Showing results by narrator "Vikas Adams" in All Categories

Laterre is on the brink of war. The Third Estate are rioting against the injustices of a corrupt system. The Patriarche, reeling from the murder of his only heir, makes brutal attempts to quash the unrest, while a new militant faction launches a series of deadly attacks. And three outlaws find themselves pulled into the fray. Marcellus is now a traitor to his planet, willing to do anything to stop his grandfather from seizing control of Laterre. Chatine is a prisoner on Bastille. Alouette is a fugitive who has been lied to her entire life. These three renegades must risk everything.

With The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 3, award-winning editor Neil Clarke provides a year-in-review and 27 of the best stories published by both new and established authors in 2017.

When the Last Days came, the planet of Laterre promised hope, a new life for a wealthy French family and their descendants. But 500 years later, it’s now a place where an extravagant elite class reigns supreme; where the clouds hide the stars and the poor starve in the streets; where a rebel group, long thought dead, is resurfacing. Whispers of revolution have begun - a revolution that hinges on three unlikely heroes.

Famine. Death. War. Pestilence. These are the harbingers of the biblical apocalypse, of the end of the world. In science fiction the end is triggered by less figurative means: nuclear holocaust, biological warfare/pandemic, ecological disaster, or cosmological cataclysm.

I am the good girl, the one who does no wrong. Daughter of a ferocious and strong MC president, I know what protection feels like. Until one night changes everything - and not a single person in the world can protect me from it, not even my dad. Suffocating. Alone. Desperate. I let my problems live deep inside until there is no longer anywhere to run. I need an escape. Anything to make the pain go away. Trouble comes for me, and I don't fight it. I tried so hard to believe in what I was, but nobody understood.

On a road trip through Africa, two English people - Bobby, a civil servant with a guilty appetite for African boys; and Linda, a supercilious "compound wife" - are driving back to their enclave after a stay in the capital. But in between lies the landscape of an unnamed country whose squalor and ethnic bloodletting suggest Idi Amin's Uganda. And the farther Naipaul's protagonists travel into it, the more they find themselves crossing the line that separates privileged outsiders from horrified victims.

Rsiran now understands that he can use not only the arcane power of lorcith, but also that of heartstone. This ability makes him powerful, perhaps too powerful for some. Others know of his ability and seek to use him. After Brusus is attacked, Rsiran makes a decision that requires an unlikely ally, and brings him to dangerous Thyr, where the Scholars of Venass offer their aid, but for a price. But the scholars want Rsiran for the same reason as the Forgotten.

A landmark short story collection that put the more character-based New Wave science fiction on the map, Dangerous Visions won several prestigious awards and was nominated for many others. This now-classic anthology includes thirty-three stories by thirty-two award-winning authors, over half of whom have won multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards.

1242. On a dark night, travelers from across France cross paths at an inn and begin to tell stories of three children: William, an oblate on a mission from his monastery; Jacob, a Jewish boy who has fled his burning village; and Jeanne, a peasant girl who hides her prophetic visions. They are accompanied by Jeanne’s loyal greyhound, Gwenforte...recently brought back from the dead. As the narrator collects their tales, the story of these three unlikely allies begins to come together.

After foiling the Quarnon's plans and killing his arch enemy, Jack is now being hunted. To keep his friends safe, Jack heads to the mysterious Isle of Maga; a place filled with poisonous mana, deadly beasts and an army of undead minotaurs.

Forced into the heart of the Aisl Forest, Rsiran and the guilds regroup and try to find a way to reclaim the city from Venass and the Elvraeth council. Rsiran has stopped the production of shadowsteel, but Venass still possesses dangerous weapons, and what's more, one of the great crystals remains missing. Forced into an alliance with the mysterious Carth in order to find the crystal, they make new allies and discover the means to reclaim the city, but will it be too late?

No longer forced to hide his ability, Rsiran now Slides openly throughout the city as he helps it recover from the recent attack. Requirements of his time continue to mount, not only as he tries to help his friends, but new responsibilities to the guild force him to interact with the Elvraeth, where he discovers the uneasy alliance that exists between the guilds and the council. When one of the great crystals goes missing, that alliance is tested, and the quest to find the crystal leads him to realize a secret long hidden.

Fresh off a victory against the Forgotten, and with unexpected allies, Rsiran knows that the war is far from over. An attack on someone close to him in the city leads to a search for answers, and he once again must confront the secrets hidden by his family. When he discovers a part of his people's history long forgotten, he realizes it might hold the key to what Venass really wants...and possibly the means to stopping them.

The silent hell of deep space holds certain death for the unwary. It is the task of the UN Navy to defend the starways, no matter the danger. An alien attack and an admiral's betrayal leave a wounded Commander Seafort stranded aboard a doomed ship.

Luck has always run in both directions for Naval Commandant Nicholas Seafort. While he has managed to save the Hope Nation colony from alien attack, he and his friends have paid a heavy price. Most recently his exploits have earned him a dignified position as an instructor at the United Nations Naval Academy. But as Seafort suspects, trouble isn't far behind. A return to Earth means a return to his roots, some of which he wishes would remain buried.

1893: Newlyweds Captain Jim Agnihotri and Diana Framji are settling into their new home in Boston, Massachusetts, having fled the strict social rules of British-ruled Bombay. It's a different life than what they left behind, but theirs is no ordinary marriage: Jim, now a detective at the Dupree Agency, is teaching Diana the art of deduction he’s learned from his idol, Sherlock Holmes.

Aboard a freighter bound for Baltimore harbor, an Iranian terrorist prepares to unleash an unimaginable horror upon the United States. The "Wrath" is an undead plague - an infection that consumes its victims with a maddening rage and turns them into mindless bloodthirsty killers. Jack Cutter is just an ordinary guy dealing with a dreadful guilt when the virus tears through his home town. Before it's too late, Cutter will have to find a way to survive, and find a reason to fight: his redemption.

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.

A Queer History of the United States abounds with startling examples of unknown or often ignored aspects of American history - the ineffectiveness of sodomy laws in the colonies, the impact of new technologies on LGBT life in the 19th century, and how rock music and popular culture were, in large part, responsible for the devastating backlash against gay rights in the late 1970s. Bronski documents how, over centuries, various incarnations of social purity movements have consistently attempted to regulate all sexuality, including fantasies, masturbation, and queer sex.

One hundred years before Ender's Game, the aliens arrived on Earth with fire and death. Earth Afire by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston is the story of the First Formic War. Victor Delgado beat the alien ship to Earth, but just barely. Not soon enough to convince skeptical governments that there was a threat. They didn't believe that until space stations and ships and colonies went up in sudden flame. And when that happened, only Mazer Rackham and the Mobile Operations Police could move fast enough to meet the threat.