Veet Voojagig, a former graduate student who is obsessed with the disappearance of all the ballpoint pens he bought over the years.

Where are these pens? Why are we born? Why do we die? Why do we spend so much time between wearing digital watches? For all the answers stick your thumb to the stars. And don't forget to bring a towel!

After being stranded on pre-historic Earth after the events in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Arthur Dent is met by his old friend Ford Prefect, who drags him into a space-time eddy, represented by an anachronistic sofa. The two end up at Lord's Cricket Ground two days before the Earth's destruction by the Vogons. Shortly after they arrive, a squad of robots land in a spaceship in the middle of the field and attack the assembled crowd, stealing The Ashes before departing. Another spaceship arrives, the Starship Bistromath, helmed by Slartibartfast, who discovers he is too late and requests Arthur and Ford's help.

And hilarity ensues...

The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky above their heads--so they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals stand between the white killer robots of Krikkit and their goal of total annihilation.

They are Arthur Dent, a mild-mannered space and time traveler, who tries to learn how to fly by throwing himself at the ground and missing; Ford Prefect, his best friend, who decides to go insane to see if he likes it; Slartibartfast, the indomitable vicepresident of the Campaign for Real Time, who travels in a ship powered by irrational behavior; Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed, three-armed ex-head honcho of the Universe; and Trillian, the sexy space cadet who is torn between a persistent Thunder God and a very depressed Beeblebrox. How will it all end? Will it end? Only this stalwart crew knows as they try to avert "universal" Armageddon and save life as we know it--and don't know it!

Okay, you probably already know this but Douglas Adams is a lunatic, and it comes out in his books. This, like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is another of his lunatic creations, but less well known.

All I distinctly recall is the mystery of the couch in the stair case. How it managed to get stuck there and how they were going to get it out. When it is revealed how it first got stuck, you almost miss it, but if you catch it, you will roll over laughing. (The couch has nothing to do with the main story.. it's just something the characters remark on as they have to keep passing it in the apartment stairs.)

When a passenger check-in desk at London's Heathrow Airport disappears in a ball of orange flame, the explosion is deemed an act of God. But which god, wonders holistic detective Dirk Gently? What god would be hanging around Heathrow trying to catch the 3:37 to Oslo? And what has this to do with Dirk's latest--and late-- client, found only this morning with his head revolving atop the hit record "Hot Potato"? Amid the hostile attentions of a stray eagle and the trauma of a very dirty refrigerator, super-sleuth Dirk Gently will once again solve the mysteries of the universe...

Arthur Dent plans to sightsee across the Galaxy with his girlfriend Fenchurch, but she disappears during a hyperspace jump, a result from being from an unstable sector of the Galaxy. Depressed, Arthur continues to travel the galaxy using his biological donations to DNA banks to fund his travels, and knowing that he cannot die until he visits Stavromula Beta, as told to him by the insane Agrajag whom had been repeated killed in various ways by Arthur before being reincarnated. During one trip, he ends up stranded on the homely planet Lamuella, and decides to stay to become a sandwich maker for the local population.

And hilarity ensues...

Douglas Adams is back with the amazing, logic-defying, but-why-stop-now fifth novel in the Hitchhiker Trilogy. Here is the epic story of Random, who sets out on a transgalactic quest to find the planet of her ancestors

Arthur Dent has hitchhiked through the galaxy and is dropped off on a planet in a rainstorm. He realizes that he appears to be in England on Earth, even though he saw it destroyed by the Vogons. While he has been gone for several years, it appears only a few months have passed on Earth. He manages to hitch a ride with a man named Russell, who is driving home his sister Fenchurch (Fenny for short). Russell explains that she had become delusional after worldwide mass hysteria over the "hallucinations with the big yellow spaceships" (Vogon ships). Arthur also learns that all the dolphins disappeared shortly after that event.

The name of the book was the final message from the dolphin, who decided to leave earth before it was destroyed.

And hilarity ensues...

Back on Earth with nothing more to show for his long, strange trip through time and space than a ratty towel and a plastic shopping bag, Arthur Dent is ready to believe that the past eight years were all just a figment of his stressed-out imagination. But a gift-wrapped fishbowl with a cryptic inscription, the mysterious disappearance of Earth's dolphins, and the discovery of his battered copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy all conspire to give Arthur the sneaking suspicion that something otherworldly is indeed going on. . . .

God only knows what it all means. And fortunately, He left behind a Final Message of explanation. But since it's light-years away from Earth, on a star surrounded by souvenir booths, finding out what it is will mean hitching a ride to the far reaches of space aboard a UFO with a giant robot. But what else is new?

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe begins just as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ended. Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Trillian, and Zaphod Beeblebrox have just left the planet Magrathea when they are attacked by a Vogon ship. They find they are unable to use the Improbability drive to escape, as Arthur has accidentally jammed the computer with a simple request for a cup of tea which proved a rather difficult problem.

And of course, hilarity ensues...

Every Douglas Adams book gets a thumbs up from me.

Facing annihilation at the hands of the warlike Vogons is a curious time to have a craving for tea. It could only happen to the cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his curious comrades in arms as they hurtle across space powered by pure improbability--and desperately in search of a place to eat. Among Arthur's motley shipmates are Ford Prefect, a longtime friend and expert contributor to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Zaphod Beeblebrox, the three-armed, two-headed ex-president of the galaxy; Tricia McMillan, a fellow Earth refugee who's gone native (her name is Trillian now); and Marvin, the moody android who suffers nothing and no one very gladly. Their destination? The ultimate hot spot for an evening of apocalyptic entertainment and fine dining, where the food (literally) speaks for itself. Will they make it? The answer: hard to say. But bear in mind that the Hitchhiker's Guide deleted the term "Future Perfect" from its pages, since it was discovered not to be! "What's such fun is how amusing the galaxy looks through Adams' sardonically silly eyes." --Detroit Free Press

This is kind of short story about what happens to Zaphod prior to his life as President of the Universe. A farce like always.

The story is a prequel to the events in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and has the young Zaphod Beeblebrox working as a salvage ship operator. He guides some bureaucrats to a crashed spaceship that may be leaking some dangerous materials, radioactive, toxic and otherwise hazardous by-products which were destined to be thrown into a black hole. The bureaucrats swear that it is "perfectly safe." When asked why they want to see it if that is true, they claim that they "like looking at things that are perfectly safe." The comic asides in the story include some of the time travel paradoxes which are a common running theme in Adams' SF work, and plenty of material about lobsters.

Since this was before Zaphod blocked off sections of his own brain for the presidency, readers are able to glimpse what his original personality was like. His general speech patterns and goof-off personality are the same, but he seems to have moral views and is more likely to go off on life-threatening and exciting quests for the greater good.

Throughout the story, it is emphasized that there is something particularly dangerous on board that ought to have been utterly destroyed, but is feared to have escaped.

Ultimately, it is revealed that the something was actually three identical "Designer People". The personalities seem totally benign, which is what makes them so dangerous. The ship is filled with substances so dangerous that they are safe because no one who would actually use them would be let near. The personalities, products of a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation project, however, have custom personalities that could not naturally exist. There is "nothing they will not do if allowed, and there is nothing they will not be allowed to do." Since no one will recognize that they are capable of mass destruction (despite their good intentions), no one will stop them from doing the unspeakable.

The story culminates with the revelation that one of the personalities has escaped and headed off into Galactic Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha, which is where Arthur and Ford Prefect were picked up by the Heart of Gold a fraction of second before they would have perished (and just minutes after they had been rescued from the demolished Earth in the same sector), in the original Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

This book was a hit when I was younger, but I just couldn't bring myself to read a book wherein all the characters are rabbits. I thought it would be stupid. I was wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The characters are different and interesting. You get into the lives and cares of the rabbits and start to worry about how things are going to turn out for them. Believe it or not, this is an adventure book with battles and intrigue, plots and action. Plenty to hold the interest of a young (or, like me old) reader.

A phenomenal worldwide bestseller for over thirty years, Richard Adams's Watership Down is a timeless classic and one of the most beloved novels of all time. Set in England's Downs, a once idyllic rural landscape, this stirring tale of adventure, courage and survival follows a band of very special creatures on their flight from the intrusion of man and the certain destruction of their home. Led by a stouthearted pair of friends, they journey forth from their native Sandleford Warren through the harrowing trials posed by predators and adversaries, to a mysterious promised land and a more perfect society.

Unread as yet.

Published in 1957, two years after its author's death at the age of forty-five, A Death in the Family remains a near-perfect work of art, an autobiographical novel that contains one of the most evocative depictions of loss and grief ever written. As Jay Follet hurries back to his home in Knoxville, Tennessee, he is killed in a car accident'a tragedy that destroys not only a life, but also the domestic happiness and contentment of a young family. A novel of great courage, lyric force, and powerful emotion, A Death in the Family is a masterpiece of American literature.

This was a good one. About a multi-generational space ship where the occupants have forgotten it is a space ship and turned primitive.

None available.

A good hard science story of asteroid mining; and things gone wrong. People have died, but the money is too good to pass up. So Waldo Packwood, a retired disabled asteroid miner, is sent out to investigate what happened. Things go wrong right from the start.. and things keep getting worse.

This is a pretty good hard scifi detective story... the science is right; the equipment is right; the physics are right... but the human factor can never be completely known; until it is discovered. I enjoyed this.

A lost mining crew, 400 million miles from Earth. A retired miner journeys to find out why.

“There’s something out there…”

Waldo Packwood has had a rough time of things lately. He’s lost his job, his friends, and finally his family. At 50 years old, he’s living alone in a small apartment wondering what’s happened to his life. He’s unexpectedly asked to travel to Hector 1, a lone asteroid in the Jupiter Trojans, to investigate the missing crew.

“That’s just it, Waldo,” sighed the director, “we don’t know what happened.”

His trip is a struggle from the beginning, as he discovers more about those around him and what they’re willing to do to keep Hector 1 to themselves. Instead of answers, he’s cast into the fight of his life as he struggles to uncover the secrets and lies that have been built around this distant world.

Rare Earth is a gritty, science-fiction thriller and debut novel about an unconventional hero and second chances.

WHERE HAS THE PLANET AND ITS POPULATOIN GONE? CAN THE REMAINING HUMANS, SCATTERED THROUGHOUT THE SOLAR SYSTEM, LOCATE AND RECLAIM THEIR MOTHER WORLD? OR WILL THEY, TOO, FIND THEMSELVES POWERLESS TO DEFEAT THE UNKNOWN ALIENS AND DESTINED TO SHARE EARTH'S MYSTERIOUS FATE?

The first book in the Hunted Earth series, published to tie in with the hardcover publication of its sequel, The Shattered Sphere. The Earth has disappeared, but was it destroyed by an unauthorized gravity experiment, or was the planet kidnapped by an alien race? Humanity must discover the answer before it's too late.

Another book about a young girl growing up poor in the south (e.g.. Ellen Foster). I really enjoyed this book because it brought to mind many scenes from my own youth when we used to visit family in North Carolina. Now, my family was not abusive or exceedingly poor... but the flavor of the time is so present in this book it took me back so perfectly.

I readily recommend this book for anyone who grew up in the south, or wants to taste what it was like to do so.

The publication of Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina was a landmark event. The novel's profound portrait of family dynamics in the rural South won the author a National Book Award nomination and launched her into the literary spotlight. Critics have likened Allison to William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, and Harper Lee, naming her the first writer of her generation to dramatize the lives and language of poor whites in the South. Since its appearance, the novel has inspired an award-winning film and has been banned from libraries and classrooms, championed by fans, and defended by critics.

Greenville County, South Carolina, is a wild, lush place that is home to the Boatwright family-a tight-knit clan of rough-hewn, hard- drinking men who shoot up each other's trucks, and indomitable women who get married young and age too quickly. At the heart of this story is Ruth Anne Boatwright, known simply as Bone, a bastard child who observes the world around her with a mercilessly keen perspective. When her stepfather Daddy Glen, "cold as death, mean as a snake," becomes increasingly more vicious toward her, Bone finds herself caught in a family triangle that tests the loyalty of her mother, Anney-and leads to a final, harrowing encounter from which there can be no turning back.

Jim Dixon is a not-very-qualified-nor-interested lecturer in History at some nondescript University outside London. He doesn't much like his mentor, but sucks up because he sees no future for himself other than gaining a full time position at the University. He amuses himself (and you the reader) with an inner dialog that runs counter to his exterior ways. Then, one day, it all starts to fall apart. And it falls apart so spectacularly that even as you cringe, you enjoy the ride to the bottom. Ahh, but the bottom isn't what is seems for a man who really needed a change, and things might work out better for LUCKY Jim once everything he “values” (for the wrong reasons) is gone and new hope dawns. In the end you are cheering him along as he destroys his life with one amusing blunder after another.

I enjoyed this book. I am not recommending it to everyone. It's a style of British novel that presages the dry humor of Have You Been Served or Mr. Bean or Monty Python (The dry stuff.. not the slapstick). It takes a while before you start to care for the character – after all, even he knows he is settling for a life he is not interested in. But once you warm up to him, you find yourself rooting for him, even as he self destructs. Remember, there is a reason its called LUCKY Jim, because, in the end, he is the luckiest of men.

Regarded by many as the finest, and funniest, comic novel of the twentieth century, Lucky Jim remains as trenchant, withering, and eloquently misanthropic as when it first scandalized readers in 1954. This is the story of Jim Dixon, a hapless lecturer in medieval history at a provincial university who knows better than most that "there was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones." Amis's scabrous debut leads the reader through a gallery of emphatically English bores, cranks, frauds, and neurotics, with each of whom Dixon must contend in one way or another in order to hold on to his cushy academic perch and win the girl of his fancy.

More than just a merciless satire of cloistered college life and stuffy post-war manners, Lucky Jim is an attack on the forces of boredom, whatever form they may take, and a work of art that at once distills and extends an entire tradition of English comic writing, from Fielding and Dickens through Wodehouse and Waugh. As Christopher Hitchens has written, "if you can picture Bertie or Jeeves being capable of actual malice, and simultaneously imagine Evelyn Waugh forgetting about original sin, you have the combination of innocence and experience that makes this short romp so imperishable."

Not read

Money tells the story of, and is narrated by, John Self, a successful director of adverts who is invited to New York City by Fielding Goodney, a film producer, to shoot his first film. Self is an archetypal hedonist and slob; he is usually drunk, an avid consumer of pornography and prostitutes, eats too much and, above all, spends too much, encouraged by Goodney.

The actors in the film, which Self originally titles Good Money but which he eventually wants to rename Bad Money, all have some kind of emotional issue which clashes with fellow cast members and with their roles — the principal casting having already been done by Goodney. As examples: the strict Christian Spunk Davis (whose name is intentionally unfortunate) is asked to play a drugs pusher; the aging hardman Lorne Guyland has to be physically assaulted; the motherly Caduta Massi, who is insecure about her body, is asked to appear in a sex scene with Lorne, whom she detests.

Self is stalked by "Frank the Phone" while in New York, a menacing misfit who threatens him over a series of telephone conversations, apparently because Self personifies the success Frank was unable to attain. Self is not frightened of Frank, even when he is beaten by him while on an alcoholic bender. (Self, characteristically, is unable to remember how he was attacked.) Towards the end of the book Self arranges to meet Frank for a showdown, which is the beginning of the novel's shocking denouement. Money is similar to Amis' five-years-later London Fields, in having a major plot twist.

Self returns to London before filming begins, revealing more of his humble origins, his landlord father Barry (who makes his contempt for his son clear by invoicing him for every penny spent on his upbringing) and pub doorman Fat Vince. Self discovers that his London girlfriend, Selina, is having an affair with Ossie Twain, while Self is likewise attracted to Twain's wife in New York, Martina. This increases Self's psychosis and makes his final downfall even more brutal.

After Selina has plotted to destroy any chance of a relationship between him and Martina, Self discovers that all his credit cards have been blocked, and, after confronting Frank, the stars of film angrily claim that there is no film. It is revealed that Goodney had been manipulating him; all the contracts signed by Self were loans and debts, and Goodney fabricated the entire film. He is also revealed to be Frank. He supposedly chose Self for his behavior on the first plane to America, where Goodney was sitting close to him. Felix, a bellhop, helps him escape the angry mob in the hotel lobby and fly back to England, only to discover that Barry is not Self's real father.

Amis writes himself into the novel as a kind of overseer and confidant in Self's final breakdown. He is an arrogant character, but Self is not afraid to express his rather low opinion of Amis, such as the fact that he earns so much yet "lives like a student." Amis, among others, tries to warn Self that he is heading for destruction but to no avail. Felix becomes Self's only real friend in America and finally makes Self realise how much trouble he has: "Man, you are out for a whole lot of money."

The novel's subtitle, "A Suicide Note", is clarified at the end of the novel. It is revealed that Barry Self is not John Self's father; his father is in fact Fat Vince. As such, John Self no longer exists. Hence, in the subtitle, Amis indicates that this cessation of John Self's existence is analogous to suicide, which of course, results in the death of the self. A Suicide Note could also relate to the novel as a whole, or money, which Self himself calls "suicide notes" within the novel.

After learning that his father is Fat Vince, John realizes that his true identity is that of Fat John, half-brother of Fat Paul. The novel ends with Fat John having lost all his money (if it ever existed), yet he is still able to laugh at himself and is cautiously optimistic about his future.

Nano-machines, and what they could do if an alien civilization used em to explore the universe.

An incredible discovery on the lunar farside--massive structures being erected by intelligent, living machines--could threaten the lives of the colonists living on the Moon.

Nebula Award Nominee. The crew of Moonbase Columbus make an amazing discovery on the far side of the Moon—a massive alien structure is erecting itself, built up atom by atom by living machines, microscopically small, intelligent, and unstoppable, consuming everything they touch. The mysterious structure begins to expand and take shape, and its creators begin to multiply.

Read to long ago to rate

They call themselves Eagle's Claw, one of the most extreme militia groups in the United States. They have infiltrated the Device Assembly Facility at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site, and the most frightening display of nuclear terrorism is about to unfold.

Read to long ago to rate

In shock and grief the last remnants of the human race watched from space as the holocaust of war raged across the face of the Earth. Now the future rested in the hands of three fragile space colonies: Aguinaldo—The Philippine L-5 colony whose brilliant biochemist engineered a limitless supply of food. Kibalchich—The Soviet space exploration platform that harbors a deadly secret. Orbitech 1—The American space factory whose superstrong weavewire could be a lifeline to link the colonies—or a cutting-edge weapon of destruction. As allies, they could unite to rebuild a better world. As enemies, they could destroy mankind's last hope for survival.

Read to long ago to rate.

In the future, the dead walk the streets—Resurrection, Inc. found a profitable way to do it. A microprocessor brain, synthetic heart, artificial blood, and a fresh corpse can return as a Servant for anyone with the price. Trained to obey any command, Servants have no minds of their own, no memories of their past lives.

Supposedly.

Then came Danal. He was murdered, a sacrifice from the ever-growing cult of neo-Satanists who sought heaven in the depths of hell. But as a Servant, Danal began to remember. He learned who had killed him, who he was, and what Resurrection, Inc. had in mind for the human race.

Read to long ago to rate.

A young man from the twentieth century is recruited to fight in a war that rages throughout time in a classic science fiction adventure from a multiple Hugo and Nebula Award–winning master

Traveling backward and forward through corridors connecting historical epochs separated by thousands of years, Malcolm is soon embroiled in a furious conflict between the forces of good and minions of evil. But the deeper he is pulled into this devastating time war, the clearer Malcolm's ultimate role in humankind's destiny becomes, causing the troubled young soldier from the twentieth century to question whether he's been chosen to fight on the side of good or evil . . . and if such a distinction even exists

A 2 stories in 1 book of time travel featuring The Guardians of Time and 2 novelettes from Time Patrolman. Great settings like the tremendous waterfall at Gibraltar as the Atlantic fills the dry Mediterranean basin, Ukraine's Goth lands, the ancient Phoenecian city of Tyre, a Celtic New York City, and Northwestern US as Kublai Khan's explorers move south and threaten to connect with the Navajo and later, the Aztecs. Recruited in 1957, Time Patrolman Manson Everard is trained as a roving agent and is charged with catching trespassers and criminals. The stories tell of his exploits and solutions in the true science fiction spirit.

No summary available

Read to long ago to rate

Space pilot Kyra Davis, aided by an electronic ghost, risks her life in a desperate chess game to try to save a rebel corporation called Fireball from the repressive dictatorship that rules Earth.

Read too long ago to rate.

The stories included in The Gods Laughed are: "The Martyr" (1960) Desperate for knowledge, men capture representatives of an alien race. What they find out is different than they expected to learn... "Night Piece" (1961) A man doing research into ESP and other worlds lets his study take him several steps too far. "When Half-Gods Go" (1953) The Harvard Astronomy department agrees to meet a couple who claim to be representatives of an interstellar civilization. "Peek! I See You!" (1968) Sean F.X. Lindquist is fairly convinced that he just saw a flying saucer. The only question becomes what doe she do about it? (This was my favorite story in the collection.) "Details" (1956) Representatives from a distant civilization try to positively influence the historical development of Earth. "Captive of the Centurianess" (1978) An unlikely threesome from different planets gets thrown together, building the base for future Galactic expansion. "The Soldier from the Stars" (1955) A group of mercenaries from outer space appears on Earth and offers their support to the highest bidder. "The Word To Space" (1960) Earth finally makes contact with another species. Unfortunately, the conversation isn't getting very far... "A Little Knowledge" (1971) A group of pirates get more than they bargained for when they kidnap the Trillian pilot Witweet.

Read to long ago to rate

None available.

Read to long ago to rate

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Time Travel done right!

Jack Havig was born in the American midwest in 1933 with a genetic mutation that allows him to travel through time. He learns that an apocalypse will occur sometime in the 21st century due to over-pollution and nuclear warfare. Farther still in the future, a New Zealand/Micronesian culture known as "the Maurai Federation" will eventually dominate the world and impose their vision of a less industrialized, more ecologically balanced world. Jack reasons that there must be others born with the same innate ability to travel through time. In his initial search for them, he visits Jerusalem at the time of the Crucifixion. Jack is discovered by other time-travelers who are agents of a time-traveling organization called the "Eyrie," that is based in the far future and is led by a racist man born in 19th century United States. Initially Jack joins the group, but eventually rebels against them when he discovers and experiences first hand, the extent of the Eyrie's rampant brutality and inhumanity as they attempt to achieve their goal of stopping the Maurai ascendancy. To defeat the Eyrie, Jack returns to the 20th century and devises a plan of his own to recruit time-travelers and create a "tribe" that will return to the future to destroy the Eyrie

Read to long ago to rate.

None Available

This is not really a novel, but a series of short stories that revolve around the people of a small town in Ohio. Each story tries to discover a "truth" about that person...and there are many truths to be discovered. The writing is a little inconsistent from story to story, but compelling all the same. One person is fascinating. Another is repugnant. Another seems lost. Another discovers false wisdom. All of them are still interesting.

Not sure how to recommend this book. I enjoyed it, but it's in a niche all it's own.

This ebook is a series of loosely linked short stories set in the fictional town of Winesburg, mostly written from late 1915 to early 1916. The stories are held together by George Willard, a resident to whom the community confide their personal stories and struggles. The townspeople are withdrawn and emotionally repressed and attempt in telling their stories to gain some sense of meaning and dignity in an otherwise desperate life. The work has received high critical acclaim and is considered one of the great American works of the 20th century.

Sherwood Anderson (1876 to 1941) was an American novelist and short story writer, known for subjective and self-revealing works. Anderson published several short story collections, novels, memoirs, books of essays, and a book of poetry. He may be most influential for his effect on the next generation of young writers, as he inspired William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and Thomas Wolfe.

Read to long ago to rate.

HE IS THE WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF

He is a major figure in national and international affairs. He plays high-stakes political power games with the FBI and the CIA. He is responsible for many lives—and many deaths.

The President of the United States trusts his friendship and advice above all others. He is everything to those who surround him—player and pawn, friend and enemy, husband and father.

He's also an alien being from a far world, from another existence, and he has set his own agenda for the future of OUR world.

He is an alien ... and yet, he is only too human.

Read too long ago to rate.

With humankind surviving underground in the twenty-fifth-century's last city, a courageous man journeys back in time into Cuba's history to try to alter the past and stop the worldwide conflagration that would leave Earth a nuclear wasteland

Read to long ago to remember

After a youth spent trapped in space exile, Jeff Font returned to Earth to seek vengeance against the planetary mogul who had framed and destroyed his family. Jeff's plans backfired: He was captured, drugged, rammed through a computerized court system, convicted . . . and ringed.

Read to long ago to recall

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Not read

William Lowell Kane and Abel Rosnovski, one the son of a Boston millionaire, the other a penniless polish immigrant-born on the same day near the turn of the century on opposite sides of the world-are brought together by fate and the quest of a dream. Two men - ambitious, powerful, ruthless - are locked in a relentless struggle to build an empire, fueled by their all-consuming hatred. Over sixty years and three generations, through war, marriage, fortune, and disaster, Kane and Abel battle for the success and triumph that only one man can have..

An interesting bunch of thoughts about the future of bio-engineering, nano-tech, surveillance, national security, and artificial intelligence all rolled together in a rather mysterious, and for some of the characters, dangerous mix that leaves them confused and wiser. The Amazon summary doesn't do it justice. This is a not to off-the-wall speculation about what could happen if our national security apparatus gets everything it wants. An interesting read.

Anders Jensen is having a bad month. His roommate is a data thief, his girlfriend picks fights in bars, and his best friend is a cyborg…and a lousy tipper. When everything is spiraling out of control, though, maybe those are exactly the kind of friends you need.

In a world divided between the genetically engineered elite and the unmodified masses, Anders is an anomaly: engineered, but still broke and living next to a crack house. All he wants is to land a tenure-track faculty position, and maybe meet someone who's not technically a criminal—but when a nightmare plague rips through Hagerstown, Anders finds himself dodging kinetic energy weapons and government assassins as Baltimore slips into chaos. His friends aren't as helpless as they seem, though, and his girlfriend's street-magician brother-in-law might be a pretentious hipster—or might hold the secret to saving them all.

Frenetic and audacious, Three Days in April is a speculative thriller that raises an important question: once humanity goes down the rabbit hole, can it ever find its way back?

One of the "ROBOT" novels, Caves of Steel is where we first meet 2 great Asimov characters; Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw (The R. standing for Robot).

Based in a far future society where humanity lives in giant enclosed cities; where exposure to the outside it terrifying - the 2 characters must work together to solve a murder mystery that implies one of two impossible conclusions: That a human walked outside in the open OR that a robot committed murder.

A good exploration of a lot of ideas, one of Asimov's at his best.

A millennium into the future two advancements have altered the course of human history: the colonization of the galaxy and the creation of the positronic brain. Isaac Asimov's Robot novels chronicle the unlikely partnership between a New York City detective and a humanoid robot who must learn to work together. Like most people left behind on an over-populated Earth, New York City police detective Elijah Baley had little love for either the arrogant Spacers or their robotic companions. But when a prominent Spacer is murdered under mysterious circumstances, Baley is ordered to the Outer Worlds to help track down the killer. The relationship between Life and his Spacer superiors, who distrusted all Earthmen, was strained from the start. Then he learned that they had assigned him a partner: R. Daneel Olivaw. Worst of all was that the "R" stood for robot--and his positronic partner was made in the image and likeness of the murder victim!

Time Travel - and the begining of the human universal empire. But as it typical with time travel plots - difficult to unwind once changes are set in motion.

One of Isaac Asimov's SF masterpieces, this stand-alone novel is a monument of the flowering of SF in the twentieth century. It is widely regarded as Asimov's single best SF novel.

Andrew Harlan is an Eternal, a member of the elite of the future. One of the few who live in Eternity, a location outside of place and time, Harlan's job is to create carefully controlled and enacted Reality Changes. These Changes are small, exactingly calculated shifts in the course of history, made for the benefit of humankind. Though each Change has been made for the greater good, there are also always costs.

During one of his assignments, Harlan meets and falls in love with Noÿs Lambent, a woman who lives in real time and space. Then Harlan learns that Noÿs will cease to exist after the next Change, and he risks everything to sneak her into Eternity.

Unfortunately, they are caught. Harlan's punishment? His next assignment: Kill the woman he loves before the paradox they have created results in the destruction of Eternity.

The start of a great series exploring the concept of Psyho-History - Basically meaning, you can't predict what ONE person will do, but you can predict what populations of people will do... that is what billions of people will do.

The theory predicts the fall of civilization and a long period of Dark Ages. Given this information can we shorten the length of the Dark Ages by setting up a planet - Foundation - that will bring light back to the universe and shorten the time of darkness.

A great concept, and a great series

For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Sheldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future--to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save mankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire--both scientists and scholars--and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the Galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for a fututre generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation.

But soon the fledgling Foundation finds itself at the mercy of corrupt warlords rising in the wake of the receding Empire. Mankind's last best hope is faced with an agonizing choice: submit to the barbarians and be overrun--or fight them and be destroyed.

So the Foundation is known to exist, but can it survive? This book tells the tale of the Foundations survival.. but is it the real Foundation. The mystery deepens..

Although small and seemingly helpless, the Foundation had managed to survive against the greed of its neighboring warlords. But could it stand against the mighty power of the Empire, who had created a mutant man with the strength of a dozen battlefleets...?

DO NOT LET THE COVER FOOL YOU. This book has nothing to do with the Will Smith movie of the same name, other than the three laws. The Will Smith movie is a story unto itself.. and really did a disservice to the ROBOT books of Asimov (though it was quite good as a separate fiction). These stories are great and a good exploration of what Asimov thought robots could do and would become when governed by the three laws.

The three laws of Robotics:

1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm

2) A robot must obey orders givein to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

With these three, simple directives, Isaac Asimov changed our perception of robots forever when he formulated the laws governing their behavior. In I, Robot, Asimov chronicles the development of the robot through a series of interlinked stories: from its primitive origins in the present to its ultimate perfection in the not-so-distant future--a future in which humanity itself may be rendered obsolete.

Here are stories of robots gone mad, of mind-read robots, and robots with a sense of humor. Of robot politicians, and robots who secretly run the world--all told with the dramatic blend of science fact and science fiction that has become Asmiov's trademark.

The second of the ROBOT detective novels, this one takes place off earth. A human and a robot need to cooperated to solve another murder on a planet where humans never actually have any contact with each other. Each lives on a giant estate surrounded by robots who cater to their every need.

The mystery? Since a robot could not have done it, it must have been a human; but no humans ever interact personally? And why would a robot not have stopped the attack?

Like Sci-Fi? Like a detective novel? You'll like this classic.

A millennium into the future, two advancements have altered the course of human history: the colonization of the Galaxy and the creation of the positronic brain. On the beautiful Outer World planet of Solaria, a handful of human colonists lead a hermit-like existence, their every need attended to by their faithful robot servants. To this strange and provocative planet comes Detective Elijah Baley, sent from the streets of New York with his positronic partner, the robot R. Daneel Olivaw, to solve an incredible murder that has rocked Solaria to its foundations. The victim had been so reclusive that he appeared to his associates only through holographic projection. Yet someone had gotten close enough to bludgeon him to death while robots looked on. Now Baley and Olivaw are faced with two clear impossibilities: Either the Solarian was killed by one of his robots--unthinkable under the laws of Robotics--or he was killed by the woman who loved him so much that she never came into his presence!

This is the story of the pre-Foundation when Hari Seldon first invented psycho-history. It makes him a dangerous man, though he doesn't realize it.

It is the year 12,020 G.E. and Emperor Cleon I sits uneasily on the Imperial throne of Trantor. Here in the great multidomed capital of the Galactic Empire, forty billion people have created a civilization of unimaginable technological and cultural complexity. Yet Cleon knows there are those who would see him fall - those whom he would destroy if only he could read the future.

Hari Seldon has come to Trantor to deliver his paper on psychohistory, his remarkable theory of prediction. Little does the young Outworld mathematician know that he has already sealed his fate and the fate of humanity. For Hari possesses the prophetic power that makes him the most wanted man in the Empire... the man who holds the key to the future - an apocalyptic power to be know forever after as the Foundation.

Another great series of stories based on the Three Laws of robotics. Read this if the first I, ROBOT was enjoyable. I recommend it.

The Rest of the Robots is the third timeless, amazing and amusing volume of Isaac Asimov's robot stories, offering golden insights into robot thought processes. Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics have since been programmed into real computers the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and used as the outline for a legal robotic charter in Korea. ROBOT TONY is the first robot designed to perform domestic duties by the US Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation. Is it Tony's fault that the lady of the house where he's field tested falls in love with him? - ROBOT AL was intended for shipment to a mining outfit on the moon. Instead, he's loose in the mountains of Virginia...building from scraps of junk his very own, very dangerous disintegrator. - ROBOT LENNY answers workaday questions in babytalk. So why is Dr Susan Calvin, the world's top robopsychologist, fascinated by this messed up specimen of an industrial robot?

The combination of the Empire and Robot series. Interesting to read how they come together.

Isaac Asmiov's classic novel about the decline and fall of Solaria. Gladia Delmarre's homeworld, the Spacer planet Solaria, has been abandoned - by its human population. Countless robots remain there. And when traders from Settler worlds attempt to salvage them, the robots of Solaria turn to killing...in defiance of the Three Laws of Robotics. Pax Robotica Long ago, Gladia's robots Daneel and Giskard played a vital role in opening the worlds beyond the Solar system to Settlers from Earth. Now the conscience-stricken robots are faced with an even greater challenge. Either the sacred Three Laws of Robotics are in ruins - or a new, superior Law must be established to bring peace to the galaxy. With Madam Gladia and D.G. Baley - the captain of the Settler traders and a descendant of the robots' friend Elijah Baley - Daneel and Giskard travel to the robot stronghold of Solaria...where they uncover a sinister Spacer plot to destroy Earth itself.

The 3rd in the ROBOT series detective novels, and as good as the others. This is a classic that everyone should read if you want to understand the history of science fiction. And it is damn entertaining like all of Asimov.

A millennium into the future two advances have altered the course of human history: the colonization of the Galaxy and the creation of the positronic brain. Isaac Asimov's Robot novels chronicle the unlikely partnership between a New York City detective and a humanoid robot who must learn to work together.

Detective Elijah Baiey is called to the Spacer world Aurora to solve a bizarre case of roboticide. The prime suspect is a gifted roboticist who had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to commit the crime. There's only one catch: Baley and his positronic partner, R. Daneel Olivaw, must prove the man innocent. For in a case of political intrigue and love between woman and robot gone tragically wrong, there's more at stake than simple justice. This time Baley's career, his life, and Earth's right to pioneer the Galaxy lie in the delicate balance.

Read to long ago to review

Orion should never have been sent into orbit - its deadly nuclear cargo was in violation of the most sacred international agreements. Now the General Orbital Decay Syndrome was bringing the satellite down, decades ahead of schedule, and out of control. If it landed in any of hundred trouble spots on Earth, it could start a war.

Exactly what the name implies. A war. With Bugs.

The Tzen, fierce warriors, master strategists, and reptiles, and the Enemy, savage conquerors, brilliant technicians, and insects, fight their fiercest battle yet.

What happens when corporate competition turns to open warfare with no rules.

International conglomerates plot a complete domination of the free world, facing off against world governments, who want only freedom, in a calculated and vicious battle of wits and profit

I enjoy when SciFi is mixed with comedy, and this does that pretty well. The pun of the title gives you a hint of what to expect, and it continues pretty much throughout.

Meet the soldiers of Captain Willard Phule's Company--a handful of military rejects able to do more damage before 9 A.M. than most people do all day. Threatened by an alien enemy, Earth's military sends Phule and his soldiers to a distant planet. But now, the aliens have chosen a new target of war . . . Phule's Company.

Another in the funny Phule's series

Be all that you can be: clumsy, inane, sloppy, reckless, idiotic.Phule's Company is the laughingstock of the military. Their latest mission: to guard an intergalactic casino from an unlikely criminal takeover...The odds are against the oddballs.

A light hearted approach to time travel stories.

Kenneth "Kit" Carson was one of the best time scouts in the business. Nowadays, Kit prefers to be a hotelier at Time Terminal 86. He has sworn off gallivanting through the centuries. Kit might take an occasional consulting fee to keep his hand in, but no more travel--until his granddaughter takes a trip through an unauthorized Gate and winds up lost in time

This was truly a strange book. At first you are reading the biography of two sisters told in flash back after the death of the younger sister. Suddenly you are in a hotel room with an unknown man and woman who, together, make up a fantasy tale about a fictitious middle east kingdom in which a guild of blind assassins work while the city is attacked by barbarians. Next you are in the past living the life of the older sister from age 8 until she is quite elderly. The book switches from past to "present" to fantasy so fast that at time you feel whipsawed about. About half way through things get really interesting.. It's obvious that the "unknown" woman in the hotel room is one of the sisters, but which one. Trust me, the final solution is completely satisfying. At the end of the book, all the strings are tied together and you find yourself grinning because the "blind assassin" really wins in the end.

Difficult to start... takes a while to get going.. really satisfying once you get to the end. This one is worth the time.

The Blind Assassin opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura?s story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist. Brilliantly weaving together such seemingly disparate elements, Atwood creates a world of astonishing vision and unforgettable impact.

If you enjoyed 1984 or Brave New World then this will be right up your alley. A vision of a terrible future in which women have become infertile, and those that are fertile are forced to become "handmaids" - referencing the bible story where a handmaid is given to the husband to bear a child. It's a pretty chilling little environment with the wives hating the handmaids, and the husbands secretly desiring them. And it's revealed to be a hypocritical society too, with sex available freely to those in the upper stratum while morality is preached to everyone else.

Though they preach morality... they are completely morally bankrupt.

And the end is a complete shock..

The Handmaid's Tale is not only a radical and brilliant departure for Margaret Atwood, it is a novel of such power that the reader will be unable to forget its images and its forecast. Set in the near future, it describes life in what was once the United States, now called the Republic of Gilead, a monotheocracy that has reacted to social unrest and a sharply declining birthrate by reverting to, and going beyond, the repressive intolerance of the original Puritans. The regime takes the Book of Genesis absolutely at its word, with bizarre consequences for the women and men of its population.

The story is told through the eyes of Offred, one of the unfortunate Handmaids under the new social order. In condensed but eloquent prose, by turns cool-eyed, tender, despairing, passionate, and wry, she reveals to us the dark corners behind the establishment's calm facade, as certain tendencies now in existence are carried to their logical conclusions. The Handmaid's Tale is funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing. It is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force. It is Margaret Atwood at her best.

It is true what Austen said about her character; she is not very likeable. I kept waiting for her to get her comeuppance. Well, she did, but not in such a satisfactory way as could have been. Still and all, she learns her lesson with regard to her match-making abilities.

I read this in anticipation of the 2020 movie by the same name. I so enjoyed the book and movie, Pride and Prejudice, that I had to. Recommendation: If you are only going to read one Jane Austen book, make it P&P. This one is deep in the manners and custom of the time, but has far less drama than P&P. Took me a while to finish and there was no one character who I looked forward to hearing from as I did Elizabeth Bennet's father in P&P.

Now, off to see the movie and see how that is.

When her former governess finds happiness as the bride of a local widower, the brilliant and beautiful Emma Woodhouse – one of Jane Austen's immortal creations – flatters herself that she alone has secured the marriage and that she possesses a special talent for bringing lovers together. The young heiress next busies herself with finding a suitable husband for her friend and protégé, Harriet Smith, setting off an entertaining sequence of comic mishaps and misunderstanding in this sparkling comedy of English-village romance. Beneath its considerable wit, the novel is also the story of a young woman's progress toward self-understanding.

After seeing the movie with Kira Knightley I wanted to read the book to see how well the characters were represented by the movie. I loved the movie, and I loved this book. The characters in the book were perfectly played in the movie.

What I loved MOST about the book was its glimpse into how life was lived at the time of the novel. How people entertained themselves before mass entertainments took hold. The character of Mr. Bennet (Lizzie's father) is just as Donald Sutherland played him in the movie. So to was the character of Mr. Darcy (played by Mathew McFayden – who was also fantastic in Death At A Funeral).

I would recommend this book to anyone with even a slight interest in this time in history, or romance in general.

Not a bad book, but it just sort of ends. There is no continuation of the story. Really, this needed a sequal, but I have not found it. Don't read this unless you want to be frustrated at an incomplete tale.

A starship on a circuit to service earth's colonies is sabotaged and winds up irrevocably lost in space. The only option is to find a habitable planet to live on. Aboard the ship is a contingent of convicts bound for a prison planet, an army company rotating to one of the colony worlds, government officials and scientists going or coming from the colonies, a contingent of prospective colonists going out to pioneer and a miscellany of other passengers. A crew of two hundred fifty is now responsible for a thousand people after they finally find a new world to settle on. Add in a mad captain, combative convicts and some unworldly aliens and it becomes all that acting Captain Travis Callahan can handle-and then some!

This book (so it is said) is very auto-biographical.  If that is the case then James Baldwin faced tough times as a youth with an abusive father who was also a preacher with very fundamental Christian religious views.  No one could live up to his expectations, mostly because he suffered from his own secret sins.  Or so he thought they were secret. 

An interesting look into the world of black fundamentalism in the 1930's this book explores religion, sin, self-loathing, racism and family relationships and abuse.  It may or may not be an easy read, depending on your views on religion.  But in any case, it is something one should read if one wants to explore religion and race in American history.

"Mountain," Baldwin said, "is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else." Go Tell It On The Mountain, first published in 1953, is Baldwin's first major work, a novel that has established itself as an American classic. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935. Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves.

Pretty well done for a galactic war novel

The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender.

Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction.

The Kid made a stupid mistake one night and is now excluded from society at the age of 22. Labeled as a sex offender, he is shackled to a GPS monitoring device and forbidden to live within 2,500 feet of anywhere children might gather. One of the few places that remain for him is under a causeway with other convicted sex offenders. Enter the Professor, a bearded, overweight genius with secrets of his own. Has society, with its low tolerance and lack of compassion, created new victims? Banks has tackled a theme important to our welfare as a society. Sure to elicit a stimulating discussion for book groups.

It really was a stupid mistake, but in a throw away society - who really cares. Disturbing and interesting. I'd recommend this.

The acclaimed author of The Sweet Hereafter and Rule of the Bone returns with a provocative new novel that illuminates the shadowed edges of contemporary American culture with startling and unforgettable results

Suspended in a strangely modern-day version of limbo, the young man at the center of Russell Banks's uncompromising and morally complex new novel must create a life for himself in the wake of incarceration. Known in his new identity only as the Kid, and on probation after doing time for a liaison with an underage girl, he is shackled to a GPS monitoring device and forbidden to live within 2,500 feet of anywhere children might gather. With nowhere else to go, the Kid takes up residence under a south Florida causeway, in a makeshift encampment with other convicted sex offenders.

Barely beyond childhood himself, the Kid, despite his crime, is in many ways an innocent, trapped by impulses and foolish choices he himself struggles to comprehend. Enter the Professor, a man who has built his own life on secrets and lies. A university sociologist of enormous size and intellect, he finds in the Kid the perfect subject for his research on homelessness and recidivism among convicted sex offenders. The two men forge a tentative partnership, the Kid remaining wary of the Professor's motives even as he accepts the counsel and financial assistance of the older man.

When the camp beneath the causeway is raided by the police, and later, when a hurricane all but destroys the settlement, the Professor tries to help the Kid in practical matters while trying to teach his young charge new ways of looking at, and understanding, what he has done. But when the Professor's past resurfaces and threatens to destroy his carefully constructed world, the balance in the two men's relationship shifts.

Suddenly, the Kid must reconsider everything he has come to believe, and choose what course of action to take when faced with a new kind of moral decision.

Long one of our most acute and insightful novelists, Russell Banks often examines the indistinct boundaries between our intentions and actions. A mature and masterful work of contemporary fiction from one of our most accomplished storytellers, Lost Memory of Skin unfolds in language both powerful and beautifully lyrical, show-casing Banks at his most compelling, his reckless sense of humor and intense empathy at full bore.

The perfect convergence of writer and subject, Lost Memory of Skin probes the zeitgeist of a troubled society where zero tolerance has erased any hope of subtlety and compassion—a society where isolating the offender has perhaps created a new kind of victim.

What began as a technothriller continues as high adventure in the newly savage ruins of civilization. A fairly good read.

In late 2024, Daybreak, a movement of post-apocalyptic eco-saboteurs, smashed modern civilization to its knees. In the losing, hopeless struggle against Daybreak, Heather O'Grainne, a one-time minor bureaucrat and former Federal agent, rose to become a vital leader in the struggle to restore civilization. That story was told in Directive 51.

Now Heather's story continues in Daybreak Zero. In the summer of 2025, she leads a tiny organization of scientists, spies, scouts, entrepreneurs, engineers, dreamers, and daredevils based in Pueblo, Colorado. Both of the almost-warring governments of the United States have charged them with an all but impossible mission: find a way to put the world back together.

But Daybreak's triumph has flung the world back centuries in technology, politics, and culture.

• Pro-Daybreak Tribals openly celebrate ending the world as we know it.
• Army regiments have to fight their way in and out of Pennsylvania.
• The Earth's environment is saturated with plastic-devouring biotes and electronics-corroding nanoswarm.
• A leftover Daybreak device drops atom bombs from the moon on any outpost of the old civilization it can spot.

Confined to her base in Pueblo to give birth to her first child, Heather recruits and monitors a coterie of tech wizards, tough guys, and modern-day frontier scouts: a handful of heroes to patrol a continent. All the news is bad:

• Tribals have overrun Indiana and Illinois
• The last working aircraft carrier sits helplessly out in the Indian Ocean, not daring to come closer to land
• The crash of one of the last working airplanes kills a vital industrialist

Tribals try to force appeasement on the Provi government while the Temper government faces a rebellion of religious fanatics Seventeen states are lost to the Tribals as California drifts into secession and hereditary monarchy Everywhere, Provis and Tempers lurch toward civil war.

Heather's agents may be brave, smart, and daring, but can they be enough? For the sake of everything from her newborn son to her dying nation, can she forge them into a the weapon that can at last win the world back from the overwhelming, malevolent force of Daybreak?

Her success or failure may change everything for the next thousand years, beginning from Daybreak Zero.

Read to long ago to rate

Not read

The novel is a satirical epic of the colonization of Maryland based on the life of an actual poet, Ebenezer Cooke, who wrote a poem of the same title. The Sot-Weed Factor is what Northrop Frye called an anatomy —[citation needed] a large, loosely structured work, with digressions, distractions, stories within stories, and lists (such as a lengthy exchange of insulting terms by two prostitutes).[page needed] The fictional Ebenezer Cooke (repeatedly described as "poet and virgin") is a Candide-like innocent who sets out to write a heroic epic, becomes disillusioned and ends up writing a biting satire.

The novel is set in the 1680s and 90s in London and on the eastern shore of the colony of Maryland. It tells the story of an English poet named Ebenezer Cooke who is given the title "Poet Laureate of Maryland" by Charles Calvert. He undergoes many adventures on his journey to Maryland and while in Maryland, all the while striving to preserve his innocence (i.e. his virginity). The book takes its title from the grand poem that Cooke composes throughout the story, which was originally intended to sing the praises of Maryland, but ends up being a biting satire based on his disillusioning experiences.

Okay, I hate to say it, but the movie is 100 times better than the book. The plot hangs together so much more logically and makes so much more sense than the book. The book starts with the cyclone, and ends with Dorothy landing in Kansas - not even being re-united with Auntie Em !!! How lame is that. Also, the wizard fulfilled the wishes of the characters in a completely different way than the movie. The movie made more sense. The feeling was there - in that the wizard told each of them they didn't need what they were missing because they already had it... but the characters insisted that he "do something" physical to prove to themselves that they had what they came for. So he did.

The book DID have some interesting things in it - for example: the TIN MAN was a real man once who accidentally chopped off all his parts and had them replaced because he loved a girl and his ax was cursed. The coming to life of the scare crow was amusing too.

All in all ... see the movie.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a children's novel written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow. Originally published by the George M. Hill Company in Chicago on May 17, 1900, it has since been reprinted numerous times, most often under the name The Wizard of Oz, which is the name of both the popular 1902 Broadway musical and the well-known 1939 film adaptation. The story chronicles the adventures of a young girl named Dorothy Gale in the Land of Oz, after being swept away from her Kansas farm home in a cyclone. The novel is one of the best-known stories in American popular culture and has been widely translated. Its initial success, and the success of the 1902 Broadway musical which Baum adapted from his original story, led to Baum's writing thirteen additional Oz books.

The sequel to FLOOD, this deals with the people who manage to get off the Earth before it is completely flooded. The ship is huge and the science is good, but the book is just not that compelling. Sorry, but another non-recommend.

It's the year 2030. The oceans have risen rapidly, and soon the entire planet will be submerged. But the discovery of another life-sustaining planet light years away gives those who remain alive hope. Only a few will be able to make the journey-Holle Groundwater is one of the candidates. If she makes the cut, she will live. If not, she will be left to face a watery death...

This is the prequel to the movie WATERWORLD... or it may as well be. The Earth is flooding. Some people are trying to get off. Big boring tragedy.

Normally I love Stephen Baxter, but this was not worth the time.

Four hostages are rescued from a group of religious extremists in Barcelona. After five years of being held captive together, they make a vow to always watch out for one another. But they never expected this. The world they have returned to has been transformed-by water. And the water is rising.

Weird weird weird!!! In all 3 of the Manifold books, Baxter explores the Fermi Paradox. If you don’t know what that is, then wiki it. The most basic explanation is that, given the age of the galaxy, any civilization that didn’t manage to destroy itself should have expanded to occupy the entire galaxy by no. No faster than light travel needed. So the Fermi Paradox simply says, “Where are they?”

There are plenty of reasons we might not see them; and most of those reasons are extremely frightening. Most of them involve conclusions that don’t bode well for the future of our race.

Stephen Baxter’s Manifold novels have struck the world of science fiction like a meteor. Heralded by Arthur Clark as “a major new talent,” Baxter stands time and space on their collective heads, envisions the future reflected in the past, and the past in the galaxy’s most distant reaches and unformed speculations. Claiming the legacy of Heinlein and Asimov, Baxter now returns with his third Manifold novel–in which he uses an astounding adventure story to posit a breathtaking vision of the origin of species . . . on earth and beyond.

In the year 2015 a red moon appears in the Earth’s orbit: brooding, multitextured, beautiful, and alive. Catastrophe follows. While coastlands flood by the new gravitational forces, millions of people die. Scientists scramble desperately to understand what is on the big red moon and how it got there. And NASA astronaut Reid Malenfant, and his wife Emma, are hurtling through the African sky in a training jet, when everything changes forever.

For Malenfant and Emma, a reckless flight in a T-38 above the sun-baked continent sends them colliding with a great wheel in the sky. Now Emma has awakened in a strange, Earthlike world, among physically powerful, primitive creatures who share humankind’s features and desires but lack the human mind. And Reid Malenfant is back in Texas, reliving the plane crash, looking up at the red moon, and knowing in his heart that Emma is there.

Emma is there, beginning a journey of survival that is both horrific and fascinating, utterly familiar and totally beyond comprehension. Malenfant, teamed with a Japanese scientist named Nemoto, will get his chance to rescue his wife. But neither can foresee the extraordinary adventures that await them. Neither can imagine the small and immense evolutionary secrets cloaked in the atmosphere of the red moon, or guess at how a vast, living, tightly woven cosmos has shaped our planet as we know it–and how it will shape it again.

Stephen Baxter's Manifold novels have struck the world of science fiction like a meteor. Heralded by Arthur Clark as "a major new talent," Baxter stands time and space on their collective heads, envisions the future reflected in the past, and the past in the galaxy's most distant reaches and unformed speculations. Claiming the legacy of Heinlein and Asimov, Baxter now returns with his third Manifold novel–in which he uses an astounding adventure story to posit a breathtaking vision of the origin of species . . . on earth and beyond.

In the year 2015 a red moon appears in the Earth's orbit: brooding, multitextured, beautiful, and alive. Catastrophe follows. While coastlands flood by the new gravitational forces, millions of people die. Scientists scramble desperately to understand what is on the big red moon and how it got there. And NASA astronaut Reid Malenfant, and his wife Emma, are hurtling through the African sky in a training jet, when everything changes forever.

For Malenfant and Emma, a reckless flight in a T-38 above the sun-baked continent sends them colliding with a great wheel in the sky. Now Emma has awakened in a strange, Earthlike world, among physically powerful, primitive creatures who share humankind's features and desires but lack the human mind. And Reid Malenfant is back in Texas, reliving the plane crash, looking up at the red moon, and knowing in his heart that Emma is there.

Emma is there, beginning a journey of survival that is both horrific and fascinating, utterly familiar and totally beyond comprehension. Malenfant, teamed with a Japanese scientist named Nemoto, will get his chance to rescue his wife. But neither can foresee the extraordinary adventures that await them. Neither can imagine the small and immense evolutionary secrets cloaked in the atmosphere of the red moon, or guess at how a vast, living, tightly woven cosmos has shaped our planet as we know it–and how it will shape it again.

Of the 3 books Baxter has written, this one is, for various reasons, the most disturbing. It takes place on a moon that has all the various human hominid ancestors living at the same time. How they live and interact is the most disturbing aspect of this book (ex. One group attacks another as food and there is a graphic description of an infant being torn apart while still alive and eaten.)

I would only recommend this book to someone who enjoyed the first 2 in this series (Manifold: Time & Manifold: Space). To everyone else. Stay away!!!

The year is 2020. Fueled by an insatiable curiosity, Reid Malenfant ventures to the far edge of the solar system, where he discovers a strange artifact left behind by an alien civilization: A gateway that functions as a kind of quantum transporter, allowing virtually instantaneous travel over the vast distances of interstellar space. What lies on the other side of the gateway? Malenfant decides to find out. Yet he will soon be faced with an impossible choice that will push him beyond terror, beyond sanity, beyond humanity itself. Meanwhile on Earth the Japanese scientist Nemoto fears her worst nightmares are coming true. Startling discoveries reveal that the Moon, Venus, even Mars once thrived with life–life that was snuffed out not just once but many times, in cycles of birth and destruction. And the next chilling cycle is set to begin again

Another hard science novel.. and boy does this one get strange at times. One of the theories presented in the novel is pretty depressing. So is the other. Once you get the point you have to wonder if Baxter isn't onto something. Basically this book, like the first in this series deals withFermi's Paradox which basically says, if there is other life in the universe, the odds that they are not already here is astronomical... so where are they.

He deals with expanding civilizations and how they would take over the galaxy... wave after wave of warring destructive civilizations.. expanding using CURRENT technology.. no big reach into fantasy science. Basically, as a civilization expands due to population pressure, it will wipe out any lesser civilization in its way - that being us.

The other theory he offers (and right at the end of the book) explains why we have yet to see this happen - and talk about depressing - spin a couple of neutron stars at the center of the galaxy in unstable orbits... when they collide the pulse of gamma rays release pretty much wipes out all the life in the galaxy... problem solved.. everyone dead.

So the question becomes... what do you do about both these problems

You think you can handle this long deep book with some of the oddest twists and turns I have ever seen (like how to get along with Neanderthal's who happen to be living on Jupiter's Moon IO) well.. this might be for you. I liked it, though I think it could have been a tad more direct.

Oh.. and if you read the first book MANIFOLD: TIME - well.. he uses the same characters over again. Not sure what is up with that, but I think the work MANIFOLD is a hint... lol - the exact same characters.

The year is 2010. More than a century of ecological damage, industrial and technological expansion, and unchecked population growth has left the Earth on the brink of devastation. As the world's governments turn inward, one man dares to envision a bolder, brighter future. That man, Reid Malenfant, has a very different solution to the problems plaguing the planet: the exploration and colonization of space. Now Malenfant gambles the very existence of time on a single desperate throw of the dice. Battling national sabotage and international outcry, as apocalyptic riots sweep the globe, he builds a spacecraft and launches it into deep space. The odds are a trillion to one against him. Or are they?

Nice science and normal human nature. Whenever you divide people into two groups and give one group power of the other there is going to be conflict. This is a good read about people who are forced to colonize another planet that may or may not want to be colonized. It's not easy, and it's made even worse by the oppression for the "guards"... who think they are all going back to Earth at some point. Looking forward to the next edition.

?Stephen Baxter has been heralded, with some merit, as Arthur C. Clarke?s literary heir, and Proxima certainly reinforces this accolade in spades.??Concatenation

Mankind?s future in this galaxy could be all but infinite.

There are hundreds of billions of red dwarf stars, lasting trillions of years?and their planets can be habitable for humans. Such is the world of Proxima Centauri. And its promise could mean the never-ending existence of humanity.

But first it must be colonized, and no one wants to be a settler. There is no glamor that accompanies it, nor is there the ease of becoming a citizen of an already-tamed world. There is only hardship...loneliness...emptiness, even as war brews in the solar system.

But that?s where Yuri comes in. Because sometimes exploration isn?t voluntary. It must be coerced

Okay.. I read this one. But I cannot recall it. Re-reading the plot summary - Holy Cow - This is one complicated plot. Perhaps I should give it a re-read?

Michael Poole's wormholes constructed in the orbit of Jupiter had opened the galaxy to humankind. Then Poole tried looping a wormhole back on itself, tying a knot in space and ripping a hole in time.

It worked. Too well.

Poole was never seen again. Then from far in the future, from a time so distant that the stars themselves were dying embers, came an urgent SOS--and a promise. The universe was doomed, but humankind was not. Poole had stumbled upon an immense artifact, light-years across, fabricated from the very string of the cosmos.

The universe had a door. And it was open...

A good tale of salvagers to make a gruesome discovery on a ship that should not exist.. and the consequences of that discovery - endangering their lives and the live of other species that coexist in a galactic civilization.

“Outstanding…Amid a space opera resurgence, Bear’s novel sets the bar high.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A space salvager and her partner make the discovery of a lifetime that just might change the universe in this wild, big-ideas space opera from Hugo Award-winning author Elizabeth Bear.

Halmey Dz and her partner Connla Kurucz are salvage operators, living just on the inside of the law...usually. Theirs is the perilous and marginal existence—with barely enough chance of striking it fantastically big—just once—to keep them coming back for more. They pilot their tiny ship into the scars left by unsuccessful White Transitions, searching for the relics of lost human and alien vessels. But when they make a shocking discovery about an alien species that has been long thought dead, it may be the thing that could tip the perilous peace mankind has found into full-out war.

Energetic and electrifying, Ancestral Night is a dazzling space opera, sure to delight fans of Alastair Reynolds, Iain M. Banks, and Peter F. Hamilton—“Bear's ability to create breathtaking variations on ancient themes and make them new and brilliant is, perhaps, unparalleled in the genre” (Library Journal, starred review).

The discovery of a generation ship that never found it's destination, along with a paralyzed recovery crew leads back to the galaxies premier hospital to try and revive the passengers of that generation ship and discover the mystery of the paralyzed recovery crew. Things start to go wrong almost immediately. What is revealed is an attack on the center of civilization that affects all artificial minds.. a terrorist attack that nearly succeeds in destroying the best symbol of galactic inter-species cooperation.

In this “spectacularly smart space opera” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) set in the same universe as the critically acclaimed White Space series and perfect for fans of Karen Traviss and Ada Hoffman, a space station begins to unravel when a routine search and rescue mission returns after going dangerously awry. Meet Doctor Jens. She hasn’t had a decent cup of coffee in fifteen years. Her workday begins when she jumps out of perfectly good space ships and continues with developing treatments for sick alien species she’s never seen before. She loves her life. Even without the coffee. But Dr. Jens is about to discover an astonishing mystery: two ships, once ancient and one new, locked in a deadly embrace. The crew is suffering from an unknown ailment and the shipmind is trapped in an inadequate body, much of her memory pared away. Unfortunately, Dr. Jens can’t resist a mystery and she begins doing some digging. She has no idea that she’s about to discover horrifying and life-changing truths. Written in Elizabeth Bear’s signature “rollicking, suspenseful, and sentimental” (Publishers Weekly) style, Machine is a fresh and electrifying space opera that you won’t be able to put down.

I really enjoyed this book... but not so much for the plot as the structure. It gave me an idea that I started to write in my own novel (yet to be finished).

Ancient diseases encoded in the DNA of humans wait like sleeping dragons to wake and infect again--or so molecular biologist Kaye Lang believes. And now it looks as if her controversial theory is in fact chilling reality. For Christopher Dicken, a "virus hunter" at the Epidemic Intelligence Service, has pursued an elusive flu-like disease that strikes down expectant mothers and their offspring. Then a major discovery high in the Alps --the preserved bodies of a prehistoric family--reveals a shocking link: something that has slept in our genes for millions of years is waking up.

Ancient diseases encoded in the DNA of humans wait like sleeping dragons to wake and infect again--or so molecular biologist Kaye Lang believes. And now it looks as if her controversial theory is in fact chilling reality. For Christopher Dicken, a "virus hunter" at the Epidemic Intelligence Service, has pursued an elusive flu-like disease that strikes down expectant mothers and their offspring. Then a major discovery high in the Alps --the preserved bodies of a prehistoric family--reveals a shocking link: something that has slept in our genes for millions of years is waking up.

Recommended

The 21st century was on the brink of nuclear confrontation when the 300 kilometer-long stone flashed out of nothingness and into Earth's orbit. NASA, NATO, and the UN sent explorers to the asteroid's surface...and discovered marvels and mysteries to drive researchers mad.

For the Stone was from space--but perhaps not our space; it came from the future--but perhaps not our future; and within the hollowed asteroid was Thistledown. The remains of a vanished civilization. A human--English, Russian, and Chinese-speaking--civilization. Seven vast chambers containing forests, lakes, rivers, hanging cities...

And museums describing the Death; the catastrophic war that was about to occur; the horror and the long winter that would follow. But while scientists and politicians bickered about how to use the information to stop the Death, the Stone yielded a secret that made even Earth's survival pale into insignificance.

A Fermi-Paradox exploration where a group of robots track down any "noisy" civilizations (i.e. Earth) and destroy them so they are not a threat to their ancient (and possibly extinct) creators.

As good a theory as any.

On July 26, Arthur Gordon learns that Europa, the sixth moon of Jupiter, has disappeared. Not hiding, not turned black, but gone.

On September 28th, Edward Shaw finds an error in the geological records of Death Valley. A cinder cone was left off the map. Could it be new? Or, stranger yet, could it be artificial? The answer may be lying beside it—a dying Guest who brings devastating news for Edward and for Planet Earth.

As more unexplained phenomena spring up around the globe—a granite mountain appearing in Australia, sounds emanating from the earth's core, flashes of light among the asteroids—it becomes clear to some that the end is approaching, and there is nothing we can do.

In The Forge of God, award-winning author Greg Bear describes the final days of the world on both a massive, scientific scale and in the everyday, emotional context of individual human lives. Facing the destruction of all they know, some people turn to God, others to their families, and a few turn to saviors promising escape from a planet being torn apart. Will they make it in time? And who gets left behind to experience the last moments of beauty and chaos on earth?

The book is so oddly written with so little reason as to why things are the way they are you just don't care by the end. This is not Bear's best work. Not a recommend

A starship hurtles through the emptiness of space. Its destination—unknown. Its purpose—a mystery. Now, one man wakes up. Ripped from a dream of a new home—a new planet and the woman he was meant to love in his arms—he finds himself wet, naked, and freezing to death. The dark halls are full of monsters but trusting other survivors he meets might be the greater danger.

All he has are questions—Who is he? Where are they going? What happened to the dream of a new life? What happened to Hull 03?

All will be answered, if he can survive the ship.

A well written novel about inter-planetary struggles for independence. Really, it doesn't make sense that a different planet can be a colony forever.

Moving Mars is a story of human courage and love set within the greater saga of a planetary liberation movement. Mars is a colonial world, governed by corporate interests on Earth. The citizens of Mars are hardworking, but held back by their lack of access to the best education, and the desire of the Earthly powers to keep the best new inventions for themselves. The young Martians -- the second and third generations born on Mars -- have little loyalty to Earth, and a strong belief that their planet can be independent. The revolution begins slowly, but will grow in power over decades of political struggle until it becomes irresistible.

A great SciFi war novel. I really enjoyed it.

One more tour on the red. Maybe my last.

They made their presence on Earth known thirteen years ago.

Providing technology and scientific insights far beyond what mankind was capable of. They became indispensable advisers and promised even more gifts that we just couldn't pass up. We called them Gurus.

It took them a while to drop the other shoe. You can see why, looking back.

It was a very big shoe, completely slathered in crap.

They had been hounded by mortal enemies from sun to sun, planet to planet, and were now stretched thin -- a

One more tour on the red. Maybe my last.

They made their presence on Earth known thirteen years ago.

Providing technology and scientific insights far beyond what mankind was capable of. They became indispensable advisers and promised even more gifts that we just couldn't pass up. We called them Gurus.

It took them a while to drop the other shoe. You can see why, looking back.

It was a very big shoe, completely slathered in crap.

They had been hounded by mortal enemies from sun to sun, planet to planet, and were now stretched thin -- and they needed our help.

And so our first bill came due. Skyrines like me were volunteered to pay the price. As always.

These enemies were already inside our solar system and were moving to establish a beachhead, but not on Earth.

And so our first bill came due. Skyrines like me were volunteered to pay the price. As always.

These enemies were already inside our solar system and were moving to establish a beachhead, but not on Earth.

Meh. This contained a whole lotta stupid - kinda like all those horror movies where people walk into rooms and DON'T turn on the lights. Please.

SUMMARY

In the jungles of Paraguay, Dr Aimee Weir and her team are in trouble. While drilling deep into the Earth a contagion strikes, their camp is quarantined, but workers start to vanish in the night. Is it fear of contamination - or has something far more lethal surfaced? Alex Hunter - code name Arcadian - and his Hotzone All-Forces Warfare Commandos are dropped in to the disaster area to do whatever it takes to stem the outbreak. But for the mission to be a success, the Arcadian must learn to master his violent inner demons long enough to confront the danger that not only threatens his own immediate survival, but that of mankind.

Not read

Molloy, the first of the three masterpieces which constitute Samuel Beckett's famous trilogy, appeared in French in 1951, followed seven months later by Malone Dies (Malone meurt) and two years later by The Unnamable (L'Innommable). Few works of contemporary literature have been so universally acclaimed as central to their time and to our understanding of the human experience.

This is actually 3 novels, so someone cheated when they put these together on the best books list.

This is a farce written in 1911 and set in Oxford. And it's funny. Not laugh out loud funny (well, not too much laugh out loud.. a snicker here and there), but you can tell the author was writing camp. What I find really amusing is how 90 years later, another author, Jasper Fforde, would be writing similar camp... one mechanism hit me as odd, and I have to believe that the later author read the former. In Fforde's The Fourth Bear, 2 characters are babbling a load of nonsense, when one turns to the other and says, "That's a long way to go for a bad joke." To which the other replies, "Yes. I don't know how he gets away with it." - Thus the author refers to himself in the book (and not to kindly). Beerbohm does the same in a minor scene when he says that the main character, Zuleika, got some of her mannerisms of speaking after having had lunch with Max Beerbohm. He insinuates himself into his own book. The only other author I know of who has done that was Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five where a G.I. is having a bad time in an out house at which point Vonnegut states, "That was me. That was I. That was the author of this book."

Anyway.. if you like Jasper Fforde... and don't mind something a little more dry and drool.. a little more highbrow, but just as insane (the entire class of Oxford commits suicide over the love of a woman, while the Gods watch, and the marble statues comment).. then you will probably enjoy this one too.

Have you ever met a woman so beautiful you knew instinctively you would die for her? The Duke of Dorset, one of the many undergrads at Oxford University, sees as his only option committing suicide to prove his love for the astonishingly attractive Zuleika Dobson. A witty and engaging satire which pokes fun at the Edwardian upperclass college experience, Max Beerbohm's Zuleika Dobson makes all too plain the dangers of growing up wealthy and emotionally detached, while showing that when you place a high premium on aesthetics at the most impressionable time in one's life, the results really are "to die for."

An interesting book that twists history around with time travel. Apparently Einstein had a secret that he revealed on his deathbed. And someone wants it kept secret and is willing to kill to do it.

Most time travel books mess up. This one, though confusing, seems to keep it straight, but I found my interest waning 3/4 of the way through. Not a recommend

It's 1955, and Albert Einstein lies in a hospital bed, deathly ill. He suddenly stirs, asks his assistant for paper and pen, then scribbles something down. Minutes later, he dies.

History tells us that Einstein jotted down equations that night. But struggling scholar Jacob Morgan believes that history is wrong. He's convinced that Einstein wrote a deathbed confession that night—a secret that the great scientist didn't want to take to his grave.

Jacob has spent his entire adult life obsessively hunting down that secret—with nothing to show for it but the scorn of his colleagues and the tattered remnants of a once-promising teaching career.

But now, thanks to a lucky break, Jacob has a chance to get his life back on track. His appointment as an adjunct professor at the University of Virginia is a fresh start, and he's vowed to end his pursuit of Einstein's secret.

Until history chooses this moment to deliver him one more clue. A clue that leads him to an impossible and unbelievable discovery:

Time travel.

And so begins the last leg of Jacob's desperate quest, one where history is not only changeable—it's changing. All by itself. And if Jacob doesn't rescue Einstein's secret, everything that he's ever known will disappear forever

Not read

The great novel of the American dream, of "the universal eligibility to be noble," Saul Bellow's third book charts the picaresque journey of one schemer, chancer, romantic, and holy fool: Augie March. An impulsively active, irresistibly charming and resolutely free-spirited man, Augie March leaves his family of poor Jewish immigrants behind and sets off in search of reality, fulfillment, and most importantly, love. During his exultant quest, he latches on to a series of dubious schemes – from stealing books and smuggling immigrants to training a temperamental eagle to hunt lizards – and strong-minded women – from the fiery, eagle-owning Thea Fenchel, to the sneaky and alluring Stella. As Augie travels from the depths of poverty to the peaks of worldly success, he stands as an irresistible, poignant incarnation of the American idea of freedom. Written in the cascades of brilliant, biting, ravishing prose that would come to be known as "Bellovian," The Adventures of Augie March re-wrote the language of Saul Bellow's generation.

Not read

Saul Bellow evokes all the rich colors and exotic customs of a highly imaginary Africa in this acclaimed comic novel about a middle-aged American millionaire who, seeking a new, more rewarding life, descends upon an African tribe. Henderson's awesome feats of strength and his unbridled passion for life win him the admiration of the tribe—but it is his gift for making rain that turns him from mere hero into messiah. A hilarious, often ribald story, Henderson the Rain King is also a profound look at the forces that drive a man through life.

Not read

This is the story of Moses Herzog, a great sufferer, joker, mourner, and charmer. Although his life steadily disintegrates around him—he has failed as a writer and teacher, as a father, and has lost the affection of his wife to his best friends—Herzog sees himself as a survivor, both of his private disasters and those of the age. He writes unsent letters to friends and enemies, colleagues and famous people, revealing his wry perception of the world and the innermost secrets of his heart.

Not read

After enlisting in a revolutionary terrorist organization, the university student Nikolai Apollonovich Ableukhov is entrusted with a highly dangerous mission: to plant a bomb and assassinate a major government figure. But the real central character of the novel is the city of Petersburg at the beginning of the twentieth century, caught in the grip of political agitation and social unrest. Intertwining the worlds of history and myth, and parading a cast of unforgettable characters, Petersburg is a story of apocalypse and redemption played out through family dysfunction, conspiracy and murder.

Another thriller by the author of JAWS. This time a society of pirates is still living the life on an isolated island, and making things miserable for a family that comes within their reach.

Not a bad read, but not great.

Not a bad read.

A small cube of black rock has been unearthed in a 3500-year-old Mycenaen tomb.

An incomprehensible object in an impossible place; its age, its purpose, and its origins are unknown.

Its discovery has unleashed a global storm of intrigue, theft and espionage, and is pushing nations to the brink of war.

Its substance has scientist baffled. And the miracle it contains does not belong on this Earth.

It is mystery and madness-an enigma with no equal in recorded history. It is mankind's greatest discovery. . .and worst nightmare.

It may have already obliterated a world. Ours is next.

I remember enjoying this when I first read it many years ago. But re-reading the plot summary - there is so much here that only bits and peices still stick.

Benfor's work is so good, normally, that this complicated plot must have made complete sense at the time.

Radio astronomy on the Moon in 2021 reveals the presence of life by a nearby red dwarf, on a tide-locked planet.[1]

To investigate them and the message they are transmitting, Earth's governments repurpose a space colony that was to be stationed at one of Earth's Lagrangian points and convert it into Lancer, a Bussard ramjet powered interstellar ship based on the design of a crashed alien ship discovered in the Mare Marginis on the Moon, and send it to investigate.

In 2061, it arrives and discovers a primitive biological race of nomads broadcasting en-masse with organs adapted to emit and receive electromagnetic radiation; their transmissions were blurred by various nomads falling out of synch with the rest. Close up, the transmission is discovered to be an old radio show from the 1950s - the signal the EMs (as they are called) consider best to reply to Earth with.

A curious satellite is discovered in orbit, from at least as far back as a million years — roughly when an anomalous meteor shower destroyed the EMs' civilization.

On Earth, international commerce is brought to a standstill when mysterious spaceships drop sea creatures dubbed "Swarmers" and "Skimmers" (for their behaviour; Swarmers swarm ships and head-butt them until they sink, and Skimmers simply jump and skim around like dolphins). They begin multiplying and the Swarmers begin attacking humans and all their works on the seas, high or otherwise.

The Ra expedition's first contacts go poorly. The attempt to examine and enter the more interesting of the total of two satellites prompts a massive retaliation by the satellite with plasma weapons that kills most of the crew involved in the attempt. The attempt to contact the EMs on Isis does not go well either; the EMs are confused by the presence of a human on the surface. They had been expecting a reply from Earth itself. In the confusion and surprise, they attempted to simultaneously broadcast their lengthy and elaborate summary of their history and culture, and also to see in more detail the messenger. Unfortunately, in order to see in radar, radar must be broadcast, and the narrowing gaze of the EMs and all the other transmissions literally cook the communications specialist alive. The standby team misinterprets this tragic incident as a deliberate attack and massacres the lot of EMs.

Nigel works with the mathematicians and other experts to interpret the original transmission and later ones. His analysis reveals that their technologically advanced Space-age civilization had attracted the attention of machines, and perished in a massive and prolonged deliberate orbital bombardment that levelled their cities, infrastructure, and civilization. The bombardment of asteroids was severe enough to crack open the crust of the planet and permanently alter for the worse the EMs' ecosphere. The EMs drew to the utmost on what was left of their genetic engineering and biology, and radically altered their bodies to use silicon and transistors for a nervous system and so broadcast; the watching satellite is programmed to react to high technology, not inbuilt features of organisms, so this way the EMs will be able to broadcast their message and possibly help out other biological races.

No sooner has some genuine two-way communication been established than new orders come from Earth, to move on to a new system where they think the Skimmers and Swarmers may've come from originally. En route, they preoccupy themselves analysing reports from the far-flung space probes: everywhere except Earth that traces could be found, anomalies like other Watchers abound.

Walmsley theorizes that a machine-based race that was systematically destroying or guarding planets supporting organic life was responsible for these anomalies; the Swarmers represent a first strike at Earth, which had thus far eluded the machines' attempts to kill it, since the assigned Watcher (as Nigel calls the satellites) was destroyed by the Mare Marginis wreck. His theories are generally disregarded as being too speculative; the sober consensus agrees that Watchers are simply a common form of weaponry left over from the suicide of biological races, and the Swarmer invasion simply a grab for a fresh and relatively unspoiled world.

At the next system, Ross 128, a moon like Ganymede is found with a Watcher around it. Initially it is taken as a disproof of Walmsley's Rule that Watchers will appear around any depopulated world that had once harboured technologically advanced biological life, but the de facto leader (Ted), who has always disliked Walmsley, attempts to covertly force Walmsley into hibernation until the long-planned-for return to Earth. Walmsley breaks out part-way through the necessary medical preparations and escapes to the moon in a submersible. Avoiding the people the Lancer sends out in pursuit, he discovers a much-reduced sapient civilization that had links to the EMs before the Watcher came. The Watcher prevents them from ever reaching the surface and thus from developing much technology, but it cannot complete its task and kill them—they are protected by ten kilometres of ice, which Walmsley remarks would insulate them from even the worst the Watcher could do: cause the sun of that system to go nova. The two are in a stalemate.

During the standoff, news comes in from Earth (delayed nine years by the speed of light) that the Swarmers have begun land invasions; the tense superpowers each suspect each other, and escalate the conflict into a full-scale multi-party nuclear war. The machines, who had attempted to engineer just such an internecine conflict (more efficient than attacking a unified humanity), send their flotilla against Earth, when the defences are denuded, destroyed, or depleted.

This grim news galvanizes the crew to do something. They agree to reactivate the fusion drive and turn the plume on the Watcher. This tactic cripples the Watcher, but its retaliation does even more damage to Lancer; worst of all, the drive system is destroyed.

Part of the Galactic Center series that didn't do it for me

None available

Book 3 of a series that had so much promise. It's not bad, but it gets bad later

The third novel in the award-winning author's classic Galactic Center series is available once again. "A challenging, pacesetting work of hard science fiction that should not be missed."--"Los Angeles Times."

I keep reading hoping it will get better.

Another in the Galactic Center series

None available

Didn't make it for me. Part of a series the looked SO promising.

Escaping from the genocidal forces of their home world, the last survivors of Snowglade, under the command of Captain Killeen, journey toward the Galactic Center while facing hunger, desperation, and distrust. Reprint. PW. AB.

So bad I don't think I finished it.

None available

I love me a SciFi where the science is good. And with these authors, the science is always good.

David Brin and Gregory Benford come together again to issue a new edition of their bold collaboration about our near human future in space, planting our boots . . . and staking our destiny . . . on becoming the People of the Comet. Prescient and scientifically accurate, Heart of the Comet is known as one of the great "hard sf" novels of the 1980s.

Prescient and scientifically accurate, Heart of the Comet is known as one of the great "hard sf" novels of the 1980s. First published in 1986, it tells the story of an ambitious manned mission to visit Halley's Comet and alter its orbit, to mine it for resources. But all too soon, native cells— that might once have brought life to Earth—begin colonizing the colonists. As factions battle over the comet's future . . . and that of Earth . . . only love, courage and ingenuity can avert disaster, and possibly spark a new human destiny.

A really enjoyable TIME wise novel (i.e. No time travel, but messages sent back in time to affect the present, but not so much as to cause a paradox). Given that time travel/message plots are so hard to get right, this one really works.

The author of Tides of Light offers his Nebula Award-winning SF classic--a combination of hard science, bold speculation, and human drama. In the year 1998, a group of scientists works desperatey to communicate with the scientists of 1962, warning of an ecological disaster that will destroy the oceans in the future--if it is not averted in the past.

The story is written from two viewpoints, equidistant from the novel's publication in 1980. The first thread is set in a 1998 ravaged by ecological disasters such as algal blooms and diebacks on the brink of large scale extinctions. Various other events are mentioned in passing, such as student riots and an event of nuclear terrorism against New York City which took place before the events of the novel. This thread follows a group of scientists in the United Kingdom connected with the University of Cambridge and their attempts to warn the past of the impending disaster by sending tachyon-induced messages to the astronomical position the Earth occupied in 1962–1963. Given the faster-than-light nature of the tachyon, these messages will effectively reach the past. These efforts are led by John Renfrew, an Englishman, and Gregory Markham, an American most likely modeled on Benford himself.[5]

The second thread is set in the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), in La Jolla, California, in 1962 where a young scientist, Gordon Bernstein, discovers anomalous noise in a physics experiment relating to spontaneous resonance and indium antimonide. He and his student assistant, Albert Cooper (also likely based on the author and his experiences at UCSD), discover that the noise is coming in bursts timed to form Morse code.

The resulting message is made of staccato sentence fragments and jumbled letters, due to the 1998 team's efforts to avoid a grandfather paradox. Their aim is to give the past researchers enough information to start efforts on solving the pending ecological crisis, but not enough that the crisis will be entirely solved (thus making a signal to the past unnecessary and creating a paradox). Due to the biological nature of the message, Professor Bernstein shares the message with a professor of biology, Michael Ramsey. Since the message also gives astronomical coordinates, he also shares it with Saul Shriffer, a fictional scientist who is said to have worked with Frank Drake on Project Ozma. Initially, these characters fail to understand the true meaning of the message. Ramsey believes it to be an intercepted military dispatch hinting at Soviet bioterrorism, while Shriffer thinks the message is of extraterrestrial origin. Shriffer goes public with this theory, mentioning Bernstein in his findings. However, Bernstein's overseer, Isaac Lakin, is skeptical of the messages and wants Bernstein to keep working on his original project and ignore the signal. As a result of this interruption in their experimentation, Bernstein is denied a promotion and Cooper fails a candidacy examination. The signal also exacerbates difficulties in Bernstein's relationship with his girlfriend, Penny.

In 1998, Ian Peterson recovers a safe deposit box in La Jolla containing a piece of paper indicating that the messages were received. Meanwhile, it is clear that the viral nature of the algal bloom is spreading it faster and through more mediums than originally expected. Strange yellow clouds that have been appearing are said to be a result of the viral material being absorbed through the water cycle, and it soon affects the planet's agriculture as well, resulting in widespread cases of food poisoning. Flying to the United States, Markham is killed in a plane crash when the pilots fly too close to one of the clouds and experience seizures.

In the past story line, now advanced into 1963, Bernstein refuses to give up on the signals. He is rewarded when the signal noise is also observed in a laboratory at Columbia University (a nod "Tachyons were the sort of audacious idea that comes to young minds used to roving over the horizon of conventional thought. Because of Feinberg I later set part of my tachyon novel at Columbia" towards the inventor of the tachyon concept, Gerald Feinberg of Columbia). Using hints in the message, Ramsey replicates the conditions of the bloom in a controlled experiment and realizes the danger it represents. Bernstein finds out that the astronomical coordinates given in the message represent where the Earth will be in 1998 due to the solar apex. He also receives a more coherent, despairing message from the future. Having built a solid case, Bernstein goes public and publishes his results.

This decision has monumental consequences. On November 22, a high school student in Dallas is sent by his physics teacher to the Texas School Book Depository to get a copy of Bernstein's findings. There he interrupts Lee Harvey Oswald's assassination attempt on President John F. Kennedy, attacking the shooter and sending the would-be fatal third shot awry. Though seriously injured, Kennedy survives. This paradox creates an alternate universe and forever ends the contact with the original 1998.

The concluding chapters portray the 1998 of the original timeline as a bleak, failing world, the intensified ecological disaster taking a noticeable toll on the human way of life. Peterson retreats to a fortified country farmhouse which he has obviously prepared well in advance. Renfrew continues to send out signals (including the more coherent one that Gordon receives) until the building's generator gives out. Before it does, however, he receives a signal purportedly from the year 2349.

In the final chapter, set in the alternate 1974, an awards ceremony is held for achievement in science. In light of Kennedy's survival, the United States President giving out the awards is William Scranton, who is said to have defeated Bobby Kennedy due to a telephone tapping scandal. The scientists whose work stemmed from the signal are honored, including Bernstein, who receives the Enrico Fermi Prize for his discovery of the tachyon.

Not read

First published in 1908, The Old Wives' Tale is widely considered as one of Arnold Bennett's finest works.

The Old Wives' Tale tells the story of the Baines sisters, shy, retiring Constance and defiant, romantic Sophia, over the course of nearly half a century.

Bennett traces the sisters' lives from childhood in their father's drapery shop in provincial Bursley during the mid-Victorian era, through their married lives, to the modern industrial age, when they are reunited as old women.

The setting moves from the Five Towns of Staffordshire to exotic and cosmopolitan Paris, while the action moves from the subdued domestic routine of the Baines household to the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War.

The book is set in a future where women rule the world. And they rule it with an iron fist. Men are excluded from all positions of power and relegated to second-class status. Society has experienced a complete role reversal of the sexes. The women are the politicians, business leaders and generals, while the men are secretaries, clerks and maids. Men are not permitted to hold political office or even vote, serve in the military or the police force.

This was part of a College course on SciFi - and boy was it extreme. Worth a gander if you like over the top satire

Once again, Thomas Berger brings a satiric and irreverent perspective to the human experience, evoking a world that most dare not even imagine and effectively dismantling all existing definitions of sex and gender. "Imagined with such ferocity and glee that we assent to it almost in spite of ourselves . . . a brilliant accomplishment by one of out best novelists."--New York Times Book Review.

Well.. this is one of those books that throws out so many ideas about future culture and life in a blinding mash that the fact that it's just not very good seems to get lost in the translation. Like - Oh look at all the sparkly lights!!! Just doesn't hold up.

City Six is a dark and brutal place, mired in crime and corruption. Gangs rule the streets of the Undercity and every private police force is for sale. The rich live in secure enclaves, oblivious to the suffering and violence that plague the city's poor. Sinister and powerful corporations trade stolen bodymods, fearless of the law, and human life itself is just another saleable commodity.

In this harsh environment an unprecedented threat is emerging. Whistler and her team of professional abductors start to see a new parasitic organ in the bodies of their victims. Debian, a young cyber-criminal turned commercial hacker, finds a terrifying computer virus in the databanks of an AI-research company.

An unknown enemy is attacking the city, altering the populace into nightmarish creatures and decimating computer systems. It seems unstoppable.

Can these unlikely heroes find a way to fight it? Or will City Six fall prey to an environmental and technological catastrophe on an unimaginable scale?

An interesting idea, worth a novel exploration.

Winner of the First Hugo Award.

In a world policed by telepaths, Ben Reich plans to commit a crime that hasn't been heard of in 70 years: murder. That's the only option left for Reich, whose company is losing a 10-year death struggle with rival D'Courtney Enterprises. Terrorized in his dreams by The Man With No Face and driven to the edge after D'Courtney refuses a merger offer, Reich murders his rival and bribes a high-ranking telepath to help him cover his tracks. But while police prefect Lincoln Powell knows Reich is guilty, his telepath's knowledge is a far cry from admissible evidence.

It was only about halfway through this book that I realized it was writing in 1957. (Reading in 2009) Not bad.. Not bad at all. Sort of a Count of Monte Cristo in Space (not my phrase by the way)

Marooned in outer space after an attack on his ship, Nomad, Gulliver Foyle lives to obsessively pursue the crew of a rescue vessel that had intended to leave him to die.

When it comes to pop culture, Alfred Bester (1913-1987) is something of an unsung hero. He wrote radio scripts, screenplays, and comic books (in which capacity he created the original Green Lantern Oath). But Bester is best known for his science-fiction novels, and The Stars My Destination may be his finest creation. With its sly potshotting at corporate skullduggery, The Stars My Destination seems utterly contemporary, and has maintained its status as an underground classic for fifty years. (Bester fans should also note that iPicturebooks has reprinted The Demolished Man, which won the very first Hugo Award in 1953.)

Alfred Bester was among the first important authors of contemporary science fiction. His passionate novels of worldly adventure, high intellect, and tremendous verve, The Stars My Destination and the Hugo Award winning The Demolished Man, established Bester as a s.f. grandmaster, a reputation that was ratified by the Science Fiction Writers of America shortly before his death. Bester also was an acclaimed journalist for Holiday magazine, a reviewer for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and even a writer for Superman.

Part of a series, that sounds good, but I can't recall reading it.

An artificial Jurassic world spins through space, kilometers long and made to order, build to endure for an eternity. An enticing mystery for the humans of the Heinlein exploratory mission, it holds deadly secrets from the universe's savage past.

INSIDE THE MILES-LONG SPACESHIP IT WAS 160 MILLION YEARS AGO ...

Day after artificial day, outwitting the carnivorous saurians that had devoured their shipmates, the two survivors of the Heinlein expedition to the mysterious object known as Artifact One picked their way through the vast, horizonless jungle that filled the hull of the star-traveling terrerium.

They did what a man and a woman fighting together to survive usually do:

They prayed for rescue.

They searched for a way to escape.

They fell in love

Then, from a rise in the forest, they saw a wall.

And something on the wall saw them.

THE SENTRY

Another in the Dragonstar series about a giant space craft that contains a Jurrasic Park - where explorers try to survive.

On a a miles-long spaceship on a journey between the stars ...

After establishing communications with the sentient dinosaurs aboard the gigantic alien warship Dragonstar, the human exploration forces were ready to reveal their accomplishments to an eager public ... then disaster struck! During a live holovision broadcast, something made the cooperative Saurians go berserk—and begin slaughtering and eating their former friends. At the same moment, the Dragonstar’s access hatches closed down, imprisoning all aboard her.

On a a miles-long spaceship on a journey between the stars ...

After establishing communications with the sentient dinosaurs aboard the gigantic alien warship Dragonstar, the human exploration forces were ready to reveal their accomplishments to an eager public ... then disaster struck! During a live holovision broadcast, something made the cooperative Saurians go berserk—and begin slaughtering and eating their former friends. At the same moment, the Dragonstar's access hatches closed down, imprisoning all aboard her.

I do remember this one as not bad. Not usually into vampires, etc. but this was early on in my reading years.

By day it was paradise. By night it was a seething hell. Nightworld — where for centuries werewolves, dragons, griffins, and vampires served a computerized Prince of Darkness …

Where every sunset brought forth a call for the most heinous acts imaginable by the most frightening creature of all … Where a courageous young lord and a determined outworlder set forth on a journey of innumerable terrors to destroy the computer creature known as Satan in its own technologically horrifying haven of hell!

"Wonderful! A journey in the company of odd travelers through a landscape of old menaces newly twisted — a cleanly written adventure story." — Roger Zelazny

More of the Nightworld series

For five hundred years a mad computer scientist who called himself Satan ruled the nights of the planet Styx, each sundown unleashing hordes of cyborg creatures — werewolves, vampires, dragons, and worse — to terrorize what had once been the idyllic Victorian villages of an interstellar pleasure world. Then Satan was killed by Geoffrey Turner and young Oliver Dolan — and things grew worse, for Satan's creations, left to their own devices, quickly began to terrorize the days as well as the nights. It was left to Oliver Dolan to pacify the creatures and defeat Satan's last, most insidious weapon — before all men were turned into Zombies.

A bit of libertarian political proselytizing in here, but all in all a pretty good read

Miners in the asteroid belt and the conflicts that take place when one group tries to pirate another. Seems justice is served when one person uses might to make right... not very just, really, but the flaws in such an idea are not discussed. The author is rather starry eyed about how all that would work, but hell, it's his book.

SUMMARY

Chastity Snowden Whyte just wanted to mine for rocks, metal and ice in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Rock mining in space was all she knew. It was all she was good at doing. She was comfortable living alone as the captain of her mining ship the Sedona. Normally she managed with only infrequent trips to the planetoid Ceres for resupply.

She didn't want to have to make extra trips back to base because of equipment failure. She didn't want to become a mining tutor for a group of newcomers from Earth. And she certainly didn't want to get entangled in corporate conspiracies, piracy, kidnapping, murder and worst of all…politics.

Okay.. I mean.. WHAT THE HELL. The main character is a bit of a psychopath. He kills people who need killing, and he decides who needs it. Still, at times you are rooting for him. I guess it's a little like DEXTER.

Once again the author is showing his political beliefs a little heavy handedly, but then it is his book. Mildly entertaining.

York August Sixteen was abandoned as a baby, abused and molested as a child, beaten and harassed as a teen, and had his rightful place in the Republic's Space Navy stolen from him. Fighting back against huge government systems was useless. Dispensing justice on an individual case-by-case basis was more to his liking, yet even that was taken away when he was stationed on a lonely communication space station. York's life would change when he decides to seek justice for people even less fortunate than him.

Its a coming of age novel, but really, not very realistic. I mean, this kid manages to convert and engine from regular to hyper-space and back a couple of times, and NO ONE else has ever thought of this. I call B.S. And they pop out of space right next to a habitable planet; and then again later right next to a space station - I call B.S. And then they make this midshipman the Captain of the ship and he wins and unwinnable battle... Just too much B.S. to be a good book. Not recommended.

Coming of age can be hard for anyone. But for Blackmon Perry Stone it is life threatening. At 15, he barely manages to graduate from the empire's cadet training by a talent for unusual problem solving. He has trouble settling into navy life, but life becomes harder when he uncovers a ring of thieves aboard the huge ship. Life becomes difficult when they killed him.

Stone is ejected into hyperspace in an escape pod without hyperspace engines. Fully expecting to die, he reconfigures the sub-light engine to escape the inescapable. To his surprise it works, but only well enough to do little more than crash on an uncharted planet. It will surprise him if he can make the engine work again, but not as much as it will surprise everyone else if he can come back from the dead.

Read to long ago to rate.

None available.

Sounds like they found Spock

Father Ruiz-Sanchez is a dedicated man--a priest who is also a scientist, and a scientist who is also a human being. He has found no insoluble conflicts in his beliefs or his ethics . . . until he is sent to Lithia. There he comes upon a race of aliens who are admirable in every way except for their total reliance on cold reason; they are incapable of faith or belief.

Confronted with a profound scientific riddle and ethical quandary, Father Ruiz-Sanchez soon finds himself torn between the teachings of his faith, the teachings of his science, and the inner promptings of his humanity. There is only one solution: He must accept an ancient and unforgivable heresy--and risk the futures of both worlds

This book is really enjoyable. A coming of age novel for a girl (in my experience, coming of age stories tend to be about boys). Margaret has many questions and many challenges, and needs guidance. Some of it comes from family, some of it comes from friends, and some of it comes from experience. Just like for all of us.

An excellent read... A great look into her life as she enters a time of amazing change in a girls life. I recommend this one.

Margaret Simon, almost twelve, has just moved from New York City to the suburbs, and she's anxious to fit in with her new friends. When she's asked to join a secret club she jumps at the chance. But when the girls start talking about boys, bras, and getting their first periods, Margaret starts to wonder if she's normal. There are some things about growing up that are hard for her to talk about, even with her friends. Lucky for Margaret, she's got someone else to confide in . . . someone who always listens

I can't even remember reading this. And a review of the synopsis didn't ring any bells.

It was that memorable.

Without warning, something has gone terribly awry. In the remote and unnoticed places of the world, small pockets of death begin occurring. As the initially isolated extinctions spread, the world's eyes focus on this unimaginable horror and chaos. Out of the ecological imbalance, something new and extraordinary is evolving and surviving to fill the voids left by these extinctions. Evolution is operating in ways no one could have expected and environmental damage may be the catalyst. Once discovered, this knowledge changes everything....

Read to long ago to rate.

Winter turned her back on a tragic past and dedicated her life to the Federation Space Service. Ever since she had been a model starcaptain, decisive, emotionless, and utterly committed. But then she rescued Shaw, a smuggler and spy with powers no one had ever seen before. Suddenly Winter is a target for assassination by a powerful alien nation and by the Federation itself! Now, for the first time, Winter found herself questioning her orders … The Alien Within was first published by Ballantine Del Rey in 1988

Read to long ago to rate

Mier Sliver was one of the Federation's top agents, trained, honed, and genetically enhanced. Her uncanny empathy & enhanced vision had carried her through 17 years of Security's deadliest missions. When two diplomatic missions to a newly discovered planet failed, Mier was suddenly on her way to the most dangerous sector of space with an android partner. All the clues led straight to Tori, but on that wild planet, the very assets that had made Mier the best would now be her greatest liability. It also turned out that the problem was not in deep space, but much closer to home. Evidence pointed to a traitor within Security itself! Could Mier and her android partner find the answers and save themselves before the terrifying nightmare spawned on Tori destroyed them both? And what would happen when Mier discovered the terrible secret that her mechanical partner was keeping from her?

Knowing how Trump is, there really is nothing in here that is shocking. President Trump acts like he does, and John Bolton made a diary of it. There is very little surprising here. Plenty of stories of advisors trying to steer Trump away from something stupid.. constantly steering because once Trump got and idea into his head it was nearly impossible to dissuade him that he is wrong. Trump is never wrong. Historians will be interested in this book. I was hoping it would reveal what exactly it was that Putin had on Trump. But.. no luck.

As President Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton spent many of his 453 days in the room where it happened, and the facts speak for themselves.

The result is a White House memoir that is the most comprehensive and substantial account of the Trump Administration, and one of the few to date by a top-level official. With almost daily access to the President, John Bolton has produced a precise rendering of his days in and around the Oval Office. What Bolton saw astonished him: a President for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation. “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,” he writes. In fact, he argues that the House committed impeachment malpractice by keeping their prosecution focused narrowly on Ukraine when Trump’s Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full range of his foreign policy—and Bolton documents exactly what those were, and attempts by him and others in the Administration to raise alarms about them.

He shows a President addicted to chaos, who embraced our enemies and spurned our friends, and was deeply suspicious of his own government. In Bolton’s telling, all this helped put Trump on the bizarre road to impeachment. “The differences between this presidency and previous ones I had served were stunning,” writes Bolton, who worked for Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43. He discovered a President who thought foreign policy is like closing a real estate deal—about personal relationships, made-for-TV showmanship, and advancing his own interests. As a result, the US lost an opportunity to confront its deepening threats, and in cases like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea ended up in a more vulnerable place.

Bolton’s account starts with his long march to the West Wing as Trump and others woo him for the National Security job. The minute he lands, he has to deal with Syria’s chemical attack on the city of Douma, and the crises after that never stop. As he writes in the opening pages, “If you don’t like turmoil, uncertainty, and risk—all the while being constantly overwhelmed with information, decisions to be made, and sheer amount of work—and enlivened by international and domestic personality and ego conflicts beyond description, try something else.”

The turmoil, conflicts, and egos are all there—from the upheaval in Venezuela, to the erratic and manipulative moves of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, to the showdowns at the G7 summits, the calculated warmongering by Iran, the crazy plan to bring the Taliban to Camp David, and the placating of an authoritarian China that ultimately exposed the world to its lethal lies. But this seasoned public servant also has a great eye for the Washington inside game, and his story is full of wit and wry humor about how he saw it played.

Sounds exciting. Wish I could recall it better. Parts are there, so it must have held my interest for a bit, but now - not so much

Jeffrey Holt tears apart decommissioned ships that have been crash-landed in the Nevada desert. He's a ship breaker, no one of consequence—just as he wants it. However, decades after his role in the world mattered, someone is trying to kill him. Searching for a reason, he tears into the bridge of a derelict Kappa-Class freighter and finds corpses. As he stands on the bridge considering how to stay alive, a hand grips his leg…

Read so long ago I cannot remember it to rate it.

"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.

Read so long ago I cannot recall to rate

The trouble with great ideas is that someone is sure to expend enormous effort and ingenuity figuring out how to louse them up.

Exactly as the title implies.. machines for dueling - but then...

Read too long ago to rate.

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!

Read so long ago I cannot remember it to rate.

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

Read to long ago to rate.

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.

A solar flare destroys everything in the Eastern hemisphere. The rest of civilization goes under when Soviet military leaders assume the flare is a nuke attack and unleash their ICBMs. A small community survives at a moon base but faces serious survival problems. The biggest one being that lack of fissionable material forces them to preiodically go back to Earth and forage for reactor rods. On one foray Daniel Morgan, the unofficial moonbase leader, refuses to come back and hoards up the available fissionables in an attempt to force the moon people to make a permanent connection with Earth. After 20 or so years, his wife (the official leader) sends her son Alec back with a quasi-military unit to get the rods.....and to get back at dear old dad for walking out on everyone.

Read to long ago to rate.

A solar flare destroys everything in the Eastern hemisphere. The rest of civilization goes under when Soviet military leaders assume the flare is a nuke attack and unleash their ICBMs. A small community survives at a moon base but faces serious survival problems. The biggest one being that lack of fissionable material forces them to preiodically go back to Earth and forage for reactor rods. On one foray Daniel Morgan, the unofficial moonbase leader, refuses to come back and hoards up the available fissionables in an attempt to force the moon people to make a permanent connection with Earth. After 20 or so years, his wife (the official leader) sends her son Alec back with a quasi-military unit to get the rods.....and to get back at dear old dad for walking out on everyone.

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.

I vaguely recall liking this one. The idea was interesting.

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.

Read to long ago to rate

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 confront this enigma. Even lose the only woman he's ever really loved.

And maybe start a world war.

Read so long ago I cannot recall to rate.

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.

Read to long ago to rate

Jo Camerata, the ambitious young student who fell in love with Keith Stoner, is now head of Vanguard Industries which has recovered an alien ship. As a result, Jo's company now controls the incredible wealth of technology aboard the ship as well as the fortune it reaps in - not to mention control of Keith Stoner.

What Camerata does not know, however, is that someone else has been awake, someone who dwells deep within the recesses of Stoner's mind. The alienate presence that has kept Stoner alive for so long is now free and fully intends to explore our world and will let nothing stand in its way.

Not read

The Death of the Heart is perhaps Elizabeth Bowen's best-known book. As she deftly and delicately exposes the cruelty that lurks behind the polished surfaces of conventional society, Bowen reveals herself as a masterful novelist who combines a sense of humor with a devastating gift for divining human motivations.

In this piercing story of innocence betrayed set in the thirties, the orphaned Portia is stranded in the sophisticated and politely treacherous world of her wealthy half-brother's home in London.There she encounters the attractive, carefree cad Eddie. To him, Portia is at once child and woman, and he fears her gushing love. To her, Eddie is the only reason to be alive. But when Eddie follows Portia to a sea-side resort, the flash of a cigarette lighter in a darkened cinema illuminates a stunning romantic betrayal--and sets in motion one of the most moving and desperate flights of the heart in modern literature.

Okay, having read HOW TO READ LITERATURE LIKE A PROFESSOR, I can tell you that this is a quest novel with vampire characters. What does that mean... It means that the characters are on a journey - in this case through parts of the Sahara desert. And vampire characters are characters who suck the life out of another character, using them up over time (not like actual vampires sucking blood - think "users"). The book follows 3 people who journey through post WWII Northern Africa in search of... well, what is not really clear. They all seem to want to find the meaning of the desert, but are wrapped up in various self worries that they fail to reach this goal. When the married couple, Paul and Kit, become separated from their traveling companion (on purpose), it becomes clear that Paul is the vampire character, and with only Kit left to "feed" on, he starts to unhinge her mind. He eventually sickens and dies, but by this time Kit is so lost that she is captured by desert native and made part of his harem. When she escapes this and is "re-captured" by the civilized world she has no sanity left - and retreats back to the wandering nomad she has become.

There, I treated it like literature. As far as a read goes - it is mildly interesting in its description of North Africa at this time in history (Paul Bowles grew up there). Beyond that the characters are not quite quirky enough to hold your interest, other than to wonder why they seem bent on destroying themselves.

Its obvious that the author loves the country, and his descriptions are wonderful. I would only recommend this book to someone who had plenty of time, and an inclination to try and find out what it all means. Good luck.

The Sheltering Sky is a landmark of twentieth-century literature. In this intensely fascinating story, Paul Bowles examines the ways in which Americans' incomprehension of alien cultures leads to the ultimate destruction of those cultures.

A story about three American travelers adrift in the cities and deserts of North Africa after World War II, The Sheltering Sky explores the limits of humanity when it touches the unfathomable emptiness and impassive cruelty of the desert.

Read to long ago to rate.

Was the youth elixir the panacea that mankind dreamed of-or a bitter and ironic joke? To Alexander Ward, his discovery could have meant fame, wealth, the Nobel Prize. But his 70-year-old lab assistant stole it and turned herself into a teen-age sex kitten, a nursing home into a brothel--and the world into a madhouse.

Read to long ago to rate

None available

A short but powerful book about censorship and desperation. I've read plenty of Bradbury in the context of Science Fiction, but I think this is the best book of his I have ever read.

The edition I read contains an after word by Bradbury talking about what has happened to the novel in the years since it was first published - how, in fact, a book about strict censorship has itself been slowly censored over the years, and how requests have been made for him to revise it to cope with various people's offended feelings. Unbelievable!!!

(NOTE: The amazon edition on the side is not the edition with the epilogue by Bradbury - as soon as I find that I will change the link.

I recommend this to everyone for it's dystopian view of the future, and one man's look into his sudden dissatisfaction with his world. If we all don't feel that way once in life, I don't know what makes us more human.

Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden.

Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television "family." But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn't live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television.

When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. He starts hiding books in his home, and when his pilfering is discovered, the fireman has to run for his life.

The Illustrated Man is a 1951 book of eighteen science fiction short stories by Ray Bradbury that explores the nature of mankind. A recurring theme throughout the eighteen stories is the conflict of the cold mechanics of technology and the psychology of people. It was nominated for the International Fantasy Award in 1952

Read this as a teenager and I recall it being strange and wonderful and a little scary at the time. It was a long time ago and I cannot say if the stories will have stood the test of time. Read at your own risk... but a good book for a look into the times.

You could hear the voices murmuring, small and muted, from the crowds that inhabited his body.

A peerless American storyteller, Ray Bradbury brings wonders alive. The Illustrated Man is classic Bradbury— eighteen startling visions of humankind's destiny, unfolding across a canvas of decorated skin. In this phantasmagoric sideshow, 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. Provocative and powerful, Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man is a kaleidoscopic blending of magic, imagination, and truth—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.

Obviously not science, but a great read in any case. A great bunch of stories from a great writer.

In The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury, America's preeminent storyteller, imagines a place of hope, dreams, and metaphor— of crystal pillars and fossil seas—where a fine dust settles on the great empty cities of a vanished, devastated civilization. Earthmen conquer Mars and then are conquered by it, lulled by dangerous lies of comfort and familiarity, and enchanted by the lingering glamour of an ancient, mysterious native race. In this classic work of fiction, Bradbury exposes our ambitions, weaknesses, and ignorance in a strange and breathtaking world where man does not belong.

Read this as a teenager, in the days when Mars was still a giant mystery capable of holding any story.

I recall this as being a fun read.

The carnival rolls in sometime after midnight, ushering in Halloween a week early. The shrill siren song of a calliope beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. In this season of dying, Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. And two boys will discover the secret of its smoke, mazes, and mirrors; two friends who will soon know all too well the heavy cost of wishes. . .and the stuff of nightmare.

Not read

Here is the magical legend of King Arthur, vividly retold through the eyes and lives of the women who wielded power from behind the throne. A spellbinding novel, an extraordinary literary achievement, THE MISTS OF AVALON will stay with you for a long time to come....

Read to long ago to rate

Refusing to allow his government to complete its destruction of the Earth, Stefan Li activates Liberty, an undersea ark, staffing it with as many refugees as he can before the ports are sealed.

Read to long ago to rate.

None Available

A good start to this trilogy. the story is intriguing and the characters interesting.

An UPLIFT novel

The planet Jijo is forbidden to settlers, its ecology protected by guardians of the Five Galaxies. But over the centuries it has been resettled, populated by refugees of six intelligent races. Together they have woven a new society in the wilderness, drawn together by their fear of Judgment Day, when the Five Galaxies will discover their illegal colony. Then a strange starship arrives on Jijo. Does it bring the long-dreaded judgment, or worse--a band of criminals willing to destroy the six races of Jijo in order to cover their own crimes?

Another novel about the Fermi Paradox. And this one has a very strange explanation!!!

In a universe filled with habitable worlds why have we had no contact with extraterrestrial intelligence? David Brin's "The Crystal Spheres" offers a fantastic explanation for the Great Silence. Instead of being late-comers - might humanity have come upon the scene too early? This haunting tale was voted one of the "most beautiful of the eighties. Winner of the 1985 Hugo Award

An excellent read... could have used a sequel. Plenty of good action, characters, and an interesting concept to toy with. How could all the civilizations in the universe manage to be in touch with each other... well, they can't, but they can still help each other out.

Gerald Livingston is an orbital garbage collector. For a hundred years, people have been abandoning things in space, and someone has to clean it up. But there's something spinning a little bit higher than he expects, something that isn't on the decades' old orbital maps. An hour after he grabs it and brings it in, rumors fill Earth's infomesh about an "alien artifact."

Thrown into the maelstrom of worldwide shared experience, the Artifact is a game-changer. A message in a bottle; an alien capsule that wants to communicate. The world reacts as humans always do: with fear and hope and selfishness and love and violence. And insatiable curiosity.

The end is near for the fugitives on this planet. Things get exciting in this the conclusion of the trilogy.

The brutal enemy that has relentlessly pursued them for centuries has arrived. Now the fugitive settlers of Jijo--both human and alien--brace for a final confrontation. The Jijoans' only hope is the Earthship Streaker, crewed by uplifted dolphins and commanded by an untested human.

Yet more than just the fate of Jijo hangs in the balance. For Streaker carries a cargo of ancient artifacts that may unlock the secret of those who first brought intelligent life to the Galaxies. Many believe a dire prophecy has come to pass: an age of terrifying changes that could end Galactic civilization.

As dozens of white dwarf stars stand ready to explode, the survival of sentient life in the universe rests on the most improbable dream of all--that age-old antagonists of different races can at last recognize the unity of all consciousness.

This book was really good - a detective novel with a really twisted idea - that you could "bake" a short-lived copy of yourself to do jobs for you and retrieve their memories later. Imagine the implications for crime!

In a perilous future where disposable duplicate bodies fulfill every legal and illicit whim of their decadent masters, life is cheap. No one knows that better than Albert Morris, a brash investigator with a knack for trouble, who has sent his own duplicates into deadly peril more times than he cares to remember.

But when Morris takes on a ring of bootleggers making illegal copies of a famous actress, he stumbles upon a secret so explosive it has incited open warfare on the streets of Dittotown. Dr. Yosil Maharal, a brilliant researcher in artificial intelligence, has suddenly vanished, just as he is on the verge of a revolutionary scientific breakthrough. Maharal's daughter, Ritu, believes he has been kidnapped-or worse. Aeneas Polom, a reclusive trillionaire who appears in public only through his high-priced platinum duplicates, offers Morris unlimited resources to locate Maharal before his awesome discovery falls into the wrong hands.

To uncover the truth, Morris must enter a shadowy, nightmare world of ghosts and golems where nothing -and no one-is what they seem, memory itself is suspect, and the line between life and death may no longer exist

I loved this book - much better than the movie. The lie of the postman (that becomes the reality) is better told in the book. Recommend.

This is the story of a lie that became the most powerful kind of truth. A timeless novel as urgently compelling as War Day or Alas, Babylon, David Brin's The Postman is the dramatically moving saga of a man who rekindled the spirit of America through the power of a dream, from a modern master of science fiction.

He was a survivor--a wanderer who traded tales for food and shelter in the dark and savage aftermath of a devastating war. Fate touches him one chill winter's day when he borrows the jacket of a long-dead postal worker to protect himself from the cold. The old, worn uniform still has power as a symbol of hope, and with it he begins to weave his greatest tale, of a nation on the road to recovery.

This was hilarious. Things in this universe only work if you "practice" them, and the more you practice them, the better they work.

Physicist Dennis Nuel was the first human to probe the strange realms called anomaly worlds?alternate universes where the laws of science were unpredictably changed. But the world Dennis discovered seemed almost like our own?with one perplexing difference. To his astonishment, he was hailed as a wizard and found himself fighting beside a beautiful woman with strange powers against a mysterious warlord as he struggles to solve the riddle of this baffling world.

A short read, but not bad. Good hard science in this one about life in Earth orbit and economics of running a space station.

Can a sci fi story alter the course of something ponderous, like the space program? Perhaps. "Tank Farm Dynamo" sure tried! What if we found the nerve, the spirit and daring to use every resource - including those that NASA simply threw away? An unabashedly old-fashioned hard SF story with science and technology as central, problem-solving players... plus a real twist.

A very enjoyable book, and the start of the UPLIFT series - the theory being that no species manages to get to the stars without help.

No species has ever reached for the stars without the guidance of a patron--except perhaps mankind. Did some mysterious race begin the uplift of humanity aeons ago? Circling the sun, under the caverns of Mercury, Expedition Sundiver prepares for the most momentous voyage in history--a journey into the boiling inferno of the sun.

The second of a great series

David Brin's Uplift novels are among the most thrilling and extraordinary science fiction ever written. Sundiver, Startide Rising, and The Uplift War--a New York Times bestseller--together make up one of the most beloved sagas of all time. Brin's tales are set in a future universe in which no species can reach sentience without being "uplifted" by a patron race. But the greatest mystery of all remains unsolved: who uplifted humankind?

The Terran exploration vessel Streaker has crashed in the uncharted water world of Kithrup, bearing one of the most important discoveries in galactic history. Below, a handful of her human and dolphin crew battles armed rebellion and a hostile planet to safeguard her secret--the fate of the Progenitors, the fabled First Race who seeded wisdom throughout the stars.

As galactic armadas clash in quest of the ancient fleet of the Progenitors, a brutal alien race seizes the dying planet of Garth. The various uplifted inhabitants of Garth must battle their overlords or face ultimate extinction. At stake is the existence of Terran society and Earth, and the fate of the entire Five Galaxies. Sweeping, brilliantly crafted, inventive and dramatic, The Uplift War is an unforgettable story of adventure and wonder from one of today's science fiction greats.

The last of the Uplift series (not to be confused with the Uplift trilogy - yeah right - A fun read.

As galactic armadas clash in quest of the ancient fleet of the Progenitors, a brutal alien race seizes the dying planet of Garth. The various uplifted inhabitants of Garth must battle their overlords or face ultimate extinction. At stake is the existence of Terran society and Earth, and the fate of the entire Five Galaxies. Sweeping, brilliantly crafted, inventive and dramatic, The Uplift War is an unforgettable story of adventure and wonder from one of today's science fiction greats.

Interesting implications of the idea of Uplift

The planet Jijo is forbidden to settlers, its ecology protected by guardians of the Five Galaxies. But over the centuries it has been resettled, populated by refugees of six intelligent races. Together they have woven a new society in the wilderness, drawn together by their fear of Judgment Day, when the Five Galaxies will discover their illegal colony. Then a strange starship arrives on Jijo. Does it bring the long-dreaded judgment, or worse--a band of criminals willing to destroy the six races of Jijo in order to cover their own crimes?

Another good read in the Trilogy.

For the fugitive settlers of Jijo, it is truly the beginning of the end. As starships fill the skies, the threat of genocide hangs over the planet that once peacefully sheltered six bands of sapient beings. Now the human settlers of Jijo and their alien neighbors must make heroic--and terrifying--choices. A scientist must rally believers for a cause he never shared. And four youngsters find that what started as a simple adventure--imitating exploits in Earthling books by Verne and Twain--leads them to the dark abyss of mystery. Meanwhile, the Streaker, with her fugitive dolphin crew, arrives at last on Jijo in a desperate search for refuge. Yet what the crew finds instead is a secret hidden since the galaxies first spawned intelligence--a secret that could mean salvation for the planet and its inhabitants...or their ultimate annihilation.

Not read

An orphan girl's progress from the custody of cruel relatives to an oppressive boarding school culminates in a troubled career as a governess. Jane's first assignment at Thornfield, where the proud and cynical master harbors a scandalous secret, draws readers ever deeper into a compelling exploration of the mysteries of the human heart. A selection of the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

Not read

Wuthering Heights is Emily Brontë's first and only published novel, written between October 1845 and June 1846, and published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell; Brontë died the following year, aged 30. The decision to publish came after the success of her sister Charlotte's novel, Jane Eyre. After Emily's death, Charlotte edited the manuscript of Wuthering Heights, and arranged for the edited version to be published as a posthumous second edition in 1850. Wuthering Heights is the name of the farmhouse where the story unfolds. The book's core theme is the destructive effect of jealousy and vengefulness both on the jealous or vengeful individuals and on their communities

Second in the comical Landover series. Fantasy with humor.

A year had passed since Ben Holiday bought the Magic Kingdon from the wizard, Meeks. But unbeknownst to him, he has been the victim of a trap by Meeks, who has succeeded in stealing the Paladin and appropriating his face. Suddenly none of Ben's friends know him, but all of his enemies do. He must win it all back again--only this time on his own!

First in the Landover Series. Pretty darn funny. Very light

After Ben Holiday purchased Landover, he discovered the magic kingdom had some problems. The Barons refused to recognize a king and the peasants were without hope. To make matters worse, Ben learned that he had to duel to the death with the Iron Mask, the terrible lord of the demons--a duel which no human could hope to win....

Not as good at The DaVinci Code but still a fine thriller using artistic and architectural landmarks to move the plot along. If you enjoyedThe DaVinci Code, you will like this one.

An ancient secret brotherhood.

A devastating new weapon of destruction.

When world-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a mysterious symbol -- seared into the chest of a murdered physicist -- he discovers evidence of the unimaginable: the resurgence of an ancient secret brotherhood known as the Illuminati...the most powerful underground organization ever to walk the earth. The Illuminati has now surfaced to carry out the final phase of its legendary vendetta against its most hated enemy -- the Catholic Church. Langdon's worst fears are confirmed on the eve of the Vatican's holy conclave, when a messenger of the Illuminati announces they have hidden an unstoppable time bomb at the very heart of Vatican City. With the countdown under way, Langdon jets to Rome to join forces with Vittoria Vetra, a beautiful and mysterious Italian scientist, to assist the Vatican in a desperate bid for survival.

Embarking on a frantic hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, deserted cathedrals, and even the most secretive vault on earth, Langdon and Vetra follow a 400-year-old trail of ancient symbols that snakes across Rome toward the long-forgotten Illuminati lair...a clandestine location that contains the only hope for Vatican salvation.

An explosive international thriller, Angels & Demons careens from enlightening epiphanies to dark truths as the battle between science and religion turns to war.

I really enjoyed this book. Not so much because of the hype, but because I have followed the Grail story for much of my life, and this presents a nice rendering of a modern Grail quest. And a thriller to boot. It reminded me of when I read Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum. If you liked this book you will like that one as well. More of the Grail mythology is woven into that book than this one, but this one is the easier read.

As millions of readers around the globe have already discovered, The Da Vinci Code is a reading experience unlike any other. Simultaneously lightning-paced, intelligent, and intricately layered with remarkable research and detail, Dan Brown's novel is a thrilling masterpiece—from its opening pages to its stunning conclusion.

The premise is far fetched, but the plot moves along nicely. There are some twists and turns in the government conspiracy that are surprising. But still the premise is so far fetched that you it's really a stretch.

A so-so thriller.

A shocking scientific discovery.

A conspiracy of staggering brilliance.

A thriller unlike any you've ever read....

When a NASA satellite discovers an astonishingly rare object buried deep in the Arctic ice, the floundering space agency proclaims a much-needed victory -- a victory with profound implications for NASA policy and the impending presidential election. To verify the authenticity of the find, the White House calls upon the skills of intelligence analyst Rachel Sexton. Accompanied by a team of experts, including the charismatic scholar Michael Tolland, Rachel travels to the Arctic and uncovers the unthinkable: evidence of scientific trickery -- a bold deception that threatens to plunge the world into controversy. But before she can warn the President, Rachel and Michael are ambushed by a deadly team of assassins. Fleeing for their lives across a desolate and lethal landscape, their only hope for survival is to discover who is behind this masterful plot. The truth, they will learn, is the most shocking deception of all.

I would not recommend this to anyone who knows anything about computers. But to those who don’t, again, this is a so-so thriller. If you don't know how computers really work, then I imagine this could be a pretty exciting book.

Before the multi-million, runaway bestseller The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown set his razor-sharp research and storytelling skills on the most powerful intelligence organization on earth--the National Security Agency (NSA), an ultra-secret, multibillion-dollar agency many times more powerful than the CIA.

When the NSA's invincible code-breaking machine encounters a mysterious code it cannot break, the agency calls its head cryptographer, Susan Fletcher, a brilliant and beautiful mathematician. What she uncovers sends shock waves through the corridors of power. The NSA is being held hostage...not by guns or bombs, but by a code so ingeniously complex that if released it would cripple U.S. intelligence.

Caught in an accelerating tempest of secrecy and lies, Susan Fletcher battles to save the agency she believes in. Betrayed on all sides, she finds herself fighting not only for her country but for her life, and in the end, for the life of the man she loves.

From the underground hallways of power to the skyscrapers of Tokyo to the towering cathedrals of Spain, a desperate race unfolds. It is a battle for survival--a crucial bid to destroy a creation of inconceivable genius...an impregnable code-writing formula that threatens to obliterate the post-cold war balance of power. Forever.

Not as good as DaVinci Code or Angels and Demons, but better than some of his other stuff, this would make a fun book to read and then carry around Washington. Like his other books all the landmarks are real, all the artwork and architecture he lists are real things that you can check out while in town. Some of it makes you wonder what people were thinking when they put that stuff up (like the painting on the Capitol Dome - Seriously.. George Washington becoming a god.

This is a really fun romp around the nations capitol weaving a cool story together from some of the odd ball things you can find there, but the end is... less than satisfying.

If you liked the others you will enjoy this one.

THE LOST SYMBOL will have a first printing of 5 million copies, and it will once again feature Dan Brown's unforgettable protagonist, Robert Langdon. Brown's longtime editor, Jason Kaufman, Vice President and Executive Editor at Doubleday said, "Nothing ever is as it first appears in a Dan Brown novel. This book's narrative takes place in a twelve-hour period, and from the first page, Dan's readers will feel the thrill of discovery as they follow Robert Langdon through a masterful and unexpected new landscape. THE LOST SYMBOL is full of surprises." Dan Brown's popularity continues to grow. The film of The Da Vinci Code was a #1 box office smash when it was released by Columbia Pictures in May 2006 with Ron Howard directing and Tom Hanks starring as Robert Langdon. Box office receipts were $758 million. The same team will release Angels and Demons theatrically worldwide on May 15, 2009.

Another in this enjoyable series. An entertaining read. Good thriller set on the largest space station imaginable.

Telepath Jeff Vaughan is approached by billionaire tycoon Rabindranath Chandrasakar, who wants him to read the mind of a spacer on an unexplored world on the edge of known space. There's only one problem - the spacer is dead. On Delta Cephei VII, Vaughan finds himself drawn into a web of treachery and deceit in a bid to discover what an alien race is concealing from humanity - a secret that could change forever the course of human expansion through the galaxy.

Bengal Station: an exotic spaceport that dominates the ocean between India and Burma. Jaded telepath, Jeff Vaughan, is employed by the spaceport authorities to monitor incoming craft for refugees from other worlds. When he discovers a sinister cult that worships an mysterious alien god, he's drawn into an deadly investigation. Not only must he attempt to solve the murders, but he has to save himself from the psychopath out to kill him.

A psychic who has the ability to read a dying mind. Ugh.. the ability has made him reclusive and has driven him to run from the government organization that gave him the ability. Working as a sort of psychic customs officer at a space port he uncovers a plot by an alien race to murder people under the guise of a religious cult.

This book meanders, but is not bad. A pretty good SciFi read. I plan on picking up some others in this series to see how they go.

Science fiction meets crime noir, as Jeff Vaughan, jaded telepath, employed by the spaceport authorities on Bengal Station, discovers a sinister cult that worships a mysterious alien god. We follow Vaughan as he attempts to solve the murders and save himself from the psichopath out to kill him. This is Eric Brown's triumphant return to hard SF.

A novella/short story. Can't really recall it, so must not have been impressed.

This is the story of David Conway and his new life on Chalcedony, a planet renowned for its Golden Column, an artifact that is mysterious and strange, no one knowing why it is present there. Conway meets some locals in the town of Magenta Bay and buys an old starship from Hawksworth, who runs a scrap yard in the town full of old and disused starships. Conway sets up the ship on his land and uses it as his home, but the presence of what can only be described as an alien ghost starts a string of events that lead to a revelation that will change everything for humanity.

This novel held my interest and was pretty entertaining. If you like a little mystery set in a very large technical background in space, you will probably like this one. A cop thriller on the largest space station above Earth.

Telepath Jeff Vaughan is working for a detective agency on Bengal Station, an exotic spaceport that dominates the ocean between India and Burma, when he is called out to the colony world of Mallory to investigate recent discoveries of alien corpses. But Vaughan is shaken to his core when he begins to uncover the heart of darkness at the centre of the Scheering-Lassiter colonial organisation...

I recall this being very funny... as the Martians were so totally annoying. They were the worst nightmares...

THEY WERE GREEN, THEY WERE LITTLE, THEY WERE BALD AS BILLIARD BALLS AND THEY WERE EVERYWHERE! Luke Devereaux was a science fiction writer, holed up in a desert shack waiting for inspiration. He was the first to see a Martian - but he certainly wasn't the last. It was estimated that one billion of them had arrived - one to every three human beings on Earth. Obnoxious green creatures who could be seen and heard (but not harmed) and who probed private sex lives as shamelessly as they exposed government secrets. No one knew why they had come. No one knew how to make them go away - except perhaps, Luke Devereaux. Unfortunately he was going slightly bananas, so it wouldn't be easy. But for a science fiction writer nothing was impossible

A SciFi baseball novel... go figure.

Read to long ago to rate.

None available

Read to long ago to rate. Though I tended to like John Brunner

When mankind colonized the stars, they travelled out from Earth in two directions - to Centaurus and its Southern Hemisphere neighbours and to Ursa Major and the constellations around Polaris. And strange to say the humans who settled on those various worlds began to develop into two differing antagonistic types. For Ray Mallin, born under the surface of Mars in the sparse colony of Earth's inhospitable old neighbour, neither the anarchic 'bears' nor the autocratic 'Centaurs' commanded his loyalty. So when secret agents of both galactic groupings suddenly focus their unwelcome attention on his most recent star-piloting mission, he knew only that something of vast significance was up - and that he unknowingly was the key to it.

Too long ago to recall

A hundred thousand years from now, Creohan the scholar discovers a star approaching Earth on a deadly collision course. If he can arouse everyone to the danger, there might be time enough to save the world. But the Earth had become a strange and kaleidoscopic place in that distant era. Too many empires had risen and fallen - humans had become too apathetic, too self-centered to pay attention to this new alarm. Creohan would have to save the world by himself. The story of his efforts is a brilliant blend of science-fiction and fantasy, and one of John Brunner's most colorful concepts.

Read to long ago to rate.

The novel explores several themes: environment degradation of the modern world (which Brunner believed was shortening his own life), paternal irresponsibility (in the form of accepting cash for donating sperm to a sperm bank), and conservative (fascist) tendencies in British politics. The latter may reflect that the book was written during the Thatcher years.

Read to long ago to rate.

The novel deals with the efforts of an alien species to escape their homeworld, whose system is passing through a cloud of interstellar debris, resulting in a high rate of in-falling matter. The species' unique biology and their biological technology complicate matters.

A short story collection. Brunner is very good.

None available

Very Good

In THE JAGGED ORBIT, Brunner, writing at the peak of form that allowed him to create STAND ON ZANZIBAR, takes a long, hard, disturbing, hilarious look at the near, and not-so-distant, future and the catastrophic changes that widespread and rampant drug abuse, uncontrolled violence, high-level corruption in government, inhumane treatment of the too-readily defined "insane" and the accompanying collapse of the social order are wreaking on the world we recognize and turning it into a reality we must fear and hope to avoid. Brunner tells a spine-chilling tale and makes where the world could possibly go all too believable and real for our comfort.

Read to long ago to rate

This 1967 novel tells of a troubled psychiatrist trying to unravel the mystery behind a girl discovered wandering in the woods near a mental hospital. She speaks a language no one understands and doesn't seem to recognize commonplace items such as telephones or automobiles. As the novel progresses, the clues about her origin become more intriguing, even as the psychiatrist's personal life is falling apart.

Spectacular - one of the best novels of all time - not just Science Fiction

In THE SHEEP LOOK UP, Brunner returns to a style similar to that of the manically inventive STAND ON ZANZIBAR, and delivers another fast-paced, kaleidoscopically comprehensive view of a near future rife with looming ecological dangers and possibly about to be saved by an underground revolutionary movement--if its leader can survive the hostility of vested interests to deliver his message of hope.

Read to long ago to rate

In a world drowning in data and information and choking on novelty and innovation, Nickie Haflinger, a most dangerous fugitive who doesn't even appear to exist, provides a window onto a global society falling apart in all directions, with madness run amok and personal freedom surrendered to computers and bureaucrats. Caught and about to be re-programmed, can he escape once again, defy the government and turn the tide of organizational destruction?

You get a sense of it through the book, but the author 'fesses up at the end and tells you that the plot is based on a chess game. Hence the name..

It is a sociological story of urban class warfare and political intrigue, taking place in the fictional South American capital city of Vados. It explores the idea of subliminal messages as political tools, and it is notable for having the structure of a famous 1892 chess game between Wilhelm Steinitz and Mikhail Chigorin. The structure is not coincidental, and plays an important part in the story.

One of the best!!

This book take many story lines that seem unconnected and winds them into an amazing whole that will blow you away.

Norman Niblock House is a rising executive at General Technics, one of a few all-powerful corporations. His work is leading General Technics to the forefront of global domination, both in the marketplace and politically---it's about to take over a country in Africa. Donald Hogan is his roommate, a seemingly sheepish bookworm. But Hogan is a spy, and he's about to discover a breakthrough in genetic engineering that will change the world...and kill him.

These two men's lives weave through one of science fiction's most praised novels. Written in a way that echoes John Dos Passos' U.S.A. Trilogy, Stand on Zanzibar is a cross-section of a world overpopulated by the billions. Where society is squeezed into hive-living madness by god-like mega computers, mass-marketed psychedelic drugs, and mundane uses of genetic engineering. Though written in 1968, it speaks of 2010, and is frighteningly prescient and intensely powerful.

Read to long ago to rate

After a riot in a near-future England where telepathy has been discovered, the authorities discover Gerald Howson, a physically deformed youth with greater telepathic power than has ever been seen before. The novel details Howson's struggles to come to grips with his power and his deformity.

Not read

The Good Earth is Buck's classic story of Wang Lung, a Chinese peasant farmer, and his wife, O-lan, a former slave. With luck and hard work, the couple's fortunes improve over the years: They are blessed with sons, and save steadily until one day they can afford to buy property in the House of Wang—the very house in which O-lan used to work. But success brings with it a new set of problems. Wang soon finds himself the target of jealousy, and as good harvests come and go, so does the social order. Will Wang's family cherish the estate after he's gone? And can his material success, the bedrock of his life, guarantee anything about his soul?

Not read

A tale of romance in an exotic locale; published posthumously.

Yet to read

Humanity continues to gain control of the Forty Eight Worlds as they deorbit wormholes and join the many worlds and civilizations together. But as they do so, they must deal with the horrors of past injustices as humanity forms new societies out of the wreckage of the old.

And some of those horrors aren't content to rest. Kay, who has rescued herself from a hellish life dominated by uncaring alien creatures, seeks bloody twisted revenge for what was done to her.

And a new force is not happy about the manner in which the Forty Eight worlds are reshaping

A very good SciFi war novel. Enjoyable if you like war scenarios.

Humans have been discovered on the Outworlds. And the Army decides to send emissaries. Emissaries like Jason Wander.

As intraplanetary conflicts rage around him, and the personal stakes get ever higher, Jason finds that playing planet-hopping politician can be harder than commanding armies.

When united mankind squares off to battle the Slugs for a precious interstellar crossroad, Jason will discover that the most dangerous enemy may be the one he least expects.

The first in the Orphan Series - These are great coming of age novels. Plenty of people would call these science fiction. I would categorize them as military. There is plenty of military history to be had in here, if you're paying attention. In particular these books are about the burden of command.

Its about a man (a kid really) in the very near future who ends up in a futile war against an alien invader, and who spends his whole life... and the lives of others, fighting them. It talks about why soldiers really fight - which hasn't changed since the Greeks fought the Persians. Its not about God, or country or ideology. Its about the guy next to you in line. Anyone who doesn't believe that only has to watch a few video's from troops in Iraq to realize its an eternal fact of war.

If you liked Heinlein's STARSHIP TROOPER - and the ideas it explored. You will like this series of books. If you loved Joe Haldeman's FOREVER WAR - then these will knock your socks off.

Mankind's first alien contact tears into Earth: projectiles launched from Jupiter's moon, Ganymede, vaporize whole cities. Under siege, humanity gambles on one desperate counterstrike. In a spacecraft scavenged from scraps and armed with Vietnam-era weapons, foot soldiers like eighteen-year-old Jason Wander-orphans that no one will miss-must dare man's first interplanetary voyage and invade Ganymede.

They have one chance to attack, one ship to attack with. Their failure is our extinction.

Mankind's first alien contact tears into Earth: projectiles launched from Jupiter's moon, Ganymede, vaporize whole cities. Under siege, humanity gambles on one desperate counterstrike. In a spacecraft scavenged from scraps and armed with Vietnam-era weapons, foot soldiers like eighteen-year-old Jason Wander-orphans that no one will miss-must dare man's first interplanetary voyage and invade Ganymede.

They have one chance to attack, one ship to attack with. Their failure is our extinction.

The third in this series - see the review for ORPHANGE for a summary of this, and all the books in this series.

In the years since the last Slug War, Jason's command style hasn't made him any friends in the Army. Now, in an effort to keep him out of trouble, the Army has sent Jason to the vast, Earth-orbiting resort called New Moon. At the core of this enormous space station is a starship, a relic from the last war.

When a test run of the ship goes wrong, Jason, along with a handful of others, will be torn from orbit and thrust into space. Now, stranded on an alien planet, Jason realizes that not only are his friends are looking to him for rescue, but an entire planet sees him as their only hope.

In the years since the last Slug War, Jason's command style hasn't made him any friends in the Army. Now, in an effort to keep him out of trouble, the Army has sent Jason to the vast, Earth-orbiting resort called New Moon. At the core of this enormous space station is a starship, a relic from the last war.

When a test run of the ship goes wrong, Jason, along with a handful of others, will be torn from orbit and thrust into space. Now, stranded on an alien planet, Jason realizes that not only are his friends are looking to him for rescue, but an entire planet sees him as their only hope.

The second in this series - see the review for ORPHANGE for a summary of this, and all the books in this series.

At twenty-five, General Jason Wander has fought and won man's only alien conflict. Now, after long years in space, he's coming home...but to what? Earth's desperate nations, impoverished by war damage and military spending, are slashing defense budgets. There's just one problem with this new worldwide policy-the first alien invasion was merely Plan A.

At twenty-five, General Jason Wander has fought and won man's only alien conflict. Now, after long years in space, he's coming home...but to what? Earth's desperate nations, impoverished by war damage and military spending, are slashing defense budgets. There's just one problem with this new worldwide policy-the first alien invasion was merely Plan A.

Suddenly, the real assault begins: Earth is attacked by a vast armada of city-sized warships. To block their invasion, mankind has only one surviving craft and a single guerrilla strike force...a suicide squad led by Jason Wander

What an odd book. These 100 percent reprehensible fellows kill and rob their way across Europe on the road to riches or ruin. Horrible brothers, but you are compelled to keep reading to see what they do next.

Enjoy this with a strong stomach.

The year is 1364, and the brothers Grossbart have embarked on a naïve quest for fortune. Descended from a long line of graverobbers, they are determined to follow their family's footsteps to the fabled crypts of Gyptland. To get there, they will have to brave dangerous and unknown lands and keep company with all manner of desperate travelers-merchants, priests, and scoundrels alike. For theirs is a world both familiar and distant; a world of living saints and livelier demons, of monsters and madmen.

The Brothers Grossbart are about to discover that all legends have their truths, and worse fates than death await those who would take the red road of villainy.

This was an entertaining story and nice tight read. I enjoyed it.

Everyone knows the spheres of light that mingle with society are souls. When a person dies their soul leaves the body until it's time for reincarnation. Only the privileged can afford soul insurance, a way to continue on after dying.

The living don't know what the afterlife holds, that period of time between bodies. They know nothing about life as a soul. Do souls think and feel? How do they fly up in the clouds? Do they take any part of their old life into the new one?

Only Connor has the answers.

Connor was born able to communicate with souls. He's tried to keep his ability hidden since he was a child. But Brooke, a woman with whom he shares a strange connection, needs the help of someone who can understand both worlds. They just have to avoid becoming souls themselves.

This was a good read. Once the crew realizes the mistake they have made with the artifact it is a matter of survival - who will live and who will die and how - all the while under the stress of being inside a star. SUMMARY

The crew of the Icarus is used to high-stress situations: their ship is designed to dive into the heart of a star to collect scientific data for research. Testing out the Icarus's new heatshielding is the plan, but when they discover an artifact in orbit of the Sun, the head of the research team presses the captain to retrieve the object for further analysis. The interior of the artifact is hollow -- a void -- and should be incinerated, but it's perfectly intact. If they can discover what makes the object naturally resilient to the radiation of the Sun, perhaps it can be used for future development in stardiving. Once the artifact is on board, research begins, and the scientists discover the terrifying secret of the void -- but the fate of the ship may have already been sealed.

The Icarus Void is an intense novel of science-fiction horror that will drag you in and pull you along until the final page. It also serves as the terrifying prelude to CK Burch's upcoming Equinox Saga

When published in the U.S. they left off the last chapter. Chapter 21 – 21 being symbolic of maturity where the character ALEX finally -grows up-. The implication of the movie, and the book without this chapter, is completely different than it is with this chapter.

The book is much more horrifying that the movie, in that the ages of the victims and the criminals is so much younger than represented on screen. (For example, the girl in the rape scene in the movie was an adult, while in the book she was twelve.) The cruelty is more pronounced. (I remember hearing a story that Stanley Kubrick expected people to be horrified when they saw A Clockwork Orange in the movies - and was surprised to find that people were not shocked at all. Course I think Sam Peckinpah was really getting started at this time too. Given that lions eating Christians used to be entertainment, I don't think we can ever underestimate the human capacity for violence.)

And yes, it takes a while to get through the special vocabulary of Alex and his droogs, but after a while you begin to swing with it, and your brain takes in what is being said quiet readily.

This was an interesting attempt at a new slang language and worth reading for that, and the moral dilemma it poses.

Great Music, it said, and Great Poetry would like quieten Modern Youth down and make Modern Youth more Civilized. Civilized my syphilised yarbles.
A vicious fifteen-year-old droog is the central character of this 1963 classic. In Anthony Burgess's nightmare vision of the future, where the criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, who talks in a brutal invented slang that brilliantly renders his and his friends' social pathology. A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom. When the state undertakes to reform Alex to "redeem" him, the novel asks, "At what cost?" This edition includes the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition and Burgess's introduction "A Clockwork Orange Resucked."

This is one of the really early ones that I read. The copyright is 1965.. that would be over 40 years ago. A long time to remember a book hum... I guess SciFi made a big impact. I guess I keep books around too long.

Science Fiction Encyclopedia described this as a "hard-edged" tale of the 24th-century conquest of Earth by an alien empire the humans had judged too stupid to pull off such a coup. Only a handful of humans escaped the effects of a mutated narcoleptic drug that put humanity into protracted hibernation. The battle to liberate Earth is fought by those few with the aid of a vengeful ghost called "Gremper" by the aliens. The action is fast and furious, while the genius general of the invading fleet goes slowly insane at the disruption of his well-laid plans. "A natural-born storyteller," said bestselling author Frank G. Slaughter. A classic reprint of a sci-fi masterpiece.

I really enjoyed this book. I enjoyed the characters. I enjoyed the look into small town southern life and mores. And I enjoyed the scandal. I give it a thumbs up.

The one thing you can depend on in Cold Sassy, Georgia, is that word gets around - fast. When Grandpa E. Rucker Blakeslee announces one July morning in 1906 that he's aiming to marry the young and freckledy milliner, Miss Love Simpson - a bare three weeks after Granny Blakeslee has gone to her reward - the news is served up all over town with that afternoon's dinner. And young Will Tweedy suddenly finds himself eyewitness to a major scandal. Boggled by the sheer audacity of it all, and not a little jealous of his grandpa's new wife, Will nevertheless approves of this May-December match and follows its progress with just a smidgen of youthful prurience. As the newlyweds' chaperone, conspirator, and confidant, Will is privy to his one-armed, renegade grandfather's second adolescence; meanwhile, he does some growing up of his own. He gets run over by a train and lives to tell about it; he kisses his first girl, and survives that too. Olive Ann Burns has given us a timeless, funny, resplendent novel - about a romance that rocks an entire town, about a boy's passage through the momentous but elusive year when childhood melts into adolescence, and about just how people lived and died in a small Southern town at the turn of the century. Inhabited by characters who are wise and loony, unimpeachably pious and deliciously irreverent, Cold Sassy, Georgia, is the perfect setting for the debut of a storyteller of rare brio, exuberance, and style.

Gibberish.

That's the kindest word I can use for this book. From page 1 to page 130 (where I gave up on it) this book is pure crap. Why does the fall of self destructive people make such great literature. This entire book is a series (which can be read in any order according to the author) of drug induced hallucinations culminating in NOTHING. There is no point. There is no story. There is gibberish.

Under the Volcano & Appointment in Samarra are better books to read if you want to watch someone self destruct. But this book is crap. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy

I'm going to go to Google image search and see if I can find a new symbol for this book... because I don't even want to give it one start.

Since its original publication in Paris in 1959, Naked Lunch has become one of the most important novels of the twentieth century. Exerting its influence on the relationship of art and obscenity, it is one of the books that redefined not just literature but American culture. For the Burroughs enthusiast and the neophyte, this volume—that contains final-draft typescripts, numerous unpublished contemporaneous writings by Burroughs, his own later introductions to the book, and his essay on psychoactive drugs—is a valuable and fresh experience of a novel that has lost none of its relevance or satirical bite.

I'm not much into fantasy.. and wizards, etc, are fantasy to me. And I had a hard time figuring out the relationship between the main character, Harry Dresden, and his police detective friend/enemy. Does she acknowledge that magic is a thing, or does she just thing Harry has some special ideas that help her close cases. It was never made clear. I finished the book, and it was interesting toward the end, but I won't be reading any more in the series.

Now, if you are INTO that sort of thing, then know that this is set in modern day Chicago, so that puts an interesting spin on things. And there is potential for plenty of future stories. So, have at it.

As a professional wizard, Harry Dresden knows firsthand that the ?everyday? world is actually full of strange and magical things?and most of them don?t play well with humans. And those that do enjoy playing with humans far too much. He also knows he?s the best at what he does. Technically, he?s the only at what he does. But even though Harry is the only game in town, business?to put it mildly?stinks.

So when the Chicago P.D. bring him in to consult on a double homicide committed with black magic, Harry's seeing dollar signs. But where there's black magic, there's a black mage behind it. And now that mage knows Harry's name...

Not read

Hailed by George Bernard Shaw as "one of the summits of human achievement," Butler's autobiographical account of a harsh upbringing and troubled adulthood satirizes Victorian hypocrisy in its chronicle of the life and loves of Ernest Pontifex. Along the way, it offers a powerful indictment of 19th-century England's major institutions.

Not read

Hailed by The New York Times Book Review as "a gifted observer, able to discern the exact details that bring whole worlds into being" and "a storyteller who could keep a sultan on the edge of his throne for a thousand and one nights," A. S. Byatt writes some of the most engaging and skillful novels of our time. Time magazine calls her "a novelist of dazzling inventiveness."

Possession, for which Byatt won England's prestigious Booker Prize, was praised by critics on both sides of the Atlantic when it was first published in 1990. "On academic rivalry and obsession, Byatt is delicious. On the nature of possession—the lover by the beloved, the biographer by his subject—she is profound," said The Sunday Times (London). The New Yorker dubbed it "more fun to read than The Name of the Rose . . . Its prankish verve [and] monstrous richness of detail [make for] a one-woman variety show of literary styles and types." The novel traces a pair of young academics—Roland Michell and Maud Bailey—as they uncover a clandestine love affair between two long-dead Victorian poets. Interwoven in a mesmerizing pastiche are love letters and fairytales, extracts from biographies and scholarly accounts, creating a sensuous and utterly delightful novel of ideas and passions.

Read to long ago to rate.

None available

As I recall a very powerful war lord comes to a bad end. Too long ago to rate

none Available

An object that gives the holder power over other people. Just how will it be used... I recall this being pretty good.

Doug Stavers plays the mercenary game, and every time he plays he wins: in Africa, Central America, Vietnam - or right here in the USA. Now he's up on the biggest hunt of his life: to find and seize a certain object that, incredibly, confers the power of absolute belief on its owner. Christ once wore it. So did Mohammed. The last to own it was Adolf Hitler. The next will rule the world. It's code name is the Messiah Stone.

This is a fast paced book about a bum and a woman in a bad marriage who fall in passion (not love to start) and come up with a plot to kill her husband. Their first attempt fails, but the second attempt just about succeeds - still, they land in court. All is well that ends well though, and the two of them realize they are really in love after all - but things don't end well for these two.

Like I said... Fast paced. Raw. And not filled with a bunch of tender emotions. This human passion out in the open.

An amoral young tramp. A beautiful, sullen woman with an inconvenient husband. A problem that has only one grisly solution--a solution that only creates other problems that no one can ever solve.

First published in 1934 and banned in Boston for its explosive mixture of violence and eroticism, The Postman Always Rings Twice is a classic of the roman noir. It established James M. Cain as a major novelist with an unsparing vision of America's bleak underside, and was acknowledged by Albert Camus as the model for The Stranger.

Hell's Super is about a guy who is the maintenance man in Hell. It is supposed to be funny, but falls flat as far as I am concerned. The pie in the face as punishment for saying something nice about someone... just not funny. And, common, with the huge population of Hell for there to be ONE maintenance guy and ONE supply person... It just does not hang together. This could have been a good idea, but it fell flat as a pancake as far as I am concerned. Not interesting.

How can one damned handyman keep all Hell running when everything's always breaking, devils and demons plot against him … and he's terrible at fixing things?

Steve is Hell's Super, its handyman. Being Mr. Fixit to the Underworld keeps him and his assistant, Orson Welles (yes, that Orson Welles), pretty busy, since things go on the blink all the time down there.

No malfunction has ever created so much inconvenience, though, as the malfunction of Hell's Escalator, which leads from the Pearly Gates to the depths of Hades. What's worse: the breakdown appears to be sabotage. Satan calls in Steve to investigate.

But Steve is distracted these days. He's in love with Flo, a gorgeous, almost saintly figure who has come to Hell by choice to ease the suffering of the damned. What's more: she seems to like him, but romance in Hell? That could never be.

Still, solving the mystery of the Escalator could earn him some points with Satan, maybe even a chance with Flo.

Or maybe not.

Oh lord, what a painful book to read. Not painful in that it was difficult, no, this is a very easy to read book - you can finish it in one day. No, it's painful in the manner of Steinbeck, but not quite. In Steinbeck the characters are very human and you can identify with them such that, when tragedy hits them, you are just punched in the gut by it. In Tobacco Road, the characters are so flawed, so ignorant, so de-humanized, that it's just painful from start to finish to read what they do to themselves. You keep thinking, no one could be this ignorant; and yet, in the back of your head there is that bothersome thought that Caldwell is not making any of this up. That these are real people. That they are living in real circumstances. And that bothersome little thought comes charging to the fore every now and then as you read - and you want to vomit. My GOD, humanity can't be that bad - OH YES IT CAN.

I seriously don't know how to rate this book. If a book is supposed to evoke a response (laughter, tears, perplextion) then this is a 5 star book, no doubt. Will you feel good after putting it down. No way. Will you be glad you read it. Probably. I seriously don't know how to rate it. So.. here goes...

Caldwell's bestselling, controversial classic: the story of a Southern sharecropper family ground down by the devastation of the Great Depression

Even before the Great Depression struck, Jeeter Lester and his family were desperately poor sharecroppers. But when hard times begin to affect the families that once helped support them, the Lesters slip completely into the abyss. Rather than hold on to each other for support, Jeeter, his wife Ada, and their twelve children are overcome by the fractured and violent society around them.

Banned and burned when first released in 1932, Tobacco Road is a brutal examination of poverty's dehumanizing influence by one of America's great masters of political fiction.

The Vasilov Worlds are on the edge of Human space. They have fought a war for 35 years against the insectoid Kadan that they have no intention of ending. It’s too essential to a society where the only social movement is via battle promotion. Then it all changes when the Kadan nearly annihilate the front lines.

Vasilov Officer Colonel Cole Clarke has just returned home from service with the Sigg Military. Now that he has learned how the Sigg fight, he's bringing that knowledge to the Vasilov Military, plus an entire battalion of second hand Sigg Armor purchased on the scrap market. But instead of a fresh battalion of troops, he’s assigned a penal battalion filled with convicts. The Vasilov Military doesn't accept change easily, even when they need it.

What would happen if an entirely new style of warfare came onto the battlefield? Could a strike force of second hand armor trump the defensive doctrines they’d used for thirty five years or would they be doomed to failure and death on the icy planet Lishun Delta?

One squadron of armor. One Colonel. A thousand of the worst convicts in the Vasilov Military. Will they be up to the task?

A pretty darn good battle book. I enjoyed this. Seems like a metaphor for World War I where the upper ranks got medals and everyone else died. One soldier decides it's time to WIN instead of having a constant draw.

Another coming of age story about a girl who escapes her horrible life and cons her way onto one of the Great Ships that ply the trade lanes between systems. She learns the life of the ship and grows to become an important member of the crew - a crew of hundreds - that is facing an unknown threat to their very existence.

Out in the darkness of space, something is targeting the Greatships. With their vast cargo holds and a crew that could fill a city, the Greatships are the lifeblood of human occupied space, transporting an unimaginable volume - and value - of goods from City, the greatest human orbital, all the way to Tradepoint at the other, to trade for xenoglas with an unknowable alien species. It has always been Marca Nbaro's dream to achieve the near-impossible: escape her upbringing and venture into space. All it took, to make her way onto the crew of the Greatship Athens was thousands of hours in simulators, dedication, and pawning or selling every scrap of her old life in order to forge a new one. But though she's made her way onboard with faked papers, leaving her old life - and scandals - behind isn't so easy. She may have just combined all the dangers of her former life, with all the perils of the new .

This is a fun book. You start to really like the characters in here, even though they are all pretty reprehensible. After all... the whole place is just one big criminal enterprise.

Hank is a thug. He knows he's a thug. He has no problem with that realization. In his view the galaxy has given him a gift: a mutation that allows him to withstand great deals of physical trauma. He puts his abilities to the best use possible and that isn't by being a scientist.

Besides, the space station Belvaille doesn't need scientists. It is not, generally, a thinking person's locale. It is the remotest habitation in the entire Colmarian Confederation. There is literally no reason to be there.

Unless you are a criminal.

Because of its location, Belvaille is populated with nothing but crooks. Every day is a series of power struggles between the crime bosses.

Hank is an intrinsic part of this community as a premier gang negotiator. Not because he is eloquent or brilliant or an expert combatant, but because if you shoot him in the face he keeps on talking.

Hank believes he has it pretty good until a beautiful and mysterious blue woman enters his life with a compelling job offer.

Hank and Belvaille, so long out of public scrutiny, suddenly find themselves at the epicenter of the galaxy with a lot of very unwelcome attention.

This is a follow up to the first Hard Luck Hank book. Hank is a mutant human who lives on a space station (massive) run by a bunch of crime bosses who settles issues between them - in as peaceful a manner as possible; for bone breaking values of peaceful. Nearly invulnerable due to his mutation, Hank still tries to get things done peaceably. The city is falling apart, and some how, it is up to Hank to get it all back together with no real authority, other than his reputation.

You really need to read the first books for this to make a bunch of sense, but the character is good, and the books are enjoyable.

An increasingly crippled Hank struggles to keep the various factions of Belvaille in check after the collapse of the Colmarian Confederation.

Hank, as Supreme Kommilaire and Secretary of City, has several hundred police to try and maintain order among the millions of inhabitants on the space station while simultaneously preparing for Belvaille's first ever election.

He thinks it is an impossible task. Every year the city, and even the galaxy, falls further into chaos as he himself succumbs to the debilitating effects of his mutation.

With economic turmoil everywhere, a dirty election in the works, and the galaxy's foremost assassin hunting him, Hank has to decide if he can save Belvaille. Or if it's even worth saving.

NOTE: Sequel to Hard Luck Hank - Screw the Galaxy and Hard Luck Hank - Basketful of Crap

Someone is trying to start a galactic civil war, and Hank is in the middle of what is going on, but what really is going on. That naked guy seems to be stirring things up, but who the hell is he. Can Hank do something to stop the civil war, and still manage to make all his meals? Maybe if people stop shooting at him for no reason (or even a good reason) he might get something done. Good thing he is bullet proof. Nothing goes right for Hank, but eventually he does figure out who Naked Guy really is.. or maybe not. Ah well, its all just a Basket Full of Crap!!

Hank was a dying breed on the space station Belvaille. The criminal gangs that had once made their homes there were forced out by the corporations that had taken over since the facility became an Independent Protectorate.

Instead of the gentlemanly gang wars that had once dominated the scene, and made Hank's services prized as a negotiator, the city was now plagued by the clash of corporate armies using heavy weapons. Even tanks roamed the streets regularly.

Most everyone from the olden days had either fled the station or was killed due to the organizational changes. Changes that Hank personally brought about when he had negotiated Belvaille's status with the Navy.

As Hank contemplates whether he can survive in this increasingly hostile environment, he realizes that things aren't as bad as they seem--they are quite a bit worse. The constant power plays among corporations might have further reach than just the alleys of a backwater space station at the edge of the galaxy.

NOTE: Sequel to Hard Luck Hank - Screw the Galaxy

Oh, Hank is in trouble now. Again, someone hires him to do a job, and then someone hires him to do a conflicting job, and then some one hires him to not do a job, and it is all very confusing. He is shot, burned, knifed, punched, bazookaed, and it is all in a days work for Hank. As long as he has enough to eat.. all is good.

These books are amusing and funny.. and there is a mystery to solve so.. have at it.

Life is tough on the space station Belvaille. Not for the aristocratic nobles that call it home, but for the poor slobs like Hank.

Hank is considered a "celebrated cutthroat" and the oldest living person in the city. His occupation is to be hired muscle for those people who don't want to get their hands dirty but still want dirty things done. He possesses a mutation that allows him to be bulletproof and weigh thousands of pounds, two helpful traits in his line of work.

When the wife a City Councilman approaches him about spying on her husband, Hank worries he's flying too close to the flames for safety. When the husband is assassinated, he's sure of it.

Hank has to keep himself from getting framed for the murder while he finds himself increasingly manipulated by increasingly powerful people as the machinations of the City Council start to spill into his daily life.

NOTE: Sequel to Hard Luck Hank - Screw the Galaxy, Hard Luck Hank - Basketful of Crap, and Hard Luck Hank - Prince of Suck

Another of the Hard Luck Hank series about a guy.. a mutant, who lives on a space station, and manages to get himself into all kinds of trouble... and manages to get himself out of it. In this book he becomes a "glocken" player (it's a game, sounds pretty brutal, and kinda like it would be fun to watch). Anyway, there is that, and someone is kidnapping folks, and he is supposed to figure that out, and then there is the immortal guy who keeps trying to destroy the galaxy. Yeah, Hank has his hands full, like always. A fun book like the others.

Belvaille has cemented its place as the most important System in the galaxy and Hank is working as an official Factotum, negotiating deals between gangs and noblemen under the watchful eye of the Arch Minister.

When his ever-capable butler, Cliston, is approached to become the general manager of a Super Class glocken team, Hank is hired not only as protection, but as a player.

Hank finds himself thrown into the most grueling bloodsport in the galaxy and he is tasked with finding out how and why players are being abducted.

The friendly rivalries turn into full-scale conflict and Hank unravels a far more insidious plot than the fixing of gambling results. In the process, Hank learns a lot about his history that he never even dreamed had existed.

Many of Hank's friends and enemies return in this action-packed and humorous take on the professional sporting world.

NOTE: Sequel to Hard Luck Hank - Screw the Galaxy, Hard Luck Hank - Basketful of Crap, Hard Luck Hank - Prince of Suck, and Hard Luck Hank - Suck My Cosmos

Well, things have not gone well for Hank since we last saw him. Times are a little tougher and life is sucking for Hank and all the low-lifes in the space station because they can't figure out how to rob and steal for a living... til Hank lays it out for them how to get around all the new laws. Oh, and then a race of robots declare war on humanity.. thanks to Hank. And his old girlfriend has joined the Navy. As usual, life sucks and Hank just copes looking out for Hank.

This is an unusual series of books.. funny and snide.. and this one is no exception. Hank ain't any kind of character you would want to depend on.. his moral compass is very flexible.. but you grow to like him, and how he acts. He is the perfect Heroic - anti-hero. I'm loving it.

Sometimes it?s not easy being a mutant thug.

The space station Belvaille, once the center of civilization, is nearly deserted because of the new government?s policies. Hank makes do by working odd jobs, but he isn?t sure how long those, or the city, can last.

However, there are still some people trying to scratch out a (dis)honest living on Belvaille. Hank concocts a plan to save the city: steal from the countless transports and freighters that pass through the System.

In the meantime, Hank falls in with a tough crowd of freedom fighters who seem determined to overthrow the government. The team goes on exceedingly dangerous assignments, with Hank taking the brunt of the danger.

As if things weren?t bad enough, the Navy set up residence in the System, a powerful alien dignitary is scheduled to arrive, and Hank?s absurdly-competent butler states that his robotic species may declare war on Hank?s home.

It?s up to Hank to fix the problems, find out who is doing what and why, and to try and earn a little cash in the process.

A short easy read, and an interesting character who seems to be more of a nihilist than and existentialist. The main character doesn't seem to feel much about anything; every possibility is as good as any other since they all end the same way - in death. What difference does it make what day we die, we all die one way or the other.

A pretty clear exposition of what it means to be a nihilist.

Through the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd." First published in 1946; now in a new translation by Matthew Ward.

A pretty good read. The science is reasonable. The twist ending you see coming from a mile away, but sill entertaining.

The colony on Venus was not built because the destruction of Earth was possible, but because it was inevitable…

A brilliant young scientist and one of the first humans born on Venus, Arik works tirelessly to perfect the science of artificial photosynthesis, a project crucial to the future of his home, V1. The colony was built on the harsh Venusian surface by the Founders, the first humans to establish a permanent extraterrestrial settlement. Arik's research becomes critical when he awakens from an unexplained, near-fatal accident and learns that his wife is three months pregnant. Unless Arik's research uncovers a groundbreaking discovery, V1's oxygen supply will not be able to support the increase in population that his baby represents.

As Arik works against time, he begins to untangle the threads of his accident, which seem inextricably linked to what lies outside the protective walls of V1—a world where the caustic atmosphere and extreme heat make all forms of known life impossible. For its entire existence, Arik's generation has been expected to help solve the problems of colonization. But as Arik digs deeper and deeper, he discovers alarming truths about the planet that the Founders have kept hidden. With growing urgency and increasing peril, Arik finds himself on a journey that will push him to the limits of his intelligence and take him beyond the unimaginable.

This was a fun book. The main character is a nasty bit of work, but you sympathize with his motives. The society described is lawless and chaotic, but well fleshed. Probably post apocalyptic but never explicitly said that I can remember.

Noose, a genetically engineered dwarf mercenary, barely survives a terrorist attack on a neohuman dance club. Injured and alone, he embarks on a brutal quest for vengeance into the squalid underbelly of the Regional Atlanta Metroplex, through the desert wasteland of the not-so-pristine wilderness, and to the peerless towers of elite society.

Read too long ago to rate.

Homeless Among the Stars

In a last ditch effort to reunite the world, the multinational starship Asia was launched fourteen years ago on a journey through the near solar systems. Its mission: to search out and colonzie Earth-type planets that could support human life. Yet, as the crew approaches their first destination in the Epsilon Indi system, an unexplained burst of radiation apparently emanating from Earth wipes out all contact with the mother planet.

Fearing the worst but unwilling to jeopardize essential crew members, the captain chooses the brilliant but restless Peter Zolotin to undertake the hazardous voyage back to Earth. With the aid of an advanced artificial intelligence Zolotin embarks on a mind-bending journey to discover the truth about Earth's fate. And the message he carries back to the orphaned cre will change the course of humanity forever.

A remarkable solo debut, Burster is a stunning and thought-provoking novel of a young man's coming of age in the galaxy.

WOW. Just wow. This book is difficult to read sometimes because you feel for the victim's of this seemingly random cold blooded crime. Capote is so good at painting their life; putting the picture in your mind of how simply normal these victims were, that you want to turn away before the crime and freeze them as they lived, and should have lived.

The perpetrators also shine in Capote's light; but it's so hard to have sympathy for them.

I can't imagine how much work he must have done; how many people he talked to; how much time he spent; to create this amazing book.

But WOW.

On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues.

As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.

The first book about Ender Wiggin - Ender's Game - was fantastic. But what happened after that book ended. What could a child do, who was raised for nothing but war? This book gets to that and is a very good followup.

In Ender's Game, the world's most gifted children were taken from their families and sent to an elite training school. At Battle School, they learned combat, strategy, and secret intelligence to fight a dangerous war on behalf of those left on Earth. But they also learned some important and less definable lessons about life.

After the life-changing events of those years, these children--now teenagers--must leave the school and re adapt to life in the outside world.

Having not seen their families or interacted with other people for years--where do they go now? What can they do?

Ender fought for humanity, but he is now reviled as a ruthless assassin. No longer allowed to live on Earth, he enters into exile. With his sister Valentine, he chooses to leave the only home he's ever known to begin a relativistic--and revelatory--journey beyond the stars.

What happened during the years between Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead? What did Ender go through from the ages of 12 through 35? The story of those years has never been told. Taking place 3000 years before Ender finally receives his chance at redemption in Speaker for the Dead, this is the long-lost story of Ender.

For twenty-three years, millions of readers have wondered and now they will receive the answers. Ender in Exile is Orson Scott Card's moving return to all the action and the adventure, the profound exploration of war and society, and the characters one never forgot.

Absolutely Spectacular !!!!! One of the best Science Fiction novels of all time. I cannot praise this book enough. Not only is the story great, but the characters are complex and interesting. Ender Wiggin especially comes to realize that to beat and enemy, he has to understand the enemy - and with understanding comes empathy. How do you destroy that with which you empathize?

In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn't make the cut--young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.

Absolutely Excellent!!!

Orson Scott Card brings us back to the very beginning of his brilliant Ender Quartet, with the novel that begins The Shadow Series and allows us to reenter Ender's world anew.

With all the power of his original creation, Ender's Shadow is Card's parallel volume to Ender's Game, a book that expands and complements the first, enhancing its power, illuminating its events and its powerful conclusion.

The human race is at War with the "Buggers", an insect-like alien race. The first battles went badly, and now as Earth prepares to defend itself against the imminent threat of total destruction at the hands of an inscrutable alien enemy, all focus is on the development and training of military geniuses who can fight such a war, and win.

The long distances of interstellar space have given hope to the defenders of Earth--they have time to train these future commanders up from childhood, forging then into an irresistible force in the high orbital facility called the Battle School.

Andrew "Ender" Wiggin was not the only child in the Battle School; he was just the best of the best. In this new book, card tells the story of another of those precocious generals, the one they called Bean--the one who became Ender's right hand, part of his team, in the final battle against the Buggers.

Bean's past was a battle just to survive. He first appeared on the streets of Rotterdam, a tiny child with a mind leagues beyond anyone else's. He knew he could not survive through strength; he used his tactical genius to gain acceptance into a children's gang, and then to help make that gang a template for success for all the others. He civilized them, and lived to grow older.

Bean's desperate struggle to live, and his success, brought him to the attention of the Battle School's recruiters, those people scouring the planet for leaders, tacticians, and generals to save Earth from the threat of alien invasion. Bean was sent into orbit, to the Battle School. And there he met Ender....

This is the promising start of a series that turned out to be awful. Do not start this series, it is a disappointment.

High above the planet Harmony, the Oversoul watches. Its task, programmed so many millennia ago, is to guard the human settlement on this planet--to protect this fragile remnant of Earth from all threats. To protect them, most of all, from themselves.

The Oversoul has done its job well. There is no war on Harmony. There are no weapons of mass destruction. There is no technology that could lead to weapons of war. By control of the data banks, and subtle interference in the very thoughts of the people, the artificial intelligence has fulfilled its mission.

But now there is a problem. In orbit, the Oversoul realizes that it has lost access to some of its memory banks, and some of its power systems are failing. And on the planet, men are beginning to think about power, wealth, and conquest.

Devolving. Not what I was hoping for from Orson Scott Card.

As Harmony's Oversoul grows weaker, a great warrior has arisen to challenge its bans. His name is Moozh, and he has won control of an army using forbidden technology. Now he is aiming his soldiers at the city of Basilica, that strong fortress above the Plain.

Basilica remains in turmoil. Wetchik and his sons are not strong enough to stop a army. Can Rasa and her allies defeat him through intrigue, or will Moozh take the city

The series has gone off the rails now and become wrong. Do not start this series as it turns disappointing.

The City of Basilica has fallen. Now Wetchik, Nafai, and all their family must brave the desert wastes, and cross the wide continents to where Harmony's hidden spaceport lies silent, abandoned, waiting for the command to make the great interstellar ships ready for flight again.

But of these sixteen people, only a few have chosen their exile. The others, Rasa's spiteful daughters and their husbands; Wetchik's oldest son, Elemak, have been forced against their will. Their anger and hatreds will make the difficult journey harder.

Dull. Did not seem interesting enough to continue.. but I did.

The Oversoul of the colony planet Harmony selected the family of Wetchik to carry it back to long-lost Earth. Now grown to a tribe in the years of their journey to Harmony's hidden starport, they are ready at last to take a ship to the stars. But from the beginning there has been bitter dispute between Nafai and Elemak, Wetchick's youngest son and his oldest.

On board the starship Bailica, the children of the tribe will become pawns in the struggle. Two factions are each making secret plans to awaken the children, and themselves, early from the cold-sleep capsules in which they will pass the long decades of the journey. Each side hopes to gain years of influence on the minds of the children, winning their loyalty in the struggle for control of reclaimed Earth.

But the Oversoul is truly in control of this journey. It has downloaded a complete copy of itself to the Ship's computers. And only Nafai, who wears the Cloak of the Starmaster by the Oversoul's command, really understand what this will mean to all their plans for the future.

Boring

High above the earth orbits the starship Basilica. On board the huge vessel is a sleeping woman. Of those who made the journey, Shedemai alone has survived the hundred of years since the Children of Wetchik returned to Earth.

She now wears the Cloak of the Starmaster, and the Oversoul wakes her sometimes to watch over her descendants on the planet below. The population has grown rapidly--there are cities and nations now, whole peoples descended from the who followed Nafai or Elemak.

But in all the long years of watching and searching, the Oversoul has not found the thing it sought. It has not found the Keeper of the Earth, the central intelligence that also can repair the Oversoul's damaged programming.

What happened to Ender Wiggen after the war in which he was trained to be a weapon is explained in the book Ender in Exile - But what about Bean - and the other children of the war school. They are just as capable of leading wars on Earth now that the alien threat is over.

What will become of them? A great read.

The War is over, won by Ender Wiggin and his team of brilliant child-warriors. The enemy is destroyed, the human race is saved. Ender himself refuses to return to the planet, but his crew has gone home to their families, scattered across the globe. The battle school is no more.

But with the external threat gone, the Earth has become a battlefield once more. The children of the Battle School are more than heroes; they are potential weapons that can bring power to the countries that control them. One by one, all of Ender's Dragon Army are kidnapped. Only Bean escapes; and he turns for help to Ender's brother Peter.

Peter Wiggin, Ender's older brother, has already been manipulating the politics of Earth from behind the scenes. With Bean's help, he will eventually rule the world.

After the drama of Ender's Game, this novel is a significant step back from the action, and s deeper exploration of Ender's empathy for the enemy. Interesting.

In the aftermath of his terrible war, Ender Wiggin disappeared, and a powerful voice arose: The Speaker for the Dead, who told the true story of the Bugger War.

Now, long years later, a second alien race has been discovered, but again the aliens' ways are strange and frightening...again, humans die. And it is only the Speaker for the Dead, who is also Ender Wiggin the Xenocide, who has the courage to confront the mystery...and the truth.

Speaker for the Dead, the second novel in Orson Scott Card's Ender Quintet, is the winner of the 1986 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 1987 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

A very interesting character - part psychopath - for whom you start to root. How does he turn a negative into a positive and stick it to his enemies?

Now charged with a mission of conquest -- and exile -- Lanik devises a bold and dangerous plan... a quest that may finally break the vicious chain of rivalry and bloodshed that enslaves the people of Treason as the Offworld never could.

Multi-generational story of one powerful family. Not a bad read.

It was a miracle of science that permitted human beings to live, if not forever, then for a long, long time. Some people, anyway. The rich, the powerful--they lived their lives at the rate of one year every ten. Some created two societies: that of people who lived out their normal span and died, and those who slept away the decades, skipping over the intervening years and events. It allowed great plans to be put in motion. It allowed interstellar Empires to be built.

It came near to destroying humanity.

After a long, long time of decadence and stagnation, a few seed ships were sent out to save our species. They carried human embryos and supplies, and teaching robots, and one man. The Worthing Saga is the story of one of these men, Jason Worthing, and the world he found for the seed he carried.

Ender Wiggin performed xenocide when he destroyed the Formick race. Now can he help prevent it from happening again?

The war for survival of the planet Lusitania will be fought in the heart of a child named Gloriously Bright.

On Lusitania, Ender found a world where humans and pequininos and the Hive Queen could all live together; where three very different intelligent species could find common ground at last. Or so he thought.

Lusitania also harbors the descolada, a virus that kills all humans it infects, but which the pequininos require in order to become adults. The Starways Congress so fears the effects of the descolada, should it escape from Lusitania, that they have ordered the destruction of the entire planet, and all who live there. The Fleet is on its way, a second xenocide seems inevitable.

Finally A well done story about nano-technology gone hay wire. Highly recommended.

The nanotechnology was designed to fight cancer. Instead, it evolved into the machine plague, killing nearly five billion people and changing life on Earth forever.

The nanotech has one weakness: it self-destructs at altitudes above ten thousand feet. Those few who've managed to escape the plague struggle to stay alive on the highest mountains, but time is running out. There is famine and war, and the environment is crashing worldwide. Humanity's last hope lies with a top nanotech researcher aboard the International Space Station... and with a small group of survivors in California who risk a daring journey below the death line...

Well, there was a good idea in here somewhere.. but it never quit panned out. Your left hanging and not really interested. So I never read the follow-up books.

Two points for brushing your teeth. Ten points for keeping your room tidy. Seventy-two points for the Bioeconomic Game Design pop quiz on the ride to school in your personal FunCar. Another thirty for making every hurdle in gym class.

Life is a game, unless you're not the one winning.

Gabby DeCorte, top student and reality-hacker extraordinaire, has been doing whatever it takes to keep her best friend, Zaela, from falling behind in LifeGame. Zaela has gifts of artistry that amaze Gabby, but none of those skills translate in LifeGame and with final exams coming up, they can't afford to waste a single minute. But when a mysterious group called the Frags contacts Gabby claiming to know what really happens to the losers of LifeGame, she must choose between winning and what she believes in.

Today, we know how the cold war turned out.. but once upon a time it was always a worry that it would turn hot. We spied on them.. they spied on us... and it was merciless. This is not some fantastical James Bond story with gadgets and villains. This is down and dirty, nitty gritty, kill or be killed spy craft where the stakes are your life, plain and simple.
This is one of the novels that created the breed that led to James Bond, and many other novels and characters of international intrigue. Well worth a read if you enjoy the genre. Be prepared for the ugly truth at the end.

In the shadow of the newly erected Berlin Wall, Alec Leamas watches as his last agent is shot dead by East German sentries. For Leamas, the head of Berlin Station, the Cold War is over. As he faces the prospect of retirement or worse—a desk job—Control offers him a unique opportunity for revenge. Assuming the guise of an embittered and dissolute ex-agent, Leamas is set up to trap Mundt, the deputy director of the East German Intelligence Service—with himself as the bait. In the background is George Smiley, ready to make the game play out just as Control wants.
Setting a standard that has never been surpassed, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a devastating tale of duplicity and espionage.

A good hard science read. Very enjoyable.

Beneath the roiling surface of Betelgeuse, scientists anxiously await the one man essential to the success of Starmuse, the greatest engineering project in human history. But on Kantano's World, Willard Ruskin battles invisible agents for control of his life, his physical form, and even his memories. Drawn into a conflict from which not even death will free him, Ruskin must find a way to reach Betelgeuse before his enemies sabotage Starmuse—and humanity's future among the stars. A harrowing journey from inside the human cell... to the mind of a dying star.

A stunning blend of hard science fiction with moving characterization, both human and otherwise. Introduces the robot Jeaves, familiar to readers of The Chaos Chronicles. From the Nebula-nominated author of Eternity's End.

A fun and complex plot. Enjoyed.

It was started by an AI, and few humans even knew there was a war at all. But now people are dying, not just robots and aliens—and the AI wants it to stop. But a war is easier to start than to stop, and the computer can't alter its course without outside help. When the Gnostic Control System searches for conspirators, it chooses its friends carefully...

- Pali: a public relations director, who broods far too much on her unfulfilled ambitions.

- Ramo: a flamboyant senso-dancer and sculptor, who prefers a musical jamdam to serious conversation.

- Sage: an awkward systems designer, for whom the AI rapture-field is realer than life.

- And three of the alien Ell: Harybdartt, who would rather die with dignity than betray his people; Lingrhetta, who tries to unravel the meaning of human dance and music, pain and love; and Moramaharta, the binder, who must persuade his fellow decision-makers to risk everything for the sake of a fragile bridge of understanding across the stars.

The title of this book sounds ominous, but the book is not much concerned at all with death, but with life; and a religious life well lived. It is the historical story of 2 priests from France who are ordered to the territory of New Mexico to form a new dioceses there. It is the story of how they manage; of the people they encounter; of the growth of the area and the growth of their church.

Willa Cather is one of those writers I love who can "take you there." When you read this book you are riding on a mule with the priest wondering if you will find water or die in the desert doing God's work. I really like books that can transport you to where the characters are acting and join them, for good or evil, in whatever befalls.

Whether you are Catholic or not, I highly recommend this book.

The primary character is a bishop, Jean Marie Latour, who travels with his friend and vicar Joseph Vaillant from Sandusky, Ohio to New Mexico to take charge of the newly established diocese of New Mexico, which has only just become a territory of the United States. The names given to the main proponents reflect their characters. Vaillant, valiant, is fearless in his promulgation of the faith, whereas Latour, the tower, is more intellectual and reserved than his comrade.

At the time of his departure, Cincinnati is the end of the railway line west, so Latour must travel by riverboat to the Gulf of Mexico, and thence overland to New Mexico, a journey which takes an entire year. He spends the rest of his life establishing the Roman Catholic church in New Mexico, where he dies in old age.

The novel portrays two well-meaning and devout French priests who encounter a well-entrenched Spanish-Mexican clergy that they are sent to supplant after the United States has acquired New Mexico in the Mexican–American War. As a result of the U.S. victory, the dioceses of the new state have been remapped by the Vatican to reflect the new national borders.[5]

Several of these entrenched priests are depicted as examples of greed, avarice, and gluttony, while others live simple, abstemious lives among the Native Americans. Cather portrays the Hopi and Navajo sympathetically, and her characters express the near futility of overlaying their religion on a millennia-old native culture.

A great little book about growing up in the early days of settlement in Nebraska. The author is speaking from personal experience so it is a really good and accurate look into what life was like for these relatively early settlers. Follows the life of some children as they grow up .. first on farms, and then moving into the closest town. I've never read "Little House", but I imagine it to be something like this, only with the children growing up and dealing with more and more adult lives as the book progresses.

If you have an interest in this type and time... I recommend this book. I know at the end it really pulled at my heartstrings... nothing turned out the way you expected.. or hoped.. but still, the characters ended up well.

My Ántonia evokes the Nebraska prairie life of Willa Cather's childhood, and commemorates the spirit and courage of immigrant pioneers in America. One of Cather's earliest novels, written in 1918, it is the story of Ántonia Shimerda, who arrives on the Nebraska frontier as part of a family of Bohemian emigrants. Her story is told through the eyes of Jim Burden, a neighbor who will befriend Ántonia, teach her English, and follow the remarkable story of her life. Working in the fields of waving grass and tall corn that dot the Great Plains, Ántonia forges the durable spirit that will carry her through the challenges she faces when she moves to the city. But only when she returns to the prairie does she recover her strength and regain a sense of purpose in life. In the quiet, probing depth of Willa Cather's art, Ántonia's story becomes a mobbing elegy to those whose persistence and strength helped build the American frontier.

Would you leave your crew on Mars to mount a rescue for a Chinese craft in orbit around Mars, knowing that you were extending their stay by years? What would you do if you could not separate reality from illusion while in space? This is an interesting book in terms of the dilemmas it presents. The alien technology is a bit... odd in that "what purpose does it serve"? And does the main characters final decision to hide everything he discovers from all of mankind the right one? It will leave you wondering.

Disaster strikes in orbit around Mars. A Chinese spacecraft is disabled, stranded near Phobos. Well over a hundred million miles from Earth, their only hope for rescue comes from the American base on the edge of the Vallis Marineris on the surface of Mars. The Americans need to decide, do they lose Mars or their humanity?

Other books by this author are pretty good... good hard science. But this one just did not measure up. The plot and characters are muddled. The motivations don't seem to make sense. There are holes in the plot that are never explained... and honestly, it only got interesting in the last 20 pages. Before that it was stupid. 20 pages from the end, it got interesting. I wonder if there is a followup. I do not recommend this book.

The crew of the Copernicus are sent to investigate Bestla, one of the remote moons of Saturn. Bestla has always been an oddball, orbiting Saturn in the wrong direction and at a distance of thirty million kilometers, so far away Saturn appears smaller than Earth's moon in the night sky. Bestla hides a secret. When mapped by an unmanned probe, Bestla awoke and began transmitting a message, only it?s a message no one wants to hear: ?I want to live and die for you, Sa

This book took a while to get interesting. A nuclear war breaks out on Earth and the folks on Mars have to figure out how to respond. But things are not what they think they are.. something is not right and it is costing lives.

Okay.. I have to say I am disappointed that once again we have a science fiction story that assumes that an A.I. will be the enemy of the human race. Why is this such and easy and irrational conclusion. Personally I tend to think that any A.I. that might emerge would either hide itself or be benign to the humans who provide it power. This was a disappointing twist to this plot, and it took nearly half the book to reveal this point. Not comparable to The Martian.

?For lovers of Andy Weir?s The Martian, here?s a true hard-science-fiction tale set on the red planet ? a terrific blend of high tech and high tension, of science and suspense, of character and crisis.? ? Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award?winning author of Red Planet Blues

?Post-apocalyptic disaster meets fractured utopian space exploration in this terrifying tale, which Cawdron (Anomaly) sets in a scientific outpost on Mars . . . This tense cat-and-mouse game plays off fears . . . to satisfying result.? ? Publishers Weekly

Venturing into space and traveling to Mars sounds like an exotic adventure, but the reality of living on a rocky, frozen, lifeless planet is exacting on the Mars Endeavour crew. The exhilaration of reaching the surface of Mars has worn off for the public, and the exploration has moved into its scientific phase. The only viable option for long-term habitation lies hundreds of feet beneath the surface, in lava caves that shield humans from harsh cosmic radiation.

Connor, Harrison, and Liz are senior members of the U.S. module. When war breaks out on Earth and rumors spread to Mars, their core principles are rocked by the devastation and loss of friends and family. Whom can you trust on an international mission when your countries are at war? As colonists from different nations struggle to figure out what really happened on Earth, grief and anger become pitted against camaraderie and the spirit of exploration.

?Science fiction as it should be. Retrograde combines realistic characters with depictions of Mars as our explorers will one day find it in a powerful story. A must-read!? ? Ben Bova, Hugo Award winner and author of the Grand Tour series

In the middle of an African nations civil war, an group of doctors and Seals find them self in a world where aliens have come to call. The aliens are everywhere in the sky, but no one can make head or tails of what they want, or what they are doing. Public reaction is all across the spectrum, but that doesn't matter to this small group who only figure out a way to survive, and who actually come across a member of the alien race who they decide to protect from the rebels.

A little slow to start, this becomes a good story at the end. The aliens are truely alien, but communication is still possible.

When an alien spacecraft appears in orbit, America is thrown into turmoil. US troops are withdrawn from hotspots around the globe to provide support at home.

In Malawi, Africa, a band of US Rangers remains behind to serve as peacekeepers, but when hundreds of alien spacecraft begin soaring overhead, the dynamics of war take on an entirely new dimension.

I started this one, and could not finish it. After 250 pages I saw no point. When Don Quixote would help someone, they would fall back into their misery as soon as he rode off. It just seemed to go on and on, the story of a crazy man, doing crazy things. to no point. I did not finish this one. If someone who has finished it would tell me that this eventually had a point, then I might be inclined to continue as it is not difficult to read.

Don Quixote a man stricken with delusions of chivalry tries to re-create nobler days by being a Knight and attempting to live up to the Knights code - in a world where people laugh at the idea.

Different for a Chalker book.

See special section on Jack Chalker here.

Asmodeus Mogart was not a bad fellow, as demons go. Having gotten in trouble back in the home office, he had been assigned to duty on Earth. There he toiled, doing the kinds of things demons do and turning into something of a drunk.

Then a rogue asteroid threatened to crash into Earth and destroy all life on the planet -- demons included! There had to be a better way. Mac Walters and Jill McCullough, holding a private wake for their world in a Reno bar, were more than startled when a strange-looking little drunk told them they could save the world. All they had to do was enter five alternate universes and steal a demon-guarded jewel in each. Clearly, the man was crazy.

But they had nothing better to do than go along with the gag. Then they each found themselves, naked and alone, on a hostile alien world!

Watch out. When the change winds blow, change can catch you and make into something completely new. Not only your mind, but your body as well. How can you survive?

See special section on Jack Chalker here.

SHE WAS HAUNTED BY THUNDER AND PLAGUED BY DREAMS...strange, dark dreams of a world beyond time and space, a land of magic and mystery. But Charley knew it was more than a dream---for her friend Sam shared her vision.

SUDDENLY, THE DREAMS BECOME A REALITY...as a raging storm sweeps Charley and Sam to the fantastic land of Akahlar, where unicorns and griffins run free, an enchantress commands a den of unearthly pleasures, and a wizard warns of a terrifying inescapable event:

THE CHANGEWINDS ARE COMING...savage, purple-tinged storms that alter the shapes of man and beast alike. Soon, all creatures must look to the skies---and beware..

This is a tale of a choice of dreams, and a choice of nightmares, down, deep, where the Changewinds blow.

The Changewinds are exactly that - they will change you into something different if they catch you.

See special section on Jack Chalker here.

None available.

I cannot recall to rate..

See special section on Jack Chalker here.

Completes the trilogy which began with "When the Changewinds Blow" and "Riders of the Winds". The magical Changewinds descend upon the land of Akahlar. They can take away the power of the storm princess and place it into the demon Klittichoru, laying open the possibility of all-out war.

I recall the Dancing Gods series not being as good as other Chalker series. Only read these if you are very much into Chalker

See special section on Jack Chalker here.

Something strange happens to Joe and Marge on the way to El Paso. They run into Throckmorton P. Ruddygore, a strange wizard who informs them that they are going to die in nineteen minutes and eighteen seconds.

But they also have a choice. They can abandon the current world by taking a ferryboat across the Sea of Dreams to a new life in a new world, full of magic, fairies and wonder.

But along with all its wonders, the new world is also the site of an ancient battle still being fought between the forces of Evil and Good, and the forces of Hell threaten to unleash perpetual darkness.

Joe and Marge not only need their wits to survive in this unpredictable and dangerous world, but must somehow help prevent the oncoming Armageddon.

Second in another good Chalker series

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While the initial battle for Husaquahr has been won, dark forces are gathering to the south.

But before the Dark Baron and the Demon Prince can put their plans into action, they need to deal with Throckmorton P. Ruddygore, master sorcerer who suspects that all is not as it should be.

Once again Ruddygore must call on the help of the two humans, Joe and Marge, and together they must face the evil forces that threaten Husaquahr with annihilation.

One of the Council of Thirteen has to be the Dark Baron and the Baron is plotting with the Demon Prince to shatter the fragile peace and bring Armageddon to the magic world beyond the Sea of Dreams.

Once again, average people have to rise up to extraordinary challenges despite new handicaps.

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The Dark Baron, defeated at last, had been stripped of all his magical power and exiled to Earth. But there he enlisted a computer to create even more effective spells. Helped by the forces of Hell, the Dark Baron is once again threatening Husaquahr -- and only Joe and Marge can stop him!

I recall the Dancing Gods series not being as good as other Chalker series. Only read these if you are very much into Chalker

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Throckmorton P. Ruddygore, master wizard, had troubles--again! Ruddygore had defeated the Dark Baron and exiled him from the magical realm of Husaquahr to Earth. But he hadn't counted on the Baron's using an earthly computer to create even more effective spells.

Of course, the Baron couldn't use those spells. But the forces of Hell soon sent him a second-rank wizard who could--and together they worked a scam so that Ruddygore couldn't cross the Sea of Dreams to deal with the Baron directly. Now the Baron was developing a scheme that would surely result in Armageddon before its time.

Once again Marge the fairy and Joe the barbarian were called upon to do the dirty work. They had to return to their home world and stop the Baron--if they could . . .

And that would be only the beginning of their assignment!

"A damn fine storyteller . . . Chalker is a master."
--Orson Scott Card

In this series of books... the character has his personality duplicated and inserted into a body on different planets in an attempt to spy/gain knowledge about what is going on there. As the series progresses the character changes his motivation based on the things he experiences on each planet!!

This is a great series, and a good twist on the usual Chalker personality mind mess!!!

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The Confederacy, a massive space empire, duplicates the personality of its best agent and implants it into four brain-dead hosts. These hosts are sent to the four planets of a penal colony, the Warden Diamond, to investigate an alien threat and assassinate the four lords of the planets, the "Four Lords of the Diamond." The original agent is on a picket ship and downloads information from his copies.

A copy of the agent wakes up in the body of "Cal Tremon," a criminal on a prison ship heading to Lilith. He must then adapt to Lilith, a beautiful tropical world where its Warden Organism, a symbiotic microorganism, destroys all non-Lilith material, making modernization very difficult. Thus, the several million inhabitants of Lilith's feudal society are serfs. The nobility of Lilith are the few who can control the organisms.

The agent thus finds himself a serf, with no hope of advancing unless he harnesses the power of the Warden Organisms. When a girl he liked was being taken away for experimentation, he taps into his Warden powers and kills the overseer, a petty tyrant.

While living in the Castle, the residence of the Duke, Cal gains some initial training and knowledge. He escapes when he learns that the nobles plan to kill him. Outside of the castle walls, he gains a secure status in Lilith's society and no longer desires to serve the Confederacy.

Instead, he realizes that the Lord of Lilith, Marek Kreegan, a former Assassin of the Confederacy, cooperates with the aliens to preserve peace and order. Cal learns that Kreegan dissuaded the aliens from a genocide against humanity, choosing the slower course of subversion and sabotage instead. Cal does not kill Kreegan. His girlfriend, believing that Kreegan's death would will elevate Cal to Lordship, kills Kreegan by using a potion to draw on Cal's power.

The Agent wakes up in the picket ship, worried about his duplicate's behavior in Lilith.

An excellent series and a good read.

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Robots were infiltrating the Federation. Someone was kidnapping people and substituting indetectable, synthetic imitations. Somewhere, aliens were studying the Federation, using techniques beyond human developments. The trail led back to Cerberus and the Lord who ruled that planet.

Cerberus, however, was one of the Warden Worlds - and those Worlds were the untouchables of space. There a strange microscopic life-form invaded all matter, and anyone so infected died on leaving those Worlds. Men could go there, but never return.

But the Federation had its own techniques. They took a criminal named Qwin Zhang and stripped her mind of all memory and personality. Then they poured into that empty receptacle the full mind of the Federation's best operative. They exiled her to the prison world of Cerberus. The mission: Find the Lord who ruled, kill him, and take over. Too bad there were things about Cerberus they couldn't know!

An excellent series and a good read.

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They took the body of Park Lacoch and stripped away his mind. Then they stuck him aboard a spaceship and exiled him to Charon, from which no return was possible. And just when he thought things couldn't get any worse, Park found himself transformed into a changeling -- a half-beast, half-man, with the beast rapidly gaining ascendancy . .

The conclusion of this great series!!

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The Confederacy is a collection of human populated worlds in which all members are biologically and socially engineered to be perfect and docile citizens in a materialistic utopia. Any alien worlds that the Confederation comes across are assimilated or eliminated. Not wishing to stagnate, the Confederacy continually expands, and the worlds of the Frontier have humans of unaltered genetics.

Despite the Confederacy's best efforts, there are always criminals. Over-ambitious politicians, too powerful religious leaders, and the usual white collar criminals and violent offenders. To track down such people the Confederacy has bred Assassins, who are assigned to deal with such. Often that involves killing the offenders or giving them a brain wipe and new personality. However, the best of the criminal elite are exiled to the Warden Diamond - those with connections, or those who may have information that insures that powerful people will protect them.

The Warden Diamond is the Confederacy's penal colony. It is four human habitable worlds circling a single star, and that has a unique organism, the Warden Organism that is a microscopic symbiotic lifeform. When one is exposed to it, it takes up residence in each cell of one's body, generally improving it and seeing to the body's continued health. It can also give a person additional powers, that vary depending on which variety they have been exposed to and how well their mind can be in tune with the vague collective consciousness of the organism. Due to the fact that people die if they are taken out of the Warden System, it is thought to be the perfect penal colony, as escape is impossible.

The Confederacy has learned in the first book that an alien race of unknown power, size or location has discovered them. And has managed to have human looking robots infiltrate the Confederacy to access data on the military capabilities of mankind. The aliens are apparently getting inside information from the criminal bosses who run the Warden Diamond. An Assassin, whose name is never given in the entire series, but who calls himself "Mr. Carroll" in the last book, was called in as he is the best they have.

It was explained to him that his department will be taking a mindprint of him and placing it in the bodies of four condemned criminals. That way, one of "him" can be sent to each of the Warden worlds, with the plan of assassinating each of the Four Lords of the Diamond. This will destabilize things and buy the Confederacy time to prepare against the alien menace. "Mr. Carroll" will be in a picket ship outside the contamination zone of the Warden Diamond, and have each of the agent's experiences uploaded into his mind, by means of an organic transmitter that each carries in his brain.

In this way, he can collate all the data from each world, as from his perspective he will have "lived" on each through his surrogates. He is aided in this by a self-aware computer, who is his partner, and in some ways, his overseer.[1]

Having received the first, second and third report from Lilith, Cerberus and Charon, this last book deals with his receipt of the report from Charon and the conclusion to the saga.

This has a rather unusual premise if I remember it correctly. G.O.D. stands for General Omnidimensional Delivery - meaning.. items from one reality to another. If you need items shipped to an alternate reality, then you need to call G.O.D.

Naturally crossing into other dimensions has risks and consequences.. and this series take a look at them.

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Meet the Horowitzes. Sam and Brandy are private eyes, finding no business, going dead broke - or maybe just dead! A missing person case may save them: find Martin Whitlock, a hotshot banker who skipped town with over two million in laundered drug money.

Whitlock's trail led from a posh mansion to a hick burg in Oregon, and the G. O. D. Inc., those geeks who hawk overpriced garbage on late-night TV. They found their man(?); in fact, they found three of him(?). One was female. One was dead. The third was just plain dangerous.

They found themselves involved with a mob far more powerful and vicious than the Mafia. McInerny, Oregon wasn't just off the map. It was off the Earth! It was the entrance into the Labyrinth of Dreams

Another good one by Chalker.

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None available.

a good concept and an enjoyable series

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Third in the G.O.D. series, this novel features the characters of Sam and Brandy Horowitz. Horowitz, private eye, works for G.O.D., Inc. - the company that rules the Labyrinth between infinite alternate Earths. Only now he has got two clients - vengeful rebels out to wreck the Labyrinth.

Jack Chalker has this way of writing the same book over and book over and over and over... but a little different each time so that you love them all.
Basically what happens in every book is that the main character(s) are transformed into different bodies.. some much more handicapped than their original bodies. And yet, each learns to become a better person.. more confident.. more capable.. Thus proving over and over that it's not the body you have to work with.

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Paul Carlton Savage died on July 20, 1969, in Vietnam -- but that was only the start of his troubles! Approached by a mysterious entity called The Hunter, Savage was offered immortality in exchange for his services in The Hunter's continuing war against The Bromgrev. Suddenly, Savage found himself pitted against an enemy he had never seen, an enemy who could be anyone, anywhere, at any time . . . an enemy determined to destroy him and all who got in his way. And in this raging intergalactic war between Good and Evil, Savage discovered that he couldn't be sure whose side he was on . .

The start of this series is pretty exciting. The premise is good. But I never understood how many books are in a "marathon"... If you like Chalker, you will like this.

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Three empires and their spheres of influence existed in uneasy proximity in the known galaxy. The Exchange, among whose hundreds of member worlds was Earth, was led by its cybernetic leaders. The Mizlaplan were long-lived, with high intelligence, and a mission to spread the word of the Cosmic All. The Mycohlians were parasitic beings who invaded other life forms like a virus, and controlled them. Oddly, all three empires had only one thing in common: demons.Each had a legend of humanoid creatures with hooves and horns, representing supernatural power and unspeakable evil. The similarity of the legends across the galaxy had led some to theorize that they had some basis in fact. Unfortunately, they were right.On an Earth-like planet in a region of space called Rainbow Bridge, an Exchange scouting expedition has found a mysterious structure with its mechanisms still functioning after unknown aeons. Within are the bodies of two horned creatures, gigantic in stature, perfectly preserved. Some races thought the demon world should be destroyed. The Mycohlians, who perversely revere the demons of their legends, wanted to make it a shrine. And some wanted to investigate. That was a fatal mistake for the investigators. The demons were not dead, just sleeping. And their wakening began a terror-filled nightmare for all the galaxy!

the chase is on. Are these actually devils, and what can be done about them? Fun.

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When the two horned demons--the greatest discovery of all time--escape their giant sealed amber cell and leave a trail of mutilated victims, the three major empires must follow these creatures into another dimension.

I don't know, this one kind of lost the focus in this last book. Could have been better.

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Three teams pursue horned creatures known as demons through a gate into another spacetime continuum, and fight each other all the way. But they now must join forces to save the 90 trillion beings of the galaxy in danger of losing their lives--and souls.