From the author of Jurassic Park, Timeline, and Sphere comes a captivating thriller about a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism, which threatens to annihilate human life. Five prominent biophysicists have warned the United States government that sterilization procedures for returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere. Two years later, a probe satellite falls to the earth and lands in a desolate region of northeastern Arizona. Nearby, in the town of Piedmont, bodies lie heaped and flung across the ground, faces locked in frozen surprise. What could cause such shock and fear? The terror has begun, and there is no telling where it will end.
Captain Beka Valentine and her crew accept an assignment to deliver a pregnant Nietzchean princess to safety, but their mission is complicated by Tyr Anasazi, a Nietzchean warrior on a mission to raise money for an army.
The award-winning Mass Effect series captured the renegade hearts and paragon souls of gamers everywhere with it's memorable characters, stunning visuals, and visceral combat! Now, journey to a new galaxy with Dark Horse's The Art of Mass Effect Andromeda- featuring never-before-seen art of the hotly anticipated game's characters, arsenal, locations, vehicles, and more! This deluxe hardcover is an essential addition to any gamer's collection! Exclusive never before seen concept art from the making of Mass Effect Andromeda! The comprehensive companion to the wildly anticipated Mass Effect Andromeda!
THE OFFICIAL TIE-IN TO THE LATEST INSTALLMENT OF ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR AND SUCCESSFUL GAME FRANCHISES EVER - MASS EFFECT Titan Books will work closely with acclaimed video game developer BioWare to publish three brand new novels set in the universe of MASS EFFECT(TM): ANDROMEDA. The action will weave directly into the new game, chronicling storylines developed in close collaboration with the BioWare game team. The action takes place concurrently with the adventure of the game itself, setting up the story and events of the game adding depth and detail to the canonical MASS EFFECT saga.
"A heady, infectious celebration."—The New Yorker "Shaughnessy's voice is smart, sexy, self-aware, hip . . . consistently wry, and ever savvy."—Harvard Review Brenda Shaughnessy's heartrending third collection explores dark subjects—trauma, childbirth, loss of faith—and stark questions: What is the use of pain and grief? Is there another dimension in which our suffering might be transformed? Can we change ourselves? Yearning for new gods, new worlds, and new rules, she imagines a parallel existence in the galaxy of Andromeda. From "Our Andromeda": Cal, faster than the lightest light, so much faster than love, and our Andromeda, that dream, I can feel it living in us like we are its home. Like it remembers us from its own childhood. Oh, maybe, Cal, we are home, if God will let us live here, with Andromeda inside us, doesn't it seem we belong? Now and then, will you help me belong here, in this place where you became my child, and I your mother out of some instant of mystery of crash and matter . . . Brenda Shaughnessy was born in Okinawa, Japan and grew up in Southern California. She is the author of Human Dark with Sugar (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), winner of the James Laughlin Award and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Interior with Sudden Joy (FSG, 1999). Shaughnessy’s poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Harper's, The Nation, The Rumpus, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Rutgers University, Newark, and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, son and daughter.
Fifty years after humanity desperately sought and found a new home on Jurthaan IV, tension with neighboring planet Palnach necessitates a peace treaty as well as the arranged marriage of Princess Kylee Wen Dao to Palnach’s Prince Maju. Taren Platinum is the best—now banished—guard on Princess Kylee’s security team. He’s also in love with her. After crashing the royal wedding, rescuing the princess, and fleeing Jurthaan IV in a stolen spacecraft, Taren finds himself on the run with Kylee, pursued by soldiers from both Jurthaan IV and Palnach. The lovers crash-land on Cartiss, leaving them stranded on a dying planet with targets on their backs. To escape, Taren must repair the ship with the help of a select few trustworthy citizens from the downtrodden city of Hurren. Without an official governing authority, the local gangsters are running Hurren and refusing to spread the wealth. While Taren’s priority is getting off Cartiss and disappearing somewhere safe, Kylee believes he has what it takes to turn things around in Hurren. Drawing attention to himself is the last thing he wants to do, but his princess is right. If there’s one thing Taren can’t overlook, it’s those who threaten the lives of innocents, even when his own life is on the line.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Fifty years after The Andromeda Strain made Michael Crichton a household name—and spawned a new genre, the technothriller—the threat returns, in a gripping sequel that is terrifyingly realistic and resonant. The Evolution is Coming. In 1967, an extraterrestrial microbe came crashing down to Earth and nearly ended the human race. Accidental exposure to the particle—designated The Andromeda Strain—killed every resident of the town of Piedmont, Arizona, save for an elderly man and an infant boy. Over the next five days, a team of top scientists assigned to Project Wildfire worked valiantly to save the world from an epidemic of unimaginable proportions. In the moments before a catastrophic nuclear detonation, they succeeded. In the ensuing decades, research on the microparticle continued. And the world thought it was safe… Deep inside Fairchild Air Force Base, Project Eternal Vigilance has continued to watch and wait for the Andromeda Strain to reappear. On the verge of being shut down, the project has registered no activity—until now. A Brazilian terrain-mapping drone has detected a bizarre anomaly of otherworldly matter in the middle of the jungle, and, worse yet, the tell-tale chemical signature of the deadly microparticle. With this shocking discovery, the next-generation Project Wildfire is activated, and a diverse team of experts hailing from all over the world is dispatched to investigate the potentially apocalyptic threat. But the microbe is growing—evolving. And if the Wildfire team can’t reach the quarantine zone, enter the anomaly, and figure out how to stop it, this new Andromeda Evolution will annihilate all life as we know it.
The Andromeda Galaxy, or M31, is an attractive galaxy for astronomers. It is close to us, it is of about the size of our galaxy, it provides some intriguing observational puzzles because the galaxy is nearly edge-on, and many objects can be studied in detail, because they are still sufficiently bright. With the current developments in instrumentation with which increasingly detailed studies of the Andromeda Galaxy can be made, this book provides a solid foundation for the start of new observations. This book is a mine of information about M31. It can be used as a reference by insiders, and at the same time it provides easy access for newcomers to the field.
The Andromeda Galaxy – Messier’s M31 – has an almost romantic appeal. It is the most distant object and the only extragalactic object that is visible to the unaided human eye. Now known to be about 21⁄2 million light-years away, it appears in the sky to be several times the width of the full Moon under good seeing conditions. The Andromeda Galaxy and the Rise of Modern Astronomy examines the astronomical studies of Andromeda and its importance to our developing knowledge of the universe. The book discusses how M31 was described both by the Ancients, but more importantly, by astronomers from the nineteenth century to the present. While at the start of the twentieth century the universe was thought of as a finite cosmos dominated by the Milky Way, the study of Andromeda galaxy shattered that image, leading ultimately to the conception of an infinite universe of countless galaxies and vast distances. Even today, M31 is a major focal point for new astronomical discoveries, and it also remains one of the most popular (and rewarding) celestial objects for amateur astronomers to observe and study. This book reveals the little-known history of M31 and the scientists who study it. For all who are interested in astronomy, the skies, and perhaps even the origins of the universe, The Andromeda Galaxy and the Rise of Modern Astronomy provides a first-of-its-kind accessible, informative, and highly readable account of how the study and observation of this celestial object has driven the development of astronomy from ancient times to the present.
