Search Results for: peace-machine,-the

Lucas Hutchman is the Ground Zero Man

The man who has his finger on the button, the man who can destroy the world – or save it, the man whose own life suddenly has no value, unless he can make the governments of Earth understand that he is the absolute master of the ultimate doomsday device – a device that can trigger every nuclear weapon in existence if Hutchman’s demands are not met in time.

In the year 2043, the Ngumi War rages. Limited nuclear strikes have been used on Atlanta and two enemy cities, but the war goes on, fought by ‘soldierboys’ – indestructible war machines operated by remote control by soldiers hundreds of miles away.

Julian Class is one of these soldiers, and for him war is truly hell. The psychological strain of being jacked-in to his soldierboy – and the genocidal results – are becoming too much to bear. Now he and his companion, Dr Amelia Harding, have made a terrifying scientific discovery, which could literally take the universe back to square one. Except that for Julian, the discovery isn’t so much terrifying as tempting…

Winner of the Hugo Award for best novel, 1998
Winner of the Nebula Award for best novel, 1998
Winner of the John W. Campbell Award for best novel, 1998

Paul Danto was a member of a subversive political party which had an answer: make peace with Venus. But the only way to peace was through the overthrow of Security. And Danton had found the one weapon which would make Security’s fall possible: the long-forgotten duplication machine. It had been well forgotten, for a machine which could make up to five duplicates of any living person was too dangerous to have around. But now, what if the top members of Security were kidnapped briefly, and then, suddenly, there were five of each?

In the 21st century the nature of war has change – Atomic weapons, Bazookas and rockets, were all banned. Machine guns were just permissable.
An the newest secret weapon? – A GLIDER
East and West had managed an uneasy truce in the arms’ race by banning all weapons developed after 1900. Yet small wars, waged in front of television cameras, were the means of settling industrial disputes.
It was a crazy way of doing things…but it worked – until an ambitious Major upset the status quo, and threw the world’s peace into deadly peril!

Marooned on the planet Quetzalia after their ship clashed with the irresistable force of gravity, Day One In Paradise is not quite the blissful Utopia fact-finding Nearthlings Francis Lostwax and Burne Newman were expecting.

Tropical fronds turn out to be brain-eating Neurovores who decimate the rest of the scientists’ crew, and a sweeping, majestic river becomes a bubbling cauldron of caustic ‘noctus’ or liquified hate.

Abandoning their craft, the two scientists flee to the Quetzalians, a peace-loving race guided by the precepts of the Ancient Mexicans. Together they vow to rid the planet of the evil Neurovores.

But the technology-free Quetzalians demand that the Nearthlings destroy their machines and with them their lifeline back to the planet New Earth…

D.G. Compton is best known for his prescient 1974 novel, THE CONTINUOUS KATHERINE MORTENHOE, which predicted the 21st century’s obsessions with media voyeurism and ‘reality television’. It was filmed as DEATH WATCH in 1980 by Bertrand Tavernier. This omnibus collects three of his incisive SF novels, ASCENDANCIES, SYNTHAJOY and THE STEEL CROCODILE.

ASCENDANCIES: Into a future where a depleted fuel supply had the world spiralling down into grinding poverty and constant war came … Moondrift. Mysterious white flakes of alien matter that was the perfect fuel – clean, powerful, dependable. But the aliens – or whatever they were – who sent Moondrift seemed to demand a heavy ransom in return…

SYNTHAJOY: Would you like to experience first-hand the emotions of a great artist, the sublime peace of a saint, the happiness of a child at Christmas? Try Sensitape. Or perhaps you had something more passionate in mind. Don’t be shy. Ask for Sexitape. And for the true connoisseur, we have the ultimate human experience: a distinguished blend of synthetic ecstasies. The world is not ready for it, but perhaps you are. We call it Synthajoy.

THE STEEL CROCODILE: In answer to an unanswerable future, science has created Bohn, the omnipotent computer whose flashing circuits and messianic pronouncements dictate what tomorrow will – or will not – be. But Matthew Oliver is flesh and blood and full of questions – not nearly as certain as the machine he’s appointed to serve. And the right hand of science seldom knows what the left hand is doing…