"Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those young rebels who are compelled, in spite of the extreme danger, to venture illegally into the Zone to collect the mysterious artifacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is dominated by the place and the thriving black market in the alien products. But when he and his friend Kirill go into the Zone together to pick up a "full empty," something goes wrong. And the news he gets from his girlfriend...

In the last decade Bruce Sterling has emerged a pioneer of crucial, cutting-edge science fiction, his work lauded by critics and contemporaries alike. Now for the first time in one volume comes every word Bruce Sterling has ever written on the world of the Schismatrix - where the Shaper revolutionaries struggle against the aristocratic Mechanists for ultimate control of mankind's destiny. Experience the classic full-length novel, Schismatrix, plus...

"Robert A. Heinlein has been hailed as one of the most forward-thinking science fiction writers of all time, and Expanded Universe (presented in two volumes) offers the perfect collection of his works to provide readers with true insights into his uniquely creative mind. Heinlein personally selected each story or essay for inclusion in this collection, which is ordered chronologically, starting with his first sale in 1939 of "Life-Line" to Astounding...

"When level-headed Francie arrives in Roswell, New Mexico, for her college roommate's UFO-themed wedding-complete with a true-believer bridegroom-she can't help but roll her eyes at all the wide-eyed talk of aliens, which obviously don't exist. Imagine her surprise, then, when she is abducted by one. Odder still, her abductor is far from what the popular media have led her to expect, with a body like a tumbleweed and a mass of lightning-fast tentacles....

"An alien virus ravages the world, its results as random as a hand of cards. Those infected either draw the black queen and die, draw and ace and receive superpowers, or draw the joker and are bizarrely mutated. Nevertheless, human nature reigns supreme. And one fo the most enduring human drives is the search for love. Aces and jokers alike both want to find it, or have lost it...or perhaps just want to use it for personal gain. Within these stories,...

"Kevin is a thirtysomething homebody, happily committed to his hydroponics-expert girlfriend, Amber, as they grow weed in their basement in Vancouver. Out of the blue, Amber announces that she has been selected for a reality show where she will compete for one of two seats on the first human-led mission to Mars. If selected, she must stay on Mars for good, because the technology to come home doesn't exist yet. Is this a suicide mission or a bold new...

When she fell asleep, the world was doomed. When she awoke, it was dead. In the wake of a fever that decimated the earth's population-killing women and children and making childbirth deadly for the mother and infant-the midwife must pick her way through the bones of the world she once knew to find her place in this dangerous new one. Gone are the pillars of civilization. All that remains is power-and the strong who possess it. A few women like her...

The office of a minor left-wing political magazine has been blown up. People are missing. The rest of the world is on the brink of nuclear annihilation. Are the events connected? Are the events what they seem? So begins the wild ride that is The Illuminatus Trilogy. Comprised of three stories: The Eye in the Pyramid, The Golden Apple, and Leviathan, the book unfolds with the history of time as its backdrop and the figures of history among its characters....

The ninth book in the bestselling British madcap time-travelling series, served with a dash of wit that seems to be everyone's cup of tea. Behind the seemingly innocuous facade of St. Mary's Institute of Historical Research, a different kind of academic work is taking place. Just don't call it "time travel"--these historians "investigate major historical events in contemporary time." And they aren't your harmless eccentrics either; a more accurate...

"Behind the seemingly innocuous facade of St. Mary's Institute of Historical Research, a different kind of academic work is taking place. Just don't call it "time travel"--these historians "investigate major historical events in contemporary time." And they aren't your harmless eccentrics either; a more accurate description, as they ricochet around history, might be unintentional disaster-magnets. The Chronicles of St. Mary's tells the chaotic adventures...