Showing posts with label sf. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sf. Show all posts

Monday, January 23, 2012

Wise Man's Fear

The Wise Man's Fear
By Rothfuss, Patrick
2011-03 - Daw Books
9780756404734 Check Our Catalog

Kvothe searches for answers, attempting to uncover the truth about the mysterious Amyr, the Chandrian, and the death of his parents. Along the way, Kvothe is put on trial by the legendary Adem mercenaries, forced to reclaim the honor of his family, and travels into the Fae realm. …More

The sequel to the epic The Name of the Wind. Kvothe is forced to leave the university and seek his destiny. Readers who like character building and the works of George R. R. Martin should read.

TB


Friday, November 18, 2011

Last of the Amazons

Last of the Amazons
By Pressfield, Steven
2002-01 - Wheeler Publishing
9780754018391 Check Our Catalog

The author of the international bestsellers "Gates of Fire and "Tides of War delivers his most gripping and imaginative novel of the ancient world-a stunning epic of love and war that breathes life into the grand myth of the ferocious female warrior culture of the Amazons.
Steven Pressfield has gained a passionate worldwide following for his magnificent novels of ancient Greece, "Gates of Fire and "Tides of War. In "Last of the Amazons, Pressfield has surpassed himself, re-creating a vanished world in a brilliant novel that will delight his loyal readers and bring legions more to his singular and powerful restoration of the past.
In the time before Homer, the legendary Theseus, King of Athens (an actual historical figure), set sail on a journey that brought him into the land of "tal Kyrte, the "free people," a nation of proud female warriors whom the Greeks called "Amazons." The Amazons, bound to each other as lovers as well as fighters, distrusted the Greeks, with their boastful talk of "civilization." So when the great war queen Antiope fell in love with Theseus and fled with the Greeks, the mighty Amazon nation rose up in rage.

"From the Hardcover edition. …More



Wednesday, June 22, 2011

A Fire Upon the Deep

A Fire Upon the Deep
by Vernor Vinge

A Fire Upon the Deep is a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale. Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, the farther from the galactic core the smarter you can become. At the galaxy's rim transcendent super-intelligent entities dwell. Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these "regions of thought," but when an ancient Transcendent artifact is used as a weapon, it unwittingly unleashes an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence. Fleeing the threat, a family of scientists, including two children, are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle. A rescue mission, not entirely composed of humans, must rescue the children-and a secret that may save the rest of interstellar civilization.

Winner of the Hugo award in 1993 this is an adventure story full of thought provoking scientific ideas. Aliens, interstellar war, ancient artifacts and evil gods maneuver for control of the galaxy. Dog lovers will enjoy the Tines; a pack-mind alien race. Vinge keeps you wanting to know what happens next alternating between events in space and events on the Tine world. A sequel called The Children of the Sky is due this October. Vinge published a prequel A Deepness in the Sky in 1999.
TB

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Revelation Space

Revelation Space
by Alastair Reynolds

In the far future, a singular question haunts humanity: why are there so few intelligent civilizations in the universe? Revelation Space is a sprawling operatic novel that ranges across vast gulfs of time and space-to arrive at a terrifying answer.

Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just when it was on the verge of discovering space flight. For the human colonists now settling the Amarantin homeworld, what caused the species extinction is of little more than academic interest. Even after colonists discover an almost perfectly preserved city on the planet, only the archaeological community seems interested.

But one scientist, Dan Sylveste, is convinced that solving the Amarantin riddle is vital to the survival of humanity. Desperate to get at the truth-but with few resources, Sylveste forges a dangerous alliance with the crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity. The ship's cyborg crew are walking weapons and could easily become a very real danger. They could also be Sylveste's only hope to find the answer he so zealously seeks.

Before becoming a full time writer, Reynolds was a scientist for the European Space Agency. Reynolds postulates a dark future of human machine cyborgs and artificial intelligences, which have mankinds emotions of revenge and murder. Mankind is colonizing the stars but finding little trace of extraterrestial civilizations. The question is: Where is everybody? The answer is shocking.

TB