“The Uplift books are as compulsive reading as anything ever published in the genre.”— The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction<br /><br />In all the universe, no species has ever reached for the stars without the guidance of a patron—except perhaps mankind. Did some mysterious race begin the uplift of humanity aeons ago? And if so, why did they abandon us? Circling the sun, under the caverns of Mercury, Expedition Sundiver prepares for the most momentous voyage in our history. A journey into the boiling inferno of the sun . . . to seek our destiny in the cosmic order of life.<br /><br />David Brin's Uplift novels are among the most thrilling and extraordinary science fiction ever written. Sundiver, Startide Rising, and The Uplift War —a New York Times bestseller—together make up one of the most beloved sagas of all time. Brin's tales are set in a future universe in which no species can reach sentience without being “uplifted” by a patron race. But the greatest mystery of all remains unsolved. . . .<br /><br />“Superb”— Science Fiction Times

Scalzi is at heart a humorist — his novel The Android's Dream opens with a chapter-long fart joke — though the difficulties of marketing humorous science fiction have often caused publishers to downplay that. But Redshirts, which is being advertised as a Star Trek parody, may signal that Scalzi has achieved a profile sufficient enough to be beyond such worries. Redshirts concerns low-ranking crew members aboard an interstellar starship who start to notice a disturbing pattern — folks like themselves never seem to make it home safe from alien worlds, whereas high-ranking officers always seem strangely untouched by the danger.

Après l'immense succès du <i>Nom de la rose</i>, voici le second grand roman d'un géant incontesté de la littérature mondiale. A Paris, au Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers où oscille le pendule de Foucault, Casaubon, le narrateur, attend le rendez-vous qui lui révélera pourquoi son ami Belbo se croit en danger de mort. A Milan trois amis passionné d'ésotérisme et d'occultisme ont imaginé par jeu un gigantesque complot, ourdi au cours des siècles, pour la domination mondiale. Et voici qu'apparaissent en chair et en os les chevaliers de la vengeance... Telles sont les données initiales de ce fabuleux thriller planétaire, incroyablement érudit et follement romanesque, regorgeant de passions et d'énigmes, qui est aussi une fascinante traversée de l'Histoire et de la culture occidentale, des parchemins aux computers, de Descartes aux nazis, de la kabbale à la science. Un de ces romans que l'on n'oublie plus jamais. Et assurément un classique.

A young wife's new job in an enigmatic organization pits her against the unfeeling machinations of the universe in this inventive and compulsively page-turning first novel<br /><br />In a windowless building in a remote part of town, the newly employed Josephine inputs an endless string of numbers into something known only as The Database. After a long period of joblessness, she's not inclined to question her fortune, but as the days inch by and the files stack up, Josephine feels increasingly anxious in her surroundings - the office's scarred pinkish walls take on a living quality, the drone of keyboards echoes eerily down the long halls. When one evening her husband Joseph disappears and then returns, offering no explanation as to his whereabouts, her creeping unease shifts decidedly to dread. <br /><br />As other strange events build to a crescendo, the haunting truth about Josephine's work begins to take shape in her mind, even as something powerful is gathering its own form within her. She realizes that in order to save those she holds most dear, she must penetrate an institution whose tentacles seem to extend to every corner of the city and beyond. Both chilling and poignant, The Beautiful Bureaucrat is a novel of rare restraint and imagination. With it, Helen Phillips enters the company of Murakami, Bender, and Atwood as she twists the world we know and shows it back to us full of meaning and wonder-luminous and new.

More than twenty-five years ago, Lucius Shepard introduced us to a remarkable fictional world, a world separated from our own “by the thinnest margin of possibility.” There, in the mythical Carbonales Valley, Shepard found the setting for “The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule,” the classic account of an artist—Meric Cattanay—and his decades long effort to paint—and kill—a dormant, not quite dead dragon measuring 6,000 feet from end to end. The story was nominated for multiple awards and is now recognized as one of its author’s signature accomplishments.<br /><br />Over the years, Shepard has revisited this world in a number of brilliant, independent narratives that have illuminated the Dragon’s story from a variety of perspectives. This loosely connected series reached a dramatic crossroads in the astonishing novella, “The Taborin Scale”. <i>The Dragon Griaule</i> now gathers all of these hard to find stories into a single generous volume. The capstone of the book—and a particular treat for Shepard fans—is “The Skull,” a new 40,000 word novel that advances the story in unexpected ways, connecting the ongoing saga of an ancient and fabulous beast with the political realities of Central America in the 21st century. Augmented by a group of engaging, highly informative story notes, <i>The Dragon Griaule</i> is an indispensable volume, the work of a master stylist with a powerful—and always unpredictable—imagination.

On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest.
Once, she was the Justice of Toren - a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy.
Now, an act of treachery has ripped it all away, leaving her with one fragile human body, unanswered questions, and a burning desire for vengeance.

In The Complete Peanuts 1965-66 : We are now in the mid-1960s, one of Schulz's peak periods of creativity (and one third of the way through the strip's life!). Snoopy has become the strip's dominant personality, and this volume marks two milestones for the the first of many "dogfights" with the nefarious Red Baron, and the launch of his writing career ("It was a dark and stormy night..."). Two new characters-the first two from outside the strip's regular little neighborhood-make their bows. Roy (who befriends Charlie Brown and then Linus at summer camp) won't have a lasting impact, but upon his return from camp he regales a friend of his with tales of the strange kids he met, and she has to go check them out for herself. Her name? Peppermint Patty.<br /><br />The Complete Peanuts 1965-66 features a new introduction by Hal Hartley, writer/director of acclaimed independent films Trust, Henry Fool, Kimono, Simple Men, The Unbelievable Truth , and Fay Grim .

Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion.

<i>Cryptonomicon</i> zooms all over the world, careening conspiratorially back and forth between two time periods—World War II and the present. Our 1940s heroes are the brilliant mathematician Lawrence Waterhouse, crypt analyst extraordinaire, and gung-ho, morphine-addicted marine Bobby Shaftoe. They're part of Detachment 2702, an Allied group trying to break Axis communication codes while simultaneously preventing the enemy from figuring out that their codes have been broken. Their job boils down to layer upon layer of deception. Dr. Alan Turing is also a member of 2702, and he explains the unit's strange workings to Waterhouse. "When we want to sink a convoy, we send out an observation plane first... Of course, to observe is not its real duty—we already know exactly where the convoy is. Its real duty is to be observed... Then, when we come round and sink them, the Germans will not find it suspicious."<br /><br />All of this secrecy resonates in the present-day story line, in which the grandchildren of the WWII heroes—inimitable programming geek Randy Waterhouse and the lovely and powerful Amy Shaftoe—team up to help create an offshore data haven in Southeast Asia and maybe uncover some gold once destined for Nazi coffers. To top off the paranoiac tone of the book, the mysterious Enoch Root, key member of Detachment 2702 and the Societas Eruditorum, pops up with an unbreakable encryption scheme left over from WWII to befuddle the 1990s protagonists with conspiratorial ties.