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The object appeared over the Pacific, moving so fast that it was over Arizona before the supersonic shock of its passing was felt. It slowed perceptibly somewhere over New Jersey, and took only a small chunk out of the World Trade Center on its way between the two towers. Earth would never be the same again

‘The Oinn and the Blettr are in league against us. They do not war with each other. The ship that crashed was a plant to make us believe.’ They came from beyond the galaxy, bent on world domination.the alien terror that endangered mankind. They deceived men into believing they sought only peace. And as their battle fleets threatened earth with extinction, only one man could save the human race.

ALLIANCE CENTRAL: the world once called Earth. Nothing breathes upon it but man and the wind, and the wind is tamed beneath great domes. From here humanity rules a vast stellar empire.
FIRSTISM: the belief that the universe is made for humanity. Therefore be fruitful, and multiply, and replace all other creatures with humankind and its domesticated beasts, and replace all other green things with plants useful to human life…
HERMES SECTOR: the remote frontier system where colonists are abruptly wiped out by an alien visitation. As a deadly threat to the countless billions of humans swarming outward from Alliance Central, the aliens must be identified.
One planet alone in Hermes Sector was spared. But that planet is Dinadh, the strangest and most secretive of all populated worlds. Firsters are not welcome on Dinadh, nor Firster technology. The only people from Alliance Central qualified by blood to visit Dinadh are a lone woman and her severely disabled five-year-old son. Their journey to Dinadh marks the beginning of a terrifying ordeal pitching mother and son beyond the shadow cast by human civilization.
Astounding sights, extraordinary aliens and colossal dangers await them…

In the corner gas station, the local saloon, on the down-east farm, in the settings of EVERYDAY – there appear UNEXPECTEDLY THE ALIEN, THE WEIRD, THE MYSTERIOUS
The title story tells of one tearful stray from a herd of alien livestock which crushes most of Manhattan and causes apologetic herders to make amends. There is a shivery novelette about the abduction of a country wife by a hairy beast, and the story of a pickup truck full of mythical characters asking directions to Olympus. Then there are the ten-legged blue bugs from inner – or outer – space that can give you a dream – or a nightmare; the shadow-monkeys who have the absurd habit of following along and changing by what you think; the tiny angel that hatches from an egg; and the ‘wrens’ that hatch from Grandpa’s beard the summer he was 106.

Robert Charles Wilson, says The New York Times, “writes superior science fiction thrillers.” His Darwinia won Canada’s Aurora Award; his most recent novel, The Chronoliths, won the prestigious John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Now he tells a gripping tale of alien contact and human love in a mysterious but hopeful universe.

At Blind Lake, a large federal research installation in northern Minnesota, scientists are using a technology they barely understand to watch everyday life in a city of lobster like aliens upon a distant planet. They can’t contact the aliens in any way or understand their language. All they can do is watch.

Then, without warning, a military cordon is imposed on the Blind Lake site. All communication with the outside world is cut off. Food and other vital supplies are delivered by remote control. No one knows why.

The scientists, nevertheless, go on with their research. Among them are Nerissa Iverson and the man she recently divorced, Raymond Scutter. They continue to work together despite the difficult conditions and the bitterness between them. Ray believes their efforts are doomed; that culture is arbitrary, and the aliens will forever be an enigma.

Nerissa believes there is a commonality of sentient thought, and that our failure to understand is our own ignorance, not a fact of nature. The behavior of the alien she has been tracking seems to be developing an elusive narrative logic–and she comes to feel that the alien is somehow, impossibly, aware of the project’s observers.

But her time is running out. Ray is turning hostile, stalking her. The military cordon is tightening. Understanding had better come soon….

Blind Lake is a 2004 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel.

One night in October when he was ten years old, Tyler Dupree stood in his back yard and watched the stars go out. They all flared into brilliance at once, then disappeared, replaced by a flat, empty black barrier. He and his best friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, had seen what became known as the Big Blackout. It would shape their lives.

The effect is worldwide. The sun is now a featureless disk – a heat source, rather than an astronomical object. The moon is gone, but tides remain. Not only have the world’s artificial satellites fallen out of orbit, their recovered remains are pitted and aged, as though they’d been in space far longer than their known lifespans. As Tyler, Jason, and Diane grow up, space probe reveals a bizarre truth: The barrier is artificial, generated by huge alien artifacts. Time is passing faster outside the barrier than inside – more than a hundred million years per day on Earth. At this rate, the death throes of the sun are only about forty years in our future.

Jason, now a promising young scientist, devotes his life to working against this slow-moving apocalypse. Diane throws herself into hedonism, marrying a sinister cult leader who’s forged a new religion out of the fears of the masses.

Earth sends terraforming machines to Mars to let the onrush of time do its work, turning the planet green. Next they send humans…and immediately get back an emissary with thousands of years of stories to tell about the settling of Mars. Then Earth’s probes reveal that an identical barrier has appeared around Mars. Jason, desperate, seeds near space with self-replicating machines that will scatter copies of themselves outward from the sun – and report back on what they find.

Life on Earth is about to get much, much stranger.

As Jack Eskridge sped through the night toward Chicago, the sky was suddenly lit with a flash of brilliance.

Jack stopped the car and ran toward the light. He was greeted by a fantastic sight: a huge, weirdly glowing arch, through which were pouring strange-looking tanks, airships and metallic-clad soldiers carrying sinister weapons.

Jack knew he had to get away and warn the country of the invasion. But before he could reach Chicago all the major cities in the United States had been conquered by the aliens.

No one knew where they came from or what their evil purpose was. Only one thing was certain – they had to be stopped before the whole of mankind fell under their domination.

One minute I was in New York . . . walking down Sixth Avenue, a private eye on a two-bit job . . .
Next minute I was in New York . . . a crazy town I almost recognised – but Goebbels was speaking in Union square, Hitler invited me to a cocktail party, and aliens from outer space were running the whole show. Fun City it wasn’t . . .

Plucked from his own “time”, a pawn in a Galactic power play, Ron Archer fights his way through a deadly maze of intrigue and conspiracy to an incredible destiny at the end of the star lanes!

Tad Dameron’s assignment was routine enough: escort Bjonn, the alien from Farhome, on the final leg of his journey to Earth – and learn what he could about the alien’s culture.
But from the beginning Dameron realized that there was something strange and ominous about Bjonn – something in his eyes and the way he spoke, even the way he help himself, that forewarned of danger.
Then Bjonn was gone, slipped away to mingle with Earth’s teeming millions, and with him the beautiful Dian, Dameron’s woman. When next he surfaced, Bjonn was heading a new religion – one which threatened to subvert all humanity. Dameron found himself embarked upon the most dangerous, most isolating job of his career in an attempt to halt the…
ALIEN MENACE

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. After each Moondrift comes an eerie sound, as pure as a children’s choir, heard all over the world. It mesmerises all who hear it with it’s beauty – and when it is ended, certain people have simply disappeared without warning, never to be seen again.

This is the story of one who disappeared . . .

Continuing the story begun in Great Sky River, Benford creates a stunning novel of the last band of humans fleeing extinction in the Galactic Center. This last remnant of humanity is led by Killeen, a man elevated to command in desperate times by his luck and daring. He manages to reach a new planet where he encounters vast wonders. But with one enemy behind them, the humans are dismayed to discover an alien race more awesome than any they have encountered.

Author of the Nebula Award winning Timescape, Benford’s first collection of short stories demonstrates the extraordinary range of his imagination. The stories contained within are a perfect introduction to the work of one of our greatest SF novelists and thinkers.

The corpse people of Planet Keela believe that life is an illusion. Earthman Jaimi Cooper finds their practices bizarre but is attracted by a beautiful tribeswoman. Cooper’s task on the planet Keela: offer the native Lukai fair price for their rare ore rhovium, but first convince the powerful Death Woman that he and the Lukai themselves are more than illusions in a world where everyone has already died. The fascinating story of one man confronting a totally alien culture.

In Philip Jose Farmers incredible sequel to The Image of the Beast, Herald Childe continues what started as a murder case – a very gruesome one – but which has now become a struggle against the strange and deadly beings who have taken his wife, who threaten his manhood and threaten mankind itself.

His seems a hopeless quest. He is fighting not people but inhuman, unhuman monster from another universe. They take grotesque physical forms, they indulge cruel whims, and they are sex-mad.

There is Vivienne, amazingly beautiful, who used to be Joan of Arc. But she has false teeth and she comes literally to pieces. Her lover is a snake-like horror whose needle teeth drip aphrodisiac venom. There is Count Igescu, a real live vampire. And these three are surrounded by a grisly crowd of bizarre aliens, characters in a science fiction nightmare. But for Childe there is to be no waking up: though no one else will believe him, he knows this is for real…

In Peril on an Alien Planet…

Alan Green was not a hero – he liked the quiet life as much as the next man. Not that he was exactly afraid of the fearsome hound, Alzo, or his hot-blooded owner, the Duchess Zuni. After all, one expected violence on this primitive planet and a man could manage to stay alive, provided he was alert twenty-four hours a day.

But when he heard of a spaceship about to leave for Earth, Alan persuaded the merchant-captain of a windroller to take him to it. And hence to the peaceful green hills of home.

He had reckoned without the vagaries of the windroller, pirates, the ‘travelling islands’, the rascally captain, and various peculiar local flora and fauna – all of which, it seemed, regarded Alan with unnerving malevolence…

The alien spaceship landed in a cornfield. Its crew died rapidly, leaving only one survivor – a baby, conceived on an unknown world, carried in its mother’s womb across space and delivered even as the mother died on a hostile Earth.

But the alien woman had given birth to more than a child. With her last act she had bequeathed to the Earth that hated her and her kind decades of turmoil and strife that would come close to tearing the whole planet apart.

“Variety is the soul of pleasure,” And variety is what this comprehensive new collection of Connie Willis is all about. The stories cover the entire spectrum, from sad to sparkling to terrifying, from classics to hard-to-find treasures with everything in between – orangutans, Egypt, earthworms, roast goose, college professors, mothers-in-law, aliens, secret codes, Secret Santas, tube stations, choir practice, the post office, the green light on Daisy’s dock, weddings, divorces, death, and assorted plagues, from scarlet fever to “It’s a Wonderful Life.” And a dog.

Famous for her “sure-hand plotting, unforgettable characters, and top-notch writing,” Willis has been called, “the most relentlessly delightful science fiction writer alive,” and there are numerous examples here. Among them, Willis’s most famous stories – the Hugo- and Nebula-Award-winning “Fire Watch” and “Even the Queen” and “The Last of the Winnebagos” – along with undiscovered gems like Willis’s heartfelt homage to Jack Williamson, “Nonstop to Portales.” Her magical Christmas stories are here, too, from “Newsletter” to “Just Like the Ones We Used to Know…” which last year was made into the TV movie, Snow Wonder, starring Mary Tyler Moore.

We’ve collected stories from throughout Willis’s career, from early ones like “Cash Crop” and “Daisy, in the Sun,” right up to her newest stories, including the wonderful “The Winds of Marble Arch.” There’s literally something for everyone here. If you’re a diehard Willis fan, you’ll be delighted with hard-to-find treasures like the until-now uncollected, “The Soul Selects Her Own Society…” If you’ve never read Connie Willis, this is your chance to discover “A Letter from the Clearys” and, well, “Chance.” To say nothing of, “At the Rialto,” the funniest story ever written about quantum physicists. And Willis’s chilling, “All My Darling Daughters.”

And…oh, there are too many great stories here to list and pleasures galore. So enjoy!

Vivia, a paragon of youth and beauty, daughter of Lord Vaddix, is alienated from his brutal campaign of violence and fear. Her only solace lies in the secret cave in the bowels of the castle, known only to her and the arcane god whose shrine she believes it is.

When plague enters the castle, bringing an orgy of death and destruction, Vivia seeks shelter in this seductive place. Drawn to her innocence and beauty, a presence – Zulgaris – is resurrected who claims her as his own. Wakened to the wonder of the undead, Vivia is granted the secret of eternal life, but she has been betrayed. Her immortality stretches before her like a damnation.

Handsome Zulgaris, dark prince, war-leader and alchemist. Is Vivia to be his lover, or his pet? Or, far worse, is she but one more thing to be used in this relentless quest for sorcerous power.

When the Survey Service first came to Bilbeis IV, it found a planet inhabited by humanoid aliens just on the verge of civilization. Then compassion overcame common sense, and David Ware did the one thing the Service prohibited – he interfered. Just a little.
But when the Survey Service returned 1,500 years later, it discovered just what David Ware’s meddling had done.
The bureaucrats of the Survey Service could not afford to allow just a breach of Noninteference to be publicized. So they set out to cover it up. Reports were destroyed, files erased, and people eliminated. For the future of the Survey Service was at stake – and so was the future of Bilbeis IV.

In the year 2130 a mysterious spaceship, Rama, arrived in the solar system. It was huge – big enough to contain a city and a sea – and empty, apparently abandoned. By the time Rama departed for its next, unknown, destination many wonders had been uncovered, but few mysteries solved. Only one thing was clear: everything the enigmatic builders of Rama did, they did in threes.

Eighty years later the second alien craft arrived in the solar system. This time, Earth had been waiting. But all the years of preparation were not enough to unlock the Raman enigma.

Now Rama II is on its way out of the solar system. Aboard it are three humans, two men and a woman, left behind when the expedition departed. Ahead of them lies the unknown, a voyage no human has ever experienced. And at the end of it – and who could tell how many years away that might be? – may lie the truth about Rama…

In addition to being one of Science Fiction’s greatest writers, Sir Arthur C. Clarke was also one of our foremost thinkers and visionaries, producing a number of highly readable and important non-fiction works. Report of Planet Three is a collection of 23 essays on the future of Man and his technology, including essays on space, satellite communications, the internet, alien contact, UFO debunking and relativity.

For something like two hundred and fifty years Earth had been dominated by humanoid aliens from the star world of Alishang. But man’s spirit refused to be conquered. There was a world-wide underground planning for the day of final liberation. And there were four leaders who knew the secret that would guarantee victory – the secret of ZI.

Rupert Clinton, intelligence man for this underground, was not one of those four; yet somewhere deep in the recesses of his subconscious mind, he knew ZI’s secret.

Money was worthless!
It had no value!

It couldn’t buy a home, clothes, food. Someone with enormous quantities of cash was buying houses and tearing them down – buying stores and closing them.

A few people could have stopped the transaction before it was too late. They could have said that Earth was being taken over by alien beings in the shapes of bowling balls, talking dogs, dolls that walked like men.

In fact, they did say it. The trouble was, no one believed them.

An adventure of the near future – brought on by a catastrophe in the far future. On a summer’s day like any other, holes appeared in the air and people from nowhere walked through them into our world.

They came, and they kept coming, until they numbered in the millions. They said they came from the future – they were our children’s children. They said there was trouble “up there”. They knew they were a terrible burden on our economy, and all, but – well, we couldn’t just let them starve, could we?

Then more facts became apparent.The “holes in the air” were time tunnels, one-way tunnels from the future. The trouble up there was in the form of alien creatures – ravening beasts with teeth, claws, and tentacles, that reproduced like bacteria and were intelligent.They were utterly uncontrollable and so our children’s children fled through the time tunnels, which, they claimed, were securely guarded. The beasts, whatever or whoever they were, couldn’t get through. So they claimed.

But then somebody up there slipped and the beasts were abroad.

THE LADY A OFFERS AN ALLIANCE

Devastated by alien invasion, one of the Empire’s far-flung planets – Omicron – is the destination for an astonishing mission. For the first time in many years, top SOTE agents Yvette Babol and Jules d’Alembert agree to co-operate with the treacherous and dangerous Lady A. it is strictly an alliance of convenience.

Together with the Empire’s deadliest enemy and two of her followers, the two SOTE agents set off for Omicron – easily the most distant planet ever settled. With them is Captain Paul Fortier of Naval Intelligence. And what they find on Omicron could lead to intergalactic war…