In M. John Harrison’s dangerously illuminating new novel, three quantum outlaws face a universe of their own creation, a universe where you make up the rules as you go along and break them just as fast, where there’s only one thing more mysterious than darkness.

In contemporary London, Michael Kearney is a serial killer on the run from the entity that drives him to kill. He is seeking escape in a future that doesn’t yet exist—a quantum world that he and his physicist partner hope to access through a breach of time and space itself. In this future, Seria Mau Genlicher has already sacrificed her body to merge into the systems of her starship, the White Cat. But the “inhuman” K-ship captain has gone rogue, pirating the galaxy while playing cat and mouse with the authorities who made her what she is. In this future, Ed Chianese, a drifter and adventurer, has ridden dynaflow ships, run old alien mazes, surfed stellar envelopes. He “went deep”—and lived to tell about it. Once crazy for life, he’s now just a twink on New Venusport, addicted to the bizarre alternate realities found in the tanks—and in debt to all the wrong people.

Haunting them all through this maze of menace and mystery is the shadowy presence of the Shrander—and three enigmatic clues left on the barren surface of an asteroid under an ocean of light known as the Kefahuchi Tract: a deserted spaceship, a pair of bone dice, and a human skeleton.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Step Into The Future

The finest selections from a banner year for short-form science fiction, Year's Best SF 16 is the boldest, most eye-opening compilation to date from acclaimed, award-winning editors and anthologists David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer—brilliant visions, both dark and hopeful, of what might await humankind over tomorrow's horizon.

Contributors include:

Gregory Benford
Terry Bisson
Brenda Cooper
Joe Haldeman
Kay Kenyon
Alastair Reynolds
Michael Swanwick
Vernor Vinge
and others

The Island of Lost Maps tells the story of a curious crime spree: the theft of scores of valuable centuries-old maps from some of the most prominent research libraries in the United States and Canada. The perpetrator was Gilbert Joseph Bland, Jr., an enigmatic antiques dealer from South Florida, whose cross-country slash-and-dash operation had gone virtually undetected until he was caught in 1995–and was unmasked as the most prolific American map thief in history. As Miles Harvey unravels the mystery of Bland’s life, he maps out the world of cartography and cartographic crime, weaving together a fascinating story of exploration, craftsmanship, villainy, and the lure of the unknown.

“Leave it to Peter Heller to imagine a postapocalyptic world that contains as much loveliness as it does devastation. His hero, Hig, flies a 1956 Cessna (his dog as copilot) around what was once Colorado, chasing all the same things we chase in these pre-annihilation days: love, friendship, the solace of the natural world, and the chance to perform some small kindness. The Dog Stars is a wholly compelling and deeply engaging debut.” —Pam Houston, author of Contents May Have Shifted
 
A riveting, powerful novel about a pilot living in a world filled with loss—and what he is willing to risk to rediscover, against all odds, connection, love, and grace.

Hig survived the flu that killed everyone he knows. His wife is gone, his friends are dead, he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, his only neighbor a gun-toting misanthrope. In his 1956 Cessna, Hig flies the perimeter of the airfield or sneaks off to the mountains to fish and to pretend that things are the way they used to be. But when a random transmission somehow beams through his radio, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life—something like his old life—exists beyond the airport. Risking everything, he flies past his point of no return—not enough fuel to get him home—following the trail of the static-broken voice on the radio. But what he encounters and what he must face—in the people he meets, and in himself—is both better and worse than anything he could have hoped for.

Narrated by a man who is part warrior and part dreamer, a hunter with a great shot and a heart that refuses to harden, The Dog Stars is both savagely funny and achingly sad, a breathtaking story about what it means to be human.

This lively and lavishly illustrated book tells the extraordinary history of the bicycle, an invention that precipitated nothing short of a social revolution. Recounting a story replete with disputed patents, brilliant inventions, and missed opportunities, David Herlihy shows us why the bicycle captured the public’s imagination and the myriad ways it has reshaped our world. 
“A comprehensive genealogy of the two-wheeled savior of mass transit. . . . Herlihy takes what could have been just another history book and makes it a story worth telling your friends about.”—Publishers Weekly      
"Fun and informative."—Baltimore Sun 
“Immensely absorbing.”—Edward Koren, New York Times Book Review
"Lovingly written and beautifully illustrated."—David Schoonmaker, American Scientist 
“A delight.”—Robert Messenger, Wall Street Journal 
“Herlihy has traced the bicycle’s family tree with a thoroughness reminiscent of Laura Hillenbrand and her thoroughbred, Seabiscuit. . . . Bicycle is a good read for all and a must for the cyclist’s home library.”—Joe Simnacher, Dallas Morning News
"[One of] the best cycling-related books I've seen in the past decade."—Joe Lindsey, Mountain Bike

David Ryan is the designer of ELOPe, an email language optimization program, that if successful, will make his career. But when the project is suddenly in danger of being canceled, David embeds a hidden directive in the software accidentally creating a runaway artificial intelligence.

David and his team are initially thrilled when the project is allocated extra servers and programmers. But excitement turns to fear as the team realizes that they are being manipulated by an A.I. who is redirecting corporate funds, reassigning personnel and arming itself in pursuit of its own agenda.

"A fictional world where Portland is the hub for the most exciting advancements in technology... Jam packed with great references to deep Portland culture...and Portlandia-type references"
—SILICON FLORIST

"Hertling builds a picture of how an AI could emerge, piece by piece, from technology available today. A fascinating, logical, and utterly believable scenario - I just hope nobody tries this at home."
—Nathaniel Rutman, Senior Systems Architect

Eighteen years have passed since the first manned mission to Earth arrived from Venus. With the first colonists already establishing themselves across the bright, sunny world of clear blue skies and wonderlands of towering mountains and ice deserts, Kyal Reen arrives to join the Venusian scientific and archeological teams that are working to reconstruct the story of the mysterious and enigmatic extinct Terran race that once flourished there. Studies of Terran geology, scientific works, and ancient records show that Earth's early peoples witnessed terrifying cataclysmic cosmic events in skies very different from those seen today. In his travels among the Terran ruins, Kyal meets a biologist called Lorili, who is attempting to explain certain baffling similarities between some Terran and Venusian life forms that are irreconcilable with the established fact that Venus is a far younger planet than Earth.

 

Formerly aligned with the “Progressive” activists back on Venus, Lorili admires the qualities of tenacity and determination written through Terran history. She constructs a theory of Venusians being descended from Terran ancestors. However, even allowing for the greatly exaggerated time scales that Terran science assigned to the processes of biological and planetary evolution, further research shows that there could have been no overlap. The Terrans were extinct long before life emerged on Venus.

 

But there is a different, unexpected answer to the riddle. Lorili and Kyal will have to fight for their theory—and their lives.

The Age of Wonder is a colorful and utterly absorbing history of the men and women whose discoveries and inventions at the end of the eighteenth century gave birth to the Romantic Age of Science. 

When young Joseph Banks stepped onto a Tahitian beach in 1769, he hoped to discover Paradise. Inspired by the scientific ferment sweeping through Britain, the botanist had sailed with Captain Cook in search of new worlds. Other voyages of discovery—astronomical, chemical, poetical, philosophical—swiftly follow in Richard Holmes's thrilling evocation of the second scientific revolution. Through the lives of William Herschel and his sister Caroline, who forever changed the public conception of the solar system; of Humphry Davy, whose near-suicidal gas experiments revolutionized chemistry; and of the great Romantic writers, from Mary Shelley to Coleridge and Keats, who were inspired by the scientific breakthroughs of their day, Holmes brings to life the era in which we first realized both the awe-inspiring and the frightening possibilities of science—an era whose consequences are with us still.

WOOL introduced the world of the silo. SHIFT told the story of its creation. DUST will describe its downfall.

This is the sequel to the New York Times bestselling WOOL series. It combines the three Shift books (First Shift, Second Shift, and Third Shift) into a single e-book in order to save the reader a few bucks. The saga concludes with DUST, which will be available in late 2013.

Reading Order:
1. WOOL
2. SHIFT
3. DUST

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In 2007, the Center for Automation in Nanobiotech (CAN) outlined the hardware and software platform that would one day allow robots smaller than human cells to make medical diagnoses, conduct repairs, and even self-propagate.

In the same year, the CBS network re-aired a program about the effects of propranolol on sufferers of extreme trauma. A simple pill, it had been discovered, could wipe out the memory of any traumatic event.

At almost the same moment in humanity’s broad history, mankind had discovered the means for bringing about its utter downfall. And the ability to forget it ever happened.

In a ruined and toxic landscape, a community exists in a giant silo underground, hundreds of stories deep. There, men and women live in a society full of regulations they believe are meant to protect them. Sheriff Holston, who has unwaveringly upheld the silo’s rules for years, unexpectedly breaks the greatest taboo of all: He asks to go outside.

His fateful decision unleashes a drastic series of events. An unlikely candidate is appointed to replace him: Juliette, a mechanic with no training in law, whose special knack is fixing machines. Now Juliette is about to be entrusted with fixing her silo, and she will soon learn just how badly her world is broken. The silo is about to confront what its history has only hinted about and its inhabitants have never dared to whisper. Uprising.

Did you know that the ski is older than the wheel?

Roland Huntford's brilliant history of skiing begins 20,000 years ago in the last ice age on the frozen tundra. On these icy slopes skiing began as a means of survival. That it has developed into the leisure and sporting pursuit of choice for so many, in so many countries, bears testament to its elemental appeal. Its use in both polar exploration and wartime has changed the course of history. The origins of skiing are bound up with the emergence of modern man and the making of the world we live in. The dramatic history of skiing is brought to life in this engaging book.

One Man, one day, and a novel bursting with drama, comedy, and humanity.
Kevin Quinn is a standard-variety American male: middle-aged, liberal-leaning, self-centered, emotionally damaged, generally determined to avoid both pain and responsibility. As his relationship with his girlfriend approaches a turning point, and his career seems increasingly pointless, he decides to secretly fly to a job interview in Austin, Texas. Aboard the plane, Kevin is simultaneously attracted to the young woman in the seat next to him and panicked by a new wave of terrorism in Europe and the UK. He lands safely with neuroses intact and full of hope that the job, the expansive city, and the girl from the plane might yet be his chance for reinvention. His next eight hours make up this novel, a tour-de-force of mordant humor, brilliant observation, and page-turning storytelling.