Bearing Gifts (The Stardock Trilogy)

Related Posts
Shadows of Eternity

Shadows of Eternity is legendary author Gregory Benford’s return to interstellar science fiction as a discovery within the SETI library on the moon turns out to be deadly. Shadows of Eternity is a novel set two centuries from now. Humanity has established Read more

Rendezvous with Rama

stronauts explore an alien spacecraft hurtling toward the sun in this Hugo and Nebula Award–winning novel—“a stone-cold classic” of hard sci-fi (The Guardian). An enormous cylindrical object has entered Earth’s solar system on a collision course with the sun. A Read more

Bearing Gifts (The Stardock Trilogy)
MainCategory:
Newstuffs: ,
Type:
Genre:
Lenght:
Seriesize:
Author:

When the over-driven hyperdrive on their mobile shipyard burned out, the Chhrt’ktk’t abandoned it in an inhabited system along their path, hoping it would work as a decoy to buy them more time to escape the Khreetan fleet pursuing them. They didn’t anticipate how far the pre-spacefaring species they turned over their broken-down maintenance facility to would subvert their plan.

Alex Holder, a retired engineer, just happened to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right mindset, to find himself chosen by the Chhrt’ktk’t to hand over control of their shipyard to, simply because he was the first person they found able to interface with it. The Chhrt’ktk’t could not possibly anticipate what he would do with it. And neither would anyone else.

“It’s kind of Larry Niven or, even more, Arthur Clarke.” — John Shirley

The Best of Cordwainer Smith

Cordwainer Smith was one of the original visionaries to think of humanity in terms of thousands of years in the future, spread out across the universe. This brilliant collection, often cited as the first of its kind, explores fundamental questions about ourselves and our treatment of the universe (and other beings) around us and ultimately what it means to be human.

In “Scanners Live in Vain” we meet Martel, a human altered to be part machine—a scanner—to be able withstand the trauma space travel has on the body. Despite the stigma placed on him and his kind, he is able to regrasp his humanity to save another.

In “The Dead Lady of Clown Town” we get to know the underpeople—animals genetically altered to exist in human form, to better serve their human owners—and meet D’Joan, a dog-woman who will make readers question who is more human: the animals who simply want to be recognized as having the same right to life, or the people who created them to be inferior.

In “The Ballad of Lost C’mell” the notion of love being the most important equalizer there is—as first raised in “The Dead Lady of Clown Town”—is put into action when an underperson, C’mell, falls in love with Lord Jestocost. Who is to say her love for him is not as valid as any true-born human? She might be of cat descent, but she is all woman!

And in “A Planet Named Shayol” it is an underperson of bull descent, and beings so mutilated and deformed from their original human condition to be now considered demons of a hellish land, who retain and display the most humanity when Mankind commits the most inhumane action of all.

Norstrilia (with the prequel, The Ballad of Lost C’Mell)

Norstrilia (with the prequel, The Ballad of Lost C'Mell)
Date:
MainCategory:
Lenght:

Welcome to Old North Australia, or Norstrilia, the only planet that has “stroon,” a substance that indefinitely delays aging in humans. Stroon is cultivated from huge, deformed sheep farmed by the wealthiest estate owners to ever exist in all of humanity’s existence.

Rod McBan is the last of one of the oldest and most honorable families on Norstrilia. But he himself has shortcomings that would normally have led to his death under the strict laws governing population control on a planet where immortality is cheap and imperfect citizens are ruthlessly “culled” to make way for more productive members of society.

But even McBan’s vaunted stature in the society is not enough to save him from the basest of human emotions-jealousy- as the enmity of a former friend forces him to escape to Earth, where McBan’s unprecedented fortune quickly makes him a magnet for all manner of crooks and revolutionaries.

Eros Ascending (Tales of the Velvet Comet)

Eros Ascending (Tales of the Velvet Comet)
Date:
MainCategory:
Type:
Lenght:
Seriesize:
Author:

The Velvet Comet is the most luxurious and expensive brothel in the galaxy. It boasts casinos, elegant restaurants, a 2-mile-long upscale shopping mall, and highly-trained prostitutes of both sexes.

As a huge moneymaker, it is also the object or corporate manipulations.

This is the story of one man who has been hired to put it out of business, and the unforseen twists and turns of his adventure.

Serie of 4 books :

Eros Ascending

Eros at Zenith

Eros Descending

Eros at Nadir

 

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars (Fractalverse)

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars (Fractalverse)
MainCategory:
Type:
Lenght:
Seriesize:
Narrator:
Reception:
Protagonist:

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is a brand new epic novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eragon, Christopher Paolini.

Kira Navárez dreamed of life on new worlds.

Now she’s awakened a nightmare.

During a routine survey mission on an uncolonized planet, Kira finds an alien relic. At first she’s delighted, but elation turns to terror when the ancient dust around her begins to move.

As war erupts among the stars, Kira is launched into a galaxy-spanning odyssey of discovery and transformation. First contact isn’t at all what she imagined, and events push her to the very limits of what it means to be human.

While Kira faces her own horrors, Earth and its colonies stand upon the brink of annihilation. Now, Kira might be humanity’s greatest and final hope . . .

prequel : Fractal Noise

Platinum Pohl: The Collected Best Stories

Frederik Pohl, the bestselling author of The Boy Who Would Live Forever, is famous for his novels, but first and foremost, he is a master of the science fiction short story.

For more than fifty years he has been writing incisive, entertaining SF stories, several hundred in all. Even while writing his bestselling triple-crown (Hugo, Nebula, Campbell Award) novel Gateway and the other Heechee Saga novels, he has always written short fiction.

Now, for the first time, he has gathered together the best of his many stories in Platinum Pohl. Spanning the decades, these tales are in their way a living history of science fiction. Because Frederik Pohl has been on the frontlines of the field since the halcyon days of the late 1930s, and has written short stories in every decade since. And because he has always been a keen observer of the human condition and the world that is shaped by it, his stories reflect the currents of political movements, social trends, major events that have shaken the world . . .

Yet at their core, all his stories are most acutely concerned with people. All sorts of people. Some are people you’ll love, some you’ll hate. But you will need to find out what happens to the people who inhabit these stories. Because Frederik Pohl imbues his characters with a depth and individuality that makes them as real as people you see every day. Of course, he also employs a mind-boggling variety of scientific ideas and science fictional tropes with which his characters must interact. And he does it all with seemingly no effort at all. That’s some trick. Not everyone can do that . . . but that’s why he was named a Grand Master of Science Fiction by his peers in the Science Fiction Writers of America.

Here are his two Hugo Award winning stories, “Fermi and Frost” and “The Meeting” (with C. M. Kornbluth), along with such classic novellas as the powerful “The Gold at the Starbow’s End” and “The Greening of Bed-Stuy,” and stories such as “Servant of the People,” “Shaffery Among the Immortals,” and “Growing Up in Edge City,” all finalists for major awards. And dozens of other wonderful tales, like “The Mayor of Mare Tranq” and the provocative “The Day the Martians Landed” and many others.

Altogether, a grand collection of thought-provoking, entertaining science fiction by one of the all-time greats!

The Legacy of Heorot (Heorot Series)

THE CLASSIC HEOROT SERIES FROM GENRE LEGENDS LARRY NIVEN, JERRY POURNELLE, AND STEVEN BARNES

The two hundred colonists on board the Geographic have spent a century in cold sleep to arrive here: Avalon, a lush, verdant planet lightyears from Earth. They hope to establish a permanent colony, and Avalon seems the perfect place. And so they set about planting and building.

But their very presence has upset the ecology of Avalon. Soon an implacable predator stalks them, picking them off one by one. In order to defeat this alien enemy, they must reevaluate everything they think they know about Avalon, and uncover the planet’s dark secrets.

At the publisher’s request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).

About The Legacy of Heorot:
“Page-turning action and suspense, good characterization and convincing setting . . . may be the best thing any of those authors has written.”—The Denver Post

“Outstanding! . . . The best ever, by the best in the field . . . the ultimate combination of imagination and realism.”—Tom Clancy

Marsbound

Marsbound
Date:
MainCategory:
Type:
Lenght:
Seriesize:
Author:
Narrator:
Protagonist:

Young Carmen Dula and her family are embarking on the adventure of a lifetime-they’re going to Mars. But Carmen’s rebellious streak leads her to venture out into the bleak Mars landscape alone, where she is saved by an angel.

An angel with too many arms and legs, a head that looks like a potato gone bad-and a message for the humans on Mars: We were here first…

Dogs of War classic stories of men and machines at arms

Military authors have entered the mainstream science fiction genre and continue to leave their mark.

David Drake pays homage to his own sub-genre by collecting ten classic stories of men-at-arms by top writers including himself.

Worlds (The Worlds Trilogy)

Worlds (The Worlds Trilogy)
Date:
MainCategory:
Type:
Genre:
Lenght:
Seriesize:
Author:
Protagonist:

In this near-future novel by the author of The Forever War, an idealistic student visiting Earth from an orbiting colony is ensnared in a political conspiracy.

By the close of the twenty-first century, almost half a million souls have already abandoned Earth to live in satellites orbiting the strife-ridden planet. Each of these forty-one Worlds is an independent entity boasting its own government and culture, yet each remains bound to the troubled home World by economic pressure.

A brilliant student of political science born and raised in New New York, the largest of the orbiting Worlds, young Marianne O’Hara has never been to the surface but now has a golden opportunity to continue her studies far below her floating home of steel. Life on Earth, however, is very different from anything she has ever experienced.

With power in the hands of a privileged few and unrest running rampant, the allure of radical politics might be too much for an idealistic and inexperienced young World dweller to resist. But even the best of intentions can have disastrous consequences, and Marianne soon finds herself unwittingly drawn into a wide-ranging conspiracy that could result in the total destruction of everything on Earth . . . and above.

The first book in the acclaimed science fiction trilogy by Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author Joe Haldeman, Worlds offers a powerful vision of a possible future.