Showing results for "i" in Hard Science Fiction

What happens when a robot begins to question its creators? What would be the consequences of creating a robot with a sense of humour? Or the ability to lie? How do we truly tell the difference between man and machine? In I, Robot, Asimov sets out the Three Laws of Robotics - designed to protect humans from their robotic creations - and pushes them to their limits and beyond.

As startling and provocative as his famous Stranger in a Strange Land, here is Heinlein’s grand masterpiece about a man supremely talented, immensely old, and obscenely wealthy who discovers that money can buy everything.

Growing up, Travis Uriah Long yearned for order and discipline in his life...he two things his neglectful mother couldn’t or wouldn’t provide. So when Travis enlisted in the Royal Manticoran Navy, he thought he’d finally found the structure he’d always wanted so desperately. But life in the RMN isn’t exactly what he expected. Boot camp is rough and frustrating; his first ship assignment lax and disorderly; and with the Star Kingdom of Manticore still recovering from a devastating plague, the Navy is possibly on the edge of budgetary extinction.

A rocket scientist is tortured by depression. He falls in love with the music of famed rock star Buddy Holly, who had died in 1959 at the age of 22 with so many plans and so much to live for. After becoming fanatical about Buddy Holly himself, his scientific genius drives him to work on building a time machine and try to save Buddy Holly from the plane crash that ended his short life and musical career. This novel delves into depression, while meandering off into philosophy of life and the universe, and as well is interspersed with comic relief.

Leon Tsarev is a high school student set on getting into a great college program, until his uncle, a member of the Russian mob, coerces him into developing a new computer virus for the mob's botnet - the slave army of computers they used to commit digital crimes. The evolutionary virus Leon creates, based on biological principles, is successful - too successful. All the world's computers are infected.

In the title story, an engaged couple working in distant corners of the galaxy plan to arrive on Earth simultaneously and walk down the aisle together. But small incidents wreak havoc on their vast journeys, pushing the date of their wedding far into the future. As centuries pass on Earth and the land and climate change, one thing is constant: the desire of the lovers to be together. Through two pairs of interlinked stories stories, Kim explores the driving forces of humanity - love, hope, creation, destruction, and the very meaning of existence.

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 process, he uncovers a recording his father made in the days before his death, and a dying wish: Avenge me.

Ein verhängnisvoller Irrtum. Ein teuflischer Plan. Und eine junge Frau mitten drin gefangen und gezwungen zu einem unerbittlichen Überlebenskampf. Willkommen in der Welt der Götter! Mein Leben ist ganz normal. Zwei Wochen vor der Hochzeit erwischte ich meinen Zukünftigen mit einer Freundin im Bett – soll vorkommen. Einige Monate danach werde ich von Aliens entführt – mit so etwas muss man täglich rechnen, oder?

A spell at GCHQ sounded like a refreshing change for academic historian George. But his life is thrown upside down when he gets put in a team with a gifted physicist, Alex, and multi-talented prankster mathematician, Betty, who have covertly broken through the accepted rules of physics to produce an extraordinary novel technology.

Nel XXI secolo gli Stati Uniti d'Europa e d'America sono governati da una coppia incantevole: "der Alte", il presidente, e la First Lady, vero motore del potere. Popolare e amatissima star televisiva, la donna nasconde segreti che ne potrebbero destabilizzare l'autorità, e si oppone a ogni tentativo di rovesciamento del suo benigno regime.

Starship Sakira ist der erste Band der amerikanischen Bestseller-SciFi-Abenteuerserie Delphi in Space. „Once I started this I couldn’t put it down. So many adventures and … « Kimberly Johnson, Buchrezensent. Marc McCormacks, ein begnadeter Wissenschaftler, stolpert während eines Experiments über ein außerirdisches Raumschiff. Begleiten Sie Marc und seine Freunde, wie sie die Erde von einer rückständigen Welt am Rande der Milchstraßengalaxie an die Spitze der interstellaren Zivilisationen bringen.

La popolazione terrestre si è enormemente ridotta dopo che una guerra globale ha devastato il pianeta rendendo sterile la maggior parte dell'umanità. Le macchine intelligenti sorvegliano la vita quotidiana; le automobili e le farmacie parlano e litigano con gli utenti, e molti, in modo ossessivo, giocano a Bluff, un gioco di gruppo che accoppia in modo sempre diverso gli individui, creando e sciogliendo matrimoni senza interruzione, in una paradossale lotteria che premia la fortuna dell'ambita fertilità.

Además de novelista, Philip K. Dick fue un prolífico autor de cuentos, muchos de los cuales han sido llevados al cine en los últimos tiempos. Él mismo reunió su producción breve en cinco volúmenes que recuperamos en una edición revisada. Esta primera entrega recoge 25 relatos escritos entre 1951 y 1952, auténticas joyas literarias que destilan la magia propia de Dick y donde quedan patentes sus constantes obsesiones: la muerte, la alienación, la locura, la religión y la represión, y la naturaleza esquiva de la realidad.

Alex rouses to near darkness, glass enclosing him on all sides, drowning in salty fluid. Except, his lungs don’t burn for air, his mind doesn’t fade away, and there is a mechanical umbilical cord extending out of his navel. The Institute offers many services, but their specialty is a release from reality. All a Dreamer needs to pay is everything they have: blood, bone marrow and stems cells. A donation to biotech science. Thousands of broken souls sleep in their pods, every thought and each emotion manipulated, improved.

The Gauntlet Weapons system has been returned to its rightful owners in Area 51. While Gauntlet remains the world's most capable weapons system, two other highly classified projects have been in development at Area 51 involving humanoid robotics and artificial intelligence.

Sixty-eight years pass. On September 15th, 2015, an incident involving the Roswell wreckage escalates into a massive nuclear exchange between Russia and the United States, leaving five billion dead. Another eighty-three years have passed. It's 2098, and project T.I.T.O.R. is a reality. Hop machines are created by top quantum physicists Ephraim Caine, Jeff Waldron, and Rose Rios. These complex crafts are designed to do one thing: penetrate the time barrier. Time is short.

Colonel Lucy Topp is a top flight virus hunter for the army who prefers the isolation of the great outdoors to the hustle and bustle of a lab. But when clusters of people start dying, apparently un-connected to one another (the mysterious proliferation of isolated fatality zones), Lucy is forced to collaborate to thwart a rapidly escalating pandemic. With the only symptoms being corpses with an eerie tight smile, it takes an unlikely partner in the form of the enigmatic Hiroshi Sugimura to unlock the puzzle. Can Lucy see what is right in front of her in a new light?

Als der Schriftsteller Frank Dekker nach einem One-Night-Stand in einem Hotel aufwacht, ahnt er zunächst nicht, dass sein Leben sich in Kürze radikal verändern wird. Die Realität holt ihn unerbittlich ein und macht ihn zum Hauptverdächtigen in einem Mordfall. Um nicht zum Spielball in einem Strudel aus Gewalt, Politik und Leidenschaft zu werden, muss er die Initiative ergreifen und selbst ermitteln. Schon bald stellen sich Fragen, die weit über die ursprüngliche Aufgabe hinausgehen. Agieren verängstigte Bürger zunehmend aggressiver gegen Roboter und künstliche Intelligenzen?

From the age of seven Ryan Richmond dreamed about going to Space. Now Ryan Richmond has $3 billion to play with, he is in his forties; and still wants to go to space. His only enemy; the U.S. Government who doesn't have its own space program-and wants his new spaceship; AMERICA ONE. He sold his first company at 19 and employed the remnants of the Russian Space Program; a couple of the best Russian space brains in the world.

Betty's knowledge has become a liability. She just simply wants a last skiing holiday, and then to die peacefully, escaping her genetic illness - she understands that her time has come. But malign agents want her secret knowledge about the i-vector technology, and they have sophisticated plans to abduct her. In response, her colleagues have made a timeline change, tipping the balance back in Betty's favour; even though she, and they, cannot be aware of that in this altered timeline.