Showing results by publisher "QUEST from W. F. Howes Ltd" in Science Fiction

Hunters of Dune finally meet the Enemy who followed the violent fanatics the Honored Matres back to their universe. The thinking machines vanquished by Serena Butler's jihad were not destroyed, only driven into exile - and now, tens of thousands of years later, they are back. Can the resurrected heroes onboard the Ithaca save our race from annihilation? 

It is the year 10,154 of the Imperial Calendar, and for four decades the planet Arrakis - called Dune by its inhabitants - has been ruled by the Harkonnen family. But the seeds of change have been sown. On Arrakis, an idealistic young planetologist, Pardot Kynes, goes out into the desert to learn the secrets of its giant sandworms and the priceless Spice they create. And on another planet, Caledon, young Leto Atreides is nearly ready to become duke. The blood feud between House Atreides and House Harkonnen is about to begin. 

The first battle was a victory. But the war is just beginning.... Earth is a radioactive ruin. But the initial campaign of the Butlerian Jihad has given new hope to mankind. Serena Butler, whose murdered child has become a symbol for oppressed humanity, inspires a war against the thinking computers led by Xavier Harkonnen and Vorian Atreides. But four of the Titans - murderous machines with human brains and human cunning - still remain. And the universal computer mind, Omnius, still wields most of its power.

As Shaddam sits at last on the Golden Lion Throne, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen plots against the new emperor and House Atreides - and against the mysterious Sisterhood of the Bene Gesserit. For Leto Atreides, grown complacent and comfortable as ruler of his House, it is a time of momentous choice: between friendship and duty, safety and destiny. But for the survival of House Atreides, there is just one choice - strive for greatness or be crushed.

Fearful of losing his precarious hold on the Golden Lion Throne, Shaddam IV, emperor of a Million Worlds, has devised a radical scheme to develop an alternative to melange, the addictive spice that binds the Imperium together and that can be found only on the desert world of Dune. In subterranean labs on the machine planet Ix, cruel Tleilaxu overlords use slaves and prisoners as part of a horrific plan to manufacture a synthetic form of melange known as amal. If amal can supplant the spice from Dune, it will give Shaddam what he seeks: absolute power.

The universal computer mind Omnius has retreated to its last stronghold, where it plots a devastating new strategy that could undo the victories of the Butlerian Jihad. The surviving Titans are creating new lieutenants to do their will when at last they return to attack the human beings they once ruled. In the years of peace too many of mankind have forgotten that their machine enemies never sleep. But some have forgotten nothing - and learned from their triumphs.

Gilbertus Albans has founded the Mentat School, a place where humans can learn the efficient techniques of thinking machines. But Gilbertus walks an uneasy line between his own convictions and compromises in order to survive the Butlerian fanatics, led by the madman Manford Torondo and his Swordmaster Anari Idaho. Mother Superior Raquella attempts to rebuild her Sisterhood School on Wallach IX, with her most talented and ambitious student, Valya Harkonnen...who also has another goal - to exact revenge on Vorian Atreides.

Raised in the Imperial court and born to be a political bargaining chip, Irulan was sent at an early age to be trained as a Bene Gesserit Sister. As Princess Royal, she also learned important lessons from her father—the Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV. Now of marriageable age, Princess Irulan sees the machinations of the many factions vying for power. Meanwhile, on Arrakis, Chani—the daughter of Liet-Kynes, the Imperial Planetologist who serves under the harsh rule of House Harkonnen—is trained in the Fremen mystical ways by an ancient Reverend Mother.

One hundred and ten centuries from now, humanity has spread across space. And all-powerful machines rule the humans who were once their masters. It began in the Time of Tyrants, when ambitious men and women used high-powered computers to seize control of the heart of the Old Empire including Earth itself. The tyrants translated their brains into mobile mechanical bodies and created a new race, the immortal man-machine hybrids called cymeks. 

Between the end of Frank Herbert's Dune and his next novel, Dune Messiah, lies a mystery: how a hero adored by a planet became a tyrant hated by a universe. Paul of Dune begins the story of those 12 fateful years and the wars of the jihad of Paul Muad'Dib. It is an epic of battle and betrayal; of love and idealism; of ambition and intrigue. Above all, it is the story of how Paul Atreides - who achieved absolute power when scarcely more than a boy - changes from an idealist into a dictator who is the prisoner of the bureaucrats and fanatics who surround him.

Paul Atreides is the man who overthrew a corrupt empire and then launched a terrible jihad across the galaxy, shedding the blood of trillions. The now-hated tyrant, the blind Emperor Paul Muad'Dib, has walked off into the endless desert of the planet Arrakis, known as Dune, leaving his turbulent empire without guidance. It's up to his mother, Jessica, with her daughter, Alia, the brave troubadour-warrior Gurney Halleck, the resurrected Duncan Idaho, the Fremen leader Stilgar, as well as Paul's wife-in-name and biographer, Princess Irulan, to try to hold an empire together. 

Surviving isn't living, even for an Expendable. Mickey7's antimatter gambit paid off. He's out of the Expendable game and doing whatever else he can to help support the threatened colony on the ice world Niflheim. But the colony now desperately needs the one thing he doesn't want to give them: the antimatter in the bomb he claimed the alien creepers have. Without it, the colony won't survive the coming years. With it, the colony leader can finally get rid of Mickey7 for good.

Weaving back through time, the secret society of eccentric anachronists ensures the best possible future for humanity, making subtle adjustments to the past—saving us from oblivion. Every alteration is carefully calculated, and nothing is left to chance. Until the day Joshua Jones, a teenage thief, breaks into one of their station houses and finds himself transported back to 1944—where he accidentally changes the outcome of WW2.

Navigators, mutated by spice into beings far superior to normal humans, make space travel possible across the burgeoning Imperium. Their prescient awareness allows them to foresee safe paths through the universe as starship engines 'fold' space. Only industrial magnate Josef Venport knows the secret of creating Navigators, and he intends to build a commercial empire to span the galaxy. 

Victor and Eli started out as college roommates - brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognised the same sharpness and ambition in one another. A shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death-experiences and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordinary abilities. But when their thesis moves from the academic to the experimental, things go horribly wrong. They become EOs, ExtraOrdinaries, leaving a body in their wake and turning on each other.

In the near future in a broken down rural America, Flynne Fisher scrapes a living as a gamer for rich players. One night, working a game set in a futuristic but puzzlingly empty London, she sees a death that's unnervingly vivid. Soon after she gets word that it isn't a game after all—the future she saw is all too real, she's the only witness to a murder and someone from that unreal tomorrow now wants her dead. The story of a young woman caught between two worlds, The Peripheral interweaves two futures to tell a story which gets right to heart of the way we live now.

Just 15 years from now, the world is polarised along ethnic and religious lines. Regional low-intensity wars have now been raging for 35 years. In the midst of the conflict, 97 members of the Allied forces ninth Mountain Squadron en route from the Northern Front for a long awaited period of rest and relaxation, are shot down over the Nordic wilderness. With no way of communicating with the outside world, the aircraft’s captain and the squadron commander lead the squadron out of the wilderness only to discover that during their absence the world they knew has ceased to exist.

World War III is a month old. After sinking the Destroyer USS Stacy Heath, the Chinese invade Tibet and India counterattacks. Rather than allow the Chinese to seize control, the US sends 20,000 soldiers to join the fight. The Russians use the opportunity to invade Ukraine. American forces are spread thin, and the decision is made to evacuate all personnel from Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the Russians are holding a training exercise called Red Ice. Except that it isn’t a training exercise.

Dalton Greaves is a hero. He's one of humankind's first representatives to Unity, a pan-species confederation working to bring all sentient life into a single benevolent brotherhood. That's what they told him, anyway. The only actual members of Unity that he's ever met are Boreau, a giant snail who seems more interested in plunder than spreading love and harmony, and Boreau's human sidekick, Neera, who Dalton strongly suspects roped him into this gig so that she wouldn't become the next one of Boreau's crew to get eaten by locals while prospecting.

Having finally met for the first time, Elizabeth and Thomas soon find themselves in mortal danger as the Mass Extinction series continues. Having encountered a strange little girl they found at the side of the road, Elizabeth and Thomas follow her to a seemingly abandoned old hospital. They soon...