Catalog Search Results
1) Passage
Author
Summary
A psychologist specializing in near-death experiences, Dr. Joanna Lander has spent two years recording the experiences of those who have been declared clinically dead and lived to tell about it.
A new doctor has arrived at Mercy General, one with the power to give Joanna the chance to get as close to death as anyone can.
A brilliant young neurologist, Dr. Richard Wright has come up with a way to manufacture the near-death experience using a psychoactive...
2) Memory
Author
Series
Summary
A disgraced space hero gets a second chance. Miles Vorkosigan lied about the state of his health and is dismissed from service by his superior. But when his superior falls mentally ill and starts making mistakes it is to Miles he turns for help. By the author of Mirror Dance.
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Series
Lady astronaut volume 1
Appears on list
Summary
On a cold spring night in 1952, a huge meteorite fell to earth and obliterated much of the east coast of the United States, including Washington D.C. The ensuing climate cataclysm will soon render the earth inhospitable for humanity, as the last such meteorite did for the dinosaurs. This looming threat calls for a radically accelerated effort to colonize space, and requires a much larger share of humanity to take part in the process. Elma York's experience...
4) Exhalation
Author
Summary
This much-anticipated second collection of stories is signature Ted Chiang, full of revelatory ideas and deeply sympathetic characters. In "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and the temptation of second chances. In the epistolary "Exhalation," an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications not just for his own people, but for all of...
Author
Summary
"A new industrial revolution has begun. Like mechanization or electricity before it, artificial intelligence will touch every aspect of our lives--and cause profound disruptions in the balance of global power, especially among the AI superpowers: China, the United States, and Europe. Autonomous weapons expert Paul Scharre takes readers inside the fierce competition to develop and implement this game-changing technology and dominate the future"--
Author
Series
Devoured world volume 1
Summary
"She's a revolutionary. Humanity is running out of options. Habitable planets are being destroyed as quickly as they're found, and Naira Sharp thinks she knows the reason why. The all-powerful Mercator family has been controlling the exploration of the universe for decades, and exploiting any materials they find along the way under the guise of helping humanity's expansion. But Naira knows the truth, and she plans to bring the whole family down from...
7) Earth afire
Author
Series
Summary
Traces the events of the First Formic War a century before the events of Ender's Game, following the unsuccessful attempt of Victor Delgado to warn skeptical Earth governments of an imminent alien invasion and the efforts of Mazer Rackham and the Mobile Operations Police to meet unprecedented threats.
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Series
(Arthur Charles),Rama volume 1
Summary
Astronomers discover a huge, celestial object hurtling through space and after a space probe confirms that is not a natural object, send a space team to investigate.
9) Severance
Author
Summary
After an epidemic causes most New Yorkers to flee, Candace Chen stays behind and continues her routine: going to work, getting paid, and blogging about the deserted city. Eventually, though, Candace will have to leave--putting her at the mercy of a power-hungry IT specialist named Bob.
10) Earth awakens
Author
Series
Summary
When the alien ship screamed through the solar system, it disrupted communications between the far-flung human mining ships and supply stations and between them and Earth. So Earth and Luna were unaware that they had been invaded until the ship pulled into Earth orbit, and began landing terra-forming crews in China. Politics and pride slowed the response on Earth, and on Luna, corporate power struggles seemed more urgent than distant deaths. In this...
Author
Summary
"Merchants of Doubt " tells the story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades that link smoking to lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone hole.
12) The Swarm
Author
Series
Second Formic War volume 1
Summary
Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston return to their Ender's Game prequel series with this first volume of an all-new trilogy about the Second Formic War in The Swarm. The first invasion of Earth was beaten back by a coalition of corporate and international military forces, and the Chinese army. China has been devastated by the Formic's initial efforts to eradicate Earth life forms and prepare the ground for their own settlement. The Scouring of China...
13) Nyxia unleashed
Author
Series
Nyxia triad volume 2
Summary
Emmett Atwater and the other Genesis spaceship survivors are caught between Babel and the indigenous Adamite population when they are sent to extract nyxia, the most valuable material in the universe.
Author
Summary
"A lyrical queer sci-fi retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet as a locked-room thriller. A Twenty-First Century Hamlet. Hayden Lichfield's life is ripped apart when he finds his father murdered in their lab, and the camera logs erased. The killer can only have been after one thing: the Sisyphus Formula the two of them developed together, which might one day reverse death itself. Hoping to lure the killer into the open, Hayden steals the research. In the...
Author
Summary
"Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. She's used to the names; she only wishes there was more truth to them. If she were truly a monster, she'd be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remains of her world. Aster lives in the lowdeck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations, Matilda has ferried the last of humanity...
16) Exordia
Author
Summary
"Anna Sinjari--refugee, survivor of genocide, disaffected office worker--has a close encounter that reveals universe-threatening stakes. Enter Ssrin, a many-headed serpent alien who is on the run from her own past. Ssrin and Anna are inexorably, dangerously drawn to each other...While humanity reels from disaster, Anna must join a small team of civilians, soldiers, and scientists to investigate a mysterious broadcast and unknowable horror. If they...
17) Earth unaware
Author
Series
Summary
The mining ship El Cavador, beyond Pluto, detects a fast-moving incoming object headed toward Earth. The crew decides it's probably not important, but they're wrong: it represents the opening wave of the first Formic War.
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Series
Out of the dark volume 3
Summary
"We've come a long way in the forty years since the Shongairi attacked Earth, killed half its people, and then were driven away by an alliance of humans with the other sentient bipeds who inhabit our planet. But it also transpires that the Shongairi expedition that nearly destroyed our home planet ... wasn't an official one. That, indeed, its commander may have been acting as an unwitting cats-paw for the Founders, the ancient alliance of very old,...
19) Nyxia uprising
Author
Series
Nyxia triad volume 3
Summary
"Emmett and the Genesis team must join forces with a surprising set of allies if they're ever to make it home alive. Desperate to return home to Earth and claim the reward Babel promised, Emmett and the Genesis team join forces with the Imago. Babel's initial attack left their home city in ruins, but that was just part of the Imago's plan. They knew one thing Babel didn't. This world is coming to an end. Eden's two moons are on a collision course...
Author
Summary
The Illustrated Man is classic Bradbury - a collection of tales that breathe and move, animated by sharp, intaken breath and flexing muscle. Here are eighteen startling visions of humankind's destiny, unfolding across a canvas of decorated skin - visions as keen as the tattooist's needle and as colorful as the inks that indelibly stain the body. The images, ideas, sounds and scents that abound in this phantasmagoric sideshow are provocative and powerful:...