Download or read book The Risen Empire written by Scott Westerfeld and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2008-07-22 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Westerfeld’s blend of traditional space opera and cutting-edge speculation makes this a truly twenty-first-century SF novel.” —Karl Schroeder, author of Pirate Sun The undead Emperor has ruled his mighty interstellar empire of eighty human worlds for sixteen hundred years. Because he can grant a form of eternal life, creating an elite known as the Risen, his power has been absolute. He and his sister, the Child Empress, who is eternally a little girl, are worshiped as living gods. No one can touch them. Not until the Rix, machine-augmented humans who worship very different gods: AI compound minds of planetary extent. The Rix are cool, relentless fanatics, and their only goal is to propagate such AIs throughout the galaxy. They seek to end, by any means necessary, the Emperor’s prolonged tyranny of one and supplant it with an eternal cybernetic dynasty of their own. They begin by taking the Child Empress hostage. Captain Laurent Zai of the Imperial Frigate Lynx is tasked with her rescue. Separated by light-years, bound by an unlikely love, Zai and pacifist senator Nara Oxham must each in their own way, face the challenge of the Rix, and they each will hold the fate of the empire in their hands. The Risen Empire is the first great space opera of the twenty-first century. “In the tradition of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series and Frank Herbert’s Dune books.” —The New York Times “Confirms the buzz that space opera is one of the most exciting branches of current SF.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Download or read book The Killing of Worlds written by Scott Westerfeld and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2005-02 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this powerful conclusion to the first story arc of Succession--which began in "The Risen Empire"--Captain Laurent Zai, unjustly held responsible for the death of the Child Empress, and his crew are sent on a suicide mission.
Download or read book Afterworlds written by Scott Westerfeld and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-09-23 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Scott Westerfeld comes a “masterful” (Cory Doctorow) novel-within-a-novel that you won’t be able to put down. Darcy Patel has put college on hold to publish her teen novel, Afterworlds. With a contract in hand, she arrives in New York City with no apartment, no friends, and all the wrong clothes. But lucky for Darcy, she’s taken under the wings of other seasoned and fledgling writers who help her navigate the city and the world of writing and publishing. Over the course of a year, Darcy finishes her book, faces critique, and falls in love. Woven into Darcy’s personal story is her novel, Afterworlds, a suspenseful thriller about a teen who slips into the “Afterworld” to survive a terrorist attack. The Afterworld is a place between the living and the dead, and where many unsolved—and terrifying—stories need to be reconciled. Like Darcy, Lizzie too falls in love…until a new threat resurfaces, and her special gifts may not be enough to protect those she cares about most.
Download or read book The Killing of Worlds written by Scott Westerfeld and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2008-09-30 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The successor to The Risen Empire is just as fine a rip-roaring space opera”—from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author (Booklist). Captain Laurent Zai of the Imperial frigate Lynx is a walking dead man. Unjustly held responsible for the death of the Child Empress, sister of the immortal Emperor, Zai has been sent to fight an unwinnable battle. The Lynx must stop a vastly superior Rix ship from reaching the planet Legis, a suicide mission that will almost certainly end in oblivion for Captain Zai and his crew. On the planet Legis below, a Rix compound mind—a massive emergent AI formed from every computer on the planet—has been isolated by their Imperial blockade. But the mind has guided a lone Rix commando, Herd, to the planet’s frozen north, and will soon order a desperate attempt to seize a polar communications array and break the blockade. Ten light-years away, Captain Zai’s true love, the psychic (some say mad) Senator Nara Oxham is engaged in a deadly game of political intrigue. From her position on the Emperor’s War Council, Senator Oxham must find a way to forestall the Emperor’s final solution if the blockade is broken: a nuclear strike to destroy the compound mind, which will also kill millions of Imperial citizens. She suspects that the Emperor has a hidden weakness discovered by the mind, a secret so dangerous to his immortal dynasty that to prevent its discovery the Emperor is willing to countenance the ultimate crime . . . The killing of worlds.
Download or read book Seveneves written by Neal Stephenson and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2015-05-19 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem, Reamde, and Cryptonomicon comes an exciting and thought-provoking science fiction epic—a grand story of annihilation and survival spanning five thousand years. What would happen if the world were ending? A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space. But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain . . . Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth. A writer of dazzling genius and imaginative vision, Neal Stephenson combines science, philosophy, technology, psychology, and literature in a magnificent work of speculative fiction that offers a portrait of a future that is both extraordinary and eerily recognizable. As he did in Anathem, Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle, and Reamde, Stephenson explores some of our biggest ideas and perplexing challenges in a breathtaking saga that is daring, engrossing, and altogether brilliant.
Download or read book The Killing School written by Brandon Webb and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a SEAL sniper and combat veteran, Webb was tapped to revamp the U.S. Naval Special Warfare (SEAL) Scout/Sniper School, incorporating the latest advances in technology and ballistics software to create an entirely new course that continues to test the skills and even the best warriors. In this revealing new book, Webb takes readers through every aspect of this training, describing how Spec Ops snipers are taught each dimension of their art. Trainees learn to utilize every edge possible to make their shot--from studying crosswinds, barometric pressure, latitude, and even the rotation of the Earth to becoming ballistic experts. But marksmanship is only one aspect of the training. Each SEAL's endurance, stealth and mental and physical stamina are tested and pushed to the breaking point. Webb also shows how this training plays out in combat, using real-life exploits of the world's top snipers, including Jason Delgado, who led a Marine platoon in the Battle of Husaybah and made some of the most remarkable kill shots in the Iraq War; Nicholas Irving, the U.S. Army Ranger credited with thirty-three kills in a single three-month tour in Afghanistan; and Rob Furlong, who during Operation Anaconda delivered the then-longest kill shot in history. During Webb's sniper school tenure, the course graduated some of the deadliest and most skilled snipers of this generation, including Marcus Luttrell (Lone Survivor), Adam Brown (Fearless), and Chris Kyle (American Sniper). From recon and stalk, to complex last minute adjustments, and finally the moment of taking the shot, The Killing School demonstrates how today's sniper is trained to function as an entire military operation rolled into a single individual--an army of one.
Download or read book A Fire Upon The Deep written by Vernor Vinge and published by Tor Science Fiction. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 626 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now with a new introduction for the Tor Essentials line, A Fire Upon the Deep is sure to bring a new generation of SF fans to Vinge's award-winning works. A Hugo Award-winning Novel! “Vinge is one of the best visionary writers of SF today.”-David Brin Thousands of years in the future, humanity is no longer alone in a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures, and technology, can function. Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these "regions of thought," but when the warring Straumli realm use an ancient Transcendent artifact as a weapon, they unwittingly unleash an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence. Fleeing this galactic threat, Ravna crash lands on a strange world with a ship-hold full of cryogenically frozen children, the only survivors from a destroyed space-lab. They are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle. Tor books by Vernor Vinge Zones of Thought Series A Fire Upon The Deep A Deepness In The Sky The Children of The Sky Realtime/Bobble Series The Peace War Marooned in Realtime Other Novels The Witling Tatja Grimm's World Rainbows End Collections Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge True Names At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Download or read book The Word for World is Forest written by Ursula K. Le Guin and published by Tor Books. This book was released on 2010-07-06 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning masterpiece by one of today's most honored writers, Ursula K. Le Guin! The Word for World is Forest When the inhabitants of a peaceful world are conquered by the bloodthirsty yumens, their existence is irrevocably altered. Forced into servitude, the Athsheans find themselves at the mercy of their brutal masters. Desperation causes the Athsheans, led by Selver, to retaliate against their captors, abandoning their strictures against violence. But in defending their lives, they have endangered the very foundations of their society. For every blow against the invaders is a blow to the humanity of the Athsheans. And once the killing starts, there is no turning back. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Download or read book The Succession Duology written by Scott Westerfeld and published by Tor Books. This book was released on 2018-03-13 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This discounted ebundle of the Succession Duology includes: The Risen Empire and The Killing of Worlds From Scott Westerfeld, the acclaimed author of the Leviathan trilogy and the Uglies series comes a sweeping space opera. A warrior and a pacifist senator hold the fate of the empire in their hands. They stand at a war between an immortal god-like emperor and relentless cybernetic humans. Only one can prevail. The Risen EmpireCaptain Laurent Zai and his pacifist lover Senator Nara Oxham, separated by lightyears, hold the fate of the empire in their hands. They serve an Emperor who has reigned with his sister the Child Empress for sixteen hundred years as living gods. But even gods might bow to the fanaticism of the Rix, machine-augmented humans, who long for the cybernetic rule of a vast AI. The Killing of Worlds Brilliant tactician Captain Laurent Zai of the Imperial Frigate Lynx faces a suicide mission: stopping the next thrust of the Rix invasion with just his own ship. While ship-to-ship combat rages among the stars, Zai's lover, Senator Nara Oxham, is caught in a deadly political fencing match with the Emperor himself. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Download or read book Peeps written by Scott Westerfeld and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-09-07 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A year ago, Cal Thompson was a college freshman more interested in meeting girls and partying than in attending biology class. Now, after a fateful encounter with a mysterious woman named Morgan, biology has become, literally, Cal's life. Cal was infected by a parasite that has a truly horrifying effect on its host. Cal himself is a carrier, unchanged by the parasite, but he's infected the girlfriends he's had since Morgan. All three have turned into the ravening ghouls Cal calls Peeps. The rest of us know them as vampires. It's Cal's job to hunt them down before they can create more of their kind. . . . Bursting with the sharp intelligence and sly humor that are fast becoming his trademark, Scott Westerfeld's novel is an utterly original take on an archetype of horror.
Download or read book The Massacre of Mankind written by Stephen Baxter and published by Crown Publishing Group (NY). This book was released on 2017 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published: London: Gollancz, 2017.
Download or read book The Killing of Worlds written by Scott Westerfeld and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-09-30 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this powerful conclusion to the first story arc of Succession--which began in "The Risen Empire"--Captain Laurent Zai, unjustly held responsible for the death of the Child Empress, and his crew are sent on a suicide mission.
Download or read book Evolution s Darling written by Scott Westerfeld and published by Running PressBook Pub. This book was released on 1999 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Darling, an astronavigational control unit, wants to know if a clone has a soul. Two hundred years and one artificial body later, he is off in search of a dead artist, a living artwork, and the forces behind a mystery that spans the universe.
Download or read book The Gone World written by Tom Sweterlitsch and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inception meets True Detective in this science fiction thriller of spellbinding tension and staggering scope that follows a special agent into a savage murder case with grave implications for the fate of mankind.... “I promise you have never read a story like this.”—Blake Crouch, New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter Shannon Moss is part of a clandestine division within the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. In western Pennsylvania, 1997, she is assigned to solve the murder of a Navy SEAL's family—and to locate his vanished teenage daughter. Though she can't share the information with conventional law enforcement, Moss discovers that the missing SEAL was an astronaut aboard the spaceship U.S.S. Libra—a ship assumed lost to the currents of Deep Time. Moss knows first-hand the mental trauma of time-travel and believes the SEAL's experience with the future has triggered this violence. Determined to find the missing girl and driven by a troubling connection from her own past, Moss travels ahead in time to explore possible versions of the future, seeking evidence to crack the present-day case. To her horror, the future reveals that it's not only the fate of a family that hinges on her work, for what she witnesses rising over time's horizon and hurtling toward the present is the Terminus: the terrifying and cataclysmic end of humanity itself. Luminous and unsettling, The Gone World bristles with world-shattering ideas yet remains at its heart an intensely human story.
Download or read book Earth Abides written by George R. Stewart and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1993-12 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Alive in the Killing Fields written by Nawuth Keat and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2009 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alive in the Killing Fields is the real-life memoir of Nawuth Keat, a man who survived the horrors of war-torn Cambodia. He has now broken a longtime silence in the hope that telling the truth about what happened to his people and his country will spare future generations from similar tragedy. In this captivating memoir, a young Nawuth defies the odds and survives the invasion of his homeland by the Khmer Rouge. Under the brutal reign of the dictator Pol Pot, he loses his parents, young sister, and other members of his family. After his hometown of Salatrave was overrun, Nawuth and his remaining relatives are eventually captured and enslaved by Khmer Rouge fighters. They endure physical abuse, hunger, and inhumane living conditions. But through it all, their sense of family holds them together, giving them the strength to persevere through a time when any assertion of identity is punishable by death. Nawuth’s story of survival and escape from the Killing Fields of Cambodia is also a message of hope; an inspiration to children whose worlds have been darkened by hardship and separation from loved ones. This story provides a timeless lesson in the value of human dignity and freedom for readers of all ages.
Download or read book Life as We Knew it written by Susan Beth Pfeffer and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2008 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I guess I always felt even if the world came to an end, McDonald's still would be open. High school sophomore Miranda's disbelief turns to fear in a split second when an asteroid knocks the moon closer to Earth, like "one marble hits another." The result is catastrophic. How can her family prepare for the future when worldwide tsunamis are wiping out the coasts, earthquakes are rocking the continents, and volcanic ash is blocking out the sun? As August turns dark and wintery in northeastern Pennsylvania, Miranda, her two brothers, and their mother retreat to the unexpected safe haven of their sunroom, where they subsist on stockpiled food and limited water in the warmth of a wood-burning stove. Told in a year's worth of journal entries, this heart-pounding story chronicles Miranda's struggle to hold on to the most important resource of all--hope--in an increasingly desperate and unfamiliar world. An extraordinary series debut Susan Beth Pfeffer has written several companion novels to Life As We Knew It, including The Dead and the Gone, This World We Live In, and The Shade of the Moon.
