The Uplift Saga

Hugo and Nebula award-winning author David Brin is one of the most eloquent, imaginative voices in science fiction.  Now he returns with a new novel rich in texture, universal in theme, monumental in scope--pushing the genre to new heights.

Young Maia is fast approaching a turning point in her life.  As a half-caste var, she must leave the clan home of her privileged half sisters and seek her fortune in the world.  With her twin sister, Leie, she searches the docks of Port Sanger for an apprenticeship aboard the vessels that sail the trade routes of the Stratoin oceans.

On her far-reaching, perilous journey of discovery, Maia will endure hardship and hunger, imprisonment and loneliness, bloody battles with pirates and separation from her twin.  And along the way, she will meet a traveler who has come an unimaginable distance--and who threatens the delicate balance of the Stratoins' carefully maintained, perfect society....

Both exciting and insightful, Glory Season is a major novel, a transcendent saga of the human spirit.

David Brin's Uplift novels--Sundiver, Hugo award winner The Uplift War, and Hugo and Nebula winner Startide Rising--are among the most thrilling and extraordinary science fiction tales ever written. Now David Brin returns to this future universe for a new Uplift trilogy, packed with adventure, passion and wit. The planet Jijo is forbidden to settlers, its ecology protected by guardians of the Five Galaxies. But over the centuries it has been resettled, populated by refugees of six intelligent races. Together they have woven a new society in the wilderness, drawn together by their fear of Judgment Day, when the Five Galaxies will discover their illegal colony. Then a strange starship arrives on Jijo. Does it bring the long-dreaded judgment, or worse--a band of criminals willing to destroy the six races of Jijo in order to cover their own crimes?

Winner of the Nebula and Hugo Awards, David Brin brings his bestselling Uplift series to a magnificent conclusion with his most imaginative and powerful novel to date--the shattering epic of a universe poised on the brink of revelation...or annihilation.

The brutal enemy that has relentlessly pursued them for centuries has arrived. Now the fugitive settlers of Jijo--both human and alien--brace for a final confrontation. The Jijoans' only hope is the Earthship Streaker, crewed by uplifted dolphins and commanded by an untested human.

Yet more than just the fate of Jijo hangs in the balance. For Streaker carries a cargo of ancient artifacts that may unlock the secret of those who first brought intelligent life to the Galaxies. Many believe a dire prophecy has come to pass: an age of terrifying changes that could end Galactic civilization.

As dozens of white dwarf stars stand ready to explode, the survival of sentient life in the universe rests on the most improbable dream of all--that age-old antagonists of different races can at last recognize the unity of all consciousness.

For the fugitive settlers of Jijo, it is truly the beginning of the end. As starships fill the skies, the threat of genocide hangs over the planet that once peacefully sheltered six bands of sapient beings. Now the human settlers of Jijo and their alien neighbors must make heroic—and terrifying—choices. A scientist must turn against the benefactors she's been trained to love. A heretic must rally believers for a cause he never shared. And four youngsters find that what started as a simple adventure—imitating exploits in Earthling books by Verne and Twain—leads them to the dark abyss of mystery. Meanwhile, the Streaker, with her fugitive dolphin crew, arrives at last on Jijo in a desperate search for refuge. Yet what the crew finds instead is a secret hidden since the galaxies first spawned intelligence—a secret that could mean salvation for the planet and its inhabitants … or their ultimate annihilation.

From multiple award-winning author David Brin comes this extraordinary collection of tales and essays of the near and distant future, as humans and aliens encounter the secrets of the cosmos--and of their own existence.  In "Dr. Pak's Preschool" a woman discovers that her baby has been called upon to work while still in the womb.  In "NatuLife" a married couple finds their relationship threatened by the wonders of sex by simulation.  In "Sshhh . . . " the arrival of benevolent aliens on Earth leads to frenzy, madness . . . and unimaginable joy.  In "Bubbles" a sentient starcraft reaches the limits of the universe--and dares to go beyond.  These are but a few of the challenging speculations in Otherness, from the pen of an author whose urgent and compelling imaginative fiction challenges us to wonder at the shape and the nature of the universe--as well as at its future.

• The Giving Plague • (1988)
• Myth Number 21 • (1990)
• Story Notes (Transitions) • (1994)
• Dr. Pak's Preschool • (1989)
• Detritus Affected • (1993)
• The Dogma of Otherness • [Editorial (Analog)] • (1986)
• Sshhh ... • (1988)
• Story Notes (Contact) • (1994)
• Those Eyes • (1994)
• What to Say to a UFO • (1994)
• Bonding to Genji • (1992)
• The Warm Space • (1985)
• Whose Millennium? • (1994)
• NatuLife ® • (1994)
• Piecework • (1990)
• Science versus Magic • (1990)
• Bubbles • (1987)
• Story Notes (Cosmos) • (1994)
• Ambiguity • (1989)
• What Continues ... And What Fails ... • (1991)
• The Commonwealth of Wonder • (1990)

It is 2061, and Halley's Comet is starting its long journey out to the far reaches of the solar system. Only this time it is not alone.

Harnessing the mighty ball of ice is the greatest challenge mankind has undertaken - and in a century of ecological disasters and social fragmentation on Earth it is also mankind's greatest hope. So when a series of startling discoveries threatens to jeopardise the mission, the small group of scientists and engineers hurtling further away from their home world find themselves fighting not only for their lives, but for the future of humanity.

Heart of the Comet is a breathtaking tale of scientific endeavour and human courage by two of the most formidable talents in science fiction.

In a perilous future where disposable duplicate bodies fulfill every legal and illicit whim of their decadent masters, life is cheap. No one knows that better than Albert Morris, a brash investigator with a knack for trouble, who has sent his own duplicates into deadly peril more times than he cares to remember.

But when Morris takes on a ring of bootleggers making illegal copies of a famous actress, he stumbles upon a secret so explosive it has incited open warfare on the streets of Dittotown.

Dr. Yosil Maharal, a brilliant researcher in artificial intelligence, has suddenly vanished, just as he is on the verge of a revolutionary scientific breakthrough. Maharal's daughter, Ritu, believes he has been kidnapped--or worse. Aeneas Polom, a reclusive trillionaire who appears in public only through his high-priced platinum duplicates, offers Morris unlimited resources to locate Maharal before his awesome discovery falls into the wrong hands.

To uncover the truth, Morris must enter a shadowy, nightmare world of ghosts and golems where nothing--and no one--is what they seem, memory itself is suspect, and the line between life and death may no longer exist.

Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy is one of the highwater marks of science fiction.The monumental story of a Galactic Empire in decline and a secret society of scientists who seek to shorten the coming Dark Age with tools of Psychohistory, Foundation pioneered many themes of modern science fiction.Now, with the approval of the Asimov estate, three of today's most acclaimed authors have completed the epic the Grand Master left unfinished.

The Second Foundation Trilogy begins with Gregory Benford's Foundation's Fear, telling the origins of Hari Seldon, the Foundation's creator. Greg Bear's Foundation and Chaos relates the epic tale of Seldon's downfall and the first stirrings of robotic rebellion. Now, in David Brin's Foundation's Triumph, Seldon is about to escape exile and risk everything for one final quest-a search for knowledge and the power it bestows. The outcome of this final journey may secure humankind's future-or witness its final downfall...

It's fifty years from tomorrow. A microscopic black hole has accidentally fallen into the Earth's core and the entire planet is in danger of being destroyed within two years. A team of scientists frantically searches for a way to prevent the ultimate disaster. But while they look for an answer, others argue that the only way to save the Earth is to let its human inhabitants become extinct: to let the million-year evolutionary clock rewind and start over.

From an underground lab in New Zealand to a spacestation in Low Earth Orbit, from an endangered species conservation ark in Africa to a home in New Orleans, Earth spans exotic settings and challenging new ideas. It's peopled with extraordinary characters: a brilliant, devoted young scientist who discovers his life's work may be responsible for destroying the world; a hard-bitten shuttle pilot who vows to learn the secret of her husband's tragic death; a legendary Novel laureate whose relationship with the planet borders on the mystical; a midwestern youth who leaves behind the boredom of suburban American life for the dangers of the unknown; a Maori billionaire who fears that all his money cannot control his fate — or the fate of the world.

But, above all Earth is a profound, impassioned testament about our own responsibility to our endangered planet.

This is the story of a lie that became the most powerful kind of truth.

A timeless novel as urgently compelling as Warday or Alas, Babylon, David Brin's The Postman is the dramatically moving saga of a man who rekindled the spirit of America through the power of a dream, from a modern master of science fiction.

He was a survivor—a wanderer who traded tales for food and shelter in the dark and savage aftermath of a devastating war. Fate touches him one chill winter's day when he borrows the jacket of a long-dead postal worker to protect himself from the cold. The old, worn uniform still has power as a symbol of hope, and with it he begins to weave his greatest tale, of a nation on the road to recovery.