Search Results for: question-and-answer

Gigantic were The Demons who terrorized the underground kingdom of Archon. Yet, who were they? Whence came their fantastic power? Why did they wage ruthless and relentless war against Archon? These were questions to which there was no answer until Stead arrived in Archon, apparently from nowhere.

Only after he had been a Forager for some months, and had experienced the spine-chilling dangers of The Outside did Stead arrive at a solution. Even then he had a difficult task convincing the Controllers, who, for generations, had insulated themselves against the harsh truth. Only those who had actually seen The Outside – the Foragers, Soldiers and Workers – could properly understand.

Superb, classic thriller from the CWA Gold Dagger award-winning author of Other Paths to Glory, rated ‘alongside Le Carre and Deighton’ GUARDIAN

A brilliant young electronics expert is killed by a car bomb seemingly meant for the head of the Foreign Office’s Middle-Eastern Section. Intelligence officer Hugh Roskill is sent by David Audley on an investigation that takes him from London clubland to the Hampshire countryside, and deep into the complexities of Middle Eastern politics, to find the answer to two questions: who was the real target of the bomb? And what is Alamut?

Against the backdrop of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the period before the Camp David Accords, Dr Audley and Colonel Butler are confronted with an assassin capable of turning the Middle Eastern conflict into Armageddon.

In a peaceful, residential section of Queens, Kitty Keeler’s young sons have gone missing. Both she and her husband say they have no idea where the children are. Then New York Police Department cop Joe Peters gets the call he’s been dreading. The bodies of two blond, blue-eyed boys have been found.
As Joe launches an investigation, he becomes dangerously drawn to the exquisite Kitty. With the evidence against her mounting and the world calling her a heartless killer, Joe vows to uncover the truth, no matter what the cost. But as violence begets violence, and his obsession with Kitty grows, Joe knows he’ll never rest until he finds the answer to the burning question: Did Kitty Keeler murder her own children?

The hill below the fortress of Taurovinda, stronghold of Urtha, High King of the Cornovidi, is coming alive: the Otherworldly realm of the Shadows of Heroes are claiming the land as their own. But this time their actions are driven by a force that is darker and older than even the oldest among the ghosts. Who or what is raising the Dead? Merlin, a temporary resident in the fortress, must answer that question if this time of kings and lovers is to be saved. Jason’s wonderful ship, Argo, has returned, drawn back by her own guilty past, and a dreadful secret that she will reveal only to Merlin. Argo holds the key to the mystery. And Niiv, the bewitching, beautiful Northlands enchantress, is working her way even closer into Merlin’s charms.

This is a journey that will take Merlin back in history, and to a fabled island of legend. Love is in the air. But at a price.

Secretly and in stealth four puny humans set out to invade the heartland of Evil – the so-called Empty Lands, filled with every evil creature from the darkest of mankind’s myths.

Harcourt went reluctantly to rescue his long-lost and almost forgotten fiancée. The Knurley Man, who was somewhat other than quite human, went to find the death that would be kinder than the future he foresaw. The abbot sought to recapture a fabulous prism in which the soul of a saint had been trapped. And the girl Yolanda was seeking the answer to a mystery and a question she did not know.

But already their coming and their purpose was known. The denizens of the Empty Lands were girding for war.

And behind all the Evil lay the most ancient of dark Powers, waiting patiently for the humans whose souls should set it free.

For millennia, humankind and the other intelligent races had studied the bizarre and unfathomable constructs of the legendary beings known as Builders. But for all that study, they were still no closer to figuring out who – or what – the Builders had been, or where they had gone. Then, on the world called Quake, in the midst of the violent planetary upheaval that was Summertide, a small group of humans and aliens witnessed the culmination of all those years of watching and waiting: the planet Quake opened up, and something came out – and it looked as if, at long last, the discovery of the Builders themselves was at hand.


All her life, Darya Lang had dreamed of finding the Builders, whose artifacts she had single-handedly catalogued for the rest of the universe. Troubleshooter and adventurer Hans Rebka had his own dreams of unraveling the mystery of those artifacts. To Louis Nenda and the Cecropian Atvar H’sial, the Builder artifacts represented a once-in-a-lifetime shot at untold wealth. And close behind them came the others: Councilor Julius Graces, who did not trust anyone to make first contact unassisted; the slavesJ’merlia and Kallik, who craved only a reunion with their masters; and the embodied computer E.C. Tally, charged with finding out just what the rest were up to.


The trail that began at Quake led to unexpected Builder artifacts full of traps for the unwary and answers for those who knew how to ask the questions. But the biggest question of all would remain an enigma, while their search unleashed the greatest threat to civilization ever imagined…

Dr John West, Cambridge don and private investigator, was present at the trial of an odd duck, R. A. Adcock, who was being most uncooperative in answering questions about a bank robbery. At length, Adcock had made a dash for it from the courtroom – through a glass window, and what should have been a three storey drop to the street. But suddenly, Adcock wasn’t there, and at once a swarm of bees came into the courtroom.

Thus begins The Molecule Men, which takes many fascinating and terrifying turns to its chilling conclusion.

In the second story, the Monster of Loch Ness, Tom Cochrane, an independent scientist, determines to find out why the waters of Loch Ness are inexplicably warming up. What was it that caused the waters of the loch to pour up into the air like the worst rainstorm any of the observers had ever seen? What was at the bottom of the loch?
These two short novels by a celebrated father and son team will hold the interest of the science fiction fan from page one on.

Thursday began as an ordinary day as far as Estelle was concerned. Breakfast… Tube… Office… Lunch… And then the sane, sane, simple everyday world began to fade. One moment she was walking along the pleasant tree-lined familiarity of her home town… the next she was involved in a strange translucent sphere and life had turned into a nightmare.
Without warning and without explanation she found herself alone in a strange new environment. There were strange stars in the unknown sky above her and the flora and fauna of her new surroundings were disturbingly unfamiliar. Most minds would have yielded to the easy escape of insanity. But Estelle Wilde was made of sterner stuff. She fought back at the strangeness of her new setting and tried desperately to establish a new set of survival data before it was too late.
Piece by piece she collected her information and sat down to the mammoth task of answering the great questions. Where was she? How had she been brought there? And why?
Above all… was it possible to get home?

Starfarers is the story of an expedition into the far reaches of the galaxy, where answers to mankind’s greatest questions await.

The saga begins when evidence of an advanced civilization is discovered by SETI astronomers. “Trails” observed in the sky are thought to be from starships travelling at the speed of light, an enigma that spurs scientific minds until this breakthrough is achieved by mankind as well. An expedition is then mounted and an eclectic team of scientists chosen to journey into the sector where the intelligent life is allegedly located.

But because the destination of the starship, Envoy, and her crew is 60,000 light-years away, the time required to reach the point of origin of the signals and return is 120,000 years – longer than Homo sapiens has been on Earth. And though the crew is ready to face the ramifications of such a trek, no one is prepared for what awaits them at the outer edge of the cosmos – or back at the planet they once called home.

Starfarers is a story of patience and immediacy, but most of all of courage. It is a saga for anyone who has ever felt the emptiness of life on Earth and found the missing substance in the spaces between the stars.

THE END OF HARRY POTTER is the perfect companion volume for all Harry Potter fans. Award-winning writer and Potter fan David Langford delves into the six Harry Potter books to explore J.K. Rowling’s universe and characters, and shows in detail how cleverly J.K. Rowling has woven her world.

This is the book for you if you are one of the gazillions of readers who find themselves wondering about horcruxes and Deatheaters and Dark Lords … Langford looks at questions like:

*What are the remaining horcruxes, the places He Who Shall Not Be Named has stashed his soul so he can never die?
*Does Harry himself bear a part of the Dark Lord’s soul in his scar?
*Is that why Harry understands Parseltongue – and if not, why does he speak the language of the serpentssss?
*What will happen when Harry is technically a grown-up, and no longer under the protection of his Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia?
*Is Albus Dumbledore really dead?
*Whose side is Severus Snape really on?
*Will Hogwarts survive the final, apocalyptic battle between Harry and You-Know-Who?

Don’t know the answers? Then read THE END OF HARRY POTTER!

In medical student August Seebeck’s world, almost identical to ours, there are eleven months in a year. None of them is the month of August-until now, when the young orphan stumbles into the true, infinite universe, and becomes a Player in the Game of Worlds. And step by deranged step he meets his siblings: Avril, Decius, Jan, Jules, Maybelline, Septimus/Septima who is both male and female, Toby, the others. And outside his family, glorious, brilliant Lune, also a Player, is quickly his lover, with dreadful secrets of her own.


These diverse warriors of the multiverse confront the terrible K-machines, who detest and slaughter humans… but then are the Seebeck family really human? What are these silver symbols engraved into their flesh? What is the true nature of the unending, unfolding cosmos, a meta-reality built from ontological computation, Lune’s doctoral specialty? And how can August slay the looming Jabberwock using only the Sun-blazing Vorpal implant in his hand? What final transformation awaits the multiverse at Yggdrasil Station, at the death and dawn of spacetime, where all the heroes die and live again? In this astounding helter-skelter two-part novel, the answers to such questions emerge along a twisting path that will not set you free until you sit with August at a great thirteen-sided table and learn his destiny, and perhaps your own.

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…

From the Hugo-winning author of Spin, an exuberant adventure in a post-climate-change America

In the reign of President Deklan Comstock, a reborn United States is struggling back to prosperity. Over a century after the Efflorescence of Oil, after the Fall of the Cities, after the Plague of Infertility, after the False Tribulation, after the days of the Pious Presidents, the sixty stars and thirteen stripes wave from the plains of Athabaska to the national capital in New York City. In Colorado Springs, the Dominion sees to the nation’s spiritual needs. In Labrador, the Army wages war on the Dutch. America, unified, is rising once again.

Then out of Labrador come tales of a new Ajax-Captain Commongold, the Youthful Hero of the Saguenay. The ordinary people follow his adventures in the popular press. The Army adores him. The President is…troubled. Especially when the dashing Captain turns out to be his nephew Julian, son of the falsely accused and executed Bryce.

Treachery and intrigue dog Julian’s footsteps. Hairsbreadth escapes and daring rescues fill his days. Stern resolve and tender sentiment dice for Julian’s soul, while his admiration for the works of the Secular Ancients, and his adherence to the evolutionary doctrines of the heretical Darwin, set him at fatal odds with the hierarchy of the Dominion. Plague and fire swirl around the Presidential palace when at last he arrives with the acclamation of the mob.

As told by Julian’s best friend and faithful companion, a rustic yet observant lad from the west, this tale of the 22nd Century asks- and answers-the age-old question: “Do you want to tell the truth, or do you want to tell a story?”