Millie, a Ddrymmian Sting baby, has always dreamt of exploring the realms of StoryEarth beyond her homeland. Fed up with her community, with all its superstitions and endless ceremonies, she craves the glamour and prestige of the Preservation Precinct. Naïve about what that glamour conceals, and disobeying her family, Millie moves to the Preservation Precinct and proves herself worthy—until the unthinkable happens. Millie is ambitious in a land that favors humility. When she rises, she ruins everything. By the time she finally understands what’s important, will she survive to do something about it?
Hailed by The New York Times for writing “with wonderful clarity about science . . . that effortlessly teaches as it zips along,” nationally bestselling author Robert M. Hazen offers a radical new approach to Earth history in this intertwined tale of the planet’s living and nonliving spheres. With an astrobiologist’s imagination, a historian’s perspective, and a naturalist’s eye, Hazen calls upon twenty-first-century discoveries that have revolutionized geology and enabled scientists to envision Earth’s many iterations in vivid detail—from the mile-high lava tides of its infancy to the early organisms responsible for more than two-thirds of the mineral varieties beneath our feet. Lucid, controversial, and on the cutting edge of its field, The Story of Earth is popular science of the highest order. "A sweeping rip-roaring yarn of immense scope, from the birth of the elements in the stars to meditations on the future habitability of our world." -Science "A fascinating story." -Bill McKibben
From the author of Exhalation, an award-winning short story collection that blends "absorbing storytelling with meditations on the universe, being, time and space ... raises questions about the nature of reality and what it is to be human" (The New York Times). Stories of Your Life and Others delivers dual delights of the very, very strange and the heartbreakingly familiar, often presenting characters who must confront sudden change—the inevitable rise of automatons or the appearance of aliens—with some sense of normalcy. With sharp intelligence and humor, Chiang examines what it means to be alive in a world marked by uncertainty, but also by beauty and wonder. An award-winning collection from one of today's most lauded writers, Stories of Your Life and Others is a contemporary classic. Includes “Story of Your Life”—the basis for the major motion picture Arrival
A series of provocative essays on how the fantastic genres evolve and grow In this wide-ranging series of essays, an award-winning science fiction critic explores how the related genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror evolve, merge, and finally "evaporate" into new and more dynamic forms. Beginning with a discussion of how literary readers "unlearned" how to read the fantastic during the heyday of realistic fiction, Gary K. Wolfe goes on to show how the fantastic reasserted itself in popular genre literature, and how these genres themselves grew increasingly unstable in terms of both narrative form and the worlds they portray. More detailed discussions of how specific contemporary writers have promoted this evolution are followed by a final essay examining how the competing discourses have led toward an emerging synthesis of critical approaches and vocabularies. The essays cover a vast range of authors and texts, and include substantial discussions of very current fiction published within the last few years.
The fantastic collection of bestselling author Brian Herbert’s short fiction, a volume packed with highly imaginative, intriguing stories and ideas. This is the first collection of Brian Herbert’s short fiction, a volume that is packed with highly imaginative, intriguing stories and ideas. In the previously unpublished “Death of the Internet,: Under Burning Skies,” the internet is wiped out—forever!—leaving hundreds of millions of people unable to function without a technology that they have become addicted to, and totally dependent upon. Another previously unpublished story, "Earth Games" describes an alien world where Earth people are kept prisoner and forced to perform competitions with hotrod automobiles. Those games strongly resemble rush-hour commute experiences in major U.S. cities, where drivers compete for lane space and make rude hand gestures to one another. A slight difference: the cars in this story have machine guns on the fenders, and cannons on the rooftops! Two of the stories in this collection—“Earth Games” and “The Stakeout”—were edited by Brian’s father Frank Herbert, the famed author of DUNE, in the early 1980s, and rewritten by Brian, with those expert comments in mind. A New York Times-bestselling author, Brian has written many works of fiction and non-fiction. Brian is best known as the coauthor of 14 new Dune-series novels, written with Kevin J. Anderson. In his solo books, Brian is known for addressing important social issues, such as the environment, politics, and religion. In his highly original novel OCEAN, the ocean and its sea creatures declare war on human civilization, in retaliation for pollution and other human-caused abuses that are fouling the waters of the planet. In DANGEROUS WORLDS, the characters find themselves in an ocean of deep, deep trouble, and must try to get out of seemingly impossible situations. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t!
A remote planet, rich in resources... A drug-addicted captain, hungry for bonuses... A hidden alien menace... Growing up as a Martian on Earth has left Jas Harrington solitary, quick-tempered, and with zero tolerance for fools. All plus points when working as chief security officer aboard prospecting starships. Jas' latest berth is aboard the Galathea, which trawls the reaches of the galaxy seeking precious minerals and rare resources. She thinks it's a routine trip. She's wrong. An inspection of a far-flung planet leaves Jas suspicious that there's more to the place than meets the eye. If only she could convince the captain of the need for caution, but she might as well wish for a tasty meal in the ship's canteen. When the captain disciplines Jas for insubordination, she has only two allies: a timid navigator and the second pilot, who has the hots for her. Not that Jas notices. All hell breaks loose, and Jas' skills are put to the ultimate test. Can she enlist the help of the only two friends she has? She's in a race against time to prevent the aliens from achieving their goal: Generation. If she fails, the ship's crew, the galactic empire, and humanity itself are at risk.
