The year is 2113. Scorge has arrived in the system of Epsilon Indi with the YAX-KUK-MO. Together with Toiber Arkroid, Vasina and Lai Pi, The Shwakan is following vague clues in search of the homeworld of an ancient robot civilisation. The trader is bound by a promise he made to 40028, a robot of this people that he recovered from an asteroid on a trading trip. Scorge follows the sparse clues and scans the supposed target system. Despite an extensive search, the centre world remains untraceable. The home of 40028 seems to have disappeared, just like the builders of the spherical robots, who anchored a high cosmic moral standard in the basic programming of their artificial creatures. Where have the brothers of the spherical robot gone? Scorge doesn’t give up and persists. He investigates every moon of Epsilon Indi, hoping to soon discover a trace of the Techno-Clerics.
A Solar Union scout ship lands on the Kuiper object Quaoar. The crew, led by squadron leader Bill Davis, finds alien artefacts on the dwarf planet. The team enters an underground cavern and discovers a terrifying, frozen alien creature during their exploration. After the alien’s rigidity has given way, the spacemen have no choice but to flee. Through the extraterrestrial’s extreme bioelectric radiation, the humans receive fragments of its thoughts. The creature transmits an impulse that takes root in the minds of the landing team: Globuster! The bestial-looking creature behaves in an extremely hostile manner. Peaceful contact seems impossible. One crew member is killed in the collision, the others manage to escape from the Globuster cave. The bizarre intelligence creature begins to race, destroys the scout ship of the exploration team and starts a hunt for the survivors. It has the ability to detect other creatures by their mental aura. While trying to escape, Bill Davis and Caroline Tubian realise that they are inferior to the extraterrestrial in every way. Hand weapons they carry with them prove ineffective. The Globuster envelops itself in a protective field against which there seems to be no remedy. At the last second, a commando from the Triton Base appears and is able to evacuate the two astronauts. The alien retreats in the face of the supposed superiority and escapes in a lenticular spaceship. Before doing so, it triggers a fateful process and changes the orbital path of the dwarf planet. It now lies exactly on a collision course with Triton ...
The Soulwanderer and his Spike pose the greatest threat in the history of the Solar Union. The extraterrestrial being, which resides in the eternal ice of Antarctica, is pursuing a sinister plan. It is determined to rob united humanity of all its modern achievements, to dominate and mentally subjugate every individual. The reasons for the extraterrestrial's actions are unknown. At this point, no one knows that the present is linked to the distant past. History seems to be repeating itself. Once before, a battle was fought on Earth against the Soulwanderer, but there were no humans who resolutely opposed him. While about a million years ago the Progonauts were fighting for survival, this time human civilisation is on the brink of extinction. In the greatest need and as a last means of defence, the leaders of the Solar Union use a special weapon. It is the Army of Nanobots.
NEBULAR is a science fiction series that transports you to the year 2113. It is an era in which nation states are a thing of the past. United in the Solar Union, Humanity faces its last great challenge: the exploration of the outer Solar System. The Union Fleet already maintains scientific outposts on the distant moons of the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Private companies are mining for raw materials and large spaceships are travelling between the inner planets. The causes of earlier civilisational setbacks, such as wars, diseases and poverty, have been overcome. Around ten billion Union citizens populate the Earth, with another 250 million humans settling in the growing colonies on the Luna and Mars. The furthest outpost from Earth is located on Neptune's moon Triton. It is an icy cold world where mainly scientists and private companies are based. The crew's main task is to explore the Kuiper Belt, also known as the Outer Ring, with its numerous dwarf planets. Astrophysicists are using the remoteness of the celestial body to advance the search for extraterrestrial life. The scientists of the new SETI project use their receiving antennas to examine the neighbouring stars for potential radio signals from alien civilisations. A total of around two thousand humans are working on the Triton Base. Space travellers from Earth have seen the ice deserts on Jupiter's moon Europa, the dust storms of Mars and the primeval hydrocarbon seas on Saturn's moon Titan with their own eyes, but so far they have not found any extraterrestrial life. One of Humanity's most important goals remains to make peaceful contact with alien civilisations in space. Unconsciously, most scientists hope that these life forms are similar to us and that communication is possible. So far, the search has been unsuccessful, but this does not rule out the possibility that they exist in the infinite expanses of space and are already watching us.
NEBULAR is a science fiction series that takes you to the year 2113. It is an era in which nation states are a thing of the past. United in the Solar Union, humanity faces its last great challenge: the exploration of the outer Solar System. The Union Fleet already maintains scientific outposts on the distant moons of the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Private companies are prospecting for raw materials and spaceships shuttle between the planets. The causes of earlier civilisational setbacks, such as wars, disease and poverty, have been overcome. Around ten billion citizens of the Solar Union populate the Earth, and another 250 million people settle in the growing colonies on the Earth’s moon and Mars. The furthest outpost from Earth is on Neptune’s moon Triton. It is a frigid world populated mainly by scientists and private companies. The crew’s main task is to explore the Kuiper Belt with its dwarf planets, also called the Outer Ring. Astrophysicists use the remoteness of the celestial body to advance the search for extraterrestrial life. The scientists of the new SETI project use their receiving antennas to examine neighbouring stars for potential radio signals from alien civilisations. A total of around two thousand men and women are on duty at the Triton Base. The icy deserts on Jupiter’s moon Europa, the dust storms of Mars and the primordial hydrocarbon seas on Saturn’s moon Titan have been seen by space travellers from Earth with their own eyes, but so far they have not found extraterrestrial life. One of humanity’s most important goals remains to make peaceful contact with alien civilisations in space. Unconsciously, most scientists hope that these life forms are similar to us and that communication is possible. So far, the search has been unsuccessful, but this does not rule out the possibility that they exist in the vastness of space and are already observing us.
Hugo and Shirley Jackson award-winning Peter Watts stands on the cutting edge of hard SF with his acclaimed novel, Blindsight Two months since the stars fell... Two months of silence, while a world held its breath. Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route. So who do you send to force introductions with unknown and unknowable alien intellect that doesn't wish to be met? You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist—an informational topologist with half his mind gone—as an interface between here and there. Pray they can be trusted with the fate of a world. They may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Global Nomads provides a unique introduction to the globalization of countercultures, a topic largely unknown in and outside academia. Anthony D’Andrea examines the social life of mobile expatriates who live within a global circuit of countercultural practice in paradoxical paradises. Based on nomadic fieldwork across Spain and India, the study analyzes how and why these post-metropolitan subjects reject the homeland in order to shape an alternative lifestyle. They become artists, therapists, exotic traders and bohemian workers seeking to integrate labor, mobility and spirituality within a cosmopolitan culture of expressive individualism. These countercultural formations, however, unfold under neo-liberal regimes that appropriate utopian spaces, practices and imaginaries as commodities for tourism, entertainment and media consumption. In order to understand the paradoxical globalization of countercultures, Global Nomads develops a dialogue between global and critical studies by introducing the concept of 'neo-nomadism' which seeks to overcome some of the shortcomings in studies of globalization. This book is an essential aide for undergraduate, postgraduate and research students of Sociology, Anthropology of Globalization, Cultural Studies and Tourism Studies.
Humankind has expanded out into interstellar space using star gates-technological remnants left behind by an ancient, long-vanished race. But the technology comes with a price. Among the stars, humanity encountered the Fallers, a strange alien race bent on nothing short of genocide. It's all-out war, and humanity is losing. In this fragile situation, a new planet is discovered, inhabited by a pre-industrial race who experience "shared reality"-they're literally compelled to share the same worldview. A team of human scientists is dispatched-but what they don't know is that their mission of first contact is actually a covert military operation. For one of the planet's moons is really a huge mysterious artifact of the same origin as the star gates . . . and it just may be the key to winning the war. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
This acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel of hope and terror from an award-winning author "pairs well with 1984 or The Handmaid's Tale" and includes a foreword by N. K. Jemisin (John Green, New York Times). When global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos in the early 2020s, California becomes full of dangers, from pervasive water shortage to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to live to see another day. Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others' emotions. Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith . . . and a startling vision of human destiny.
"Cerebral, passionate, and beautifully drawn. A highly distinctive and engaging book." --Joe Sacco, author of Palestine Witchbody is an invitation to experience what lies hidden beneath the surface of our everyday lives—to see the magic in all things. A plant, a tree, a coffee cup, garbage bins, you, me—they're all magic. Witchcraft is simply the power we’re all born with to awaken our senses to this magic, to awaken our “witchbody.” And that awakening is essential if we are to reframe our experience with Nature and with our precious planet.
