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Table of Contents:

• 7 - On Losing the Taint of Being a Cannibal - essay
• 9 - Webster - (1973) - short story
• 25 - The White Horse Child - (1979) - short story
• 49 - Sleepside Story - (1988) - novella
• 101 - Dead Run - (1985) - short story
• 132 - Through Road, No Whither - (1985) - short story
• 138 - Petra - (1982) - short story

Yoshio Kawashita is a great warrior until aliens whisk him away during World War II. They put him on a desolate planet far from his home, where he is destined to remain forever, leaving him alone in his new hell. Then Anna Nestor appears. This empress does not see planets as homes for their inhabitants; she sees exploitable real estate. Anna Nestor views Kawashita as a sideshow attraction until they fall in love. But the two lovebirds cannot be free until they find out who kidnapped Kawashita and why.

Hugo and Nebula Award winning novelette. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, June 1983. It has been expanded to the full novel Blood Music (1985) and has been reprinted many times. It can be found in the anthologies:

• The Year's Best Science Fiction: First Annual Collection (1984), edited by Gardner Dozois
• The 1984 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha
• The Nebula Awards #19 (1984), edited by Martha Randell
• The New Hugo Winners: (1983-85) (1989), edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg
• Visions of Wonder (1996) edited by David G. Hartwell and Milton T. Wolf
• Future on Ice (1989), edited by Orson Scott Card
• Nanotech (1998) edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois
• The Ultimate Cyberpunk (2002) edited by Pat Cadigan
• Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction (2005), edited by Gardner Dozois
• A Science Fiction Omnibus (2007) edited by Brian Aldiss
• The Big Book of Science Fiction (2016), edited by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer

It is included in the collections Tangents (1989) and The Collected Stories of Greg Bear (2002).

Read the full story for free at the Baen website.

An amazing breakthrough in genetic engineering made by Vergil Ulam is considered too dangerous for further research, but rather than destroy his work, he injects himself with his creation and walks out of his lab, unaware of just quite how his actions will change the world. Author Greg Bear's treatment of the traditional tale of scientific hubris is both suspenseful and a compelling portrait of a new intelligence emerging amongst us, irrevocably changing our world.

Do you dream of a city at the end of time?

In a time like the present, in a world that may or may not be our own, three young people - Ginny, Jack, and Daniel - dream of a doomed, decadent city of the distant future: the Kalpa. Ginny's and Jack's dreams overtake them without warning, leaving their bodies behind while carrying their consciousnesses forward, into the minds of two inhabitants of the Kalpa - a would-be warrior, Jebrassy, and an inquisitive explorer, Tiadba - who have been genetically retro-engineered to possess qualities of ancient humanity. As for Daniel: He dreams of an empty darkness - all that his future holds.

But more than dreams link Ginny, Jack, and Daniel. They are fate-shifters, born with the ability to skip like stones across the surface of the fifth dimension, inhabiting alternate versions of themselves. And each guards an object whose origin and purpose are unknown: gnarled, stony artifacts called sum-runners that persist unchanged through all versions of time.

Hunted by others with similar powers who seek the sum-runners on behalf of a terrifying, goddess-like entity known as the Chalk Princess, Ginny, Jack, and Daniel are drawn, despite themselves, into an all but hopeless mission to rescue the future - and complete the greatest achievement in human history.

For the last two years, Peter Russell has mourned the death of one of his twin daughters--who was just ten when she was murdered. Recent news of his best friend's fatal heart attack has now come as another devastating blow. Divorced, despondent, and going nowhere in his career, Peter fears his life is circling the drain. Then Trans comes along. The brainchild of an upstart telecom company, Trans is (as its name suggests) a transcendent marvel: a sleek, handheld interpersonal communication device capable of flawless operation anywhere in the world, at any time. "A cell phone, but not"--transmitting with crystal clarity across a newly discovered, never-utilized bandwidth... and poised to spark a new-technology revolution. When its creators offer Peter a position on their team, it should be a golden opportunity for him. If only he wasn't seemingly going mad.

Everywhere Peter turns, inexplicable apparitions are walking before him or reaching out in torment. After a chilling encounter with his own lost child he begins to grasp the terrifying truth: Trans is a Pandora's box that has tapped into a frequency not of this world... but of the next. And now, via this open channel to oblivion, the dead have gained access to the living. For Peter, and for humankind, a long, shadowy night of the soul has descended, bringing with it the stuff of a horrifying nightmare from which they may never awaken.

Fifty years after professor Challenger's discovery of the Lost World, America's last dinosaur circus has gone bankrupt, leaving a dozen avisaurs, centrosaurs, ankylosaurs, and one large raptor abandoned. Now a daring expedition plans to do the impossible: return the Jurassic giants to the wild. Two filmmakers, a circus trainer, a journalist, and a young Peter Belzoni must find a way to take the dinosaurs across oceans, continents, rivers, jungles, up a mountain that has been isolated for 70,000 years... Then if they make it, all they'll do is face all the prehistoric wonders, dangers, and terrors of the Lost World.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (Early Harvest) - (1988) - essay
• 3 - A Martian Ricorso - (1976) - short story
• 31 - Webster - (1973) - short story
• 51 - Alien - (1988) - essay
• 61 - Raiders of the Lost Ark - On the Side of the Angels - (1988) - essay
• 67 - The Ayatollah of Dune - (1988) - essay
• 73 - Superman: Leaping Over the Changing Decades - (1988) - essay
• 81 - The Shining - (1988) - essay
• 89 - Spiritless Night in Room 502 - (1988) - essay
• 97 - Fahrenheit 451--A 1984 with Hope - (1988) - essay
• 103 - The Machineries of Joy - (1988) - essay
• 129 - Memorial Service for Ted Sturgeon - (1988) - essay

Nebula Award winning and Hugo Award nominated novella.

In this Nebula Award-winning short story by master SF writer Greg Bear, humans are engaged in a long war against an advanced alien race, the Senexi, but the possibility for peace may exist thanks to a young girl who learns the enemy's larger role and humanity's opportunity to evolve.

The story originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, February 1983. It can also be found in the antologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: First Annual Collection (1984), edited by Gardner Dozois, The Best Science Fiction of the Year #13 (1984), edited by Terry Carr and The Nebula Awards #19 (1984). It is included in the collections The Wind from a Burning Woman (1983), The Collected Stories of Greg Bear (2002) and Women In Deep Time (2008). It is part of Tor Double #2: Hardfought/Cascade Point (1988, with Timothy Zahn). The story has also been published as a separate novella.

The planet Hegira is the universe's melting pot. Hundreds of tribes in dozens of cities intermingle in the vast uncharted territory. The only thing holding the people together are the massive Obelisks, the chronicles of the all the truths and falsehoods each tribe has brought to Hegira. Young Bar-Woten is in search of knowledge and he knows the key to the truth about his homeland is contained in the writings of the Obelisks. With his fellow companions, Bar-Woten must travel through Hegira's exotic cities to discover the lies within the words of thousands.

A starship hurtles through the emptiness of space. Its destination-unknown. Its purpose-a mystery.

Now, one man wakes up. Ripped from a dream of a new home-a new planet and the woman he was meant to love in his arms-he finds himself wet, naked, and freezing to death. The dark halls are full of monsters but trusting other survivors he meets might be the greater danger.

All he has are questions-- Who is he? Where are they going? What happened to the dream of a new life? What happened to Hull 03?

All will be answered, if he can survive the ship.

HULL ZERO THREE is an edge-of-your-seat thrill ride through the darkest reaches of space.

Poul Anderson (1926-2001) was one of the seminal figures of 20th century science fiction. Named a Grand Master by the SFWA in 1997, he produced an enormous body of standalone novels (Brain Wave, Tau Zero) and series fiction (Time Patrol, the Dominic Flandry books) and was equally at home in the fields of heroic fantasy and hard SF. He was a meticulous craftsman and a gifted storyteller, and the impact of his finest work continues, undiminished, to this day.

Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds is a rousing, all-original anthology that stands both as a significant achievement in its own right and a heartfelt tribute to a remarkable writer--and equally remarkable man. A nicely balanced mixture of fiction and reminiscence, Multiverse contains thirteen stories and novellas by some of today's finest writers, along with moving reflections by, among others, Anderson's wife, Karen, his daughter, Astrid Anderson Bear, and his son-in-law, novelist and co-editor Greg Bear. (Bear's introduction, My Friend Poul, is particularly illuminating and insightful).

The fictional contributions comprise a kaleidoscopic array of imaginative responses to Anderson's many and varied fictional worlds. A few of the highlights include Nancy Kress's 'Outmoded Things' and Terry Brooks' 'The Fey of Cloudmoor,' stories inspired by the Hugo Award-winning 'The Queen of Air and Darkness;' a pair of truly wonderful Time Patrol stories ('A Slip in Time' by S. M. Stirling and 'Christmas in Gondwanaland' by Robert Silverberg); Raymond E. Feist's Dominic Flandry adventure, 'A Candle;' and a pair of very different homages to the classic fantasy novel, Three Hearts and Three Lions: 'The Man Who Came Late' by Harry Turtledove and 'Three Lilies and Three Leopards (And a Participation Ribbon in Science)' by Tad Williams. These stories, together with singular contributions by such significant figures as Larry Niven, Gregory Benford, and Eric Flint, add up to a memorable, highly personal anthology that lives up to the standards set by the late--and indisputably great--Poul Anderson.

Table of Contents:

• "Outmoded Things" by Nancy Kress
• "The Man Who Came Late" by Harry Turtledove
• "A Slip in Time" by S. M. Stirling
• "Living and Working with Poul Anderson" by Karen Anderson
• "Dancing on The Edge of The Dark" by C. J. Cherryh
• "The Lingering Joy" by Stephen Baxter
• "Operation Xibalba" by Eric Flint
• "Tales Told" by Astrid Anderson Bear
• "The Fey of Cloudmoor" by Terry Brooks
• "Christmas in Gondwanaland" by Robert Silverberg
• "Latecomers" by David Brin
• "An Appreciation of Poul Anderson" by Jerry Pournelle
• "A Candle" by Raymond E. Feist
• "The Far End" by Larry Niven
• "Bloodpride"" by Gregory Benford
• "Three Lilies and Three Leopards (And a Participation Ribbon in Science)" by Tad Williams

In a major science fiction event, Nebula Award winners Poul Anderson, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin, Nancy Kress, and Frederik Pohl join forces--under the editorship of Robert Silverberg--to create a triumph of world-building: Murasaki, a science fiction novel in six parts. Murasaki is completely based in hard science and what we know of the Murasaki star system--which actually exists.

Authors Poul Anderson and Frederik Pohl painstakingly constructed the working mechanics of a real star system, projecting the atmosphere, geology, chemistry, flora, and fauna of the two planets on which the work is set. They and four more of America's best science fiction authors--known for their "hard" speculative fiction--used Pohl and Anderson's essays (included as appendixes to this book) as source material to create this amazing story of the earliest human explorations of the twenty-third century--an epic tale of discovery, conflict, and resolution told by the masters of imaginative writing.

Murasaki, star HD 36395... where the gristmill of Darwinism produced two vastly different alien ecologies on two closely revolving planets, circling each other since scouring lightning storms stirred them to life billions of years ago. The two planets are Genji, violent and reckless, filled with a variety of winged life; and Chujo, a cooling world of ancient, crumbling cities, slowly going through its glacial death throes. Both planets are host to intelligences that are strange in ways Man can only guess at...and the planets have an eerie connection that will soon come to fruition after the first human explorers arrive. Exceeding light-speed for twenty years and decelerating by plasma exhaust drive, the first ship bearing humans arrives at Murasaki. The wealth, pride, and future of nations depend upon the outcome as the first contact team sets foot on a Murasaki-system world--while the hope of mankind, a planet capable of supporting human life, awaits the first explorer to touch the strangely colored alien soil....

Contains:

• Introduction (Murasaki) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Treasures of Chujo - novelette by Frederik Pohl
• Genji - novelette by David Brin
• Language - novelette by Poul Anderson
• World Vast, World Various - novella by Gregory Benford
• A Plague of Conscience - novelette by Greg Bear
• Birthing Pool - novelette by Nancy Kress
• Appendix A: Design for Two Worlds (Murasaki) - essay by Poul Anderson
• Appendix B: Murasaki's Worlds (Murasaki) - essay by Frederik Pohl

WFA and Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Omni, February 1982. The story can also be found in the anthologies The First Omni Book of Science Fiction (1984), edited by Ellen Datlow and Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (1986), edited by Bruce Sterling, and the collections The Wind from a Burning Woman (1983), The Venging (1992) and The Collected Stories of Greg Bear (2002).

Curiosity may kill Larry Fowler. A scientist from New Mexico, Fowler is hot on the trail of a mysterious phenomenon that is known to freeze animals instantly and can demolish an entire town.

Part ghost story, part science fiction, part political treatise, Greg Bear's novel tracks Fowler on his journey to discover the true nature of the PSYCHLONE.

This short story originally appeared in Nature, December 15, 2005. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 11 (2005), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.

Read the full story for free at Nature.

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the collection Tangents (1998). It has also been publihsed as a chapbook and is included in the collection W3: Women in Deep Time (2003).

Read the full story for free at the Bean website.

Table of Contents:

• vii - Introduction: On Losing the Taint of Being a Cannibal - (2004) - essay
• 1 - Webster - (1973) - short story
• 21 - The White Horse Child - (1979) - short story
• 47 - Richie by the Sea - (1980) - short story
• 67 - Sleepside Story - (1988) - novella
• 123 - Dead Run - (1985) - short story
• 159 - The Visitation - (1987) - short story
• 165 - Through Road No Whither - (1985) - short story
• 173 - Petra - (1982) - short story
• 199 - The Way of All Ghosts - [Thistledown] - (1999) - novelette

In a theocratic world far into the future, cities control their own movements and organization. Constantly moving, growing and decaying, taking care of every need their inhabitants might think of, the cities have decided that humans are no longer a necessary part of their architecture, casting them out to wander in the wilderness and eke out a meager subsistence. To the exiled humans, the cities represent a paradisiacal Eden, a reminder of all they cannot attain due to their sinful and unworthy natures. But things are beginning to change. People are no longer willing to allow the cities to keep them out, choosing instead to force an entry and plunder at will. The cities are starting to crumble and die because they have no purpose or reason to continue living without citizens. One woman, called mad by some and wise by others, is the only human allowed to inhabit a city. From her lonely and precarious position at the heart of one of the greatest cities ever, she must decide the fate of the relationship between human society and the ancient strongholds of knowledge, while making one last desperate attempt to save the living cities.

Multi-award winning author Greg Bear established himself as the most ambitious and imaginative of the potential successors to Arthur C. Clarke with his bestselling space operas Eon and Eternity. Tangents is his first collection of short stories and includes two tales that won both Hugo and Nebula Awards: 'Tangents' a remarkable account of contact with beings from another dimension, and the original short version of his classic novel Blood Music.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay
• Blood Music - (1983) - novelette
• Sleepside Story - (1988) - novella
• Webster - (1973) - shortstory
• A Martian Ricorso - (1976) - shortstory
• Dead Run - (1985) - shortstory
• Schrödinger's Plague - (1982) - shortstory
• Through Road, No Whither - (1985) - shortstory
• Tangents - (1986) - shortstory
• Sisters - (1989) - novelette
• The Machineries of Joy - (1988) - essay

Hugo and Nebula Award winning short story. It originally appeared in Omni, January 1986. The story has been reprinted many times and can, among others, be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection (1987), edited by Gardner Dozois, Nebula Awards 22 (1988), edited by George Zebrowski, The New Hugo Winners, Volume II (1992), edited by Isaac Asimov, The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF (1994), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, and Hackers (1996), edited by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann. It was collected in Tangents (1989) and The Collected Stories of Greg Bear (2002).

This collection of Greg Bear's major short fiction ably demonstrates why Bear is one of science fiction's most popular authors. The multiple Hugo and Nebula Award winner offers here a feast of his most famous stories and novellas, accompanied by thoughtful introductions and afterwords that provide insight into the writer and his process.

This collection contains Bear's earliest published fiction from the late 1960s and early 1970s as well his remarkable award-winning work from the 1980s and 1990s—stories like the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novella-length version of "Blood Music" and the Hugo and Nebula Award-winner "Tangents." Also included are The Wind from a Burning Woman," in which despair and anger inspire a young woman's terrible act of vengeance; "The White Horse Child," a loving look at the nascence of the creative impulse; "Dead Run," in which the road to hell is paved with concrete, and not all intentions are good; and over twenty others.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: The Blank Space - (2002) - essay by Greg Bear
• Blood Music - (1983)
• Sisters - (1989)
• A Martian Ricorso - (1976)
• Schrödinger's Plague - (1982)
• Heads - (1990)
• The Wind from a Burning Woman - (1978)
• The Venging - (1975)
• Perihesperon - (1975)
• Scattershot - (1978)
• Plague of Conscience - (1992)
• The White Horse Child - (1979)
• Dead Run - (1985)
• Petra - (1982)
• Webster - (1973)
• Through Road, No Whither - (1985)
• Tangents - (1986)
• The Visitation - (1987)
• Richie by the Sea - (1980)
• Sleepside Story - (1988)
• Judgment Engine - (1995)
• The Fall of the House of Escher - (1996)
• The Way of All Ghosts - (1999)
• MDIO Ecosystems Increase Knowledge of DNA Languages (2215 C.E.) - (2000)
• Hardfought - (1983)
• Appendix - essay by Greg Bear

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Future Visions: Original Science Fiction Inspired by Microsoft (2015), edited by Jennifer Henshaw and Allison Linn. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Ten (2016), edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Reynard, a young apprentice, seeks release from the drudgery of working for his fisherman uncle in the English village of Southwold. His rare days off lead him to strange encounters--not just with press gangs hoping to fill English ships to fight the coming Spanish Armada, but strangers who seem to know him--one of whom casts a white shadow.

The village's ships are commandeered, and after a fierce battle at sea, Reynard finds himself the sole survivor of his uncle's devastated hoy. For days he drifts, starving and dying of thirst, until he is rescued by a galleon, also lost--and both are propelled by a strange current to the unknown, northern island of Thule. Here, Reynard Reynard must meet his destiny in a violent clash between humans and gods.

A collection of 6 early stories.

Table of Contents:

• Preface (1983) - essay by Greg Bear
• The Wind from a Burning Woman (1978)
• The White Horse Child (1979)
• Petra (1982)
• Scattershot (1978)
• Mandala (1978)
• Hardfought (1983)

Blending fierce, fast plots with vivid characters and mind-bending ideas, Greg Bear has mastered a powerful alchemy of suspense, science, and action in his gripping thrillers. Darwin's Radio was hailed across the country as one of the best books of the year. His newest novel, Vitals, begins with a harrowing descent to a netherworld at the very bottom of the sea - and then explodes to the surface in sheer terror.

Hal Cousins is one of a handful of scientists nearing the most sought after discovery in human history: the key to short-circuiting the aging process. Fueled by a wealth of research, an overdose of self-confidence, and the money of influential patrons to whom he makes outrageous promises, Hal experiments with organisms living in the hot thermal plumes in the ocean depths. But as he journeys beneath the sea, his other world is falling apart.

Across the country, scientists are being inexplicably murdered - including Hal's identical twin brother, who is also working to unlock the key to immortality. Hal himself barely eludes a cold-blooded attack at sea, and when he returns home to Seattle, he finds himself walking into an eerie realm where voices speak to him from the dead... where a once-brilliant historian turned crackpot is leading him on a deadly game of hide-and-seek... and where the beautiful, rich widow of his twin is more than willing to pick up the pieces of Hal's life - and take him places he's never been before.

Suddenly Hal is trapped inside an ever-twisting maze of shocking revelations. For he is not the first person to come close to ending aging forever - and those who came before him will stop at nothing to keep the secret to themselves. Now every person on earth is at risk of being made an unsuspecting player in one man's spectacular and horrifying master plan.

From the bottom of Russia's Lake Baikal to a billionaire's bionic house built into the cliffs of the Washington seashore, from the darkest days of World War II and the reign of Josef Stalin to the capitalist free-for-all that is the United States, Vitals tells an astounding tale of the most unimaginable scientific secret of all - exposed by the quest for immortality itself...

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (W3: Women in Deep Time) - (2003) - essay
• 1 - Sisters - (1989) - novelette
• 49 - Hardfought - (1983) - novella
• 149 - Scattershot - (1978) - novelette
• 199 - Speech: Guest of Honor, Millennium Philcon 59th World Science Fiction Convention - 2001 - (2001) - essay

Greg Bear's powerfully written, brilliantly inventive novels combine cutting-edge science and unforgettable characters, illuminating dazzling new technologies--and their dangers. Now, in Darwin's Radio, Bear draws on state-of-the-art biological and anthropological research to give us an ingeniously plotted thriller that questions everything we believe about human origins and destiny--as civilization confronts the next terrifying step in evolution.

A mass grave in Russia that conceals the mummified remains of two women, both with child--and the conspiracy to keep it secret... A major discovery high in the Alps: the preserved bodies of a prehistoric family--the newborn infant possessing disturbing characteristics... A mysterious disease that strikes only pregnant women, resulting in miscarriage. Three disparate facts that will converge into one science-shattering truth.

Molecular biologist Kaye Lang, a specialist in retroviruses, believes that ancient diseases encoded in the DNA of humans can again come to life. But her theory soon becomes chilling reality. For Christopher Dicken--a "virus hunter" at the Epidemic Intelligence Service--has pursued an elusive flu-like disease that strikes down expectant mothers and their offspring. The shocking link: something that has slept in our genes for millions of years is waking up.

Now, as the outbreak of this terrifying disease threatens to become a deadly epidemic, Dicken and Lang, along with anthropologist Mitch Rafelson, must race against time to assemble the pieces of a puzzle only they are equipped to solve. An evolutionary puzzle that will determine the future of the human race... If a future exists at all.

A fiercely intelligent, utterly enthralling novel of adventure and ideas, genetics and evolution, a fast-paced thriller that is grounded in the timeless human themes of struggle, loss, and redemption, Darwin's Radio is sure to become one of the most talked-about books of the year.

Greg Bear's Nebula Award–winning novel, Darwin's Radio, painted a chilling portrait of humankind on the threshold of a radical leap in evolution - one that would alter our species forever. Now Bear continues his provocative tale of the human race confronted by an uncertain future, where "survival of the fittest" takes on astonishing and controversial new dimensions.

DARWIN'S CHILDREN

Eleven years have passed since SHEVA, an ancient retrovirus, was discovered in human DNA - a retrovirus that caused mutations in the human genome and heralded the arrival of a new wave of genetically enhanced humans. Now these changed children have reached adolescence... and face a world that is outraged about their very existence. For these special youths, possessed of remarkable, advanced traits that mark a major turning point in human development, are also ticking time bombs harboring hosts of viruses that could exterminate the "old" human race.

Fear and hatred of the virus children have made them a persecuted underclass, quarantined by the government in special "schools," targeted by federally sanctioned bounty hunters, and demonized by hysterical segments of the population. But pockets of resistance have sprung up among those opposed to treating the children like dangerous diseases - and who fear the worst if the government's draconian measures are carried to their extreme.

Scientists Kaye Lang and Mitch Rafelson are part of this small but determined minority. Once at the forefront of the discovery and study of the SHEVA outbreak, they now live as virtual exiles in the Virginia suburbs with their daughter, Stella - a bright, inquisitive virus child who is quickly maturing, straining to break free of the protective world her parents have built around her, and eager to seek out others of her kind.

But for all their precautions, Kaye, Mitch, and Stella have not slipped below the government's radar. The agencies fanatically devoted to segregating and controlling the new-breed children monitor their every move - watching and waiting for the opportunity to strike the next blow in their escalating war to preserve "humankind" at any cost.

The first novel to be released in The Foreworld Saga, The Mongoliad: Book One, is an epic-within-an-epic, taking place in 13th century. In it, a small band of warriors and mystics raise their swords to save Europe from a bloodthirsty Mongol invasion. Inspired by their leader (an elder of an order of warrior monks), they embark on a perilous journey and uncover the history of hidden knowledge and conflict among powerful secret societies that had been shaping world events for millennia.

But the saga reaches the modern world via a circuitous route. In the late 19th century, Sir Richard F. Burton, an expert on exotic languages and historical swordsmanship, is approached by a mysterious group of English martial arts aficionados about translating a collection of long-lost manuscripts. Burton dies before his work is finished, and his efforts were thought lost until recently rediscovered by a team of amateur archaeologists in the ruins of a mansion in Trieste, Italy. From this collection of arcana, the incredible tale of The Mongoliad was recreated.

Full of high adventure, unforgettable characters, and unflinching battle scenes, The Mongoliad ignites a dangerous quest where willpower and blades are tested and the scope of world-building is redefined.

A note on this edition: The Mongoliad began as a social media experiment, combining serial story-telling with a unique level of interaction between authors and audience during the creative process. Since its original iteration, The Mongoliad has been restructured, edited, and rewritten under the supervision of its authors to create a more cohesive reading experience and will be published as a trilogy of novels. This edition is the definitive edition and is the authors' preferred text.

This riveting second installment in Stephenson and company's epic tale focuses on the aftermath of the world-shattering Mongolian invasion of 1241 and the difficult paths undertaken by its most resilient survivors.

The Shield Brethren, an order of warrior monks, search for a way to overthrow the horde, even as the invaders take its members hostage. Forced to fight in the Mongols' Circus of Swords, Haakon must prove his mettle or lose his life in the ring. His bravery may impress the enemy, but freedom remains a distant dream.

Father Rodrigo receives a prophecy from God and believes it's his mission to deliver the message to Rome. Though a peaceful man, he resigns himself to take up arms in the name of his Lord. Joining his fight to save Christendom are the hunter Ferenc, orphan Ocyrhoe, healer Raphael, and alchemist Yasper, each searching for his place in history.

Deftly blending fact and fantasy, The Mongoliad: Book Two captures the indomitable will to survive against immense odds.

A note on this edition: The Mongoliad began as a social media experiment, combining serial story-telling with a unique level of interaction between authors and audience during the creative process. Since its original iteration, The Mongoliad has been restructured, edited, and rewritten under the supervision of its authors to create a more cohesive reading experience and will be published as a trilogy of novels. This edition is the definitive edition and is the authors' preferred text.

The shadow of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II hangs over the shattered Holy Roman Church as the cardinals remain deadlocked, unable to choose a new pope. Only the Binders and a mad priest have a hope of uniting the Church against the invading Mongol host. An untested band of young warriors stands against the dissolute Khan, Onghwe, fighting for glory and freedom in the Khan's sadistic circus of swords, and the brave band of Shield-Brethren who set out to stop the Mongol threat single-handedly race against their nemesis before he can raise the entire empire against them. Veteran knight Feronantus, haunted by his life in exile, leads the dwindling company of Shield-Brethren to their final battle, molding them into a team that will outlast him. No good hero lives forever. Or fights alone.

In this third and final book of the Mongoliad trilogy from Neal Stephenson and company, the gripping personal stories of medieval freedom fighters collide to form an epic, imaginative recounting of a moment in history when a world in peril relied solely on the courage of its people.

A note on this edition: The Mongoliad began as a social media experiment, combining serial story-telling with a unique level of interaction between authors and audience during the creative process. Since its original iteration, The Mongoliad has been restructured, edited, and rewritten under the supervision of its authors to create a more cohesive reading experience and will be published as a trilogy of novels. This edition is the definitive edition and is the authors' preferred text.

On September 28th, a geologist working in Death valley finds a mysterious new cinder cone in very well-mapped area.

On October 1st, the government of Australia announces the discovery of an enormous granite mountain. Like the cinder cone, it wasn't there six months ago....

Something is happening to Planet Earth, and the truth is too terrifying to consider....

The Forge of God described the destruction of Earth itself by self-replicating robots, Von Neumann machines designed to use the planet's mass to create more robotic creatures and spread throughout the Galaxy. Only a few humans have survived, aided by a mysterious alien race known only as “The Benefactors”, who arrived at Earth too late.

Now the small group of human survivors is determined to track down the criminal race who launched the planet killers. Humanity is given a starship by The Benefactors, and driven only by revenge they set out to find the unknown beings who are responsible for the destruction of Earth, and many other worlds.

100,000 years ago, the galaxy was populated by a great variety of beings.
But one species--eons beyond all others in both technology and knowledge--achieved dominance.
They ruled in peace but met opposition with quick and brutal effectiveness.
They were the Forerunners--the keepers of the Mantle, the next stage of life in the Universe's Living Time.
And then they vanished.
This is their story.

Bornstellar Makes Eternal Lasting is a young rebellious Forerunner. He is a Manipular, untried--yet to become part of the adult Forerunner society, where vast knowledge and duty waits. He comes from a family of Builders, the Forerunners' highest and most politically powerful rate. It is the Builders who create the grand technology that facilitates Forerunner dominance over the known universe. It is the Builders who believe they must shoulder the greatest burden of the Mantle--as shepherds and guardians of all life.

Bornstellar is marked to become a great Builder just like his father.

But this Manipular has other plans.

He is obsessed with lost treasures of the past. His reckless passion to seek out the marvelous artifacts left behind by the Precursors--long-vanished superbeings of unknowable power and intent---forces his father's hand.

Bornstellar is sent to live among the Miners, where he must come to terms with where his duty truly lies.

But powerful forces are at play. Forerunner society is at a major crux. Past threats are once again proving relentless. Dire solutions--machines and strategies never before contemplated--are being called up, and fissures in Forerunner power are leading to chaos.

On a Lifeworker's experimental planet, Bornstellar's rebellious course crosses the paths of two humans, and the long lifeline of a great military leader, forever changing Bornstellar's destiny ...and the fate of the entire galaxy.

Halo: Cryptum by Greg Bear is a tale of life, death, intergalactic horror, exile, and maturity. It is a story of overwhelming change--and of human origins. For the Mantle may not lie upon the shoulders of Forerunners forever.

The second in a new series of three HALO novels, Greg Bear's Halo: Primordium dives back into the Forerunner saga.

A long time ago, I was a living, breathing human being. I went mad. I served my enemies. They became my only friends.

Since then, I've traveled back and forth across this galaxy, and out to the spaces between galaxies--a greater reach than any human before me.

You have asked me to tell you about that time. Since you are the last true Reclaimer, I must obey. Are you recording? Good. Because my memory is failing rapidly. I doubt I'll be able to finish the story.

Once, on my birth-world, a world I knew as Erde-Tyrene, and which now is called Earth, my name was Chakas...

In the wake of apparent self-destruction of the Forerunner empire, two humans--Chakas and Riser--are like flotsam washed up on very strange shores indeed.

Captured by the Master Builder, misplaced during a furious battle in space, they now find themselves on an inverted world where horizons rise into the sky, and where humans of all kinds are trapped in a perilous cycle of horror and neglect. For they have become both research animals and strategic pawns in a cosmic game whose madness knows no end--a game of ancient vengeance between the powers who seeded the galaxy with life, and the Forerunners who expect to inherit their sacred Mantle of duty to all living things.

In the company of a young girl and an old man, Chakas begins an epic journey across a lost and damaged Halo in search of a way home, an explanation for the warrior spirits rising up within, and for the Librarian's tampering with human destiny.

This journey will take them into the Palace of Pain, the domain of a powerful and monstrous intelligence who claims to be the Last Precursor, and who now has control of both this Halo and the fate of Forerunners and Humans alike.

Called the Captive by Forerunners, and the Primordial by ancient human warriors, this intelligence has taken charge of, and retasked, the Master Builder's cruel researches into the Flood--which it may have itself unleashed on the galaxy more than ten thousand years before.

In the last years of the Forerunner empire, chaos rules. The Flood--a horrifying shape-changing parasite--has arrived in force, aided by unexpected allies. Internal strife within the ecumene has desperately weakened Forerunner defenses.

Too little, too late, the legal rate of Juridicals is only now investigating possible crimes by the Master Builder and others. Evidence-gathering agents known collectively as Catalog have been dispatched to collect testimony from the Librarian and both Didacts: the Ur-Didact, treacherously abandoned in a Flood-infested system, and the Bornstellar Didact, who accompanies the Librarian as she preserves specimens against the dire possibility of Halo extermination.

Facing the imminent collapse of their civilization, the Librarian and the Ur-Didact reveal what they know about the relationship between the long-vanished Precursors and the Flood.

The Precursors created many technological species, including humanity and the Forerunners. But the roots of the Flood may be found in an act of enormous barbarity, carried out beyond our galaxy ten million years before...

Because of that barbarism, a greater evil looms. Only the Ur-Didact and the Librarian--husband and wife pushed into desperate conflict--hold the keys to a solution.

Facing the consequences of a mythic tragedy, one of them must now commit the greatest atrocity of all time-to prevent an insane evil from dominating the entire universe... in Greg Bear's Halo: Silentium.

The Nebula Awards Showcase volumes have been published annually since 1966, reprinting the winning and nominated stories of the Nebula Awards, voted on by the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).

The editor of this year's volume, selected by SFWA's anthology Committee (chaired by Mike Resnick), is American science fiction and fantasy writer Greg Bear, author of over thirty novels, including the Nebula Award-winning Darwin's Radio and Moving Mars.

This anthology includes the winners of the Andre Norton, Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master, Rhysling, and Dwarf Stars Awards, as well as the Nebula Award winners, and features Ann Leckie, Nalo Hopkinson, Rachel Swirsky, Aliette de Bodard, and Vylar Kaftan, with additional articles and poems by authors such as Robin Wayne Bailey, Samuel R. Delany, Terry A. Garey, Deborah P Kolodji, and Andrew Robert Sutton.

Table of Contents:

• The Long, Hot Summer of Science Fiction - essay by Greg Bear
• If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love - (2013) - shortfiction by Rachel Swirsky
• The Sounds of Old Earth - (2013) - shortstory by Matthew Kressel
• Selkie Stories Are for Losers - shortfiction by Sofia Samatar
• Selected Program Notes from the Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer - (2013) - shortfiction by Kenneth Schneyer
• Alive, Alive Oh - (2013) - shortstory by Sylvia Spruck Wrigley
• The Waiting Stars - (2013) - novelette by Aliette de Bodard
• Paranormal Romance - (2013) - novelette by Christopher Barzak
• They Shall Salt the Earth with Seeds of Glass - (2013) - novelette by Alaya Dawn Johnson
• Pearl Rehabilitative Colony for Ungrateful Daughters - (2013) - novelette by Henry Lien
• In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind - (2013) - novelette by Sarah Pinsker
• The Litigation Master and the Monkey King - (2013) - novelette by Ken Liu
• The Weight of the Sunrise - (2013) - novella by Vylar Kaftan
• Excerpt from Ancillary Justice - shortfiction by Ann Leckie
• Finding Frqnkie: Remembering Frank M. Robinson - essay by Robin Wayne Bailey
• Excerpt from Sister Mine - shortfiction by Nalo Hopkinson
• A Life Considered as a Prism of Ever-Precious Light: An Appreciation of Samuel R. Delany - essay by Nalo Hopkinson
• Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones - (1968) - novelette by Samuel R. Delany
• The Cat Star - (2013) - poem by Terry A. Garey
• Basho after Cinderella (III) - (2012) - poem by Deborah P. Kolodji
• Into Flight - (2013) - poem by Andrew Robert Sutton

The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem has been blown to bits by extremists, and, in retaliation, thousands have died in another major attack on the United States. Now the FBI has been dispatched to deal with a new menace. A plague targeted to ethnic groups--Jews or Muslims or both--has the potential to wipe out entire populations. But the FBI itself is under political assault. There's a good chance agents William Griffin, Fouad Al-Husam, and Jane Rowland will be part of the last class at Quantico. As the young agents hunt a brilliant homegrown terrorist, they join forces with veteran bio-terror expert Rebecca Rose. But the plot they uncover--and the man they chase--prove to be far more complex than anyone expects.

The world just keeps getting tougher and more complicated. America teeters on the edge of bankruptcy because of crushing foreign debt and an apparent savior, The Talos Corporation, delivers training for soldiers and security forces around the world, logistical support and badly-needed troops economically, but with a hidden cost that's both sinister and disturbing.

The three rookie FBI agents who survived the challenges portrayed in Quantico, have gone their separate ways but seem fated to be drawn back together in an alliance against a surprising challenge for which no one seems prepared. Rebecca Rose is brought back from an extended sabbatical when the President is shot and her second-in-command is implicated in an horrific crime--and all the threads point deeper into Talos's secretive activities. Fouad Al-Husam, working undercover inside Talos, has uncovered and been forced to hide vital information of a takeover plot that threatens America's independence.

Nathan Trace, victim of a violent incident in the Middle East, struggles with post-traumatic stress and seems to be recovering through participation in a treatment program, code-named Mariposa, which has unexpected side-effects that turn patients into brilliant, detached and sociopathic individuals--very smart and extremely deadly.

Only a desperate combination of misfits and survivors can combat an apparently inevitable collapse of American organization that will lead to the fall of democracy.

Los Angeles 2047, a city on the eve of the Binary Millennium. Public Defender Mary Choy faces her toughest assignment yet - to bring back Emanuel Goldsmith, acclaimed poet turned mass killer, from the heart of a Caribbean island that is about to explode in revolution.

In an abandoned mining colony at the Lunar Ice Pit Station, two experiments may change science forever. One is achieving Absolute Zero -- a temperature so cold it can bend the laws of physics. The other involves 410 human heads, severed and frozen for decades, whose memories may hold the keys to death... and beyond.

Moving Mars is a story of human courage and love set within the greater saga of a planetary liberation movement. Mars is a colonial world, governed by corporate interests on Earth. The citizens of Mars are hardworking, but held back by their lack of access to the best education, and the desire of the Earthly powers to keep the best new inventions for themselves. The young Martians -- the second and third generations born on Mars -- have little loyalty to Earth, and a strong belief that their planet can be independent. The revolution begins slowly, but will grow in power over decades of political struggle until it becomes irresistible.

Told through the eyes of an extraordinary character, Casseia Majumdar, a daughter of one of Mars' oldest, most conservative Binding Multiples, Moving Mars is Greg Bear's brilliant conception of the human colonization of the red planet, with lovingly painted details and a grand historical sweep, embellishing an audacious scientific speculation.

In the sixth decade of the twenty-first century, Earth has been transformed. Nanotechnology has been perfected, giving humans the ability to change their environment and themselves down to the cellular level. And the study of the mind has brought a revolution in human psychotherapy and artificial intelligence. It's a sane and perfect world. Almost.

Isaac Asimov's renowned Foundation Trilogy pioneered many of the familiar themes of modern science fiction and shaped many of its best writers. With the permission and blessing of the Asimov estate, the epic saga left unfinished by the Grand Master himself now continues with this second masterful volume.

With Hari Seldon on trial for treason, the Galactic Empire's long-anticipated migration to Star's End is about to begin. But the mission's brilliant robot leader, R. Daneel Olivaw, has discovered a potential enemy far deadlier--and closer--than he ever imagined. One of his own kind.

A freak accident erases the basic commandments in humaniform robot Lodovik Trema's positronic brain. Now Lodovic's service to humankind is no longer bound by destiny, but by will. To ensure his loyalty, Daneel has Lodovic secretly reprogrammed. But can he be trusted? Now, other robots are beginning to question their mission--and Daneel's strategy. And stirrings of rebellion, too, are infecting their human counterparts. Among them is a young woman with awesome psychic abilities, a reluctant leader with the power to join man and robot in a quest for common freedom.or mutual destruction.

There is a song you dare not sing ... a melody that you dare not play, a concerto that you dare not hear: it is called a Song of Power.

It is a gateway to another world - a gate that will lock behind you as you pass, barring you from the Earth forever.

Resist at all cost. For it is a world of great danger and great beauty - and it is not good to be human in the Realm of the Sidhe.

He'd been held captive in the land of the Sidhe, and when he returned home to Los Angeles, all he wanted was to live like a normal, average man again.

But there are hauntings in the city streets, and strange bodies in a crumbling old hotel, a Song of Power in the air and an ancient creature summoning him from beneath the waters of a loch in Scotland.

Michael had returned to Caligornia at last. But the Sidhe were following him home.

An awesome, sentient force of protostars - Corona - has taken control of a stranded team of Vulcan scientists. The USS Enterprise has come on a rescue mission, with a female reporter and a new computer that can override Kirk's command. Suddenly, the rescuers must save themselves and the entire Universe - before Corona unleashes a Big Bang!

This is an unforgettable journey, stretching from the farthest reaches of known space to the battlefield of a young boy's heart, where a secret struggle is being waged that will decide the fate of billions.

That boy is twelve-year-old Anakin Skywalker. The Force is strong in Anakin... so strong that the Jedi Council, despite misgivings, entrusted the young Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi with the mission of training him to become a Jedi Knight. Obi-Wan--like his murdered master Qui-Gon-- believes Anakin may be the Chosen One, the Jedi destined to bring balance to the Force. But first Obi-Wan must help his undisciplined, idealistic apprentice, who still bears the scars of slavery, find his own balance.

Dispatched to the mysterious planet of Zonama Sekot, source of the fastest ships in the galaxy, Obi-Wan and Anakin are swept up in a swirl of deadly intrigue and betrayal. For the Trade Federation is interested in Zonama Sekot as well. Raith Sienar, a brilliant but unscrupulous weapons and ship designer, seizes the opportunity to make a killing by stealing the secret of the superfast ships.

As Sienar strikes with all the brutal power of the Trade Federation, Obi-Wan and Anakin sense a disturbance in the Force unlike any they have encountered before. It seems there are more secrets on Zonama Sekot than meet the eye.

The search for those secrets will threaten the bond between Obi-Wan and Anakin... and bring the troubled young apprentice face-to-face with his deepest fears--and his darkest destiny.

The New York Times Book Review hails this collection of thirteen dazzling stories and a rare screenplay by Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Greg Bear as a "solid introduction to the oeuvre of a classic writer."

Greg Bear--author of Queen of Angels, Eon, and Hull Zero Three, among many other hugely popular novels--has an ability to transform challenging scientific concepts into gripping fiction that has won him numerous awards and an avid following. He has written novels about interstellar war, human evolution, intelligent bacteria, international terrorism, and the exploration of deep space--but he doesn't stop there. This brilliant collection of Bear's stories, each newly revised by the author, proves he is a master of the short form as well. Just Over the Horizon offers thirteen mind-bending explorations of the near future... or just beyond the border of conventional reality. The volume includes:

• "Blood Music," a Hugo and Nebula award-winning classic and the basis for the novel of the same name--and the first science-fictional exploration of nanotechnology;
• "Sisters," in which high school students find maturity and family by confronting a tragic genetic destiny;
• "Tangents," winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards, about a persecuted scientist who seeks refuge in a better world;
• "Dead Run," a tale of union truck drivers ferrying souls through Death Valley into Hell, adapted for an episode of the television series The Twilight Zone;
• "Sleepside Story," which Bear calls one of his favorite pieces, an urban fantasy tale that takes a music student by Night Metro to the Sleepside mansion of a magical woman of the night, inverting "Beauty and the Beast" in a very modern mirror;
• "Genius," the screenplay written for the television series Outer Limits, but never produced.

6 dazzling stories, freshly revised for this volume, plus new introductions, commentary, and reminiscences from the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of War Dogs, Eternity, and The Forge of God

Greg Bear is the author of more than 30 books, from thrillers (Darwin's Radio, Vitals) to science fiction (Blood Music, Eon, Hull Zero Three) to pure fantasy (The Infinity Concerto, The Serpent Mage). He has won 5 Nebula and 2 Hugo Awards, his works have been translated into more than 20 languages, and his titles have sold millions of copies worldwide. But his skills are not confined to writing at full-length novels: He is also the author of dozens of brilliant short stories, novellas, and novelettes. Far Thoughts and Pale Gods contains 6 highly acclaimed stories, each newly revised by the author, that illustrate Bear's abundant breadth of talent. The volume includes:

• "Heads," which marks the first time the concept of quantum computing appears in science fiction--though it is a vision of 400 frozen heads that will remain in the reader's memory;
• "The Wind from a Burning Woman," the first story set in the universe that spawned the novels Eon and Eternity;
• "Plague of Conscience," which explores what it means to be alien--and whether that can be comprehended without understanding what it means to be human;
• "Scattershot," beginning "The teddy bear spoke excellent Mandarin," a gripping deep-space adventure that is also a tribute to legendary female science fiction writer James Tiptree Jr.

These and the remaining entries--"Mandala" and "Petra"--form a remarkable collection showcasing the talents of a major American writer.

Each story is accompanied by an introduction and an afterword written especially for this volume.

7 remarkable stories, newly revised for this collection, showcase the award-winning talents of one of the 21st century's finest writers of speculative fiction

Whether penning science fiction (Moving Mars, Queen of Angels, War Dogs), alternate history (the Mongoliad series with Neal Stephenson), or fantasy (Sleepside, The Infinity Concerto), Greg Bear tells stories that engage the reader's intellect while gripping the imagination. His short fiction is no exception. Beyond the Farthest Suns takes readers to the far end of the universe and the borders of scientific understanding. The volume includes:

• "The Way of All Ghosts," set in the bestselling universe of Eon and Eternity;
• "The Venging," which takes a group of desperate fugitives fleeing alien dominance down into the awesome gateway of a black hole;
• "The Fall of the House of Escher," in which a world-famous illusionist is brought back from the dead for a terrifying command performance;
• "Hardfought," the critically acclaimed Nebula Award-winning story showcasing a far future in which a legendary female pilot and her alien captor are forced into a tapestry of echoing lives where they struggle to communicate and find the deepest secrets of their history.

These works, along with 3 additional entries, stunningly illustrate how Bear interweaves the rationality of science with remarkable characters whose thoughts and emotions reflect our own.

The 21st century was on the brink of nuclear confrontation when the 300 kilometer-long stone flashed out of nothingness and into Earth's orbit. NASA, NATO, and the UN sent explorers to the asteroid's surface...and discovered marvels and mysteries to drive researchers mad.

For the Stone was from space--but perhaps not our space; it came from the future--but perhaps not our future; and within the hollowed asteroid was Thistledown. The remains of a vanished civilization. A human--English, Russian, and Chinese-speaking--civilization. Seven vast chambers containing forests, lakes, rivers, hanging cities...

And museums describing the Death; the catastrophic war that was about to occur; the horror and the long winter that would follow. But while scientists and politicians bickered about how to use the information to stop the Death, the Stone yielded a secret that made even Earth's survival pale into insignificance.

Multiple Nebula and Hugo Award-winner Greg Bear returns to the Earth of his acclaimed novel Eon—a world devastated by nuclear war. The crew of the asteroid-starship Thistledown has thwarted an attack by the Jarts by severing their link to the Way, an endless corridor that spans universes. The asteroid settled into orbit around Earth and the tunnel snaked away, forming a contained universe of its own.

Forty years later, on Gaia, Rhita Vaskayza recklessly pursues her legacy, seeking an Earth once again threatened by forces from within and without. For physicist Konrad Korzenowski, murdered for creating The Way, and resurrected, is compelled by a faction determined to see it opened once more. And humankind will discover just how entirely they have underestimated their ancient adversaries.

The Way is a tunnel through space and time. The entrance is through the hollow asteroid Thistledown and the space station Axis City that sits at the asteroid's center. From there the Flawships ride the center of the Way, traveling to other worlds and times.

Now the rulers of Axis City have discovered that a huge group of colonists has secretly entered one of the interdicted worlds along the Way. In some ways Lamarkia is very Earth-like--but its biology is extraordinary. A single genetic entity can take many forms, and span a continent. There are only a few of these "ecos" on Lamarkia, and the effect of human interaction on them is unknown.

Olmy Ap Sennon has been sent to secretly assess the extent of the damage. But he will find far more than an intriguing alien biology--for on their new world the secret colonists have returned to the old ways of human history: war, famine, and ecological disaster. On this mission, Olmy will learn about the basics: love, responsibility, and even failure...

Hardfought:

The Nebula award-winning short story by master SF writer Greg Bear.

Humans are engaged in a long war against an advanced alien race, the Senexi, but the possibility for peace may exist thanks to a young girl who learns the enemy's larger role and humanity's opportunity to evolve.

Cascade Point:

This Hugo award winning story is set in a Universe where the pilot of a star ship, as it travels between the stars, passes through "Cascade Points" where he or she will see a pattern of images showing how he or she might have appeared in a slightly different reality in which different major lifestyle choices had been made.

The Gurus came in peace, bearing gifts.

They were a highly advanced, interstellar species who brought amazingly useful and sophisticated technology to the human race. There was, of course, a catch. The Gurus warned of a far more malevolent life form, beings who have hounded the Gurus from sun to sun, planet to planet, across the cosmos. Pundits have taken to calling them the Antagonists - or Antags - and they have already established a beachhead on Mars. In exchange for all they've done for us, the Gurus would now like our help.

Enter Master Sergeant Michael Venn, a veteran Skyrine (a Marine who is specially trained for off-world combat) who is dropped onto the Red Planet with his band of brothers on a mission to take down as many Antags as possible.

But from the moment they're dropped through the thin Martian atmosphere, their mission goes horribly, terribly wrong. From a group of female special ops Skyrines with secret orders, to mysterious humans who've settled on Mars, to the overwhelming and highly-reinforced Antags themselves, Venn and his brothers will face impossible odds just to survive - let alone make it home alive.

After barely surviving his last tour on Mars, Master Sergeant Michael Venn finds himself back on earth in enforced isolation. Through a dangerous series of operations he returns to Mars to further his investigation into the Drifters - ancient artifacts suddenly reawakened on the red planet.

But another front in the war leads his team to make the difficult journey to Saturn's moon, Titan. Here, in the cauldron of war, hides new truths about the Drifters, the origin of life in our solar system and the plans of the supposedly benevolent Gurus, who have been "sponsoring" and supporting humanity in their fight against outside invaders.

Killing Titan is the second book in the epic interstellar War Dogs trilogy from master of science fiction, Greg Bear.

After the revelations on Titan about what the supposedly benign alien Gurus are really up to, Master Sergeant Michael Venn now has a whole new war on his hands.

As the Antag invasion wreaks havoc in the distant reaches of the solar system, Venn voyages towards the battle that could decide the fate of not just the human race, but that of the whole galaxy.

It's here that Venn will finally understand his destiny and that of every intelligent being in the solar system - including the enigmatic Gurus.

Take Back the Sky is the climactic book in the epic interstellar War Dogs trilogy from master of science fiction, Greg Bear.