Tales ​of Known Space

Ray Bradbury - The ​October Country
The ​October Country is a 1955 collection of twenty macabre short stories by Ray Bradbury. It reprints fifteen of the twenty-seven stories of his 1947 collection Dark Carnival, and adds four more of his stories previously published elsewhere.

Ismeretlen szerző - Monsters
Here ​are future nighmares - the enemies that await us both within and outside our world, from a small town in Kansas to the seas of Venus. Fantastic and thrilling short novels and stories by science fiction's bestselling authors.

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.

Larry Niven - Jerry Pournelle - The ​Gripping Hand
Robert ​Heinlein called it "possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read." The San Francisco Chronicle declared that "as science fiction, The Mote in God's Eye is one of the most important novels ever published." Now Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, award winning authors of such bestsellers as Footfall and The Legacy of Heorot, return us to the Mote, and to the universe of Kevin Renner and Horace Bury, of Rod Blaine and Sally Fowler. There, 25 years have passed since humanity quarantined the mysterious aliens known as Moties within the confines of their own solar system. They have spent a quarter century analyzing and agonizing over the deadly threat posed by the only aliens mankind has ever encountered-- a race divided into distinct biological forms, each serving a different function. Master, Mediator, Engineer. Warrior. Each supremely adapted to its task, yet doomed by millions of years of evolution to an inescapable fate. For the Moties must breed-- or die. And now the fragile wall separating them and the galaxy beyond is beginning to crumble.

Orson Scott Card - Maps ​in a Mirror
_Maps ​in a Mirror_ brings together nearly all of Orson Scott Card's short fiction written between 1977 and 1990. For those readers who have followed this remarkable talent since the beginning, here are all those amazing stories gathered together in one place, with some extra surprises as well. For the hundreds of thousands who are newly come to Card, here is chance to experience the wonder of a writer so versatile that he can handle everything from traditional narrative poetry to modern experimental fiction with equal ease and grace. The brilliant story-telling of the Alvin Maker books is no accident; the breathless excitement evoked by the Ender books is not a once-in-a-lifetime experience. In this enormous volume are forty-six stories, plus ten long, intensely personal essays, unique to this volume. In them the author reveals some of his reasons and motivations for writing, with a good deal of autobiography into the bargain.

Connie Willis - Time ​is the Fire
This ​new collection of stories from the multi-award-winning author of DOOMSDAY BOOK and TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG contains: A Letter from the Clearys At the Rialto Death on the Nile The Soul Selects Her own Society Fire Watch Inside Job Even the Queen The Winds of Marble Arch All Seated on the Ground Last of the Winnebagos Ten stories - which have all won the HUGO AWARD, the NEBULA AWARD or both - are compulsory reading for the serious science fiction fan.

Ray Bradbury - The ​Toynbee Convector
A ​superlative new collection of twenty-two stories by the author of "The Martian Chronicles" includes the continuating saga of H.G. Well's time traveller and his Toynbee Convector, a ghost on the Orient Express, and a bored man who creates his own genuine Egyptian mummy

Larry Niven - Edward M. Lerner - Fate ​of Worlds
This ​is the fifth and last novel in Larry Niven's "Ringworld" series. This series began in 1970, with the publication of Ringworld, now, in conjunction with Edward M. Lerner, Niven brings the series to its conclusion. For decades, the spacefaring species of Known Space have battled over the largest artifact—and grandest prize—in the galaxy: the all-but-limitless resources and technology of the Ringworld, but without warning the Ringworld has vanished, leaving behind three rival war fleets. Something must justify the blood and treasure that have been spent. If the fallen civilization of the Ringworld can no longer be despoiled of its secrets, the nearby advanced, but pacifistic species known as "Puppeteers" will be forced to surrender theirs. Yet, the danger to the Puppeteers goes far beyond mere invasion fleets, the survival of their planet is at stake, plus political intrigue, deadly rivalries, risk and danger at every turn.

Larry Niven - Three ​Books of Known Space
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!

Philip K. Dick - The ​Transmigration of Timothy Archer
Loosely ​based on the story of Bishop James Pike, Dick's last novel tells of an erudite man of the cloth whose faith is shaken by the suicides of his son and mistress, and then transformed by his bizarre quest for the identity of Christ.

John Scalzi - This ​Must Be the Place
Colonial ​Union diplomat Hart Schmidt is back home for Harvest Day celebrations to a family whose members wonder whether its youngest son isn't wasting his life clinging to the lowest rung of the CUs diplomatic ladder. When his father, a legendarily powerful politician, presents him with a compelling offer, Schmidt has to take stock of his life and career.

Michael Swanwick - The ​Dog Said Bow-Wow
Science ​fiction and fantasy's most adept short-story author reinvents some classic themes in an engaging collection that includes three of his Hugo award–winning stories. These smart expansions of traditional themes summon dinosaurs, dragons, peril in space, myths, faeries, and time travel, each undergoing artful alchemy to create serious genre literature that is playful, original, and clever. Comprising 16 imaginative and mischievous adventures, including the previously unpublished novelette, The Skysailor's Tale, this adroit gathering makes a collection to truly revel in.

J. G. Ballard - The ​Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard
“More ​than one thousand compelling pages from one of the most haunting, cogent, and individual imaginations in contemporary literature.”—William Boyd The American publication of The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard is a landmark event. Increasingly recognized as one of the greatest and most prophetic novelists, J. G. Ballard was a “writer of enormous inventive powers,” who, in the words of Malcolm Bradbury, possessed, “like Calvino, a remarkable gift for filling the empty deprived spaces of modern life with the invisible cities and the wonder worlds of imagination.” Best known for his novels, such as Empire of the Sun and Crash, Ballard rose to fame as the “ideal chronicler of disturbed modernity” (The Observer). Perhaps less known, though equally brilliant, were his devastatingly original short stories, which span nearly fifty years and reveal an unparalleled prescience so unique that a new word—Ballardian—had to be invented. Ballard, who wrote that “short stories are the loose change in the treasury of fiction, easily ignored beside the wealth of novels available,” regretted the fact that the public had increasingly lost its ability to appreciate them. With 98 pulse-quickening stories, this volume helps restore the very art form that Ballard feared was comatose. Ballard’s inimitable style was already present in his early stories, most of them published in science fiction magazines. These stories are surreal, richly atmospheric and splendidly elliptical, featuring an assortment of psychotropic houses, time-traveling assassins, and cities without clocks. Over the next fifty years, his fierce imaginative energy propelled him to explore new topics, including the dehumanization of technology, the brutality of the corporation, and nuclear Armageddon. Depicting the human soul as “being enervated and corrupted by the modern world” (New York Times), Ballard began to examine themes like overpopulation, as in “Billenium,” a claustrophobic imagining of a world of 20 billion people crammed into four-square-meter rooms, or the false realities of modern media, as in the classic “Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan,” a faux-psychological study of the sexual and violent reactions elicited by viewing Reagan’s face on television, in which Ballard predicted the unholy fusion of pop culture and sound-bite politics thirteen years before Reagan became president. Given Ballard’s heightened powers of perception, it is astonishing that the dehumanized world that he apprehended so acutely neither diminished his own febrile imagination nor his engagement with mankind, evident in every story, including two new ones for this American edition. So eerily prophetic is his vision, so commanding are his literary gifts, the import and insight of J. G. Ballard’s deeply humanistic and transcendent works can only grow in years to come.

John Scalzi - We ​Only Need the Heads
CDF ​Lieutenant Harry Wilson has been loaned out to a CDF platoon tasked with secretly removing an unauthorized colony of humans on an alien world. Colonial Ambassador Abumwe has been ordered to participate in final negotiations with an alien race the Union hopes to make allies. Wilson and Abumwes missions are fated to crossand in doing so, place both missions at risk of failure.

Catherynne M. Valente - Silently ​and Very Fast
Fantastist ​Catherynne M. Valente takes on the folklore of artificial intelligence in this brand new, original novella of technology, identity, and an uncertain mechanized future. Neva is dreaming. But she is not alone. A mysterious machine entity called Elefsis haunts her and the members of her family, back through the generations to her great-great-grandmother -- a gifted computer programmer who changed the world. Together Neva and Elefsis navigate their history and their future, an uneasy, unwilling symbiote. But what they discover in their dreamworld might change them forever... Winner of the 2012 Locus Award for Best Novella. 2011 Nebula Award Nominee for Best Novella. 2012 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novella. 2012 Sturgeon Award Finalist. 2012 World Fantasy Award Nominee for Best Novella.

Isaac Asimov - Buy ​Jupiter and Other Stories
From ​backyard miracles to cosmic conundrums, enter the incredible world of Isaac Asimov. Spanning twenty-three years of Asimov's amazing career, these stories display to the full the exhilarating power of one of science fiction's most astonishing writers. Each tale is accompanied by Asimov's own intriguing account of how and why it came to be written.

Philip K. Dick - Ubik ​(angol)
Glen ​Runciter is dead. Or is he? Someone died in the explosion orchestrated by his business rivals, but even as his funeral is scheduled, his mourning employees are receiving bewildering messages from their boss. And the world around them is warping and regressing in ways which suggest that their own time is running out. If it hasn't already.

Philip K. Dick - The ​World Jones Made
Floyd ​Jones is sullen, ungainly, and quite possibly mad, but in a very short time he will rise from telling fortunes at a mutant carnival to convulsing an entire planet. For although Jones has the power to see the future -- a power that makes his life a torment -- his real gift lies elsewhere: in his ability to make people dream again in a world where dreaming has been made illegal, even when the dream is indistinguishable from a nightmare. In Philip K. Dick's unsettling chronicle of the rise and fall of a postnuclear messiah, readers will find a novel that is as minutely realistic as it is prophetic. For along with its engineered mutants, hermaphroditic sex performers, and protoplasmic drifters from the stars, The World Jones Made gives us nothing less than a deadly accurate reading of our own hunger for belief.

C. J. Cherryh - Sunfall
Men ​had gone to the stars; they had trod the soil of distant planets and settled their colonies; yet the homeworld of Earth remained. It was legend; it was a place of nostalgia for mankind's lost youth; it was always there. For every son or daughter who had departed for the stars, there were those who preferred the original skies and winds of the world which had first endured humanity's trials and triumphs. The cities remained. Over the eons, facing the sunset of Terra, they still stood. Changed, yet retaining their individuality, their unique characteristics, their ancient prides. C. J. Cherryh, many honored author, has produced in SUNFALL a book of marvels in which six mighty cities laden with the grandeur of history confront their fates ... and those of the Earth-born who loved them. This is a truly unique work.

Roger MacBride Allen - Isaac ​Asimov's Utopia
Third ​in a powerful trilogy that examines Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics--a challenge welcomed and sanctioned by Isaac Asimov, and written with his cooperation.