Marooned ​in Realtime

Larry Niven - A ​World Out Of Time
After ​200 years in cryosleep, Jaybee Corbell awakens to find that his mind has been downloaded to another body and he's in servitude to a harsh future State. After his escape via a spaceship, he traverses such vast distances--with accompanying time dilations--that he returns to Earth 3 million years later to discover a world wholly alien to the one he'd left. A.E. van Vogt wrote, "This fantastic novel is a mix of Niven hard science and a time-travel concept to boggle the mind." "Larry Niven is one of the giants of modern science fiction." - Mike Resnick "His tales have grit, authenticity, colorful characters and pulse-pounding narrative drive. Niven is a true master!" - Frederik Pohl "Niven's intoxicating concepts, ideas, scientific extrapolations, and exotic hardware buffle up from every page. Rich in imagination and astonishing in breath ... will challenge the most sophisticated readers." - ALA Booklist "This fantastic novel is a mix of Niven hard science and a time-travel concept to boggle the mind...even after the last line the feeling remains of the story still rushing on into the magic distance of the universe." - A.E. van Vogt "Terrific fun!" - Kirkus Reviews

Joan Slonczewski - Brain ​Plague
_Brain ​Plague_ is the new hard SF novel by Joan Slonczewski, set in the same future universe as her award-winning _A Door into Ocean_ and _The Children Star_ (a New York Times Notable Book). An intelligent microbe race that can live symbiotically in other intelligent beings is colonizing the human race throughout the civilized universe. And each colony of microbes has its own personality, good or bad. In some people, carriers, they are brain enhancers, and in others a fatal brain plague, a living addiction. This is the story of one woman's psychological and moral struggle to adjust to having an ambitious colony of microbes living permanently in her own head. This novel is one of the most powerful and involving SF novels of the year.

Joan Slonczewski - Daughter ​of Elysium
Like ​its predecessor, A Door into Ocean , this thoughtful, well-crafted novel is set on the ocean world of Shora. Shora's original settlers, the Sharers, are peace-loving women who live in close harmony with nature. They now share their world with the 12 floating cities of Elysium, a society of nearly ageless humans who live surrounded by wealth and advanced technology. The Windclans, a family hailing from a pastoral, underpopulated world where children are highly prized and women revered, come to work in one Elysian city. But as they try to adapt to the Elysians' unfamiliar ways, family members find themselves caught up in the political intrigues among the Elysians, the Sharers and their friends and enemies on neighboring planets--culminating in a confrontation with a potentially lethal adversary from within Elysium itself. Slonczewski's settings and alien cultures are rich and detailed, her characters memorable and often extremely endearing. Even against such an intricate plot and exotic backgrounds, her depictions of relationships, especially family life, are touchingly real.

Vernor Vinge - A ​Deepness in the Sky
After ​thousands of years of searching, humans stand on the verge of first contact with an alien race. Two human groups: The Qeng Ho, a culture of free, innovative traders, and the Emergents, a ruthless society based on the technological enslavement of minds. The group that opens trade with the aliens will reap unimaginable riches. But first, both groups must wait at the aliens' very doorstep for their strange star to relight and for the alien planet to reawaken, as it does every two hundred and fifty years... Amidst terrible treachery, the Qeng Ho must fight for their freedom and for the lives of the unsuspecting innocents on the planet below, while the aliens themselves play a role unsuspected by the Qeng Ho and Emergents alike.

Larry Niven - The ​Integral Trees
When ​leaving Earth, the crew of the spaceship Discipline was prepared for a routine assignment. Dispatched by the all-powerful State on a mission of interstellar exploration and colonization, Discipline was aided (and secretly spied upon) by Sharls Davis Kendy, an emotionless computer intelligence programmed to monitor the loyalty and obedience of the crew. But what they weren’t prepared for was the smoke ring – an immense gaseous envelope that had formed around a neutron star directly in their path. The Smoke Ring was home to a variety of plant and animal life-forms evolved to thrive in conditions of continual free-fall. When Discipline encountered it, something went wrong. The crew abandoned ship and fled to the unlikely space oasis.

Larry Niven - Ringworld
Pierson's ​puppeteers, strange, three-legged, two-headed aliens, have discovered an immense structure in a hitherto unexplored part of the universe. Frightened of meeting the builders of such a structure, the puppeteers set about assembling a team consisting of two humans, a puppeteer and a kzin, an alien not unlike an eight-foot-tall, red-furred cat, to explore it. The artefact is a vast circular ribbon of matter, some 180 million miles across, with a sun at its centre - the Ringworld. But the expedition goes disastrously wrong when the ship crashlands and its motley crew faces a trek across thousands of miles of the Ringworld's surface.

Dan Simmons - The ​Fall of Hyperion
Dan ​Simmons is a phenomenal talent. Since the triumphant publication of his first novel, the multiple-award-winning author of The Hollow Man has demonstrated equal facility for writing horror; thoughtful, literary fiction; and a powerful, world-building science fiction in the best tradition of Frank Herbert, Larry Niven, and David Brin.

Hal Clement - Heavy ​Planet
Discover ​MESKLIN - Gravity: 3g at the equator, 700g at the poles! Hal Clement is a Grand Master of SF, and the one most associated with the subgenre of hard SF. From his classic stories in Astounding in the 1940s through his novels of the 1950s and on to the recent _Half Life_, he has made a lasting impression on SF readers, and on writers, too. For many of them, Clement's work is the model of how to write hard SF, and this book contains the reasons why. Here are all the tales of bizarre, unforgettable Mesklin: the classic novel _Mission of Gravity_ and its sequel, _Star Light_, as well as the short stories "Under" and "Lecture Demonstration." Also included is "Whirligig World," the famous essay Clement published in Astounding in 1953. It describes the rigorous process he used to create his intriguingly plausible high-gravity planet, with its odd flattened shape, its day less than eighteen minutes long, and its many-limbed, noble natives. Come to Mesklin and learn why _The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction_ called _Mission of Gravity_ "one of the best loved novels in SF."

Linda Nagata - First ​Light
Lieutenant ​James Shelley commands a high-tech squad of soldiers in a rural district within the African Sahel. They hunt insurgents each night on a harrowing patrol, guided by three simple goals: protect civilians, kill the enemy, and stay alive—because in a for-profit war manufactured by the defense industry there can be no cause worth dying for. To keep his soldiers safe, Shelley uses every high-tech asset available to him—but his best weapon is a flawless sense of imminent danger...as if God is with him, whispering warnings in his ear.

James S. A. Corey - Tiamat's ​Wrath
Thirteen ​hundred gates have opened to solar systems around the galaxy. But as humanity builds its interstellar empire in the alien ruins, the mysteries and threats grow deeper. In the dead systems where gates lead to stranger things than alien planets, Elvi Okoye begins a desperate search to discover the nature of a genocide that happened before the first human beings existed, and to find weapons to fight a war against forces at the edge of the imaginable. But the price of that knowledge may be higher than she can pay. At the heart of the empire, Teresa Duarte prepares to take on the burden of her father's godlike ambition. The sociopathic scientist Paolo Cortázar and the Mephistophelian prisoner James Holden are only two of the dangers in a palace thick with intrigue, but Teresa has a mind of her own and secrets even her father the emperor doesn't guess. And throughout the wide human empire, the scattered crew of the Rocinante fights a brave rear-guard action against Duarte's authoritarian regime. Memory of the old order falls away, and a future under Laconia's eternal rule -- and with it, a battle that humanity can only lose - seems more and more certain. Because against the terrors that lie between worlds, courage and ambition will not be enough...

Robert Sheckley - Dimension ​of Miracles
New ​York civil servant Thomas Carmody has never been particularly lucky. Imagine his surprise when he discovers he’s won the grand prize in an Intergalactic Lottery he had no idea he’d entered. Whisked far away to Galactic Central to claim his award, he has two immediate, equally troubling revelations. Not only does his Prize—a talkative device that changes shape—serve no practical purpose whatsoever, but now he’s expected to find his own way back to Earth. Of course, Carmody has no idea where, when, or even which universe he’s been stranded in. Ignoring the worthless advice and opinions of his increasingly annoying Prize, he embarks on a bizarre odyssey that takes him from alternate Earth to alternate Earth, bringing him into close contact with all manner of strangeness—and even with a bored God Almighty Himself. But Carmody’s sweepstakes “windfall” comes with yet another unexpected drawback. Suddenly, an unrelenting predator is on his tail, determined to eliminate the “glitch” wandering lost through numerous dimensions where he does not belong. A full decade before Douglas Adams devised TheHitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Robert Sheckley created his Dimension of Miracles, launching one luckless protagonist on a hilarious journey across an alien universe of intelligent dinosaurs and mothering sentient towns. Fans of Kurt Vonnegut, Roger Zelazny, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, and Harry Harrison’s Bill the Galactic Hero will delight in Sheckley’s biting and brilliant Alice in Wonderland–like outer space adventure.

Isaac Asimov - The ​End of Eternity
Andrew ​Harlan is an Eternal, a man whose job it is to range through past and present Centuries, monitoring and, where necessary, altering Time's myriad cause-and-effect relationships. But when Harlan meets and falls for a non-Eternal woman, he seeks to use the awesome powers and techniques of the Eternals to twist time for his own purposes, so that he and his love can survive together.

Robert A. Heinlein - The ​Door into Summer
Dan ​Davis was tricked by an unscrupulous business partner and a greedy fiancee into spending thirty years in suspended animation just when he was on the verge of a success beyond his wildest dreams. But when he awoke in the future, he discovered he had the means to travel back in time -- and get his revenge!

Dan Simmons - The ​Rise of Endymion
The ​time of reckoning has arrived. As a final genocidal Crusade threatens to enslave humanity forever, a new messiah has come of age. She is Aenea and she has undergone a strange apprenticeship to those known as the Others. Now her protector, Raul Endymion, one-time shepherd and convicted murderer, must help her deliver her startling message to her growing army of disciples. But first they must embark on a final spectacular mission to discover the underlying meaning of the universe itself. They have been followed on their journey by the mysterious Shrike - monster, angel, killing machine - who is about to reveal the long-held secret of its origin and purpose. And on the planet of Hyperion, where the story first began, the final revelation will be delivered - an apocalyptic message that unlocks the secrets of existence and the fate of humankind in the galaxy.

Ransom Riggs - Miss ​Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
A ​mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. And a strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children who once lived here – one of whom was his own grandfather – were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a desolate island for good reason. And somehow – impossible though it seems – they may still be alive. A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows.

Connie Willis - Blackout
Oxford ​in 2060 is a chaotic place, with scores of time-traveling historians being sent into the past. Michael Davies is prepping to go to Pearl Harbor. Merope Ward is coping with a bunch of bratty 1940 evacuees and trying to talk her thesis adviser into letting her go to VE-Day. Polly Churchill’s next assignment will be as a shopgirl in the middle of London’s Blitz. But now the time-travel lab is suddenly canceling assignments and switching around everyone’s schedules. And when Michael, Merope, and Polly finally get to World War II, things just get worse. For there they face air raids, blackouts, and dive-bombing Stukas—to say nothing of a growing feeling that not only their assignments but the war and history itself are spiraling out of control. Because suddenly the once-reliable mechanisms of time travel are showing significant glitches, and our heroes are beginning to question their most firmly held belief: that no historian can possibly change the past.

Stephen Baxter - Ring
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...

Octavia E. Butler - Dawn
Lilith ​lyapo awoke from a centuries-long sleep to find herself aboard the vast spaceship of the Oankali. Creatures covered in writhing tentacles, the Oankali had saved every surviving human from a dying, ruined Earth. They healed the planet, cured cancer, increased strength, and were now ready to help Lilith lead her people back to Earth--but for a price.

David Weber - On ​Basilisk Station
Honor ​Harrington in trouble: Having made him look the fool, she's been exiled to Basilisk Station in disgrace and set up for ruin by a superior who hates her. Her demoralized crew blames her for their ship's humiliating posting to an out-of-the-way picket station. The aborigines of the system's only habitable planet are smoking homicide-inducing hallucinogens. Parliament isn't sure it wants to keep the place; the major local industry is smuggling, the merchant cartels want her head; the star-conquering, so-called "Republic" of Haven is Up to Something; and Honor Harrington has a single, over-age light cruiser with an armament that doesn't work to police the entire star system. But the people out to get her have made one mistake. They've made her mad!

Tom Sweterlitsch - The ​Gone World
_Inception_ ​meets _True Detective_ in this science-fiction thriller of spellbinding tension and staggering scope. _The Gone World_ follows a special agent into a savage murder case with grave implications for the fate of mankind. Shannon Moss is part of a clandestine division within the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. In Western Pennsylvania, 1997, she is assigned to solve the murder of a Navy SEAL's family--and to locate his teenage daughter, who has disappeared. Though she can't share the information with conventional law enforcement, Moss discovers that the missing SEAL was an astronaut aboard the spaceship U.S.S. Libra--a ship assumed lost to the darkest currents of Deep Time. Moss knows first-hand the mental trauma of time-travel and believes the SEAL's experience with the future has triggered this violence. Determined to find the missing girl and driven by a troubling connection from her own past, Moss travels ahead in time to explore possible versions of the future, seeking evidence or insight that will crack the present-day case. To her horror, the future reveals that it's not only the fate of a family that hinges on her work, for what she witnesses rising over time's horizon and hurtling toward the present is the Terminus: the terrifying and cataclysmic end of humanity itself. Luminous and unsettling, _The Gone World_ bristles with world-shattering ideas yet remains at its heart an intensely human story.