Search Results for: homeworld

To VENTUR the Subs were a nuisance.

They were fed and housed under the stern but loving care of the great machine systems. They were housed in space-saving underground accommodation, designed to protect the surface of their planet, and perfectly functional if not luxurious. Their culture was respected, some even had employment. In reality, VENTUR saved them, and their planet, from their own thoughtless harm.

But some refuse to be appropriately grateful. Some refuse to know their place…

Visiting the homeworld, ALIC hoped to find a little old-fashioned excitement on the “Subcontinent”. A retired games creator, however, ALIC can’t resist when Millie invites her to play a game that is wholly unique. One from which she struggles to escape, as her life becomes entwined with the people around her as they strive for revolution.

First published in 1986, ESCAPE PLANS was lauded as an original feminist cyberpunk novel, one which pulls no punches in its exploration of humanity’s relationships with computers, and our own flaws and follies.

The multi-species crew of the Veracity are enjoying some well-deserved R&R after informing the galaxy about spread of the time-bending Messiah drug. Now that the galaxy has been saved again, the crew begin to see each other in a new light.

Unfortunately, in the Veracity‘s wake lie a string of crimes – and someone has got to pay. Former assassin Raena Zacari is hauled back to the weapons-free pleasure planet Kai to answer charges of kidnapping, murder, and the theft of an Imperial-era diplomatic transport: the Veracity itself.

In the meantime, something is moving in the undersea city Raena destroyed on the Thallian homeworld. Has the worst mass-murderer the galaxy has ever known been cloned back from the dead? Can the Veracity’s crew lay the ghosts to rest without Raena’s lethal skills?

In a distant future, on an Earth populated by a scant few hundred thousand humans, the Atkins’s Thomas performs without question the duties for which he was genetically bred. Called “Soldier” by one and all, he is a man of honor and ability, responsible for keeping the peace, for maintaining the status quo . . . and, most important, for guarding the great Book House on the hill – a vast repository of Last Culture knowledge presided over by Libary, Soldier’s mentor, the most senior of the mystic Celibate scholars.

Such is Thomas’s life in the serene, semi-primitive world without nations and cities and governments – until the night the starship comes home. Having fled a dangerously overcrowded Earth years before the Collapse and the Twilight that followed, for seven centuries the men and women of the space-going vessel Search have been combing the galaxy for inhabitable planets – their aging processes dramatically slowed by the relative magic of light speed travel and cryogenic sleep. And now, lonely and frustrated, the weary voyagers have returned to a homeworld unrecognizably altered by the relentless tides of time – a world that does not want them back.

A bitter welcome awaits the Searchers, as old Libary gathers Earth’s Ordinands and Elders together to tap the terrifying power of the collective unconscious – in preparation of the Carnival night when they will sweep the helpless intruders back to their lonely sky in the name of Holy Science. And it is Soldier who stands in the middle, silent and alone – bound by duty to evict the homesick star-travelers . . . yet cursed by a preordained genetic destiny that has decreed their eviction will mean Soldier’s death.

On the Rim planet fittingly called End of Nothing, a bizarre society of robots and humans toiled for a thousand years to perfect a religion that would create a new and all-embracing faith – no novelty in a galaxy crowded with religions. But one project was hidden from the hordes of pilgrims welcomed at Vatican-17 on End of Nothing. A group of trained human sensitives were sending their minds ranging through all of time and space, gathering information. With that information, a computer of infinite knowledge, wisdom and infallibility was being constructed in secret – the ultimate Pope.

Of the three outsiders allowed residence on End of Nothing, one was tolerated at a distance by Vatican-17, one was welcome – and one was a threat to be countered.

Decker hardly mattered. His lifeboat had landed him on the remote planet, and he kept to himself in the wilderness. Neither the human nor robot authorities knew of the unseen companion who whispered constantly in Decker’s mind.

Dr Jason Tennyson had fled the political furies of his homeworld. Here, Vatican-17’s physician had died, and Tennyson’s skills were desperately needed and well rewarded.

Jill Roberts was a journalist in quest of a sensational story she had scented. Vatican-17 knew she could not be allowed to break the news of Project Pope before it was completed – and debated two possible ways of stopping her.

The one of the Searcher sensitives threw Vatican-17 into turmoil, threatening its very existence and involving the three outsiders in a sudden power struggle between human and robot.

Drifting in unsuspecting dimensions, the woman had encountered Heaven!

For more than a thousand years, Homeworld has been unchanged: the Great Houses rule and peace between them is enforced by unbreakable webs of kinship. The Folk accept what the system offers them – stability, prosperity and peace – and the Indigenes are placid.

Then, on one night of rebellion everything changes, as the Folk overthrow the Great Houses. Joseph, the young son of one Great House is visiting another and survives the violence, but his home is ten thousand miles away and communications and transport have been destroyed. For all he knows his family may have been wiped out but his only hope lies in making that ten thousand mile trek across a world turned strange and hostile.

To succeed, he must set aside all his old beliefs and assumptions and learn the truth about the world he lives in.

She called herself Reee and she was the last human being on Earth. This was the one thing she was sure of. Because Earth was not a dead planet, not by a long way. There were all manner of strange plants and bizarre animals, and there were the blue boys who insisted they were human – but she always set fire to them.



There was however Indigo, the all-devouring protoplasmic ocean that was literally gobbling up everything in the world. And there was the enigmatic Emeroo to whom she owed her continued existence. There were also the so-called Martians – humans who had fled to Mars and only came back to Earth to scout for survivors and vent their futile furies on the inhospitable homeworld.

With their homeworld in ruins, ten thousand brave colonists set out for the stars. Among them is Marianne O’Hara – who survived a baptism of cataclysmic fire to emerge as the last hope of her doomed race. But madness, mysterious deaths and irreversible sabotage threaten their mission – propelling the crippled starship Newhome blindly toward an unimaginable future, and hurtling Marianne toward an astonishing confrontation that could mean the end or the transcendent rebirth of humankind.

Homeworld is heaven on earth.
If you don’t ask questions.

Homeworld is stable at last, hundreds of years after the collapse of the 20th Century economy. For the millions of proles, life is still a grim ordeal, but for the lucky few, like Engineer Jan Kulozik, there is every kind of luxury. Except one. On Homeworld, where everything and everyone is monitored by the faceless power of government, there is no freedom.

Jan Kulozik knew nothing of the Resistance; he probably didn’t want to. But suddenly, he is part of it. And running for his life.

Young Jim diGriz has but one ambition in life – to become a master criminal, perhaps the greatest that his backwater homeworld, Bit O’Heaven, has ever seen. So that he can learn the ropes, he has to mix with the right people – or rather the wrong people. And for this kind of on-the-job training the best place to meet the worst villains is in prison. But even for a customer as slippery as Jim, getting behind bars isn’t easy.

So Jim does a bank job, very badly, with the avowed intention of getting himself nicked . . .

Science has come to humanity’s rescue with two crucial discoveries – antigravity devices that enable whole cities to be lifted from the Earth to become giant spaceships, and longevity drugs that allow their inhabitants to live for thousands of years – lead to the establishment of a unique Galactic empire.

Now, the earth’s cities are able to abandon the worn-out homeworld for a new life, a new future. But what will they find as the hurtle off into the depths of space . . . ?