In a Victorian England dominated by an industry and wealth created through the power of magic, an ambitious young man finds himself torn between his love for his childhood sweetheart and his disdain for the world to which she yearns to belong. Reprint.
The year is 1870. As the young country of Freedonia prepares to celebrate fifty years of existence, a young bounty hunter by the name of Zeke Culpepper is hired by a wealthy businessman to find a valuable book. In the kingdom of Mali on the continent of Africa, veteran warrior Famara Keita has been assigned to find that same book and bring it back to its rightful owner. And in the newly formed nation of Germany, an ambitious Prussian officer seeks the book as well for its secrets that could make Germany the most powerful nation in the world. The result is an action adventure like no other!
A startling, seductive literary novel that entwines suspense, science fiction, adventure, romance and history into an intoxicating new genre.
1908: New Venice--"the pearl of the Arctic"--a place of ice palaces and pneumatic tubes, of beautifully ornate carriage-sleds and elegant victorian garb, of long nights and vistas of ice.
But as the city prepares for spring, it feels more like qaartsiluni , "the time when something is about to explode in the dark." Local "poletics" are wracked by tensions with the Eskimos circling the city, with suffragette riots led by an underground music star, with drug round-ups by the secret police force known as the Gentlemen of the Night. An ominous black airship hovers over the city, and the Gentlemen are hunting for the author of a radical pamphlet calling for revolt.
Their lead suspect is Brentford Orsini, one of the city's most prominent figures. But as the Gentlemen of the Night tighten the net around him, Orsini receives a mysterious message from a long-lost love that compels him to act.
What transpires is a literary adventure novel unlike anything you've ever read before. Brilliant in its conception, masterful in its prose, thrilling in its plot twists, and laced with humor, suspense, and intelligence, it marks the beginning of a great new series of books set in New Venice-and the launch of an astonishing new writer.
Suppose that a few of our present inventions had been made earlier, and others not discovered at all? How would the last century have evolved differently?This is the story of Oswald Bastable, a Victorian captain who found himself in such alternate worlds. It is based on notes handed down to Michael Moorcock from his great-grandfather. It's a story of a world of empires secured by airships, and a Chinese genius who invented the means of overthrowing the West's power!
In this breathtaking debut novel by Felix Gilman, one man embarks on a thrilling and treacherous quest for his people’s lost god—in an elaborate Dickensian city that is either blessed …or haunted.
Arjun arrives in Ararat just as a magnificent winged creature swoops and sails over the city. For it is the day of the return of that long-awaited, unpredictable mystical the great Bird. But does it come for good or ill? And in the service of what god? Whatever its purpose, for one inhabitant the Bird sparks a long-dormant to map the mapless city and liberate its masses with the power of knowledge.
As the creature soars across the land, shifting topography, changing the course of the river, and redrawing the territories of the city’s avian life, crowds cheer and guns salute in a mix of science and worship. Then comes the time for the Bird’s power to be trapped—within the hull of a floating warship called Thunderer , an astounding and unprecedented weapon. The ship is now a living temple to the Bird, a gift to be used, allegedly, in the interests of all of Ararat.
Hurtled into this convulsing world is Arjun, an innocent who will unwittingly unleash a dark power beyond his imagining—and become entangled in a dangerous underground movement that will forever transform Ararat. As havoc overtakes the streets, Arjun dares to test the city’s moving boundaries. In this city of gods, he has come to search among them, not to hide.
A tour de force of the imagination, and a brilliant tale of rebellion, Thunderer heralds the arrival of a truly gifted fantasy writer who has created a tale as rich, wondrous, and captivating as the world in which it is set.
The time is the 1970s—sort of. The place is Earth—in a way. The project: build a tunnel over four thousand miles in length, intended to sustain a pressure of one thousand atmospheres while accommodating cargo and passengers traveling in excess of a thousand miles per hour. The Transatlantic Tunnel will be the greatest engineering feat in the history of the British Empire, a structure worthy of Her Majesty’s Empire in this, the eighth decade of the twentieth century.
If the project is a success, the credit will belong to Captain Augustine Washington, the most brilliant engineer of our age. It is Washington’s greatest hope that his success will at last erase the family shame inspired by that other Washington: George, traitor to his king, who was hanged by Lord Cornwallis more than two centuries ago.
Harry Harrison, that incomparable creator of alternate worlds, has crafted a brilliant double exposure of history and a typically superb reading experience.
In this stunning follow-up to his acclaimed debut, Thunderer , Felix Gilman’s brave hero returns from one thrilling and dangerous quest only to confront another. In a magical landscape where time is meaningless, reality precarious, and countless selves work toward countless possible futures, one man must seek a city’s truth—and rediscover his own.
Imprisoned with a prophetic half human, half beast, the lost man learns his Arjun . Slowly the terrible memories emerge, and at last he remembers where—and when—he has been. . . .
In the last days of the once great city of Ararat, Arjun is just another ghost lost in the shadows of the Mountain. To some, the Mountain is a myth, to others, a weapon. Above all, it is a dark palace leaving its seekers to wander the city below. For no matter how far one walks, the Mountain never draws closer, and time itself becomes another trap.
Rescued by two sisters from the mindless Know-Nothings who erode what’s left of the city, Arjun volunteers to retrieve their long-lost third sister from a ghost like Brace-Bel, another man out of time. It will require a perilous trek through ruins to a decadent mansion—one surrounded by traps and devices that could not possibly exist yet. And what awaits Arjun inside is something he could not possibly have imagined.
As he struggles to recover the lost girl and piece the fragments of his life back together, Arjun knows he must finally return to the beast to hear the rest of its prophecy. But each step is more treacherous than the last . . . and the beast who knows his fate may pose the most deadly trial yet.
A spellbinding novel of imagination and intrigue, Gears of the City will propel you into an adventure like no other, in a world like no other.
Michael Flynn has won widespread acclaim for his Firestar series - Harry Turtledove "As Robert A. Heinlein did and all too few have done since, Michael Flynn writes about the near future as if he'd been there and was bringing back reports of what he'd seen." But Flynn doesn't need the flash of futurity to write an exciting story, as he demonstrated in this, his first novel.
Set primarily in the present, with tantalizing flashbacks to the 1800s, In the Country of the Blind concerns a small group of American idealists who manage to actually build the Analytical Engine designed by Charles Babbage and use it to develop mathematical models that could chart the likely course of the future. When their calculations predicted a united Germany armed with unimaginably powerful bombs by 1939, the Charles Babbage Society kept it from ever happening. Soon they were working to alter history's course to their own liking in other ways. By the 1990s the Society has become the secret master of the world. But no secret can be kept forever, at least not without drastic measures. When her plans for some historic real estate lead developer and ex-reporter Sarah Beaumont to stumble across the Society's existence, it is just the first step into a baffling and deadly maze of conspiracies.
Originally published in the 1980s as a paperback original, In the Country of the Blind has been revised and updated for this new edition and now includes Flynn's article from Analog , "An Introduction to Cliology," about the ideas underlying the book. We are pleased to bring it to hardcover for the first time for those who have discovered his work in the years since its first appearance in print.
Rising above your station can be deadly. Cliffy is a child born on the streets of a Neo-Victorian world. Witnesses to a murder, he blackmails a nobleman, receiving a unique bribe. In exchange for his silence, the nobleman introduces him to the Malcolm Rutherford Holden Institute of Regentrification. There, Cliffy learns to walk, talk, and act like a nobleman, so that he may infiltrate high society. But that type of fraud is punishable by death, and when Cliffy uncovers a plot to assassinate a head of state, he's hunted by more than just the aristocracy. Royal intrigue, daring escapes, sub-dermal machines, and bear polo. A grand adventure in a not-so-distant world.
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