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The Long Cosmos
by Terry Pratchett
2070-71. Nearly six decades after Step Day, a new society continues to evolve in the Long Earth. Now, a message has been received: Join us.
The Next the hyper-intelligent post-humans realize that the missive contains instructions for kick-starting the development of an immense artificial intelligence known as The Machine. But to build this computer the size of an Earth continent, they must obtain help from the more populous and still industrious worlds of mankind.
Meanwhile, on a trek in the High Meggers, Joshua Valiente, now nearing seventy, is saved from death when a troll band discovers him. Living among the trolls as he recovers, Joshua develops a deeper understanding of this collective-intelligence species and its society. He discovers that some older trolls, with capacious memories, act as communal libraries, and live on a very strange Long Earth world, in caverns under the root systems of trees as tall as mountains.
Valiente also learns something much more profound . . . about life and its purpose in the Long Earth: We cultivate the cosmos to maximize the opportunities for life and joy in this universe, and to prepare for new universes to come.
Long Earth #5
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Bloodline : new republic
by Claudia Gray
WITNESS THE BIRTH OF THE RESISTANCE
When the Rebellion defeated the Empire in the skies above Endor, Leia Organa believed it was the beginning to a lasting peace. But after decades of vicious infighting and partisan gridlock in the New Republic Senate, that hope seems like a distant memory.
Now a respected senator, Leia must grapple with the dangers that threaten to cripple the fledgling democracy from both within and without. Underworld kingpins, treacherous politicians, and Imperial loyalists are sowing chaos in the galaxy. Desperate to take action, senators are calling for the election of a First Senator. It is their hope that this influential post will bring strong leadership to a divided galaxy.
As the daughter of Darth Vader, Leia faces with distrust the prospect of any one person holding such a powerful position even when supporters suggest Leia herself for the job. But a new enemy may make this path Leia s only option. For at the edges of the galaxy, a mysterious threat is growing. . . .
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Central Station
by Lavie Tidhar
When Boris Chong returns to Tel Aviv from Mars, much has changed. Boris's ex-lover is raising a strangely familiar child who can tap into the datastream of a mind with the touch of a finger. His cousin is infatuated with a robotnik -- a damaged cyborg soldier who might as well be begging for parts. His father is terminally-ill with a multigenerational mind-plague. And a hunted data-vampire has followed Boris to where she is forbidden to return. Rising above them is Central Station, the interplanetary hub between all things: the constantly shifting Tel Aviv; a powerful virtual arena; and the space colonies where humanity has gone to escape the ravages of poverty and war.
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The raft : a novel
by Fred Strydom
The day every person on earth lost his and her memory was not a day at all. In people's minds there was no actual event. . . and thus it could be followed by no period of shock or mourning. There could be no catharsis. Everyone was simply reset to zero.
On Day Zero, the collapse of civilization was as instantaneous as it was inevitable. A mysterious and oppressive movement rose to power in the aftermath, forcing people into isolated communes run like regimes. Kayle Jenner finds himself trapped on a remote beach, and all that remains of his life before is the vague and haunting vision of his son. . .
Kayle finally escapes, only to find a broken world being put back together in strange ways. As more memories from his past life begin returning, the people he meets wandering the face of a scorched earth some reluctant allies, others dangerous enemies begin to paint a terrifying picture. In his relentless search for his son, Kayle will discover more than just his lost past. He will discover the truth behind Day Zeroa truth that makes both fools and gods of men.
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Sleeping Giants
by Sylvain Neuvel
17 years ago: A girl in South Dakota falls through the earth, then wakes up dozens of feet below ground on the palm of what seems to be a giant metal hand. Today: She is a top-level physicist leading a team of people to understand exactly what that hand is, where it came from, and what it portends for humanity. A swift and spellbinding tale told almost exclusively through transcriptions of interviews conducted by a mysterious and unnamed character, this is a unique debut that describes a hunt for truth, power, and giant body parts.
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Barren Cove
by Ariel S. Winter
Sapien is a relic of a bygone age, searching for meaning in a world where his outdated allegiances to a time long past have left him isolated and hopeless. Seeking peace and quiet, he retires to a beach house at Barren Cove, a stately Victorian manor even more antiquated than he. He becomes increasingly fascinated with the family whose lives are entwined with the home angry and rebellious Clark; flamboyant Kent; fragile, beautiful Mary; and most of all, Beachstone, the mysterious man whose history may hold all the answers Sapien has been searching for. As Sapien unlocks their secret loves and betrayals, the dangerous past of Barren Cove will indelibly change him...and who he is fated to become.
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Just one damned thing after another
by Jodi Taylor
Behind the seemingly innocuous facade of St. Mary’s Institute of Historical Research, a different kind of academic work is taking place. Just don’t call it time travel these historians investigate major historical events in contemporary time. And they aren’t your harmless eccentrics either; a more accurate description, as they ricochet around history, might be unintentional disaster-magnets.
The first thing you learn on the job at St. Mary’s is that one wrong move and history will fight back sometimes in particularly nasty ways. But, as new recruit Madeleine Maxwell soon discovers, it’s not only history they’re often fighting.
The Chronicles of St. Mary s tells the chaotic adventures of Max and her compatriots Director Bairstow, Chief Leon Farrell, Mr. Markham, and many more as they travel through time, saving St. Mary s (too often by the very seat of their pants) and thwarting time-travelling terrorists, all the while leaving plenty of time for tea.
From eleventh-century London to World War I, from the Cretaceous Period to the destruction of the Great Library at Alexandria, one thing is for sure: wherever the historians at St. Mary’s go, chaos is sure to follow in their wake.
The Chronicles of St. Mary's #1
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Dominion
by John Connolly
Syl Hellais and Paul Kerr have traveled through Derith, the mysterious wormhole from which no traveler has ever returned. Yet Derith’s secrets are darker than they imagined, and trapped in a dimension beyond their own, they finally emerge to discover a universe that has moved on without them.
Years have passed, and Civil War rages among the Illyri. It is whispered that the Earth is lost, prey to the alien parasites known as the Others, and other worlds will soon follow. Most shocking of all, the sinister Archmage Syrene of the Nairene Sisterhood has disappeared into the bowels of the Sisterhood’s lair.
But before she cloistered herself, Archmage Syrene chose her replacement. The Sisterhood has a new leader, with her own plans for the future of her race. Now Syl and Paul, teenagers in a deadly adult world, must find a way to change the course of history and save the lives of billions. They have but one hope.
For Syl Hellais is changing.
Chronicles of the Invaders #3
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Icon
by Genevieve Valentine
A year ago, International Assembly delegate Suyana Sapaki barely survived an attempt on her life. Now she’s climbing the social ranks, dating the American Face, and poised for greatness. She has everything she wants, but the secret that drives her can t stay hidden forever. When she quickly saves herself from a life-threatening political scandal, she gains a new enemy: the public eye.
Daniel Park was hoping for the story of a lifetime. And he got her. He s been following Suyana for a year. But what do you do when this person you thought you knew has vanished inside the shell, and dangers are building all around you? How much will Daniel risk when his job is to break the story? And how far will he go for a cause that isn’t his?
Persona #2
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War factory
by Neal L. Asher
Thorvald Spear, resurrected from his death over a hundred years earlier, continues to hunt Penny Royal, the rogue AI and dangerous war criminal on the run from Polity forces. Beyond the Graveyard, a lawless and deadly area in deep space, Spear follows the trail of several enemy Prador, the crab-like alien species with a violent history of conflict with humanity.
Sverl, a Prador genetically modified by Penny Royal and slowly becoming human, pursues Cvorn, a Prador harboring deep hatred for the Polity looking to use him and other hybrids to reignite the dormant war with mankind.
Blite, captain of a bounty hunting ship, hands over two prisoners and valuable memplants from Penny Royal to the Brockle, a dangerous forensics entity under strict confinement on a Polity spaceship that quickly takes a keen interest in the corrupted AI and its unclear motives.
Penny Royal meanwhile continues to pull all the strings in the background, keeping the Polity at bay and seizing control of an attack ship. It seeks Factory Station Room 101, a wartime manufacturing space station believed to be destroyed. What does it want with the factory? And will Spear find the rogue AI before it gets there?
Transformation #2
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Forest of memory
by Mary Robinette Kowal
Katya deals in Authenticities and Captures, trading on nostalgia for a past long gone. Her clients are rich and they demand items and experiences with only the finest verifiable provenance. Other people’s lives have value, after all.
But when her A.I. suddenly stops whispering in her ear she finds herself cut off from the grid and loses communication with the rest of the world.
The man who stepped out of the trees while hunting deer cut her off from the cloud, took her A.I. and made her his unwilling guest.
There are no Authenticities or Captures to prove Katya’s story of what happened in the forest. You ll just have to believe her.
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The map of bones
by Francesca Haig
Four hundred years in the future, the Earth has turned primitive following a nuclear fire that has laid waste to civilization and nature. Though the radiation fallout has ended, for some unknowable reason every person is born with a twin. Of each pair, one is an Alpha--physically perfect in every way; and the other an Omega--burdened with deformity, small or large. With the Council ruling an apartheid-like society, Omegas are branded and ostracized while the Alphas have gathered the world's sparse resources for themselves. Though proclaiming their superiority, for all their effort, Alphas cannot escape one harsh fact: whenever one twin dies, so does the other. Cass is a rare Omega, one burdened with psychic foresight. While her twin, Zach, gains power on the Alpha Council, she dares to dream the most dangerous dream of all: equality. For daring to envision a world in which Alphas and Omegas live side-by-side as equals, both the Council and the Resistance have her in their sights.
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The Seascape Tattoo
by Larry Niven
Aros of Azteca and Neoloth-Pteor are the deadliest of enemies: Swordsman and Sorcerer, locked in mortal combat, who have tried to kill each other more times than either can count. But when the princess Neoloth loves is kidnapped, there is only one plan that offers any hope of rescue . . . and that requires passing off the barbarian Aros as a lost princeling and infiltrating the deadliest cabal of necromancers the world has ever seen. They cannot trust each other. They will betray or kill each other the first chance they get. But they're all each other has.
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Join
by Steve Toutonghi
What if you could live multiple lives simultaneously, have constant, perfect companionship, and never die? That's the promise of Join, a revolutionary technology that allows small groups of minds to unite, forming a single consciousness that experiences the world through multiple bodies. But as two best friends discover, the light of that miracle may be blinding the world to its horrors. Chance and Leap are jolted out of their professional routines by a terrifying stranger--a remorseless killer who freely manipulates the networks that regulate life in the post-Join world. Their quest for answers--and survival--brings them from the networks and spire communities they've known to the scarred heart of an environmentally ravaged North American continent and an underground community of the "ferals" left behind by the rush of technology. In the storytelling tradition of classic speculative fiction from writers like David Mitchell and Michael Chabon, Join offers a pulse-pounding story that poses the largest possible questions: How long can human life be sustained on our planet in the face of environmental catastrophe? What does it mean to be human, and what happens when humanity takes the next step in its evolution? If the individual mind becomes obsolete, what have we lost and gained, and what is still worth fighting for?
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Just Over the Horizon
by Greg Bear
The "New York Times Book Review" hails this collection of thirteen dazzling stories and a rare screenplay by Hugo and Nebula Award winning author Greg Bear as a solid introduction to the oeuvre of a classic writer. Greg Bear author of "Queen of Angels," " Eon," and" Hull Zero Three," among many other hugely popular novels has an ability to transform challenging scientific concepts into gripping fiction that has won him numerous awards and an avid following. He has written novels about interstellar war, human evolution, intelligent bacteria, international terrorism, and the exploration of deep space but he doesn’t stop there. This brilliant collection of Bear’s stories, each newly revised by the author, proves he is a master of the short form as well. "Just Over the Horizon "offers thirteen mind-bending explorations of the near future... or just beyond the border of conventional reality. The volume includes: Blood Music, a Hugo and Nebula award winning classic and the basis for the novel of the same name and the first science-fictional exploration of nanotechnology; Sisters, in which high school students find maturity and family by confronting a tragic genetic destiny; Tangents, winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards, about a persecuted scientist who seeks refuge in a better world; Dead Run, a tale of union truck drivers ferrying souls through Death Valley into Hell, adapted for an episode of the television series"The Twilight Zone"; Sleepside Story, which Bear calls one of his favorite pieces, an urban fantasy tale that takes a music student by Night Metro to the Sleepside mansion of a magical woman of the night, inverting Beauty and the Beast in a very modern mirror; Genius, the screenplay written for the television series"Outer Limits," but never produced. "Just Over the Horizon"combines Bear’s intense concern with the human condition with a deep understanding of science, resulting in a collection long to be remembered.
Complete Short Fiction of Greg Bear #1
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The Sudden Appearance of Hope
by Claire North
My name is Hope Arden, and you won't know who I am. But we've met before-a thousand times.
It started when I was sixteen years old.
A father forgetting to drive me to school. A mother setting the table for three, not four. A friend who looks at me and sees a stranger.
No matter what I do, the words I say, the crimes I commit, you will never remember who I am.
That makes my life difficult. It also makes me dangerous.
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Power Surge
by Ben Bova
The science advisor to a newly-elected freshman senator, Jake has crafted a comprehensive energy plan that employs innovative new technologies to make America the world's leader in energy production while simultaneously boosting the economy and protecting the environment. The facts--and the science--are on Jake's side, but his plan soon runs afoul of entrenched special interests, well-funded lobbies, cynical bureaucrats, pork-barrel politics, and one very powerful US Senator.
To keep his plan alive and secure a sustainable future for America, Jake needs a crash course in the way Washington really works. Everyone keeps telling him that his plan has no hope of succeeding, but Jake is determined to prove them wrong even if it kills him...something that certain hostile parties may be all too happy to arrange.
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New Charity Blues
by Camille Griep
In the wake of a devastating plague, two communities emerge as bastions of survival. One is called the City, and its people scrabble for scraps in the wasteland. The other, New Charity, enjoys the bounty of its hydroelectric dam and refuses City denizens so much as a drop of precious water. When City-dweller Cressyda inherits her father s ranch within New Charity, she becomes intent on opening the dam to all no matter the cost.
But when Syd reunites with her old best friend, Casandra, a born seer and religious acolyte, she realizes that her plans could destroy the fragile lives they’ve built in order to survive. What’s more, the strange magic securing the dam’s operations could prove deadly if disturbed. Yet when Syd discovers evidence that her father might have been murdered, she is more determined than ever to exact revenge on New Charity’s corrupt.
Pitted against Cas, as well as her own family, Syd must decide how to secure the survival of both settlements without tipping them over the brink to utter annihilation. In this intense and emotional reimagining of the Trojan War epic, two women clash when loyalty, identity, community, and family are all put to the ultimate test.
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Year's Best Military & Adventure Sf 2015
by David Afsharirad
The new Golden Age of short science fiction has arrived! Selected from the premier print and online markets in the field, here are stories to challenge, provoke, thrill, and entertain. Stories of future military men and women, space opera on a grand scale, and edge-of-your-seat adventure science fiction in the grand pulp tradition. The second volume in an on-going series, "The Year s Best Military and Adventure Science Fiction," features stories by giants of the genre and the hottest new voices.
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Death's bright day
by David Drake
Captain Daniel Leary thinks that his marriage will allow him to slip into the quiet role of a naval officer in peacetime. His friend, the spy and cybrarian Adele Mundy, is content to be collating data in her library. But high officials of both superpowers are involved! Those who want Daniel and Adele to become involved in the Tarbell Stars claim that only they can prevent a war between the Republic of Cinnabar and its great rival, the Alliance of Free Stars. The conflict is political, but at the sharp end it means blazing warfare and cold-blooded murder. Daniel and Adele will be at the sharp end. The odds in ships and guns are badly in the enemy's favor. Daniel, Adele, and the crew of the "Princess Cecile" will do everything humanly possible, but that may not be enough against an enemy battleship. And even if Daniel and his companions succeed in battle, they can't be sure whether their employers "really" wanted them to win or whether they even want them alive.All they can do is to race forward, hoping to come through into DEATH'S BRIGHT DAY.
RCN #11
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The chimes
by Anna Smaill
After the end of a brutal civil war, London is divided, with slums standing next to a walled city of elites. Monk-like masters are selected for special schooling and shut away for decades, learning to write beautiful compositions for the chimes, played citywide morning and night, to mute memory and keep the citizens trapped in ignorance. A young orphan named Simon arrives in London with nothing but the vague sense of a half-forgotten promise, to locate someone. What he finds is a new family--a gang of scavengers that patrols the underbelly of the city looking for valuable metal to sell. Drawn in by an enigmatic and charismatic leader, a blind young man named Lucien with a gift for song, Simon forgets entirely what originally brought him to the place he has now made his home. In this alternate London, the past is a mystery, each new day feels the same as the last, and before is considered "blasphony." But Simon has a unique gift--the gift of retaining memories--that will lead him to discover a great injustice and take him far beyond the meager life as a member of Lucien's gang. Before long he will be engaged in an epic struggle for justice, love, and freedom.
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Dark Run
by Mike Brooks
In this debut space epic, a crew of thieves and con artists take on a job that could pay off a lot of debts in a corrupt galaxy where life is cheap and criminals are the best people in it.
The Keiko is a ship of smugglers, soldiers of fortune, and adventurers travelling Earth’s colony planets searching for the next job. And they never talk about their past until now.
Captain Ichabod Drift is being blackmailed. He has to deliver a special cargo to Earth, and no one can know they’re there. It’s what they call a dark run And it may be their last.
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Infomocracy
by Malka Ann Older
It's been twenty years and two election cycles since Information, a powerful search engine monopoly, pioneered the switch from warring nation-states to global micro-democracy. The corporate coalition party Heritage has won the last two elections. With another election on the horizon, the Supermajority is in tight contention, and everything's on the line.
With power comes corruption. For Ken, this is his chance to do right by the idealistic Policy1st party and get a steady job in the big leagues. For Domaine, the election represents another staging ground in his ongoing struggle against the "pax democratica." For Mishima, a dangerous Information operative, the whole situation is a puzzle: how do you keep the wheels running on the biggest political experiment of all time, when so many have so much to gain?
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The Medusa Chronicles
by Stephen Baxter
A sequel to Sir Arthur C. Clarke s Nebula Award winning novella, “A Meeting with Medusa,” this novel continues the thrilling adventure of astronaut Howard Falcon, humanity’s first explorer of Jupiter from two modern science fiction masters.
Howard Falcon almost lost his life in an accident as the first human astronaut to explore the atmosphere of Jupiter and a combination of human ingenuity and technical expertise brought him back. But he is no longer himself. Instead, he has been changed into an augmented human: part man, part machine, and exceptionally capable.
With permission from the Clarke Estate, Stephen Baxter and Alastair Reynolds continue this beloved writer’s enduring vision and have created a fresh story for new readers. "The Medusa Chronicles" charts Falcon’s journey through the centuries granted by his new body, but always back to mysteries of Jupiter and the changing interaction between humanity and the universe.
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Zen City
by Eliot Fintushel
The world of ZEN CITY is a world of passionate desires: the desire for power, the desire for order, and the desire for self-transcendence. ZEN CITY is a story about the struggle and violence of people who see themselves as striving for the ultimate. Along the way, ZEN CITY presents a sly critique of the practice and perversions of imported spirituality in twentieth-century America.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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Prince George's County Memorial Library System 9601 Capital Lane Largo, Maryland 20774 301-699-3500www.pgcmls.info/ |
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