Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Science Fiction

For millennia after the Accident, Earth lay cold and still, its small population punished by the dismal climate, harried by plague, and impoverished by frequent, bloody wars. Then, unexpectedly, a hero emerged and offered hope to the oppressed. With great ice fleets, he conquered the forces of tyranny and brought the promise of renewal to an otherwise miserable world. But nothing was quite as it seemed—either to Michael Ormson or to his followers.

Hiram Granville, a modern Leonardo, secured more than a thousand patents during his lifetime, often just ahead of others who had already been working on the same ideas. His son, John, an economics genius, never lost a cent in the stock market—or any other financial deal—and was investigated for insider trading on more than one occasion. Now Cat, a documentarian; her researcher, Mercy; and Cracker Jack, an electronics whiz, are doing a film about the Granville clan. What they find as they research the family is madness, suicide, and a frightening glimpse about what it means to peer into the future.

Five hundred years have passed since the combined fleets of humanity met and broke the berserker armada at Stone Place. But though the human victory was total, one of the killer machines (weaponless, its star drive a ruin) managed to limp to a secret sanctuary on a planet called Hunter's World. Over the years, a new cult has arisen there, a cult dedicated to Death as the only and ultimate Good.

A deceased scientist's telepathy experiments have been taken over by his unscrupulous assistant. A group determined to stop him is drawn into a web of intrigue involving Senate files, counterfeit money, gambling casinos, and the Secret Service.

In the discreet little Key West bar that Jake Stonebender established, Fast Eddie Costigan learned to curse back at parrots as he played the house piano; the Reverend Tom Hauptman learned to tend bar bare-chested, and Long-Drink McGonnigle discovered the margarita. Nobody even noticed them save the universe.

The Big War started in Western Europe with a Soviet nerve gas attack that laid waste to France, Germany, and Spain. The world’s democracies fought back, and pilots like Hawk Hunter led the charge - tearing across the flaming wreckage of the continent at supersonic speeds. They pushed the Russians back and just when victory was in sight, a traitor at the highest level of government turned off America’s missile defense system, and Soviet nukes rained from the sky.

East and West have fused into separate superstates known as the Allied National Government (ANG) and the Soviet International Bloc (SIB). As the Cold War rages, brilliant scientist Lucas Martino works on a top-secret project known only as K-Eighty-eight that could alter the balance of world power. The project goes horribly awry at an Allied research facility near the Soviet border, and Martino is abducted. After several months of tense negotiations, he returns severely injured from the lab explosion, and under pressure from America, he undergoes extensive reconstructive surgery.

Did you know George Armstrong Custer survived the Battle of the Little Big Horn and became a gunslinging knight - errant in the West - aided by a troupe of Chinese acrobats, cancan-dancing girls, a rebel-flag eye-patch-wearing Southern gambler, and a multilingual Crow Indian scout? H. W. Crocker's rollicking, witty, adventurous new novel Armstrong is an alternative history like you've never before heard.

In a future Earth that's run by brilliant green cities, separated by open land for the good of wild things, two sisters must work together across and between the two vastly different envioronments to root out dangers to both. They must protect the cities and the wilderness from the Reuturners, a group that prefers the toxic past to the difficult present.

The third and final volume of the very best of Ben Bova, creator of the New York Times best-selling Grand Tour science fiction series, six-time Hugo award winner, and past president of the National Space Society - a grand master of science fiction storytelling. These stories span the five decades of Bova's incandescent career.

Coryn Williams has grown up in the megacity of Seacouver, where her every need is provided for - except satisfaction with her life. After her parents' suicides, her sister, Lou, fled the city to work on a rewilding crew, restoring lands once driven to the brink of ecological disaster by humans to a more natural state. Finally of age, Coryn leaves the city with her companion robot to look for her sister.

Deep below Manhattan, tunnel engineer Josh Reed leads his team as they excavate the East Side Access extending New York's railway service. But sparks fly as the drill hits an unusual crystalline material - one Josh has never seen before. They push on, and Josh discovers something even more unexpected: a vast room, empty and lifeless - or so it seems.

For rising young lawyer Cal Griffin, it's just another day in the Big City, full of stress, screw-ups, deadlines, and anxiety. That is until New York is rocked by a series of bizarre tremors - and the lights go off...for good. Trapped in a giant metropolis and cut off from the rest of the world, Cal tries desperately to make sense of the surreal chaos that engulfs his crippled city. Worst of all, the people around him are...changing. Once-ordinary humans are becoming embodiments of their darkest desires, manifestations of their deepest fears.

The second volume of the best stories from legendary hard science fiction writer Ben Bova, the creator of the New York Times best-selling Grand Tour science fiction series, a six-time Hugo award winner, and past president of the National Space Society. The stories included in this volume span the five decades of Bova's incandescent career at the center of science fiction and space advocacy. Here are tales of star-faring adventure, peril, and drama.

Six years ago, with the financial collapse of her country and the death of her parents, Carrie Ashworth swore to protect her siblings. She has fought to build a life for them in her illegal clan. Now home and recovering from a government-spread virus, she's ready to pursue a little happiness of her own - with Greg. Greg Pierce has no plan to join the growing rebellion or their "live free or die" mentality. Even after compulsory military service deepened his hatred of President Rigsby's regime, he wants nothing more than to leave it all behind and start a quiet life with Carrie.

The Life Engineered begins in the year 3594, when humanity is little more than a memory, a legend of the distant past - destined to reappear. Capeks, a race of artificial creatures originally created by humans, have inherited the galaxy and formed a Utopian civilization built on the shared goal of tirelessly working to prepare for their makers' return.

When the posthuman Next suddenly reappear in a solar system that banished them, humans are threatened. Their reactions vary from disgust and anger to yearning to live forever like the powerful Next, who are casually building a new city out of starships in the heart of the rewilded planet Lym. The first families of Lym must deal with invasion while they grapple with their own inner fears.

What if a society banished its worst nightmare to the far edge of the solar system, destined to sip dregs of light and struggle for the barest living? What if that life thrived, grew, learned, and became far more than anyone ever expected, yearning to return to the sun? What if it didn't share your moral compass in any way? The Glittering Edge duology describes the clash of forces when an advanced society that has filled a solar system with flesh-and-blood life meets the near-AIs it banished long ago.

Here are tales of star-faring adventure, peril, and drama. Here are journeys into the mind-bending landscapes of virtual worlds and alternate realities. Here you'll also find stories of humanity's astounding future on Earth, on Mars, and in the solar system beyond - stories that always get the science right. And Bova's gathering of deeply realized, totally human characters are the heroic, brave, tricky, sometimes dastardly engineers, astronauts, corporate magnates, politicians, and scientists who will make these futures possible.

Getting back to Earth from the planet Tschai involved either stealing a spaceship or having one built to order - for Tschai was home to several intelligent star-born races, and so they had spaceyards. But Adam Reith's problem was not so simple. He'd already been lucky to escape the Chasch and the Wankh and a dozen different types of humans, and now his course led directly to the Grand Sivishe Spaceyards in the domains of the Dirdir.