Epic Cycle

Welcome to a society governed through computer games! On New Earth, society is governed and conflicts are resolved in the arena of a fantasy computer game, Epic. If you win, you have the chance to fulfill your dreams; if you lose, your life both in and out of the game is worth nothing. When teenage Erik dares to subvert the rules of Epic, he and his friends must face the Committee. If Erik and his friends win, they may have the key to destroying the Committee's tyranny. But if they lose....

"Epic" is a mountaineering term that evokes a sense of treacherous disaster. The climb that went wrong: fighting blinding snowstorms and horrific avalanches; days spent tentbound running low on food, water, and oxygen; surviving broken bones and shattered spirits. This program offers a collection of the most memorable accounts of legend-making expeditions to the world's most famous peaks, often in the worst possible conditions.

What happens when a society decides that survival depends on narrowing the truth? In the towering prison-city of Eterra, order is maintained not through spectacle or open brutality, but through clean hands, quiet rooms, and the careful rationing of reality. Truth is never simply forbidden. It is measured, softened, corrected, and distributed only in forms the population can survive. Seran has been raised to believe in that system. A rising young doctrinal officer, Seran is disciplined, intelligent, and disturbingly good at his work.

For millennia, the inhabitants of the fifty-two villages have lived in gratitude toward the Mother and her Titans. But for Valianara, a young novice hungry for the truth, entering the Academy of the Lore-Keepers marks the end of her innocence. Behind the legends lies a macabre reality: her people are nothing more than livestock for a civilization of immortal mages. As the foundations of her faith crumble, Valianara falls victim to an unprecedented magical accident: she finds herself sharing her mind with Azymantias, a rebel mage imprisoned in an urn for centuries.

The legends are awake. Loss and defeat have rattled Mariah and her court. They've taken refuge in the Kreah deserts, but peace continues to evade them. Mariah must navigate her grief, her crown, and the sensitive politics of the continent, and she must do it without the most important person in...

Crop Circles, Star Children, and forbidden archaeology redefine the entire mythology of extraterrestrial life and its impact on our world, its history, and the future. People once thought the Mayan Calendar heralded December 21st, 2012 as a catastrophic end of life as they knew it. Instead, that...