Kirth Gersen tracks Lens Larque across several worlds, most notably Aloysius, the desert world Dar Sai and the more temperate Methel. He eventually learns that Larque is a Darsh, born Husse Bugold. He had been deprived of an earlobe and made a rachepol or outcast from his clan for a crime considered “repulsive but not superlatively heinous.” He took the name Lens Larque, after the lanslarke, an indigenous creature and the fetish of the Bugold clan. (It was this slim clue that enabled Gersen to track him down.) He then became a notorious criminal renowned for his magnificent, if often grotesque and horrifying, jests.
A race for survival among the stars... Humanity's last survivors escaped earth's ruins to find a new home. But when they find it, can their desperation overcome its dangers?
WHO WILL INHERIT THIS NEW EARTH?
The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age—a world terraformed and prepared for human life.
But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare.
Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?
The starship Earthling, filled with thousands of hybernating colonists en route to a new world at Tau Ceti, is stranded beyond the solar system when the ship's three Organic Mental Cores, disembodied human brains that control the vessel's functions, go insane. An emergency skeleton crew sees only one chance for survival: to create an artificial consciousness in the Earthling's primary computer, which could guide them to their destination . . . or could destroy the human race.
Frank Herbert's classic novel that begins the epic Pandora Sequence (written with Bill Ransom), which also includes The Jesus Incident, The Lazarus Effect, and The Ascension Factor.
ONE: Eons ago, a gentle race of giant aliens fled the planet Minerva, leaving the ancestors of Man to fend for themselves.
TWO: 50 thousand years ago, Minerva exploded, hurling its moon into an orbit about the Earth.
THREE: In the 21st century, scientists Victor Hunt and Chris Danchekker, doing research on Ganymede, attract a small band of friendly aliens lost in time, who begin to reveal something of the origin of Mankind.
Finally, Man thought he comprehended his place in the Universe...until he learned of the Watchers in the stars!
Long before the world of the Ganymeans blew apart, millennia ago, the strange race of giants had vanished. No one could discover their fate, nor where they had gone, nor why. There was only a wrecked ship abandoned on a frozen satellite of Jupiter. And now Earth's code and scientists were there, determined to ferret out the secret of the lost race.
And suddenly, spinning out of the vastness of space and immensity of time, the ship of the strange, humanoid giants returned. They brought with them answers that would alter all Mankind's knowledge of human origins in startling revelations from the past that would have biologic reverberations to be at this time. . .
Somewhere, from among the four human-settled worlds of the Warden Diamond, hostile aliens were spying on Earth. But no agent could be sent to investigate and report back. All trips to the Warden worlds were one-way. There, a microscopic symbiont invaded all life forms, after which life became impossible outside the Warden system. The same organism destroyed any form of machinery, so no message could be beamed back by normal means.
That called for extraordinary means, of course. One agent was chosen, then four men were stripped of their own minds and personalities, and his was imposed upon them. Hooked up properly, he could then receive their reports, without ever leaving safe territory.
Each man was assigned one world to conquer. His mission was first to find the Overlord of that world and kill him, then to take over his link with the aliens. Of course all this must be done with no help beyond his own naked ability...
This first book of Jack Chalker's epic tetralogy deals with Cal Tremon, who was sent to Lilith, a planet that was a paradise - but a paradise designed in hell!
Severian the Torturer, possessor of the miracle-producing gem, the Claw of the Conciliator, experiences strange adventures as he journeys across the savage land of Urth
On Ganymede, the station that represents the main food source for exoplanets, a Martian marine sergeant watches her entire platoon being slaughtered before her eyes by a supernatural monster. On Earth, a high-ranking politician struggles to defuse an interplanetary war. Meanwhile, an alien protomolecule sweeps across Venus, causing profound and mysterious changes and threatening to spread and sweep across the solar system.
In the vastness of space, James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante maintain the stability of the exoplanetary alliance. When he and his crew agree to help a scientist search for his missing daughter on war-torn Ganymede, the fate of humanity hinges on whether one craft can prevent an alien invasion that may already be underway.
"Corey spins his novel with elegant, old-fashioned threads while maintaining a fast-paced pace." -- Charles Stross, one of Britain's most acclaimed science fiction authors.
"It's like watching a Hollywood blockbuster come to life in a paperback." -- io9
Humanity pushed its way to the stars - and encountered the Gbaba, a ruthless alien race that nearly wiped us out.
Earth and her colonies are now smoldering ruins, and the few survivors have fled to distant, Earth-like Safehold, to try to rebuild. But the Gbaba can detect the emissions of an industrial civilization, so the human rulers of Safehold have taken extraordinary measures: with mind control and hidden high technology, they've built a religion in which every Safeholdian believes, a religion designed to keep Safehold society medieval forever.
800 years pass. In a hidden chamber on Safehold, an android from the far human past awakens. This "rebirth" was set in motion centuries before, by a faction that opposed shackling humanity with a concocted religion. Via automated recordings, "Nimue" - or, rather, the android with the memories of Lieutenant Commander Nimue Alban - is told her fate: she will emerge into Safeholdian society, suitably disguised, and begin the process of provoking the technological progress which the Church of God Awaiting has worked for centuries to prevent.
Nothing about this will be easy. To better deal with a medieval society, "Nimue" takes a new gender and a new name, "Merlin." His formidable powers and access to caches of hidden high technology will need to be carefully concealed. And he'll need to find a base of operations, a Safeholdian country that's just a little more freewheeling, a little less orthodox, a little more open to the new.
And thus Merlin comes to Charis, a mid-sized kingdom with a talent for naval warfare. He plans to make the acquaintance of King Haarahld and Crown Prince Cayleb, and maybe, just maybe, kick off a new era of invention. Which is bound to draw the attention of the Church...and, inevitably, lead to war.
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