Ben Bova
This annual tradition from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America collects the best of the year's stories, as well as essays and commentary on the current state of the genre and predictions for future science fiction and fantasy films, art, and more.
This year's award-winning authors include Jack McDevitt, James Patrick Kelly, Peter S. Beagle, Elizabeth Hand, and more. The anthology also features essays from celebrated science fiction
...At first, the dueling machine seemed like a benign or even a helpful invention, allowing people to blow off steam and solve conflicts in a virtual reality-like environment. But before long, an evil tyrant discovers a way to use the device to inflict real and lasting harm on participants. Will the intrepid scientist who invented the technology be able to stop him before it's too late?
3) Mars Life
Jamie Waterman has made an important discovery on Mars. A cliff dwelling reveals the fact that an intelligent race lived on the red planet sixty-five million years ago, only to be driven into extinction by the crash of a giant meteor. But now the exploration of Mars is itself under threat of extinction, as the ultraconservative New Morality movement gains control of the United States government and cuts off all funding for the Mars program.
Meanwhile,
...4) Voyagers
Ex-astronaut turned physicist Keith Stoner knew that the fiery object hurtling toward the Earth was an alien spacecraft—but the world might never know. He was trapped in an iron cordon of secrecy, for the discovery had set off a brutal power struggle among the elite, raging from the sacred halls of the Vatican to the corridors of the Kremlin and the Pentagon. Each nation wanted to be the first to contact the aliens, to learn their superior
...When Keith Stoner awoke, he found himself in a world changed almost beyond recognition. Eighteen years before, Stoner had been the American member of a joint US–Soviet mission to capture an alien ship. The Soviets had to pull out, but Stoner persisted, and while on the strange ship, he fell into suspended animation.
Jo Camerata, the ambitious young student who fell in love with Stoner, is now head of Vanguard Industries, which has recovered
...Astronaut Keith Stoner, member of a joint US-Soviet mission to capture an alien ship that had entered the solar system, was trapped alone aboard the spacecraft. But he didn't die; he lay frozen in deep sleep for fifteen years, kept alive by alien biotechnology. Now Stoner is something more than just a man. While asleep he was inoculated with nanotechnology designed to repair his body, expand his brain, and let him live forever. Stoner also carries
...7) The Hittite
Ben Bova brings us an exciting new take on the timeless legend of Troy.
This is the tale of Lukka, the Hittite soldier who traveled across Greece in search of the vicious slave traders who kidnapped his wife and sons. He tracks them all the way to war-torn Troy, where he proves himself a warrior to rank with noble Hector and swift Achilles.
In this fascinating work of historical fiction, Lukka is also the man who builds the Trojan horse
...Microbiologist Michael Cochrane has been murdered. His brother, Paul, wants to find out who did it and why. It's clear that Michael was working with cyanobacteria, the bacteria that crack water molecules and release free oxygen. It's less clear why this would get anybody killed.
Accompanied by a beautiful industrial spy, Elena Sandoval, Paul follows the trail from California to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Along the way, the truth emerges: Michael
...9) The Return
In the 1980s, an alien starship visited Earth. While investigating what appeared to be a sarcophagus bearing the preserved body of its builder, astronaut Keith Stoner was trapped and cryogenically frozen. After his body was eventually returned to Earth and revived, Stoner discovered that he had acquired alien powers. Putting them to use, he built a new starship and left Earth. Now, after more than a century of exploring the stars, Keith Stoner
...Earth is an old planet, and her teeming masses are running out of resources—and time. It is up to men such as Jeff Holman to discover a haven for Earth's millions. Altair VI is one such planet, and Holman is determined to transform this world into one where the human race can survive.
Star probes long ago informed Earth that Altair VI had a flourishing ecology with one very tough beast at the top of the food chain, one that will have
...11) Able One
When a nuclear missile launched by a rogue North Korean faction explodes in space, the resulting shock wave destroys most of the world's satellites and all global communication. US military satellites, designed to withstand such an assault, reveal two more missiles on launch pads in North Korea, ready to be deployed. Faced with the threat of a thermonuclear attack, the United States has only one possible defense: Able One.
Able One, or ABL-1,
...12) Return to Mars
What Jamie Waterman discovered on Mars was astonishing. What he survived was remarkable—but it was only the beginning.
Six years after the first manned Martian expedition, a second has been announced, this one motivated purely by its profitable potential. Half-Navajo geologist Jamie Waterman, a veteran of the first mission, feels his conflicted soul beckoning him back to the eerie, unforgiving planet. As commander of the new exploratory
...13) Moonrise
There is a future of astonishing possibilities waiting on a lifeless world of surprising contrasts, where sub-frigid darkness abuts the blood-boiling light—a future threatened by greed and jealousy, insanity and murder.
A twenty-first-century US aerospace company has developed the first permanent human settlement on the moon. The settlement is made possible by major scientific breakthroughs, particularly in the practical use of nanotechnology—microscopic
...In this provocative, gripping, and startling novel, bestselling author Ben Bova delivers a knockout read with his trademark blend of cutting-edge science and unrelenting suspense.
Some see stem-cell research as mankind's greatest scientific breakthrough; others, a blasphemous attempt to play God. Suddenly, the possibility of immortality exists. Two brothers, both doctors, stand on opposite sides of the controversy. To Arthur Marshak, his
...A hero without peer or scruples, Sam Gunn has a nose for trouble, money, and women though not necessarily in that order. A man with the ego (and stature) of a Napoleon, the business acumen of a P. T. Barnum, and the raging hormones of a teenage boy, Sam is the finest astronaut NASA ever trained and dumped. But more than money, more than women, Sam Gunn loves justice. (And he really does love money and women.) Whether he’s suing the Pope, helping
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