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Science Fiction February 2017
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1636 : the chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz
by Kerryn Offord
Phillip Theophrastus Gribbleflotz, the world's greatest alchemist and a great-grandson of Paracelsus and a Bombast on his mother's side was a man history had forgotten. But when the town of Grantville was transported by a cosmic accident from modern West Virginia to central Germany in the early seventeenth century, he got a second chance at fame and fortune.
The world's greatest alchemist does not make household goods. But with suitable enticements Gribbleflotz is persuaded to make baking soda and then baking powder so that the time-displaced Americans can continue to enjoy such culinary classics as biscuits andgravy. Applying his superb grasp of the principles of alchemy to the muddled and confused notions the Americans have concerning what they call chemistry, Gribbleflotz leaves obscurity behind.
In his relentless search for a way to invigorate the quinta essential of the human humors, Gribbleflotz plays a central role in jump-starting the seventeenth century s new chemical and marital aids industries and pioneering such critical fields of human knowledge as pyramidology and aura imaging. These are his chronicles.
Ring of Fire #20
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Beacon 23 : the complete novel
by Hugh Howey
For centuries, men and women have manned lighthouses to ensure the safe passage of ships. It is a lonely job, and a thankless one for the most part. Until something goes wrong. Until a ship is in distress. In the twenty-third century, this job has moved into outer space. A network of beacons allows ships to travel across the Milky Way at many times the speed of light. These beacons are built to be robust. They never break down. They never fail. At least, they aren't supposed to.
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Super extra grande
by Yoss
In a distant future in which Latin Americans have pioneered faster-than-light space travel, Dr. Jan Amos Sangan Dongo has a job with large and unusual responsibilities: he’s a veterinarian who specializes in treating enormous alien animals. Mountain-sized amoebas, multisex species with bizarre reproductive processes, razor-nailed, carnivorous humanoid hunters: Dr. Sangan has seen it all. When a colonial conflict threatens the fragile peace between the galaxy’s seven intelligent species, he must embark on a daring mission through the insides of a gigantic creature and find two swallowed ambassadors who also happen to be his competing love interests.
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Dragon and Thief
by Timothy Zahn
Jack Morgan has been framed for theft. He's hiding on a distant planet with the virtual presence of his deceased Uncle Virge, a con man who has been his only family since Jack's parents died. Jack knows he must clear his name before the cops catch up with him. A firefight among ships in the skies above leaves a downed ship near Jack's hiding place, with a single unlikely survivor. It looks like a dragon, and it must join with a human host within six hours or die. The only available host is Jack.
Draycos, Jack's new "companion," is a K'da, a dragon-like species that lives symbiotically with the humanoid Shontine. The attackers, determined to exterminate Draycos's people, will find them if they don't flee; so the pair works together to escape the planet and begin a search for the truth behind Jack's frame-up and the identity of the attackers.
With Jack's future hanging in the balance, as well as the future of billions of Draycos's people, the pair must track down the people who framed Jack, and prevent the destruction of the remaining K'da and Shontine. They'll also discover whether their union was mere coincidence, or a friendship written in the stars.
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The Book of the Unnamed Midwife
by Meg Elison
When she fell asleep, the world was doomed. When she awoke, it was dead.
In the wake of a fever that decimated the earth s population killing women and children and making childbirth deadly for the mother and infant the midwife must pick her way through the bones of the world she once knew to find her place in this dangerous new one. Gone are the pillars of civilization. All that remains is power and the strong who possess it.
A few women like her survived, though they are scarce. Even fewer are safe from the clans of men, who, driven by fear, seek to control those remaining. To preserve her freedom, she dons men s clothing, goes by false names, and avoids as many people as possible. But as the world continues to grapple with its terrible circumstances, she ll discover a role greater than chasing a pale imitation of independence.
After all, if humanity is to be reborn, someone must be its guide.
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Pirate utopia
by Bruce Sterling
Who are these bold rebels pillaging their European neighbors in the name of revolution? The Futurists! Utopian pirate warriors of the diminutive Regency of Carnaro, scourge of the Adriatic Sea. Mortal enemies of communists, capitalists, and even fascists (to whom they are not entirely unsympathetic). The ambitious Soldier-Citizens of Carnaro are led by a brilliant and passionate coterie of the perhaps insane. Lorenzo Secondari, World War I veteran, engineering genius, and leader of Croatian raiders. Frau Piffer, Syndicalist manufacturer of torpedos at a factory run by and for women. The Ace of Hearts, a dashing Milanese aristocrat, spymaster, and tactical savant. And the Prophet, a seductive warrior-poet who leads via free love and military ruthlessness.
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A trail through time
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 Chronicles of St. Mary’s tells the chaotic adventures of Madeleine Maxwell and her compatriots Director Bairstow, Leon Chief 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.
Chronicles of St. Mary's #4
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New Worlds, Old Ways : Speculative Tales from the Caribbean
by Karen Lord
Do not be misled by the speculative in the title. Although there may be robots and fantastical creatures, these common symbols are tools to frame the familiar from fresh perspectives. Here you will find the recent past and ongoing present of government and society with curfews, crime, and corruption; the universal themes of family, growth and death, love and hate; the struggle to thrive when power is capricious and revenge too bittersweet. Here too is the passage of everything old ways, places, peoples, and ourselves leaving nothing behind but memories, histories, and stories.
This anthology speaks to the fragility of our Caribbean home, but reminds the reader that although home may be vulnerable, it is also beautifully resilient. The voice of our literature declares that in spite of disasters, this people and this place shall not be wholly destroyed.
Read for delight, then read for depth, and you will not be disappointed.
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The mad scientist's daughter
by Cassandra Rose Clarke
When Cat Novak was a young girl, her father brought Finn, an experimental android, to their isolated home. A billion-dollar construct, Finn looks and acts human, but he has no desire to be one. He was programmed to assist his owners, and performs his duties to perfection.
His primary task now is to tutor Cat. Finn stays with her, becoming her constant companion and friend as she grows into adulthood. But when the government grants rights to the ever-increasing robot population, Finn struggles to find his place in the world. As their relationship goes further than anyone intended, they have to face the threat of being separated forever.
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Last Year
by Robert Charles Wilson
Two events made September 1st a memorable day for Jesse Cullum. First, he lost a pair of Oakley sunglasses. Second, he saved the life of President Ulysses S. Grant. It's the near future, and the technology exists to open doorways into the past--but not our past, not exactly. Each "past" is effectively an alternate world, identical to ours but only up to the date on which we access it. And a given "past" can only be reached once. After a passageway is open, it's the only road to that particular past; once closed, it can't be reopened. A passageway has been opened to a version of late 19th-century Ohio. It's been in operation for most of a decade, but it's no secret, on either side of time. A small city has grown up around it to entertain visitors from our time, and many locals earn a good living catering to them. But like all such operations, it has a shelf life; as the "natives" become more sophisticated, their version of the "past" grows less attractive as a destination. Jesse Cullum is a native. And he knows the passageway will be closing soon. He's fallen in love with a woman from our time, and he means to follow her back--no matter whose secrets he has to expose in order to do it.
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Take back the sky
by Greg Bear
Marooned beneath the icy, waxy crust of Saturn's moon, Titan, Skyrine Michael Venn and his comrades face double danger from Earth and from the Antagonists, both intent on wiping out their growing awareness of what the helpful alien Gurus are really doing in our solar system.
Haunted by their dead and by the ancient archives of our Bug ancestors, the former combatants must now team up with their enemies, forget their indoctrination and their training, and journey far beyond Pluto to the fabled Planet X, the Antagonists' home world, a Sun-Planet in the comet-generating Kuiper belt. It's here that Master Sergeant Venn will finally understand his destiny and the destiny of every intelligent being in the solar system-including the enigmatic Gurus.
War Dogs #3
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1636 : the Ottoman onslaught
by Eric Flint
The modern West Virginia town of Grantville has been displaced in time to continental Europe in 1632. Now four years have passed. The long-feared attack on Austria by the Ottoman Empire has begun. Armed with new weapons inspired by the time-displaced Americans of Grantville, the Turks are determined to do what they were unable to do in the universe the Americans came from: capture Vienna.
The Ottomans have the advantage of being able to study the failings and errors of their own campaigns in a future they can now avoid. They are led by the young, dynamic, and ruthless Murad IV, the most capable emperor the Ottomans have produced in a century. They are equipped with weapons that would have seemed fantastical to the Turks of that other universe: airships, breech-loading rifles, rockets even primitive tanks.
And this time they won’t have to face massive reinforcements from Austria s allies. In fact, the only force Emperor Gustav Adolf can think of sending to Austria is the United States of Europe Third Division under the command of Mike Stearns. It’s an army currently engaged in a desperate struggle for Bavaria.
The emperors of the USE and Austria share the same problem. They have one too many enemies, one too few allies, and only one general to cover the gaps. Fortunately, that general is Mike Stearns, also known as the Prince of Germany.
Ring of Fire #21
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Borders of Infinity : Adventures of Miles Vorkosigan
by Lois McMaster Bujold
Three Miles Vorkosigan Adventures!
"The Mountains of Mourning" is a Hugo & Nebula award-winning novella. Just after graduating from military academy, Ensign Miles must take on one of his duties as a Barrayaran Vor Lord by acting as detective and judge in a back-country murder case.
In "Labyrinth," Miles travels to Jackson's Whole on a covert mission for Barrayar as Dendarii Mercenary Admiral Naismith. His mission to rescue a top research geneticist is complicated by the doctor's insistence that one of his experimental creatures be destroyed first.
"The Borders of Infinity" finds Miles in a Cetagandan prison camp. But why is he there? How does he handle captivity? And will he make it out alive?
Vorkosigan Saga #7
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Chasing Shadows : Visions of Our Coming Transparent World
by David Brin
David Brin, Hugo award-winning author of The Uplift War, presents Chasing Shadows, a collection of short stories and essays by other science fiction luminaries. As we debate Internet privacy, revenge porn, the NSA, and Edward Snowden, cameras get smaller, faster, and more numerous. Has Orwell's Big Brother finally come to pass? Or have we become a global society of thousands of Little Brothers watching, judging, and reporting on one another?
Partnering with the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, and inspired by Brin's nonfiction book The Transparent Society, noted author and futurist David Brin and scholar Stephen Potts have compiled essays and short stories from writers such as Robert J. Sawyer, James Morrow, William Gibson, Damon Knight, Jack McDevitt, and many others to examine the benefits and pitfalls of technologic transparency in all its permutations.
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Martians abroad : a novel
by Carrie Vaughn
Polly Newton has one single-minded dream, to be a starship pilot and travel the galaxy. Her mother, the Director of the Mars Colony, derails Polly's plans when she sends Polly and her genius twin brother, Charles, to Galileo Academy on Earth.
Homesick and cut off from her plans for her future, Polly cannot seem to fit into life on Earth. Strange, unexplained, dangerous coincidences centered on their high-profile classmates begin piling up. Charles may be right there's more going on than would appear, and the stakes are high. With the help of Charles, Polly is determined to find the truth, no matter the cost.
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No time like the past
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 Chronicles of St. Mary’s tells the chaotic adventures of Madeleine Maxwell and her compatriots (Director Bairstow, Leon Chief 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.
In No Time Like the Past, St. Mary’s has been rebuilt, and it’s nearly back to business as usual for the history department. Except for the visit to St. Paul’s Cathedral with a seventeenth-century ghost that only Mr. Markham can see. And getting trapped in the Great Fire of London. And an unfortunately-timed vacation at Thermopylae that leaves the fate of the western world hanging in the balance.
Actually, that sounds quite like business as usual for Max and the gang.
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Empire games
by Charles Stross
The year is 2020. It's seventeen years since the Revolution overthrew the last king of the New British Empire, and the newly-reconstituted North American Commonwealth is developing rapidly, on course to defeat the French and bring democracy to a troubled world. But Miriam Burgeson, commissioner in charge of the shadowy Ministry of Intertemporal Research and Intelligence the paratime espionage agency tasked with catalyzing the Commonwealth's great leap forward has a problem. For years, she's warned everyone: "The Americans are coming." Now their drones arrive in the middle of a succession crisis.
In another timeline, the U.S. has recruited Miriam's own estranged daughter to spy across timelines in order to bring down any remaining world-walkers who might threaten national security.
Two nuclear superpowers are set on a collision course. Two increasingly desperate paratime espionage agencies try to find a solution to the first contact problem that doesn't result in a nuclear holocaust. And two women a mother and her long-lost daughter are about to find themselves on opposite sides of the confrontation.
Empire Games #1
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Galactic empires
by Neil Clarke
From E. E. "Doc" Smith’s Lensman, to George Lucas Star Wars, the politics and process of Empire have been a major subject of science fiction’s galaxy-spanning fictions. The idiom of the Galactic Empire allows science fiction writers to ask (and answer) questions that are shorn of contemporary political ideologies and allegiances. This simple narrative slight of hand allows readers and writers to see questions and answers from new and different perspectives.
The stories in this book do just that. What social, political, and economic issues do the organizing structure of empire address? Often the size, shape, and fates of empires are determined not only by individuals, but by geography, natural forces, and technology. As the speed of travel and rates of effective communication increase, so too does the size and reach of an Imperial bureaucracy. Sic itur ad astra Thus one journeys to the stars.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, writers such as Kipling and Twain were at the forefront of these kinds of narrative observations, but as the century drew to a close, it was writers like Iain M. Banks who helped make science fiction relevant. That tradition continues today, with award-winning writers like Ann Leckie, whose 2013 debut novel Ancillary Justice hinges upon questions of imperialism and empire.
Here then is a diverse collection of stories that asks the questions that science fiction asks best. Empire: How? Why? And to what effect?
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Six wakes
by Mur Lafferty
A space adventure set on a lone ship where the clones of a murdered crew must find their murderer -- before they kill again.
It was not common to awaken in a cloning vat streaked with drying blood.
At least, Maria Arena had never experienced it. She had no memory of how she died. That was also new; before, when she had awakened as a new clone, her first memory was of how she died. Maria's vat was in the front of six vats, each one holding the clone of a crew member of the starship Dormire, each clone waiting for its previous incarnation to die so it could awaken. And Maria wasn't the only one to die recently...
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Headlong flight
by Dayton Ward
Surveying a nebula as part of their continuing exploration of the previously uncharted Odyssean Pass, Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the Starship Enterprise encounter a rogue planet. Life signs are detected on the barren world’s surface, and then a garbled message is received: a partial warning to stay away at all costs. Determined to render assistance, Picard dispatches Commander Worf and an away team to investigate, but their shuttlecraft is forced to make an emergency landing on the surface moments before all contact is lost and the planet completely disappears.
Worf and his team learn that this mysterious world is locked into an unending succession of random jumps between dimensions, the result of an ambitious experiment gone awry. The Enterprise crewmembers and the alien scientists who created the technology behind this astonishing feat find themselves trapped, powerless to break the cycle. Meanwhile, as the planet continues to fade in and out of various planes of existence, other parties have now taken notice.
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Binti : Home
by Nnedi Okorafor
It’s been a year since Binti and Okwu enrolled at Oomza University. A year since Binti was declared a hero for uniting two warring planets. A year since she found friendship in the unlikeliest of places.
And now she must return home to her people, with her friend Okwu by her side, to face her family and face her elders.
But Okwu will be the first of his race to set foot on Earth in over a hundred years, and the first ever to come in peace.
After generations of conflict can human and Meduse ever learn to truly live in harmony?
Binti #2
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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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