When an enigmatic monolith is found buried on the moon, scientists are amazed to discover that it's at least 3 million years old. Even more amazing, after it's unearthed the artifact releases a powerful signal aimed at Saturn. What sort of alarm has been triggered? To find out, a manned spacecraft, the Discovery, is sent to investigate. Its crew is highly trained--the best--and they are assisted by a self-aware computer, the ultra-capable HAL 9000. But HAL's programming has been patterned after the human mind a little too well. He is capable of guilt, neurosis, even murder, and he controls every single one of Discovery's components. The crew must overthrow this digital psychotic if they hope to make their rendezvous with the entities that are responsible not just for the monolith, but maybe even for human civilization...

When an enigmatic monolith is found buried on the moon, scientists are amazed to discover that it's at least 3 million years old. Even more amazing, after it's unearthed the artifact releases a powerful signal aimed at Saturn. What sort of alarm has been triggered? To find out, a manned spacecraft, the Discovery, is sent to investigate. Its crew is highly trained--the best--and they are assisted by a self-aware computer, the ultra-capable HAL 9000. But HAL's programming has been patterned after the human mind a little too well. He is capable of guilt, neurosis, even murder, and he controls every single one of Discovery's components. The crew must overthrow this digital psychotic if they hope to make their rendezvous with the entities that are responsible not just for the monolith, but maybe even for human civilization...

Downloaded from the Islamic Workplace blog at http://makkah.wordpress.com

A 1950s hospital. Temporary amnesia. A naked man running through Central Park yelling something about alien space tentacles. Tinfoil, duct tape, and bananas. These are the ingredients for a spectacular romp through a world you never thought possible as aliens reach out and make contact with Earth.

This novella extends a short story from The Alien Chronicles

First Contact may not look quite like the preconceived cliches—on either side!

Citizen in Space is a collection of science fiction short stories by Robert Sheckley. It was first published in 1955 by Ballantine Books (catalogue number 126). It includes the following stories (magazines in which the stories originally appeared given in parentheses):

1. "The Mountain Without a Name" (1955)

2. "The Accountant" (F&SF 1954/7)

3. "Hunting Problem" (Galaxy 1955/9)

4. "A Thief in Time" (Galaxy 1954/7)

5. "The Luckiest Man in the World" (Fantastic Universe 1955/2; also known as "Fortunate Person")

6. "Hands Off" (Galaxy 1954/4)

7. "Something for Nothing" (Galaxy 1954/6)

8. "A Ticket to Tranai" (Galaxy 1955/10)

9. "The Battle" (If 1954/9)

10. "Skulking Permit" (Galaxy 1954/12)

11. "Citizen in Space" (Playboy 1955/9; also known as "Spy Story")

12. "Ask a Foolish Question" (Science Fiction Stories No. 1, 1953)

We have seen the future.

A universe cursed with life after death.

It all started deep beneath the Yucatan peninsula, where an archaeological discovery took us into a new age, bringing us face-to-face with our origins and destiny.

Michael Altman had a theory no one would hear.

It cursed our world for centuries to come.

This, at last, is his story.

Жизнь Иштвана и Йенси Сато под куполом с искусственной атмосферой не отличалась разнообразием: школа, игры, дом с не любящей сыновей матерью. Старший из братьев, Иштван, был не от мира сего, временами он глубоко погружался в себя, видел вещи, которых больше не видел никто, и Йенси приглядывал за ним, выручал из переделок. Пути братьев разошлись после того, как их мать угодила в психиатрическую лечебницу. Йенси окончил школу и стал пилотом, Иштван надолго пропал из его поля зрения и вновь напомнил о себе, застрелив при большом стечении народа известного политика. Безо всякого суда Иштвана упрятали в секретную тюрьму на далекой необитаемой планете. Йенси не может себе простить, что не защитил брата, и отправляется на его поиски.

Новый роман по мотивам культовой видеоигры «Dead Space».

Впервые на русском!

Род человеческий не ведал о том, что еще в час своего рождения он был проклят на многие века вперед. Что его будущее – это мир, в котором мертвецы вернутся к жизни.

Все началось у берегов полуострова Юкатан. Чтобы изучить лежащую в кратере подводного вулкана океана археологическую находку, была организована дорогостоящая экспедиция. Но исследователей, пытавшихся приблизиться к загадочному Черному Обелиску, ожидала страшная судьба…

Впервые на русском языке – роман-приквел к знаменитой компьютерной игре!

Victor Koman, three-time Prometheus Award-winning author of Kings of the High Frontier, finally releases his long-suppressed first novel. Based on his Galaxy Magazine short story, Death's Dimensions tells the tale of a stunningly unusual and startlingly original hero worthy of the New Wave novels of Norman Spinrad or Robert Silverberg.His death wish exceeded that of any other mortal. Only his lust for oblivion gave him the strength to survive the Valliardi Transfer, the key to the Universe.He was Virgil Grissom Kinney, and he was insane beyond hope.Caged and bound in a madhouse she found him. She rescued him, reprogrammed him, forged him into a test pilot, then abandoned him to the trackless stars.She was Delia Trine, his angel of Death.She filled him with the memories of a man already dead. When that man lived again inside Virgil, she tried to shatter their souls, to possess both her dead lover and her lover of death. But the dead man inside Virgil would stop at nothing for a chance to live again.The Universe was their ballroom, madness their song, and death the dance they danced.

When a garbageman in California is found skinned alive, Remo and Chiun figure it's a dirty business. When the same man starts showing up in the company of a tipsy lady scientist, they know something's really rotten. But finding out the new face belongs to an old foe - a deadly enemy they killed themselves - they know trouble's heading right for their laps, and they've got to move fast to keep from landing down in the dumps . . . for good. Hot on a trail littered with peril, Remo and Chiun head for Moscow where the KGB, the scientist, and the once-dead enemy of Sinanju teach them just who's going to bury whom? As they waste away in a Soviet prison, America's future is coming to a head - a warhead. And with Remo and Chiun incarcerated, the U.S. is going to be incinerated . . . unless, somehow, the odds shift to give the good guys a fighting chance . . .

Freedom is Space for the Spirit by Glen Hirshberg is a fantasy about a middle-aged German, drawn back to Russia by a mysterious invitation from a friend he knew during the wild, exuberant period in the midst of the break-up of the Soviet Union. Upon his arrival in St. Petersburg, he begins to see bears, wandering and seemingly lost.

Paul Trilby is having a bad day. If he were to be honest with himself, Paul Trilby would have to admit that he's having a bad life. His wife left him. Three subsequent girlfriends left him. He's fallen from a top-notch university teaching job, to a textbook publisher, to, eventually, working as a temp writer for the General Services department of the Texas Department of General Services. And even here, in this world of carpeted partitions and cheap lighting fixtures, Paul cannot escape the curse his life has become. For it is not until he begins reach out to the office's foul-mouthed mail girl that he begins to notice things are truly wrong. There are sounds coming from the air conditioning vents, bulges in the ceiling, a disappearing body. There are the strange men lurking about town, wearing thick glasses and pocket protectors.

The Kings of Infinite Space is a hilarious and macabre spoof on our everyday lives, and gives true voice to the old adage, "Work is Hell."

Having mastered probability lanes, man found an indefinite number of Earths—and everyone could have a planet all to himself, if he wanted. But there was one joker in the deal . . .

“The best science fiction writer working today in any language.”

— Newsweek

In this widely acclaimed sequel to The Star Diaries, Ijon Tichy, space traveler of future centuries, discovers that “out there” isn’t very different from “down here.” Especially when he finds a galactic society over which the Plenum Moronicum presides, which appoints as ruler a ruthless Machine; the inhabitants, docilely cooperating in their own destruction, go by the name of Phools.

Tichy seems to attract inventors of splenetic genius, such as the madman who has invented the soul, or another who invents kitchen appliances so good at their jobs they might as well be wives or slaves. Throughout these nine wild adventures, surprise follows witty surprise for the discerning reader of riotously imaginative fiction.

STANISLAW LEM, who “knows science well enough to be playful about it” (Time), lives in Poland and is the author of books translated into nearly thirty languages, including Tales of Pirx the Pilot and His Master’s Voice.

* * *

In this sequel to The Star Diaries, Ijon Tichy, space traveler of future centuries, discovers that “out there” isn’t very different from “down here.” Throughout these nine wild adventures, surprise follows witty surprise.

Line drawings by the Author.

Well known as the author of MISSION OF GRAVITY, CYCLE OF FIRE, CLOSE TO CRITICAL and for his many other extraordinarily realistic creations of extraterrestrials, it is remarkable that Hal Clement's novelettes have never appeared in book form before. — Here are three of the best — each dealing with a different aspect of communication with creatures so alien to mankind that the first thing to do is throw speech out the window!

Tied in to Baxter’s masterful Manifold trilogy, these thematically linked stories are drawn from the vast graph of possibilities across which the lives of hero Reid Malenfant have been scattered.

Reid Malenfant is the commander of a NASA earth-orbiting science platform. The platform is intended to probe the planets of the nearest star system by bouncing laser pulses off them. But no echoes are returned … and Reid's reality begins to crumble around him. Huddling with his family, awaiting the end – or an unknown new beginning – Reid tells stories of other possibilities, other realities.

The linked stories encompass the myriad possibilities that might govern our relationship with the universe: are we truly alone, or will we eventually meet other lifeforms? The final possibility – that the Universe as we know it is in fact an elaborate illusion designed to protect us from the fearful reality – is brilliantly explored in the tour de force novella that ends the volume.

Dr Dan Sylveste, an archaeologist who has for years been fascinated with the long-dead alien race the Amarantin, is about to discover something that could change the course of mankind. But before he can act on anything his wife is killed and he is captured when a coup sweeps across the planet Resurgam. Meanwhile, an astonishing ship bearing a crew of militaristic cyborgs and a kidnapped Gunnery Officer is bearing down on Resurgam, crossing light years of space to enlist Sylveste’s help to save their metamorphosing Captain. Only Sylveste, or, more accurately, the software programme containing his father’s knowledge that he carries in his mind, can save the Captain. None of them can anticipate the cataclysm that will result when they meet, a cataclysm that will sweep through space and could determine the ultimate fate of humanity.

Nominated for BSFA Award in 2000.

Nominated for Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2001.

The first novel in "Solar Queen" series, followed by Plague Ship, Postmarked the Stars and others.

The novel follows Dane Thorson, a newbie apprentice cargo master on board of a Free Trader spaceship Solar Queen, and his adventures on a recently discovered planet.

‘If they existed, they would be here’ ENRICO FERMI. In the second volume in Stephen Baxter's epic Manifold Series Reid Malenfant inhabits the universe Malenfant kick-started in TIME (‘science fiction at its best’ FHM) — and ‘they’ are here. When Nemoto, a Japanese researcher on the Moon, discovers evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence in the solar system, the Fermi Paradox provokes both Malenfant and Nemoto to question why now? Because, suddenly, there are signs of intelligent life in deep space in all directions. Deeper layers of Fermi’s paradox unravel as robot-like aliens, the Gaijin, seem to be e-mailing themselves from star to star, and wherever telescopes point, far away, other alien races are destroying worlds!

What if they’re right?

What if the most expensive and ambitious structure ever assembled, the International Space Station, was threatened?

Prepare yourself for another wild ride in space with this sequel to Moon Hoax, the second book of the Hoax Trilogy.

CIA agent and former NASA candidate Peter Novak, son of a U.S. moonwalker, is safely back on Earth, ready to settle down and begin a family. But the Chinese will not soon forget how he spoiled their plans for space race glory—they want revenge on America for losing face.

A commercial space corporation in America is the unwitting vector of a deeply-rooted plot by the Chinese to sabotage forty years of hard work and multinational cooperation. Shortly after his celebrated trip to the moon and back, Peter rockets into orbit on a harrowing rescue mission. Cosmonauts are trapped aboard a crippled ship, and the International Space Station is in danger.

Peter must risk his life to save the stranded space men, once more flying by the seat of his pants—he has a 1970s Skylab spacesuit and a flashlight against sophisticated incendiary devices.

If he flinches, it’s game over.

Riveting… couldn’t put it down! Great sequel to Moon Hoax!

CHARLIE DUKE

APOLLO 16 MOONWALKER

Need a Job, Go to Mars… or the nearest space station or colony world. But what kind of career opportunities will you find on the ever-expanding frontiers of space? And how many alien beings will be vying for the same positions? To discover some of the possibilities, check out Space, Inc., and such entertaining and original tales as:

“Attached Please Find My Novel”—Sometimes you found tomorrow’s best-sellers in the most unexpected places…

“The Siren Stone”—Their mission was to blow up an asteroid before it could destroy a space station and its entire population, but nothing could prepare them for what they discovered when they rendezvoused with this giant piece of rock…

“Come All Ye Faithful”—Finding a real congregation on Mars wasn’t going to be easy—in fact he had to admit it would be a miracle if it ever happened…

AFTER TWO CENTURIES….

The sound came swiftly nearer, rising in pitch and swelling in volume. Then it broke through the clouds, tall and black and beautifully deadly—the Gern battle cruiser, come to seek them out and destroy them.

Humbolt dropped inside the stockade, exulting. For two hundred years his people had been waiting for the chance to fight the mighty Gern Empire…

… with bows and arrows against blasters and bombs!

Если на просторах космоса вам встретился русский, то стойте прямо и открывайте, только когда вас спрашивают. Иначе вам будет мучительно больно об этом вспоминать. Потому что Российская Империя – крупнейшее и сильнейшее из человеческих государств, и на просторах космоса ему нет равных.

А еще русские никогда не бросают своих. И если они назвали кого-то другом, то задевать этого человека опасно для жизни. А значит, когда экипажу русского корабля отдали приказ поставить на уши галактику – он это сделает. Потому что для русских есть слова долг и честь и нет слова невозможно. Всем стоять и бояться – русские идут!

SPACE STAR ONLINE новая космическая игра на стадии бета-теста, где Павлу с ником Хан, предстоит пройти нелегкий путь медика и генного инженера путешествуя по красочным планетам и планетам на которых почти нет жизни, познать все тяготы полевого медика и раскрыть тайны жизни, путем генных опытов, но есть те, кто играет совсем не по правилам. И это ему придется испытать на собственной шкуре…

First Published in Galaxy Science Fiction, February 1956. From the collection The High Ones and Other Stories by Poul Anderson published in 2010 by Wonder Publishing Group.

www.WonderPublishingGroup.com

Beyond the hideous Plain of darkness, past the terrifying secret city, deep within earth’s dank uncharted caverns, a monstrous hybrid race stood guard at the entrance to the great white space.

So it was that the Great Northern Expedition ventured into the horrors of a stupendously vast underground terrain, in search of the legendary opening to another universe, peopled by an unimaginable spawn of darkness…

In the words of those who trod the void and those at mission control, here are over 50 of the greatest true stories of suborbital, orbital and deep-space exploration. From Apollo 8’s first view of a fractured, tortured landscape of craters on the ‘dark side’ of the Moon to the series of cliff-hanger crises aboard space station Mir, they include moments of extraordinary heroic achievement as well as episodes of terrible human cost. Among the astronauts and cosmonauts featured are John Glenn, Pavel Beyayev, Jim Lovell, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Valery Korzun, Vasily Tsibliyev and Michael Foale.

Includes

• First walk in space by Sergei Leonov and his traumatic return to Earth

• Apollo 13’s problem — the classic, nail-biting account of abandoning ship on the way to the Moon

• Docking with the frozen, empty Salyut 7 space station that had drifted without power for eight months

• Progress crashes into Mir — the astronauts survive death by a hair’s breadth

• Jerry Linenger’s panic attack during a space walk, ‘just out there dangling’.

In the words of those who trod the void and those at mission control, here are over 50 of the greatest true stories of suborbital, orbital and deep-space exploration. From Apollo 8’s first view of a fractured, tortured landscape of craters on the ‘dark side’ of the Moon to the series of cliff-hanger crises aboard space station Mir, they include moments of extraordinary heroic achievement as well as episodes of terrible human cost. Among the astronauts and cosmonauts featured are John Glenn, Pavel Beyayev, Jim Lovell, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Valery Korzun, Vasily Tsibliyev and Michael Foale.

Includes

• First walk in space by Sergei Leonov and his traumatic return to Earth

• Apollo 13’s problem — the classic, nail-biting account of abandoning ship on the way to the Moon

• Docking with the frozen, empty Salyut 7 space station that had drifted without power for eight months

• Progress crashes into Mir — the astronauts survive death by a hair’s breadth

• Jerry Linenger’s panic attack during a space walk, ‘just out there dangling’.

A spaceship has crashed on a planet, and the descendants of the original colonists have all but forgotten their origins. But they have built a culture around the “holy books” that have survived the wreck—books of Indian lore and the novels of Sir Walter Scott.

Then this culture in contact with a crew from a Company spaceship, coming from a society that is high-tech, opportunistic, and ruthless. We see the action through the eyes of the native warrior, John-of-the-Hawks. Can his bravery and cunning win the day? Or will his people be destroyed?

The book is a “fixup” novel based on three long novelettes originally published in Analog magazine in 1966 under the pseudonym of Guy McCord.

The year is 1893, and the workaday life of a young commercial traveller is enlivened by his ladyfriend, and she takes him to the laboratory of Sir William Reynolds building a Time Machine. It is but a small step into futurity, the beginning of a series of adventures that culminate in a violent confrontation with the most ruthless intellect in the Universe.

The novel effectively binds the storylines of the H.G. Wells novels The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine into the same reality. Action takes place both in Victorian England and on Mars, as the time machine displaces the protagonists through space in addition to time.

What could be a more radical approach to politics than this?

One of the great original classics of modern SF returns!

An all-time classic space saga, The Voyage of the Space Beagle is one of the pinnacles of Golden Age SF, an influence on generations of stories. An episodic novel filled with surprises and provocative ideas, this is the story of a great exploration ship sent out into the unknown reaches of space on a long mission of discovery. They encounter several terrifying alien species, including the Ix, who lay their eggs in human bodies, which then devour the humans from within when they hatch. This is one of the most entertaining and gripping stories in all of classic SF.

The first third of this novel, “Black Destroyer,” appeared in the July 1939 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION as Van Vogt’s first science fiction story. It was the basis of the Sigourney Weaver film, Alien.

Alfred Elton van Vogt (1912–2000) was a Canadian-born science fiction author who was one of the most prolific, yet complex, writers of the mid-twentieth century “Golden Age” of the genre. Many fans of that era would have named van Vogt, Robert Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov as the three greatest science fiction writers.

* * *

The Voyage of the Space Beagle, as the immense rocket leaps from galaxy to galaxy, vertiginously hurtling ever deeper into space, is one of the most enthralling ‘outward bound’ stories ever written. On some planets they find traces of long vanished alien civilisations. On other worlds the aliens have by no means vanished!And one terrifying race they come upon needs no planet: it exists and lives after its fashion in space itself.But the final aliens that van Vogt brilliantly and disturbingly conjures up are discovered in the rocket — Man himself.

The Voyage of the Space Beagle is an SF classic.

Back cover:

INTERGALACTIC QUEST

Into the awesome depths of intergalactic space hurtled the Space Beagle, travelling on Man’s most ambitious expedition to the far reaches of the universe. From galaxy to galaxy, the crew explored the remains of past races and civilizations on desolate planets and found weird life forms floating in space itself.

But the explorers not only had to contend with danger from the outside: within their own ship they carried one of the deadliest menaces in all creation…

A. E. van Vogt is one of the foremost masters of adventurous science fiction. The Voyage of the Space Beagle is one of his all-time classic space sagas, an action-packed narrative that carries the reader out among far stars into new dimensions of SF excitement.

Книга посвящена деятельности видного американского политика, сенатора от штата Висконсин Джозефа Маккарти. Показывается, что маккартизм являлся реакцией патриотически настроенной части американского общества на скрыто антигосударственную, космополитическую ориентацию влиятельной группы ведущих политических и общественных деятелей США того времени.

Хотя в книге рассказывается о событиях более чем полувековой давности, происходивших в далёкой от нас Америке, но многие затронутые в ней темы ― в особенности приёмы демократов лгать и клеветать за гранты от международных фондов на народ и историю страны, в которой они угнездились ― актуальны и для современной России.