Braxton Thorpe has discovered a threat to the entire Solar System, but he has a problem: he's dead. Frozen at death, he awakens to find himself uploaded into an electronic matrix. Exploring beyond the matrix and the larger GlobalNet, he discovers the Oort, a distributed electronic entity older than humanity, with an unnerving secret: aliens wiped out nearly all life on Earth once, and are coming back to do it again. The mathematical entity that is Thorpe has to find a way to convince humans of the threat, and in time to do something about it. But how, and what? If you've read Niven's "A World Out of Time" or Taylor's "We Are Legion," the opening of "Icicle" will only "seem" familiar. Buckle up for a wild ride; you ain't seen nothing.
As the Oort Federation becomes a major force in the Solar System, Braxton Thorpe passes the Federation chairmanship to former US President John Butler. Thorpe's group offers humanity virtual immortality, but Isidor Orlov and his Udachny Enterprises oppose their every move. While terraforming Mars for more living space, the Mars Reds prove formidable as resisters. If the Asterian starship fighter pilots are released, will they align with Phoenix or Udachny, and who will develop the right FTL technology? In this tense space adventure, Thorpe, his team, and Max the tabby cat travel to Proxima Centauri and beyond to the Aster system, 84 lightyears distant. Will Thorpe bring together humans and Asterians in their quest for intergalactic travel? Will long life prove more than mere humans can handle?
Can you drop from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) with just a hardshell wingsuit? Navy SEAL Derek “Tiger” Baily and his SEALS Winged Insertion Command (SWIC) develop an experimental Gryphon hardshell wingsuit that can do just that. Eventually, when the presidential front-runner is seized by pirates for ransom, Baily’s 6-man SWIC team must hurtle around the world, staging critical re-entry for a rescue, challenged to solve life-or-death problems with only seconds to spare. Can they survive? Will they effect the rescue? Join Tiger Baily through all four adventures in sci-fi master Robert G. Williscroft’s Daedalus series, now collected for the first time as “The Daedalus Files: SEALS Winged Insertion Command (SWIC)."
A U.S. senator—likely next president—has been seized by pirates and held for $100 million ransom. Derek “Tiger” Baily and his SEAL Winged Insertion Command (SWIC) get the call: a rescue operation with soldiers zooming in from the sky, the 6-man squad’s first real combat operation. Hurtling around the world in the new Gryphon-10 MK 4hardshell wingsuit, Tiger and his team must literally improvise on the fly when everything goes wrong and they have everything to lose. Go into battle with Tiger and the SWIC on a mission of life or death in Robert G. Williscroft’s fourth and final installment following Daedalus, Daedalus LEO, and Daedalus Squad.
Recovering from his Operation Arctic Sting injuries, USS Teuthis Executive Officer Mac McDowell is tasked with laying SOSUS arrays in the southern Atlantic and off Thurston Island, Western Antarctica. Teuthis tangles with Argentine subs in the south Atlantic, then confronts a ChiCom sub off Thurston Island. Mac and his team experience serious setbacks at the hands of the ChiComs while installing a relay transmitter on a nearby mountain peak. Teuthis discovers an underwater oil operation off Thurston Island and is tasked with escorting a Taiwanese sub and underwater tanker under the cover of the largest military marine exercise since World War II: PacEx89. Teuthis is attacked by a Chinese Han-class sub and a previously unknown North Korean AIP sub despite the protection provided by three U.S. fast-attack subs. Will Mac and Teuthis complete their mission, or will they finally meet their watery graves on the Pacific Ocean abyssal plain?
They discover a Dyson Sphere under construction by microbots, but the bots are scavenging one part of the sphere to construct another. And where is the civilization that designed this massive project? “This is cutting edge, hard science fiction at its finest. This broad-minded, far-sweeping saga is both realistic and daring. The reader feels that yes, this is what the universe is like and what man’s role in it will come to be.” Professor John B. Rosenman, Norfolk State University. The starship Andromeda stops at the Keid triple-star system on its voyage of discovery and stumbles on a derelict Dyson Sphere. The starship is attacked by microbots scavenging one part of the sphere to repair another. They map the sphere and discover several primitive races inside—humanoid, feline, and saurian. They investigate the internal structure of the Dyson Sphere with its hundred-kilometer wide tubes filled with fast-moving magnetic fluid, and I-beams with hundred- kilometer wide plates and thirty-kilometer wide flanges that are one hundred meters thick. They eventually meet digital uploads of the race that built the sphere. Then the explorers discover that the Dyson Sphere’s star is about to produce a superflare that could destroy all life inside the sphere and possibly even the Dyson Sphere itself. The explorers mount a major rescue effort to save the uploads and sapient races.
Derek “Tiger” Baily and his SEAL Winged Insertion Command (SWIC) jump from orbit to test the enhanced Gryphon-10 MK 4 hardshell wingsuit for combat applications. Every contingency has been planned. The 6-man squadron believes it is fully prepared for hurtling around the world and staging critical re-entry, but challenged to innovate life-or-death solutions with only seconds to spare, Baily’s team might not survive intact. Fly with Tiger and the SWIC on a mission that surely will test the limits of their training in Robert G. Williscroft’s third installment following Daedalus and Daedalus LEO.
Slingshot is a love story – about a man, a woman, another man, another woman, some gender-bending...and a machine, the largest ever built. Slingshot is a mystery – about a missing aviatrix, a conspiracy, a true-believer. Slingshot is an adventure – about following a dream, the ocean-deep, outer space. Slingshot is about constructing the first space launch- loop stretching 2,600 km between Baker and Jarvis Islands in the Equatorial Pacific. It’s about high finance, intrigue, unlimited ambition, heroism, fanaticism, betrayal...and about opening space to the common person. The setting is the day-after-tomorrow. Technology has advanced, the web is more pervasive than ever, but human ambition and greed remain unchanged. In Slingshot, Alex Regent, Margo Jackson, and Klaus Blumenfeld reach for the stars as they blend their skills to create the world’s first space launch-loop, backed by major software money. Environmental fanatic Lars Watson with his team of young eco-terrorists are funded by opposing financial interests, who will go to any length to halt the project. Reporter Lori Kutcher indiscriminately applies her own personal skills to ensure it is she who reports the unfolding events to a watching world. With a cast of 69, Slingshot takes you from Seattle’s world financial district, to the ocean bottom at 5,000 feet off Baker Island, to the edge of space 80 km above. You play with dolphins and battle sharks. You fly and sail and dive, you work and play and love across the vast panorama of an Equatorial Pacific being put to leash to serve humanity’s surge into outer space. While its accurate science and precise engineering will appeal to hard science-fiction buffs, Slingshot’s major focus is the grand journey, the opening of outer space to the common person by men and women who loom larger than life as they work, play, and love.
As USS Teuthis Saturation Dive Team Officer-in-Charge (OIC) Mac McDowell leads his submarine team laying SOSUS arrays under the Arctic ice, they capture an abandoned fully automated Alfa-class Soviet sub. Piloting their prize through the ice pack to the U.S. East Coast, they must evade or confront other Soviet subs trying to recover the sub—or sink it. Breathtaking deep-sea clashes erupt, including hand-to-hand combat with Soviet Morskoy Spetsnaz divers under the ice. Too far from Teuthis to escape, the Americans are accosted by a 5-ton orca. Will Mac’s ship survive long enough to reach friendly waters, or will the men become just another meal for a deadly whale?
