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In the near future, they have discovered a way to bring back Alzheimer's patients to full health, but then the former patients have to go back to high school to get the remedial high tech skills to be able to function in society. Robert Gu, a former world class poet, is one of those former patients. While he was renowned for his poetry, he was a complete creep to his family, to say the least, emotionally abusive and a first class arrogant jerk. But now he has to start over, with less than the skills of a high school student. And then he gets sucked into an international conspiracy involving UCSD and the high tech labs associated with it - by a mysterious being named Rabbit. Will Robert ever be able to be a poet again? Will the challenges Robert faces turn him into a nicer, better person? Is Rabbit the avatar of a real person, or is Rabbit an artificial intelligence, a sort of God for a new culture and new society?
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One night in October when he was ten years old, Tyler Dupree stood in his back yard and watched the stars go out. They all flared into brilliance at once, then disappeared, replaced by a flat, empty black barrier. He and his best friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, had seen what became known as the Big Blackout. It would shape their lives. The effect is worldwide. The sun is now a featureless disk--a heat source, rather than an astronomical object. The moon is gone, but tides remain. Not only have the world's artificial satellites fallen out of orbit, their recovered remains are pitted and aged, as though they'd been in space far longer than their known lifespans.
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It's 1808 and that Corsican upstart Napoleon is battering the English army and navy. Enter Mr. Norrell, a fusty but ambitious scholar from the Yorkshire countryside and the first practical magician in hundreds of years. What better way to demonstrate his revival of British magic than to change the course of the Napoleonic wars? Mr. Norrell moves to London to establish his influence in government circles, devising such powerful illusions as an 11-day blockade of French ports by English ships fabricated from rainwater. But however skilful his magic, his vanity provides an Achilles heel, and the differing ambitions of his more glamorous apprentice, Jonathan Strange, threaten to topple all that Mr. Norrell has achieved.
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Three years have passed since the widowed Dowager Royina Ista found release from the curse of madness that kept her imprisoned in her family's castle of Valenda. Her newfound freedom is costly, bittersweet with memories, regrets, and guilty secrets, for she knows the truth of what brought her land to the brink of destruction. And now the road beckons. Quite fitting for the Dowager Royina of all Chalion. Yet something else is free, too, something beyond deadly. To the north lies the vital border fortress of Porifors. Memories linger there as well, of wars and invasions and the mighty Golden General of Jokona. And someone, something, watches from across that border, humans, demons, gods. Ista thinks her little party of pilgrims wanders at will. When Ista's retinue is unexpectedly set upon not long into its travels, a mysterious ally appears, a warrior nobleman who fights like a berserker. The temporary safety of her enigmatic champion's castle cannot ease Ista's mounting dread, however, when she finds his dark secrets are entangled with hers in a net of the gods' own weaving. In her dreams the threads are already drawing her to unforeseen chances, fateful meetings, fearsome choices. What the inscrutable gods commanded of her in the past brought her land to the brink of devastation. Now, once again, they have chosen Ista as their instrument. And again, for good or for ill, she must comply.
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Hominids, the first book of the Neanderthal Parallax, is a story of parallel worlds: our own, and another in which neanderthals, not homo sapiens, became the dominant intelligent species. In that world, neanderthal civilization has reached heights of culture and science comparable to our own, but very different in detail and philosophy. During a risky physics experiment deep in a mine in Canada, a neanderthal physicist, Ponter Boddit, is accidentally transferred to our universe, where another experiment is taking place in the same time. He is captured and studied, alone and bewildered, a stranger in a strange land. Back home, Ponters research partner is left with a messy lab, a missing body, suspicious people all around, and a murder trial that he can't possibly win because he doesn't know what happened. When luck, curiosity, imagination and inventiveness combine to save the day, its not the end at all but a new beginning, with two worlds eager to learn more about what links them and what holds them apart.
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Released from prison shortly after the accidental death of his wife, ex-con Shadow finds himself free, but bereft of all the things that gave his previous life meaning. As he bids his farewell to the fragments of that life, an eerie stranger named Mr. Wednesday offers him employment. Wednesday needs someone to act as aid, driver, errand boy, and, in case of Wednesday's death, someone to hold a vigil for him. Shadow consents and finds himself drawn unsuspectingly into a cryptic reality where myth and legend coexist with today's realities. Mr. Wednesday, trickster and wise man, is on a quest. The old gods who came over to this country with each human incursion have weakened as their followers have dwindled and are now threatened with extinction by the modern gods of technology and marketing. Wednesday travels from deity to deity, rounding up help for what will be last battle. He engages ancient Russian gods, Norse legends, Egyptian deities, and countless others who have found their way to America in the past 10,000 or so years. Shadow never quite understands what his role is in all of this, but he experiences visions and dreams which promise that he is far more than Wednesday's factotum.
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Now 14, her orphan hero has only two more weeks with his Muggle relatives before returning to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Yet one night a vision harrowing enough to make his lightning-bolt-shaped scar burn has Harry on edge and contacting his godfather-in-hiding, Sirius Black. Happily, the prospect of attending the season's premier sporting event, the Quidditch World Cup, is enough to make Harry momentarily forget that Lord Voldemort and his sinister familiars, the Death Eaters, are out for murder.
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After thousands of years searching, humans stand on the verge of first contact with an alien race. Two human groups: the Qeng Ho, a culture of free 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 their planet to reawaken, as it does every two hundred and fifty years...
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Ned Henry is badly in need of a rest. He's been shuttling between the 21st century and the 1940s searching for a Victorian atrocity called the bishop's bird stump. It's part of a project to restore the famed Coventry Cathedral, destroyed in a Nazi air raid over a hundred years earlier. But then Verity Kindle, a fellow time traveller, inadvertently brings back something from the past. Now Ned must jump back to the Victorian era to help Verity put things right, not only to save the project but to prevent altering history itself.
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In the year 2043, the Ngumi War rages. Limited nuclear strikes have been used on Atlanta and two enemy cities, but the war goes on, fought by 'soldierboys', indestructible war machines operated by remote control by soldiers hundreds of miles away. Julian Class is one of these soldiers, and for him war is truly hell. The psychological strain of being jacked-in to his soldierboy, and the genocidal results, are becoming too much to bear. Now he and his companion, Dr Amelia Harding, have made a terrifying scientific discovery, which could literally take the universe back to square one. Except that for Julian, the discovery isn't so much terrifying as tempting.
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The red planet is red no longer, as Mars has become a perfectly inhabitable world. But while Mars flourishes, Earth is threatened by overpopulation and ecological disaster. Soon people look to Mars as a refuge, initiating a possible interplanetary conflict, as well as political strife between the Reds, who wish to preserve the planet in its desert state, and the Green "terraformers". The ultimate fate of Earth, as well as the possibility of new explorations into the solar system, stand in the balance.
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John Percival Hackworth is a nanotech engineer on the rise when he steals a copy of "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" for his daughter Fiona. The primer is actually a super computer built with nanotechnology that was designed to educate Lord Finkle-McGraw's daughter and to teach her how to think for herself in the stifling neo-Victorian society. But Hackworth loses the primer before he can give it to Fiona, and now the "book" has fallen into the hands of young Nell, an underprivileged girl whose life is about to change.
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Miles Vorkosigan faces more than his share of troubles as the protagonist in Mirror Dance. Not only is he deformed and undersized but he has a cloned brother who gets into a jam in the free enterprise plague spot known as Jackson's Whole. Miles tries to help his brother but ends up injured, placed on cryogenic suspension and then lost in intergalactic limbo.
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Nearly a generation has passed since the first pioneers landed, but the transformation of Mars to an Earthlike planet has just begun The plan is opposed by those determined to preserve the planets hostile, barren beauty. Led by rebels like Peter Clayborne, these young people are the first generation of children born on Mars. They will be joined by original settlers Maya Toitovna, Simon Frasier, and Sax Russell. Against this cosmic backdrop, passions, rivalries, and friendships explode in a story as spectacular as the planet itself.
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Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function. Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these "regions of thought," but when the warring Straumli realm use an ancient Transcendent artefact as a weapon, they unwittingly unleash an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence. Fleeing the threat, a family of scientists, including two children, are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle. A rescue mission, not entirely composed of humans, must rescue the children-and a secret that may save the rest of interstellar civilization.
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For Kivrin, preparing an onsite study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman travelling alone. For her instructors in the twenty first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received. However a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin, barely of age herself, finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history's darkest hours.
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Cordelia Naismith has deserted her home planet and a career in astrocartography for her husband Aral Vorkosigan, who has just been appointed Regent of Barrayar by the dying Emperor. As Lord and Lady Vorkosigan, they struggle to establish stability in a fragile government thrown into confusion by the transition of power. When a palace coup endangers the government, their lives, and her unborn son, Cordelia takes action to secure the safety of her new family... and her new home.
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Miles Vorkosigan graduates from the Barrayaran Military Academy with high expectations of ship command but is disappointed with an assignment as meteorologist to an arctic training camp. There he narrowly averts a massacre between the trigger-happy base commander and mutinous recruits. Reassigned to investigate a suspicious military build-up near a wormhole nexus, he revives his undercover persona as mercenary Admiral Miles Naismith to negotiate between competing powers for control of the wormhole, to rescue the Emperor of Barrayar, and to watch his back for the arctic base commander seeking bloody vengeance.
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On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all. On the eve of Armageddon, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to Hyperion seeking the answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives. Each carries a desperate hope, and a terrible secret. And one may hold the fate of humanity in his hands.
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The story focuses on what's going on planet Cyteen, the heart of the Union, in the aftermath of the Merchant's War. The explosive political situation conducts to the murder of Ariane Emory a powerful charismatic state leader. Yet another chance, the scientist is replicated in the lab, leaving a prodigy who attempts to chart a different fate. However will Ary 2 be as brilliant and decisive as her predecessor? Will she survive to adulthood in Cyteen's crushing environment?
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Billions of years ago, an alien race known as the Progenitors began the genetically engineered techniques by which non-intelligent creatures are given intelligence by one of the higher races in the galaxy. Once "Uplifted," these creature must serve their patron race before they, in turn, can Uplift other races. Human intelligence, which developed by itself (and brought about the Uplifting of chimpanzees and dolphins), is an affront to the aliens who plan an attack, threatening a human experiment aimed at producing the next Uplift. 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.
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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.
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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 is drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training. Ender's skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender's two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives.
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Case had been the sharpest data-thief in the business cruising the information superhighway, jacking his consciousness into cyberspace, soaring through tactile lattices of data and logic, rustling encoded secrets for anyone with the money to buy his skills. Then he double-crossed the wrong people, who caught up with him in a big way and burned the talent out of his brain, micron by micron. Banished from cyberspace, trapped in the meat of his physical body, Case courted death in the high-tech underworld. Until a shadowy conspiracy offered him a second chance, and a cure, for a price. With a dead man riding shotgun and Molly, mirror-eyed street-samurai, to watch his back, Case embarks on an adventure that ups the ante on an entire genre of fiction.
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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.
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At last, the costly and bitter war between the two Foundations had come to an end. The scientists of the First Foundation had proved victorious; and now they return to Hari Seldon's long-established plan to build a new Empire that the Second Foundation is not destroyed after all-and that its still-defiant survivors are preparing their revenge. Now the two exiled citizens of the Foundation-a renegade Councilman and the doddering historian-set out in search of the mythical planet Earth... and proof that the Second Foundation still exists. Meanwhile someone-or something-outside of both Foundations seems to be orchestrating events to suit its own ominous purpose. Soon representatives of both the First and Second Foundations will find themselves racing toward a mysterious world called Gaia and a final shocking destiny at the very end of the universe!
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Down Below Station has everything you could want in a science fiction book. Aliens, space stations, space ships, politics, war, and most of all, does all of this in a completely plausible and believable way. Begin your journey. You'll be glad you did! Earth has expanded to the stars, set up space stations along the way, and eventually found planets to colonize and build space stations in orbit around. The far flung planets and space stations eventually disagree with Earth's policies, break away, and form a totalitarian government called the Union and fight a war with Earth. A space station in orbit around the planet Pell, called Downbelow in slang, thus the name Downbelow Station, tries to maintain a neutrality in the war, but finds this difficult as soldiers and agents from both sides are both simultaneously trying to obtain control of the station, and if cannot obtain control then destroy it.
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The imperious Winter colonists have ruled the planet Tiamat for 150 years, deriving wealth from the slaughter of the sea mers. But soon the galactic stargate will close, isolating Tiamat, and the 150-year reign of the Summer primitives will begin. The ruler of Tiamat for the winter season is due to be ritually executed at the end of her term, and the changing of the seasons. However all is not lost if Arienrhod, the ageless, corrupt Snow Queen, can change her destiny. The Snow Queen in an effort to prolong her reign has seeded the Summer people of Tiamat with eight clones of herself. There is one clone who survived to maturity, Moon, upon whom all hope rests.
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Vannemar Morgan's dream is to link Earth to the stars with the greatest engineering feat of all time, a 24,000-mile-high space elevator. First he must solve a million technical, political, and economic problems while allaying the wrath of God. For the only possible site on the planet for Morgan's Orbital Tower is the monastery atop the Sacred Mountain of Sri Kanda. And for two thousand years, the monks have protected Sri Kanda from all mortal quests for glory. Kings and princes who have sought to conquer the Sacred Mountain have all died. Now Vannemar Morgan may be next.
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Stavin is being tended to by Snake and Grass, two snakes who have healing abilities, but only when they're together. Snake must wrap herself around Stavin's waist and Grass has to lay very still on Stavin's head in order for them to heal him. The operation seems to be going well until Stavin's father, Arevin accidentally drops a rock on Grass and kills her. Snake plans to find another dreamsnake so Stavin could be healed. But a dangerous road lies ahead.
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When prospector Bob Broadhead went out to Gateway on the Heechee spacecraft, he decided he would know which was the right mission to make him his fortune. Three missions later, now famous and permanently rich, Robinette Broadhead has to face what happened to him and what he is...in a journey into himself as perilous and even more horrifying than the nightmare trip through the interstellar void that he drove himself to take!
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An ecological catastrophe (and a development of human infertility) destroys the human race except a group of scientists that propagate themselves in the only way possible, by cloning. Thus a society of clones, family groups are a batch of 6-10 identical clones raised as a unit. Unfortunately, by cloning the exact same genetic material over and over, subsequent generations of clones become more and more specialised (one group is doctors, one group builds barns, etc.) until no one in the society has any initiative or imagination. Into this society is introduced an anomaly. A woman has a traumatic experience that allows her latent individuality to surface. She is impregnated and gives birth to a son, the only "singleton" child in the entire human race.
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Private William Mandella is a hero in spite of himself, a reluctant conscript drafted into an elite military unit, and propelled through space and time to fight in a distant thousand year conflict. He never wanted to go to war, but the leaders on Earth have drawn a line in the interstellar sand, despite the fact that their fierce alien enemy is unknowable, unconquerable, and very far away. So Mandella will perform his duties without rancor and even rise up through the military's ranks, if he survives. But the true test of his mettle will come when he returns to Earth. Because of the time dilation caused by space travel the loyal soldier is aging months, while his home planet is aging centuries and the difference will prove the saying: you never can go home.
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Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. he will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe. To do this dangerous task will mean giving up his family and possibly his life. Shevek must make the unprecedented journey to the utopian mother planet, Anarres, to challenge the complex structures of life and living, and ignite the fires of change.
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A huge, mysterious, cylindrical object appears in space, swooping in toward the sun. The citizens of the solar system send a ship to investigate before the enigmatic craft, called Rama, disappears. The astronauts given the task of exploring the hollow cylindrical ship are able to decipher some, but definitely not all, of the extraterrestrial vehicle's puzzles. From the ubiquitous trilateral symmetry of its structures to its cylindrical sea and machine-island, Rama's secrets are strange evidence of an advanced civilization. But who, and where, are the Ramans, and what do they want with humans? Perhaps the answer lies with the busily working biots, or the sealed-off buildings, or the inaccessible "southern" half of the enormous cylinder. Rama's unsolved mysteries are tantalizing indeed.
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Only a few know the terrifying truth, an outcast Earth scientist, a rebellious alien inhabitant of a dying planet, a lunar born human intuitionist who senses the imminent annihilation of the Sun. They know the truth, but who will listen? They have foreseen the cost of abundant energy, but who will believe? These few beings, human and alien, hold the key to the Earth's survival.
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When famous adventurer Sir Richard Francis Burton dies, the last thing he expects to do is awaken naked on a foreign planet along the shores of a seemingly endless river. But that's where Burton and billions of other humans (plus a few nonhumans) find themselves as the epic Riverworld saga begins. It seems that all of Earthly humanity has been resurrected on the planet, each with an indestructible container that provides three meals a day, cigarettes, alcoholic beverages, a lighter, and the odd tube of lipstick. But why? And by whom?
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A new place is being built, a world of huge dimensions, encompassing millions of miles, stronger than any planet before it. There is gravity, and with high walls and its proximity to the sun, a liveable new planet that is three million times the area of the Earth can be formed. We can start again! An interstellar cast of characters, set out to explore large, ring-shaped world that someone has constructed and is circling a star a fair distance from Earth.
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Genly Ai is a human, sent as an ambassador to an alien world called Winter, so called because it exists in an extended ice age. The inhabitants of Winter are also human, but they are neuter hermaphrodites, living in neither gender for most of the time, and assuming either gender when in estrus. Genly Ai must bridge the gap of culture and gender in order to bring Winter and its inhabitants into the growing galactic civilization.
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There are seven billion-plus humans crowding the surface of 21st century Earth. It is an age of intelligent computers, mass-market psychedelic drugs, politics conducted by assassination, scientists who burn incense to appease volcanoes... all the hysteria of a dangerously overcrowded world, portrayed in a dazzlingly inventive style.
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Earth is long since dead. On a colony planet, a band of men has gained control of technology, made themselves immortal, and now rule their world as the gods of the Hindu pantheon. Only one dares oppose them: he who was once Siddhartha and is now Mahasamatman. Binder of Demons, Lord of Light.
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This is a tale of revolution, of the rebellion of the former Lunar penal colony against the Lunar Authority that controls it from Earth. It is the tale of the disparate people, a computer technician, a vigorous young female agitator, and an elderly academic, who become the rebel movement's leaders. And it is the story of Mike, the supercomputer whose sentience is known only to this inner circle, and who for reasons of his own is committed to the revolution's ultimate success.
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Conrad Nomikos has a long, rich personal history that he'd rather not talk about. And, as Arts Commissioner, he's been given a job he'd rather not do. Escorting an alien grandee on a guided tour of the shattered remains of Earth is not something he relishes, especially when it is apparent that this places him at the centre of highlevel intrigue that has some bearing on the future of Earth itself!
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The sweeping tale of a desert planet called Arrakis, the focus of an intricate power struggle in a byzantine interstellar empire. Arrakis is the sole source of Melange, the "spice of spices." Melange is necessary for interstellar travel and grants psychic powers and longevity, so whoever controls it wields great influence. The troubles begin when stewardship of Arrakis is transferred by the Emperor from House Harkonnen to House Atreides. The Harkonnens don't want to give up their privilege, though, and through sabotage and treachery they cast young Duke Paul Atreides out into the planet's harsh environment to die. There he falls in with the Fremen, a tribe of desert dwellers who become the basis of the army with which he will reclaim what's rightfully his. Paul Atreides, though, is far more than just a usurped duke. He might be the end product of a very long-term genetic experiment designed to breed a super human, he might be the messiah. His struggle is at the center of a nexus of powerful people and events, and the repercussions will be felt throughout the Imperium.
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A mysterious planet of approximately the same mass as Earth appears from hyperspace within the orbit of our moon, tearing the satellite to pieces and inflicting tremendous damage on our planet through vastly increased tidal forces. The Wanderer inspires feelings of pure terror in the hearts of the five billion human being inhabiting planet earth. The presence of the alien planet causes increasingly severe tragedies and chaos.
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Enoch Wallace, a veteran of the American Civil War who is 124 years old, and yet only appears to younger than 30. The story is told in a non-linear style, and Simak artfully moves between present and past events, learning about how Enoch became a Way Station for an inter-galactic transportation system, why he has kept it secret, what has happened during his time as the keeper of the station, and why the CIA has finally become aware of his existence.
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It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. the few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some 20 years earlier the United States lost a war, and is now occupied jointly by Nazi Germany and Japan.
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This is the story of Valentine Michael Smith, born during, and the only survivor of, the first manned mission to Mars. Michael is raised by Martians, and he arrives on Earth as a true innocent. He has never seen a woman and has no knowledge of Earth's cultures or religions. However he brings turmoil with him, as he is the legal heir to an enormous financial empire, not to mention de facto owner of the planet Mars. With the irascible popular author Jubal Harshaw to protect him, Michael explores human morality and the meanings of love. He founds his own church, preaching free love and disseminating the psychic talents taught him by the Martians. Ultimately, he confronts the fate reserved for all messiahs.
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In the Utah desert, Brother Francis of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz has made a miraculous discovery: the relics of the martyr Isaac Leibowitz himself, including the blessed blueprint and the sacred shopping list. The accidental excavation of a holy artifact: A creased, brittle memo scrawled by the hand of the blessed Saint Leibowitz, that reads: "Pound pastrami, can kraut, six bagels, bring home for Emma.". To the Brothers of Saint Leibowitz, this sacred shopping list penned by an obscure, 20th century engineer is a symbol of hope from the distant past, from before the Simplification, the fiery atomic holocaust that plunged the earth into darkness and ignorance. They may provide a bright ray of hope in a terrifying age of darkness, a time of ignorance and genetic monsters that are the unholy aftermath of the Flame Deluge. However as the spellbinding mystery at the core of this extraordinary novel unfolds, it is the search itself, for meaning, for truth, for love, that offers hope to a humanity teetering on the edge of an abyss.
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Johnny Rico signed up with the Federal Service on a lark and to receive citizenship, but despite the hardships and rigorous training, he finds himself determined to make it as a cap trooper. In boot camp he will learn how to become a soldier, but when he graduates and war comes (as it always does for soldiers), he learns why he is a soldier. Rico goes into battle with the Terran Mobile Infantry against mankinds most frightening enemy. Rico learns that with citizenship comes responsibility and that a man has to do, what a man has to do, to protect humanity against the long night.
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In the year 2049 Father Ruiz-Sanchez is part of a four member commission from Earth on the planet Lithia, trying to determine what level of contact Earth should have with Lithia. Lithia is inhabited by a reptilian race of highly intelligent, logical and almost emotionless beings. They live in harmony with themselves and their environment. It seems an almost perfect society. One member of the commission is very impressed with Lithian society and is eager to establish full relations at once. Another member is contemptuous and hopes to exploit the planet for Earth's benefit. But Father Sanchez although profoundly sympathetic with the Lithians, feels they are very dangerous and all contact with Lithia should cease immediately. However is it too perfect? Is it in fact, as Father Ruiz-Sanchez suspects, the work of The Adversary? And what role does Egtverchi, the young Lithian raised on Earth, play? Is he an innocent victim of circumstance, or will he bring about the Dies Irae, the day of the wrath of God, upon the earth? The fate of two worlds hinges on the answers to these questions, and will lead to an ancient earth heresy that shakes the Jesuit priest's beliefs to their very core.
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Have you ever worried about your memory, because it doesn't seem to recall exactly the same past from one day to the next? Have you ever thought that the whole universe might be a crazy, mixed-up dream? If you have, then you've had hints of the Change War. It's been going on for a billion years and it will last another billion or so. Up and down the timeline, the two sides, "Spiders" and "Snakes", battle endlessly to change the future and the past. Our lives, our memories, are their battleground. And in the midst of the war is the Place, outside space and time, where Greta Forzane and the other Entertainers provide solace and rest for tired time warriors.
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One minute, down and out actor Lorenzo Smythe was, as usual, in a bar, drinking away his troubles as he watched his career go down the tubes. Then a space pilot bought him a drink, and the next thing Smythe knew, he was shanghaied to Mars. Suddenly he found himself agreeing to the most difficult role of his career: impersonating an important politician who had been kidnapped. Peace with the Martians was at stake, failure to pull off the act could result in interplanetary war. And Smythe's own life was on the line, for if he wasn't assassinated, there was always the possibility that he might be trapped in his new role forever!
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Dr. Billings is assigned by the government to produce a machine pilot which can handle vehicles that move at a quicker rate than humans. They have been told by specialists, that this would only be possible by duplicating the function of the human brain. Dr. Billings, who had been told of Joe Carter by Dr. Martin, knew that the best person for the job would be a telepath. Dr. Billings puts together a team of specialists from many areas, and Joe helps them communicate by manipulating their minds without their knowledge. The team puts together Bossy, but before it can be complete, the public learns of their attempt to "replace man", and they are forced to go into hiding. Bossy, the machine, does much more than they ever intended, and it is able to get inside the mind of other people and to correct the ailments of man by removing the biases which have built up over the person's lifetime. This process has the amazing effect of rejuvenating the person undergoing the treatment, as well as give that person telepathic abilities. One of the limitations of the machine is that the person has to be willing to give up their biases, a trait which exists in the less fortunate elements of society. When the public becomes aware of the abilities, there is a power struggle between governments and business to control the new technology.
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In the year 2301, guns are only museum pieces and benign telepaths sweep the minds of the populace to detect crimes before they happen, murder is virtually impossible, but one man is about to change that. Ben Reich, a psychopathic business magnate, has devised the ultimate scheme to eliminate the competition and destroy the order of his society. He 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. However while police prefect Lincoln Powell knows Reich is guilty, his telepath's knowledge is a far cry from admissible evidence.
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Novels winning the Hugo Award
![They'd Rather Be Right - [aka The Forever Machine]](http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0881848425.01.TZZZZZZZ.jpg)
