Download or read book Helliconia Spring written by Brian W. Aldiss and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 634 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author and Science Fiction Grand Master delivers a sweeping epic of a planet suffering deadly conditions of alternating extremes in this Nebula Award finalist Helliconia follows an eccentric orbit around a double-star system with a twenty-six-hundred-year cycle of very long seasons. As spring slowly breaks the brutally long winter, humans emerge from hiding and a long sequence of civilization and growth begins to repeat again, unbeknownst to the participants but watched by an orbiting satellite station, Avernus, created by Earth some centuries ago. Humans free themselves from slavery to the aboriginal Phagors, and religion and science flower and expand. Brian W. Aldiss has, for more than fifty years, continued to challenge readers’ minds with literate, thought-provoking, and inventive fiction. Helliconia Spring’s prescience with regard to climate change is nothing short of extraordinary.
Download or read book Helliconia Summer written by Brian W. Aldiss and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 678 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Grand Master of Science Fiction’s “monumental” epic continues as Helliconia nears its larger star—and a strange visitor joins its civilization (The Times, London). A handful of centuries on, Helliconia is close to the larger star in its binary system, and the Phagors have been driven into exile, but conflicting religions and hostility to science keep human civilization fragmented and constantly fighting wars over petty power and fertile land as a plague devastates populations. However, everything changes when a secret visitor from the observer satellite from Earth accepts a slow death in order to visit the planet and spend his time in the sunlight and open air. More than thirty years after the original publication of Helliconia Spring, the first volume of the Helliconia Trilogy, the series is newly available, now with a map, an afterword, and an introduction by the author.
Download or read book Helliconia Winter written by Brian W. Aldiss and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A civilization crumbles as its planet hurtles away from its star in the final chapter of this “monumental” epic from the Grand Master of Science Fiction (The Times, London). After many centuries, the flowering of human civilization has begun to dwindle again and the Great Year slowly progresses while the long, deadly cold winter looms—but a break in the long, repeating cycles of growth and decay may result from the long-ago visit of the Earthman. New legends of the spring and summer have evolved and a new future may be aborning. More than thirty years after the original publication of Helliconia Spring, the first volume of the Helliconia Trilogy, the series is newly available, now with a map, an afterword, and an introduction by the author.
Download or read book Helliconia written by Brian Aldiss and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2011-05-12 with total page 1248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Helliconia is a planet that, due to the massively eccentric orbit of its own sun around another star, experiences seasons that lasts eons. Whole civilisations grow in the Spring, flourish in the Summer and then die in the brutal winters. The human-like inhabitants have been profoundly changed by their experience of this harsh cycle. In orbit above the planet a terran mission struggles to observe and understand the effects on society of such a massive climatic impact. Massive, thoroughly researched, minutely organised, full of action, pulp references and deep drama this is a classic trilogy.
Download or read book The Helliconia Trilogy written by Brian W. Aldiss and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-10-25 with total page 1683 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a Science Fiction Grand Master: The sweeping epic of a planet veering from one extreme atmosphere to another—and the humans trying to survive on it. Helliconia Spring introduces us to a tumultuous world that follows an eccentric orbit around a double-star system—and the satellite from Earth secretly monitoring it. Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author Brian W. Aldiss then explores the social and religious divisions keeping the planet’s population in conflict even as they’re devastated by plague in Helliconia Summer, and concludes the trilogy with Helliconia Winter, which recounts both the threat of a looming, frigid age of decay and the hope of a new future. The Helliconia Trilogy is both a riveting story and a thought-provoking examination of how our destinies are shaped by the environment around us. Aldiss’s study of fields from astronomy to climatology to geobiology endow all three novels with rich details of the planet Helliconia. This riveting, century-spanning saga is a timely exploration of what climate change can mean for our own planet. “Brian Aldiss’s towering imagination places his Helliconia Trilogy far above standard science fiction” (Daily Mail).
Download or read book Non Stop written by Brian W. Aldiss and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “brilliant . . . classic of the field” generation ship adventure from the Golden Age of Science Fiction by the author of the Helliconia Trilogy (Encyclopedia of Science Fiction). Non-Stop is Grand Master of Science Fiction and Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author Brian W. Aldiss’s debut novel. Written in response to Robert Heinlein’s Orphans of the Sky and published in the late 1950s, it is set in a primitive world, home to tribes of inhabitants who endure their harsh and stunted lives in a maze of corridors. Though legends exist that they’re actually on a ship traveling through the universe, no one really believes it. But that conviction doesn’t stop a group of people from embarking on a mission to find the rumored “Forwards” section and its control room. Through a tangled, hydroponic jungle, they’ll encounter telepathic animals, giants, outcasts, and mutants in an epic race to uncover the truth—and survive . . . “A breakneck ride filled with some truly disturbing and chaotic imagery . . . Aldiss’ world is visceral and powerful.” —Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations “Worth reading, and quite a significant contribution to the long SF history of generation ship novels.” —SF Site Praise for Brian W. Aldiss “A major figure in world SF . . . Whatever else Aldiss may be, predictable he is not.” —The Guardian “One of the most influential—and one of the best—SF writers Britain has ever produced.” —Iain M. Banks, award-winning author of the Culture series “One of the most important SF writers of the 20th century.” —Publishers Weekly
Download or read book Hothouse written by Brian W. Aldiss and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-05-19 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Hugo Award–winning classic about a far-future Earth dominated by gargantuan plants and the few humans who remain Millions of years beyond our time, our Earth has long since stopped spinning—and giant flora have taken over the sunlit half of the motionless world. Here humans are among the very few animal species that still exist, struggling to survive against enormous odds, but they have become small and weak, and their numbers have dwindled to almost nothing. When the aging leader of Gren’s tribe decrees it is time for the old ones to go “Up,” the younger are left to make their own way below. Although the journey will not be an easy one for young Gren, he sets off on an odyssey across a perilous world populated by carnivorous plants and other evolved vegetation. But any knowledge to be gained at the terminator—the forbidding boundary between the day world and the night—might well prove worthless for the boy and the companions he amasses along the way when the expanding sun goes nova and their Earth is no more. A thrilling parable of courage, discovery, and survival, Hothouse is among Grand Master Brian W. Aldiss’s most beloved and enduring works. Ingeniously inventive, richly detailed, and breathtakingly lush and vibrant, the doomed world and people that Aldiss creates will live forever in the minds of all those who enter this remarkable realm.
Download or read book Supertoys Last All Summer Long written by Brian W. Aldiss and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2001-06-27 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of science fiction tales, including the story of a robot boy who wants nothing more than to be loved by his parents.
Download or read book Brian Aldiss written by Michael R. Collings and published by Wildside Press LLC. This book was released on 1986-01-01 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to Aldiss's fictional output from the 50's to the 80's.
Download or read book The Hyperion Cantos 4 Book Bundle written by Dan Simmons and published by Spectra. This book was released on 2014-08-05 with total page 2320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hailed as “one of the finest achievements of modern science fiction” by The New York Times Book Review, The Hyperion Cantos is a triumphant odyssey into the heart of space and time. Through four riveting novels, Dan Simmons masterfully weaves such influences as classical mythology, romantic poetry, and far-future philosophy into an ambitiously conceived and unfailingly entertaining epic. Now, for the first time, this entire masterpiece of the imagination is available in one extraordinary eBook bundle: HYPERION THE FALL OF HYPERION ENDYMION THE RISE OF ENDYMION On the planet Hyperion, beyond the reach of galactic law, waits a creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. On the eve of Armageddon, with the known universe at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to Hyperion seeking the answers to the unsolved riddles of existence. As the Shrike anticipates their mission, each traveler nurtures a desperate hope—and harbors a terrible secret. And one may hold the fate of humanity in his or her hands. Praise for The Hyperion Cantos “For vastness of scope, clarity of detail and seriousness of purpose, Simmons’s epic narrative is on a par with Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, Frank Herbert’s Dune books, Gene Wolfe’s multipart Book of the New Sun and Brian Aldiss’s Helliconia trilogy.”—The New York Times Book Review “Dan Simmons has brilliantly conceptualized a future 700 years distant. In sheer scope and complexity it matches, and perhaps even surpasses, those of Isaac Asimov and James Blish.”—The Washington Post Book World “State of the art science fiction . . . This work will be that against which all future works will have to be measured, in the same way, in their time, that Asimov’s Foundation series and Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness set new standards.”—Asimov’s “Simmons’ own genius transforms space opera into a new kind of poetry.”—The Denver Post “A major work . . . Simmons doesn’t just promise; he delivers.”—Science Fiction Chronicle
Download or read book Greybeard written by Brian W. Aldiss and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human reproduction has ceased and society slowly spirals in this “adult Lord of the Flies” by a Grand Master of Science Fiction (San Francisco Chronicle). After the “Accident,” all males on Earth become sterile. Society ages and falls apart bit by bit. First, toy companies go under. Then record companies. Then cities cease to function. Now Earth’s population lives in spread‐out, isolated villages, with its youngest members in their fifties. When the people of Sparcot begin to make claims of gnomes and man‐eating rodents lurking around their village, Greybeard and his wife set out for the coast with the hope of finding something better.
Download or read book The Arm of the Starfish written by Madeleine L'Engle and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR). This book was released on 2011-06-07 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Characters from Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quintet and Austin Family Chronicles cross paths in this story that explore the timeless themes of love, chance, and destiny. When Adam Eddington, a gifted marine biology student, makes the acquaintance of blond and beautiful Kali Cutter at Kennedy International Airport on his way to Portugal to spend the summer working for the renowned scientist Dr. O'Keefe, he has no idea that this seemingly chance meeting will set into motion a chain of events he will be unable to stop. Caught between Kali's seductive wiles and the trusting adoration of Dr. O'Keefe's daughter, Poly, Adam finds himself enmeshed in a deadly power struggle between two groups of people, only one of which can have right on its side. As the danger escalates, Adam must make a decision that could affect the entire world—which side is he on? Books by Madeleine L'Engle A Wrinkle in Time Quintet A Wrinkle in Time A Wind in the Door A Swiftly Tilting Planet Many Waters An Acceptable Time A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel by Madeleine L'Engle; adapted & illustrated by Hope Larson Intergalactic P.S. 3 by Madeleine L'Engle; illustrated by Hope Larson: A standalone story set in the world of A Wrinkle in Time. The Austin Family Chronicles Meet the Austins (Volume 1) The Moon by Night (Volume 2) The Young Unicorns (Volume 3) A Ring of Endless Light (Volume 4) A Newbery Honor book! Troubling a Star (Volume 5) The Polly O'Keefe books The Arm of the Starfish Dragons in the Waters A House Like a Lotus And Both Were Young Camilla The Joys of Love
Download or read book Cryptozoic written by Brian Aldiss and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2009-06-04 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The human consciousness had now widened so alarmingly, was so busy transforming everything on Earth into its own peculiar tones, that no art could exist that did not take proper cognisance of the fact. Something entirely new had to be forged.' The time traveller Bush's adventure takes him through 1930, 1851, the Jurassic and 2093, on the way exploring a modern crisis that remains our own. In Brian Aldiss's tale of time travel, the fiction is once again as psychologically imaginative as it is scientific, an idiosyncrasy of Aldiss's future visions that, over time, have proven remarkably prescient.
Download or read book The Dark Light Years written by Brian W. Aldiss and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A strange alien species forces us to question our definition of civilization in this biting satire from the Grand Master of Science Fiction. What would intelligent life‐forms on another planet look like? Would they walk upright? Would they wear clothes? Or would they be hulking creatures on six legs that wallow in their own excrement? Upon first contact with the Utod— intelligent, pacifist beings who feel no pain—mankind instantly views these aliens as animals because of their unhygienic customs. This leads to the slaughter, capture, and dissection of the Utod. But when one explorer recognizes the intelligence behind their habits, he must reevaluate what it actually means to be “intelligent.”
Download or read book Mindscapes the Geographies of Imagined Worlds written by George Edgar Slusser and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eighteen essays plus four examples from the ninth annual J. Lloyd Eaton Conference on Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature at the University of California, Riverside. The concept of mindscape, Slusser and Rabkin explain, allows critics to focus on a single fundamental problem: "The constant need for a relation between mind and some being external to mind." The essayists are Poul Anderson, Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, Ronald J. Heckelman, David Brin, Frank McConnell, George E. Slusser, James Romm, Jack G. Voller, Peter Fitting, Michael R. Collings, Pascal J. Thomas, Reinhart Lutz, Joseph D. Miller, Gary Westfahl, Bill Lee, Max P. Belin, William Lomax, and Donald M. Hassler. The book concludes with four authors discussing examples of mindscape. The participants are Jean-Pierre Barricelli, Gregory Benford, Gary Kern, and David N. Samuelson.
Download or read book Report on Probability A written by Brian W. Aldiss and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-05-19 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unending chain of surveillance crosses countless dimensions in this brilliant, disturbing, and groundbreaking “antinovel” by one of science fiction’s greatest practitioners Mr. Mary and his wife are being observed from at least three vantage points as they go about their mundane home lives. G, the former gardener, watches them from a garden shed. Mr. Mary’s dismissed secretary, S, watches them from the top room of a brick outhouse in the back. The chauffeur, C, who no longer drives, watches the Marys from the garage. Each observer must file a report with his superiors in another continuum, pausing in his surveillance only long enough to eat identical meals alone at the deserted café across the street. But the watchers are themselves being observed by others who are, in turn, being watched across vast and infinite dimensional planes in an attempt to unravel the mysteries of the world known as Probability A. This brilliant, experimental work by Grand Master Brian W. Aldiss is a perplexing and devastatingly haunting masterwork of speculative fiction, considered by many to be the greatest work in the long, prolific career of a true giant of the genre. Thought-provoking, confounding, and stylistically brilliant, Report on Probability A will burn its way into the reader’s mind and memory.
Download or read book Way Station written by Clifford D. Simak and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-07-21 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hugo Award Winner: In backwoods Wisconsin, an ageless hermit welcomes alien visitors—and foresees the end of humanity . . . Enoch Wallace is not like other humans. Living a secluded life in the backwoods of Wisconsin, he carries a nineteenth-century rifle and never seems to age—a fact that has recently caught the attention of prying government eyes. The truth is, Enoch is the last surviving veteran of the American Civil War and, for close to a century, he has operated a secret way station for aliens passing through on journeys to other stars. But the gifts of knowledge and immortality that his intergalactic guests have bestowed upon him are proving to be a nightmarish burden, for they have opened Enoch’s eyes to humanity’s impending destruction. Still, one final hope remains for the human race . . . though the cure could ultimately prove more terrible than the disease. Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel, Way Station is a magnificent example of the fine art of science fiction as practiced by a revered Grand Master. A cautionary tale that is at once ingenious, evocative, and compassionately human, it brilliantly supports the contention of the late, great Robert A. Heinlein that “to read science-fiction is to read Simak.”
