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Let three complete books in one take you on a dazzling journey into science fiction’s most famous future history: Known Space!
WORLD OF PTAVVS
Kzanol was a thrint from a distant galaxy. He had been trapped on Earth in a time-stasis field for two billion years. Now he was on the loose, and telepath Larry Greenberg knew everything he was thinking. Thrints lived to plunder and enslave lesser planets . . . and the planet Kzanol had in mind was Earth!
A GIFT FROM EARTH
Shrouded in lethal mists, the world named Mount Lookitthat was never meant for humans. Life existed only on one plateau, unreachable except from space. But still the planet had been colonized, and the settlers struggled to survive under a ruthless dictatorship on a rebellion-proof world . . . until fate dealt them a wild card named Matthew Keller, whose secret talent might just be their only hope!
TALES OF KNOWN SPACE
A classic collection of stories that traces humankind’s expansion and colonization throughout the galaxy from the twentieth century to the thirty-first . . .
AND MORE: Larry Niven’s latest thoughts on the evolution—both creative and “historical”—of known space, as well as an updated Timeline of Known Space and a complete Niven bibliography!
Kapcsolódó könyvek
Larry Niven - Flatlander
_Flatlander is a 1995 collection of stories by Larry Niven, all set in Known Space. It is the definitive collection of all stories by Niven about ARM agent Gil Hamilton. Many of the stories revolve around the theme of involuntary organ transplantation._
Gil "The Arm" Hamilton was one of the top operatives of ARM, the elite UN plice force. His intuition was unfailingly accurate, his detective skills second to none, and his psychic powers -- esper sense and telekinesis -- were awesome. Now you can read all the classic stories of the legendary ARM operative, collected in one volume for the first time -- plus, an all-new, never-before-published Gil Hamilton adventure!
Mickey Zucker Reichert - Isaac Asimov's I, Robot - To Protect
_First in an all-new trilogy inspired by Isaac Asimov's legendary science fiction collection I, Robot._
2035: Susan Calvin is beginning her residency at a Manhattan teaching hospital, where a select group of patients is receiving the latest in diagnostic advancements: tiny nanobots, injected into the spinal fluid, that can unlock and map the human mind.
Soon, Susan begins to notice an ominous chain of events surrounding the patients. When she tries to alert her superiors, she is ignored by those who want to keep the project far from any scrutiny for the sake of their own agenda. But what no one knows is that the very technology to which they have given life is now under the control of those who seek to spread only death...
James Tiptree, Jr. - Up the Walls of the World
Up the Walls of the World is a 1978 sf novel by the American Alice Sheldon who wrote under the pen name of James Tiptree, Jr. It was the 1st novel she published having until then worked & built a reputation only in the field of short stories.
The book explores the possibility that telepathy & other psychic phenomena are real. It sympathetically describes an Earth invasion attempt by beings with telepathic abilities from the planet Tyree. It considers the subject of sentience in different lifeforms inhabiting widely different environments, in computers & in a vast sentient inhabitant of deep space formed of a network of widely spaced nodes. It's her skill to be able to write convicingly of the experience of such beings.
The story takes place in 3 settings which unfold together.
-On Earth, at a US Navy telepathy lab.
-On the planet Tyree, a life-rich gas giant inhabited by intelligent beings resembling manta rays or cuttlefish which ride the air currents of its vast atmosphere.
-In deep space, The Destroyer, an intelligent entity larger than a solar system but only slightly denser than the vacuum of space & composed of countless linked nodes.
Alexander C. Irvine - Isaac Asimov's Have Robot, Will Travel
_From Alexander C. Irvine, the Locus Award-winning author of A Scattering of Jades, comes a thrilling new robot mystery set in the world of the late SF Grand Master and beloved author, Isaac Asimov._
Exiled to the colony Nova Levis, roboticist Derec Avery and Auroran ambassador Ariel Burgess have tried to make their best of their situation, after exposing an anti-robot conspiracy on Earth five years before that cost them their jobs and their freedom. But all that is about to change... A human has been murdered on Kopernik, a space station orbiting the Earth, and all the clues point toward a robot as the killer. But how can that be, when robots are programmed to never bring harm to humans? It's a familiar situation for Derec and Ariel-the sort of mystery that led to their current status as political pariahs. Still, not even an exiled robot expert can turn down an opportunity to add his expertise to the investigation, and before too long, Derec is on his way to Kopernik. Ariel, meanwhile, has a mystery of her own to unravel. With the help of old friends-and potentially new enemies-Derec searches for the identity of a killer, unaware that Ariel is walking directly into the center of the web of intrigue....
Mark W. Tiedemann - Isaac Asimov's Aurora
The Third Law of Robotics states that a robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws... In Mirage and Chimera, Mark W. Tiedemann explored the fear and hatred toward robots -- and their offworld owners -- held by the people of Earth, and the animosity toward Terrans expressed by all Spacers. Now, all the plot threads of Tiedemann's epic story come together in this exciting conclusion to the Isaac Asimov's Robot Mysteries cycle.
After the diplomatic failures of the Spacer mission on Earth -- which began with the assassinations of key diplomats and politicians, and culminated with the uncovering of a vast plot to create cyborgs from terminally-handicapped human infants -- Ambassador Ariel Burgess and roboticist Derec Avery are recalled to their home planet, Aurora. Unfortunately, their situation only worsens when they arrive, as they become suspects in yet another murder -- one that, based on the evidence, could only have been committed by a non-human.
On a world with a 20-to-1 robot-to-human population, is it possible a robot could have violated the Three Laws governing its behavior -- and if so, why? Or is something far more sinister at work...?
Mark W. Tiedemann - Isaac Asimov's Chimera
Coren Lanra is the head of security for DyNan Manual Industries. A former Special Service agent, he's never cared for bureaucracy, piracy, or deception. Lanra's troubles begin when Nyom Looms, daughter of DyNan president Rega Looms, is murdered during an ill-fated mission to smuggle illegal immigrants from Earth to the colony Nova Levis. The question is, why? The only clue might be contained within the positronic brain of a robot that had accompanied the victim, but it has been deactivated, and Lanra is denied access to its memories. With the help of roboticist Derec Avery and Auroran ambassador Ariel Burgess, Lanra searches for the identity of a killer, before more lives are lost.
T. C. Boyle - A Friend of the Earth
It's 2025, and 75-year-old environmentalist Ty Tierwater is eking out a bleak living managing a pop star's private zoo. It is the last one in southern California and vital for the cloning of its captive species. Once, Ty was so serious about environmental causes that as an eco-terrorist committed to Earth Forever! he endangered the lives of both his daughter, Sierra, and his wife, Andrea. Now, when he's just trying to survive in a world cursed by storm and drought, Andrea returns to his life.
Italo Calvino - Cosmicomics
An enchanting series of stories about the evolution of the universe
During the course of these stories Calvino toys with continuous creation, the transformation of matter, and the expanding and contracting reaches of space and time. His characters, made out of mathematical formulae and simple cellular structures, disport themselves among galaxies, experience the solidification of planets, move from aquatic to terrestrial existence, play games with hydrogen atoms, and have a love life. Calvino succeeds in relating complex scientific concepts to the ordinary reactions of common humanity.
Italo Calvino's superb storytelling gifts earned him international renown and a reputation as "one of the world's best fabulists" (John Gardner, New York Times Book Review). Born in Cuba in 1923, Calvino was raised in Italy, where he lived most of his life. He died in Siena at the age of sixty-one.
James S. A. Corey - Leviathan Wakes
Humanity has colonized the planets - interstellar travel is still beyond our reach, but the solar system has become a dense network of colonies. But there are tensions - the mineral-rich outer planets resent their dependence on Earth and Mars and the political and military clout they wield over the Belt and beyond.Now, when Captain Jim Holden's ice miner stumbles across a derelict, abandoned ship, he uncovers a secret that threatens to throw the entire system into war. Attacked by a stealth ship belonging to the Mars fleet, Holden must find a way to uncover the motives behind the attack, stop a war and find the truth behind a vast conspiracy that threatens the entire human race.
Ken MacLeod - Fractions
In a balkanized future of dizzying possibilities, mercenaries contend with guns as smart as they are, nuclear deterrence is a commodity traded on the open market, teenagers deal in "theologically correct" software for fundamentalists, and anarchists have colonized a planet circling another star. Against this background, men and women struggle for a better future against the betrayals that went before. Death is sometimes the end, and sometimes something altogether different…
This volume comprises _The Star Fraction_ and _The Stone Canal_.
Frederik Pohl - Jem
The discovery of another habitable world might spell salvation to the three bitterly competing power blocs of the resource-starved 21st century; but when their representatives arrive on Jem, with its multiple intelligent species, they discover instead the perfect situation into which to export their rivalries. Subtitled, with savage irony, 'The Making of a Utopia', Jem is one of Frederik Pohl's most powerful novels.
Connie Willis - To Say Nothing of the Dog
Ned Henry shuttles between the 1940s and the twenty-first century while researching Coventry Cathedral for a patron interested in rebuilding it until the time continuum is disrupted.
Isaac Asimov - Oceans of Venus
The third adventure in the Odyssey of Davis Starr, Space Ranger. On Venus an underwater colony of Earthmen is threatened with disaster locked in a battle for survival beneath the waves. David Starr has to face the evil menace of the depths...
Alfred Bester - Starburst
Time, Space and the Future. Here is your passport into the fascinating world of science fiction...eleven dazzling, jet-propelled, rocket-paced tales of tomorrow by one of today's leading writers.
Brian W. Aldiss - Helliconia Spring
A planet orbiting binary suns, Helliconia has a Great Year spanning three millennia of Earth time: cultures are born in spring, flourish in summer, then die with the onset of the generations-long winter. Helliconia is emerging from its centuries-long winter. The tribes of the equatorial continent emerge from their hiding places and are again able to dispute possession of the planet with the ferocious phagors. In Oldorando, love, trade and coinage are being redisovered, This is the first volume of the Helliconia Trilogy - a monumental saga that goes beyond anything yet created by this master among today's imaginative writers.
Alastair Reynolds - On the Steel Breeze
We have found a distant planet. It carries sign of an alien civilisation.
And on a fleet of holoships, vast asteroids hollowed out and turned into miniature worlds, millions of us are heading there. With engines designed to exploit a physics we barely understand we are on a one way journey, travelling at one sixth the speed of light, to a new home. And an encounter with the unknown.
And we take with us hopes and lies, secrets and betrayals. And another, quite alien intelligence.
The Akinya family have not finished with space. Their destiny still lies with the stars, however they get there, whichever of them make it.
And the Mechanism has not finished with the Akinyas…
Mickey Zucker Reichert - Isaac Asimov's I, Robot - To Obey
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
_2036: Robotic technology has evolved into the realm of self-aware, sentient mechanical entities. But even as humanity contends with the consequences of its most brilliant creation, there are those who have their own designs for the robots: enslavement…or annihilation._
Susan Calvin is about to enter her second year as a psych resident at the Manhattan Hasbro teaching hospital when a violent crime strikes her very close to home.
When she was young, Susan lost her mother in a terrible car wreck that also badly injured her father. She now believes the accident was an attempted murder by government powers who wanted her parents dead. Susan has always known that there was a faction of the U.S. government that wanted to hijack her father’s work for military use. Now, it seems that faction is back.
As she struggles to overcome her pain and confusion as well as deal with her studies, Susan finds herself hunted by violent anti-tech vigilantes who would revert mankind to the dark ages—and at the same time watched very closely by extremists who want high-tech genocide. Somehow she must find a way to stop them both.
Mark W. Tiedemann - Isaac Asimov's Mirage
From a new and exciting talent, Mark W. Tiedemann, comes a fantastic new robot mystery set in the world of the late SF Grand Master and beloved author, Isaac Asimov. The First Law of Robotics states that a robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human to come to harm.
At a crucial conference uniting the Spacers, the Settlers, and representatives of Earth, Senator Clar Eliton of Earth and Senior Space Ambassador Galiel Humadros of Aurora are advocating the restoration of positronic robots on Earth, repudiating years of fear and resentment. It is a dangerous stance to take.
As the Spacer delegates arrive on Earth, conspirators assassinate Sentor Eliton. Ambassador Humadros is cut down, too. Both are failed by their robot protectors.
Special Agent Mia Daventri -- part of the security force assigned to protect Eliton -- is the only member of her team to survive the attack, and is rushed to the hospital.
Derec Avery -- a survivor of the Robot City epic -- is called in to investigate what may have caused the robot bodyguards to fail at the most critical hour. But his inquiries are stone-walled, and an attempt is made on Mia's life. Derec and Mia join forces with Calvin Instititute attache Ariel Burgess to penetrate a vast conspiracy that sprawls across Terran, Spacer, and Settler worlds and threatens to bring all three to the brink of war.
John Scalzi - The Observers
In an effort to improve relations with the Earth, the Colonial Union has invited a contingent of diplomats from that planet to observe Ambassador Abumwe negotiate a trade deal with an alien species. Then something very bad happens to one of the Earthings, and with that, the relationship between humanitys two factions is on the cusp of disruption once more. Its a race to find out what really happened, and who is to blame.
John Scalzi - The Sound of Rebellion
The Colonial Defense Forces usually protect humanity from alien attack, but now the stability of the Colonial Union has been threatened, and Lieutenant Heather Lee and her squad are called to squash a rebellion on a colony world. It seems simple enoughbut theres a second act to the rebellion that finds Lee captive, alone, and armed with only her brains to survive.
