Samuel Bolls’ plan was simple—go to California and parlay his camera and editing skills and the connection with his famous uncle into an entertainment industry career—but fate had other ideas. Rachael Nue, aspiring actress, with enough genetic enhancements to make her perfect saw Samuel as her way to stardom. And the giant living blimps flying overhead had their own fiery date with destiny. A hundred years after the supernova flare had set everything back, the world had been on two conflicting paths to recovery—industrial vs. genetic engineering. Samuel and Rachael’s opportunity to document history was soon going to put them in the cross hairs of a war that would steer the world in one direction, or the other. Henry Melton’s Project Saga stretches from the current day into a far future where we remake the solar system and discover humanity’s place in the universe. It’s a history not just of new technologies, but of personal choices.
"GRIPPING. ... One of the greatest polar rescue efforts ever mounted." —Wall Street Journal The riveting true story of the largest polar rescue mission in history: the desperate race to find the survivors of the glamorous Arctic airship Italia, which crashed near the North Pole in 1928. Triumphantly returning from the North Pole on May 24, 1928, the world-famous exploring airship Italia—code-named N-4—was struck by a terrible storm and crashed somewhere over the Arctic ice, triggering the largest polar rescue mission in history. Helping lead the search was Roald Amundsen, the poles’ greatest explorer, who himself soon went missing in the frozen wastes. Amundsen’s body has never been found, the last victim of one of the Arctic’s most enduring mysteries . . . During the Roaring Twenties, zeppelin travel embodied the exuberant spirit of the age. Germany’s luxurious Graf Zeppelin would run passenger service from Germany to Brazil; Britain’s Imperial Airship was launched to connect an empire; in America, the iconic spire of the rising Empire State Building was designed as a docking tower for airships. But the novel mode of transport offered something else, too: a new frontier of exploration. Whereas previous Arctic and Antarctic explorers had subjected themselves to horrific—often deadly—conditions in their attempts to reach uncharted lands, airships held out the possibility of speedily soaring over the hazards. In 1926, the famed Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen—the first man to reach the South Pole—partnered with the Italian airship designer General Umberto Nobile to pioneer flight over the North Pole. As Mark Piesing uncovers in this masterful account, while that mission was thought of as a great success, it was in fact riddled with near disasters and political pitfalls. In May 1928, his relationship with Amundsen corroded beyond the point of collaboration, Nobile, his dog, and a crew of fourteen Italians, one Swede, and one Czech, set off on their own in the airship Italia to discover new lands in the Arctic Circle and to become the first airship to land men on the pole. But near the North Pole they hit a terrible storm and crashed onto the ice. Six crew members were never seen again; the injured (including Nobile) took refuge on ice flows,unprepared for the wretched conditions and with little hope for survival. Coincidentally, in Oslo a gathering of famous Arctic explorers had assembled for a celebration of the first successful flight from Alaska to Norway. Hearing of the accident, Amundsen set off on his own desperate attempt to find Nobile and his men. As the weeks passed and the largest international polar rescue expedition mobilized, the survivors engaged in a last-ditch struggle against weather, polar bears, and despair. When they were spotted at last, the search plane landed—but the pilot announced that there was room for only one passenger. . . . Braiding together the gripping accounts of the survivors and their heroic rescuers, N-4 Down tells the unforgettable true story of what happened when the glamour and restless daring of the zeppelin age collided with the harsh reality of earth’s extremes.
Mars was terraformed, and the biotech engineers could walk on Luna without breathing gear. Earth had three moons and hundreds of orbiting habitats in the Clusters. The great Terraforming Project was hitting its stride, but there were conflicts over which nations would get favored colonization sites on Luna and the antitechnology Three Sins cult was demanding that it all stop. But what disturbed Dr. Bet Nomad, circuit doctor for many of the minor habitats in the Clusters was a simple cough that seemed to be found every place she visited. The more she learned, using banned genetic technology, the tighter her own limitations restricted what she could do—she was banned genetic tech herself, living in the shadows lifetime after lifetime. But she was certain something was wrong—something evil. Humanicide is the final chapter of the Earth Branch of the Project Saga. Henry Melton has been crafting the Project history line since the 70s, building an alternate history of mankind that stretches from the current day to a new destiny among the stars.
On the poisonous world of Ko, the U’tanse—a breed of psychically gifted humans—struggle to find their destiny under the brutal control of their Cerik overlords. Life or death was at the whim of their masters’ claws. Joshua was the first freeborn U’tanse, born to Cyclops, a blinded worker, and Debbie, a Festival girl, at a hidden refuge composed of slaves discarded to die by their masters. Joshua’s first assignment as part of the group’s network of free telepathic spies was to monitor Samson, a U’tanse warrior bred to be a giant, strong enough to fight alongside the predatory Cerik, and deeply loyal to his master, Elehadi, the most powerful of the ruling Cerik Names. But when Elehadi decided to eliminate a whole colony of the U’tanse, Joshua discovered his job had become a lot more hazardous than just monitoring the giant’s thoughts from their secret refuge. This branch of the Project Saga reveals the struggles of a splinter of humanity, making their way on a world that could never be their own.
Captain Pearce never intended to be a teacher, but the only way she could escape her early retirement on Earth and get back out into the vacuum was to share the human side of the great Terraforming Project to young political appointees hoping to become Fleet cadets. Hiding her old secrets had given her a unique view of the past failures and the ongoing dream that powered the greatest macro-engineering task of all—remaking the Solar System into new habitable planets for mankind. Stationed on Ceres, formerly an asteroid, now the second largest moon of Earth and headquarters of the Project, also gave her the opportunity to pull off a little project of her own—if she could play the game before they found her out. Henry Melton has been writing Project stories for magazines and anthologies for decades and here in one volume are collected old favorites and several new, previously unpublished works spanning from the beginnings of the Fleet as a simple space transport organization through its expansion to become the mover of planets and changer of worlds.
Centuries after the Plague, detailed in Humanicide, humanity lives on... Charles Fasail was born to be a student on the island nation of Alp, a colony of scholars on an illiterate world—the terraformed Luna. For seven years he survived as an indentured dockworker after his home was destroyed in a cataclysmic firestorm. Earning his way out of servitude and joining a wagon train into the interior lands to find a place of his own should have been his bright, new beginning. All that was lost to an attack by the forest dwelling Kimmer and the betrayal by his older brother. It left him on a solitary path, struggling to be the Alpine scholar he was born to be. He had to wander a fascinating world similar to Far Earth in the sky above, but shaped by the lighter gravity, the 48-hour days, and the oxygen-rich atmosphere created by its transformation. All he had was his early training and, hidden in his backpack, his father’s impulse gun, a relic from the ancient days of lost technology. Alpine Duty is the first book of the Lunar Alpine trilogy. Henry Melton has been crafting the Project history line since the 70s, building an alternate history of mankind that stretches from the current day to a new destiny among the stars.
A beautifully written, unforgettable novel of a troubled marriage, set against the lush landscape and political turmoil of Trinidad—by the award-winning author of The Mermaid of Black Conch and Passiontide Monique Roffey's Orange Prize-shortlisted novel is a gripping portrait of postcolonialism that stands among great works by Caribbean writers like Jamaica Kincaid and Andrea Levy. When George and Sabine Harwood arrive in Trinidad from England, George is immediately seduced by the beguiling island, while Sabine feels isolated, heat-fatigued, and ill-at-ease. As they adapt to new circumstances, their marriage endures for better or worse, despite growing political unrest and racial tensions that affect their daily lives. But when George finds a cache of letters that Sabine has hidden from him, the discovery sets off a devastating series of consequences as other secrets begin to emerge.
Of all the worlds in the multiverse, Adrathea is the last David Render would willingly revisit. What happened there broke his heart and drove him to retire from the UN Multiverse Survey. To hang up his sword forever. Then Treyvar of the Alvehn brings disturbing news. Adrathea is in peril, and David’s old comrade needs his help to stop a rogue Alvehn from usurping the throne and ruling the planet forever as an immortal tyrant. To set things right, David must return to the one place he never wants to see again. But Adrathea is a world to which David’s fate is bound by the most intimate of ties. He has no choice. Adrathea calls, and he must answer.
