Subject: Science Fiction | Page #2
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Triplanetary E. E. "Doc" Smith
The Arisians, benevolent humanoids who have declared themselves Guardians of Civilization, war with the Eddoreans, shapeless, malevolent beings, hungry for power at any price. They fight on both physical and mental levels, wielding weaponry of inconceivable destructiveness. And their battleground is a tiny planet in... read more »
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Scratch Monkey Charles Stross
Oshi Adjani works for the Boss doing odd jobs, fomenting a revolution here, confronting a mass murderer there. Her field of operations is the Milky Way galaxy, and the Boss is a Superbright, one of the man-created super-intelligent artificial intelligences who regard this galaxy as their property. She has been... read more »
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True Names Benjamin Rosenbaum
The tale of duelling galactic colony-organisms that are competing to recruit all the matter in the universe for raw computation. For more information, visit the official Benjamin Rosenbaum website. read more »
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Realware Rudy Rucker
It's 2054, and Phil Gottner doesn't know where his life is. His girlfriend is hooked on merge, a drug used in 'bacteria-style' sex. His father has just been swallowed by a hyperspatial anomaly that materialized from a piece of art designed to project images of four-dimensional objects into three-dimensional space... read more »
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The Swordsman of Mars Otis Adelbert Kline
Harry Thorne, outcast scion of a wealthy East Coast family, seeks the greatest adventure of his life. He exchanges bodies with his look-alike, Martian Sheb Takkor, and is transported millions of years into the past to a Mars peopled with mighty warriors, beautiful women, and fearsome beasts. Sheb Takkor, a great... read more »
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The Machine Stops E. M. Forster
In this short science fiction story, Forster describes a world in which almost all humans have lost the ability to live on the surface of the Earth. Each individual lives in isolation in a 'cell', with all bodily and spiritual needs met by the omnipotent, global Machine. Most humans welcome this development, as they... read more »
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Blindsight Peter Watts
It's been two months since a myriad of alien objects clenched about the Earth, screaming as they burned. The heavens have been silent since - until a derelict space probe hears whispers from a distant comet. Something talks out there: but not to us. Who to send to meet the alien, when the alien doesn't want to meet?... read more »
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Everyone In Silico Jim Munroe
In Vancouver in 2036, people are tired of the rain. They're willing to give up a lot for guaranteed sunshine, a life with no wasted hours. A life free of crime and disease. A life that ends when you want it to, not when some faceless entity decides it's your time. Those who don't buy in — the poor, the old, the... read more »
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The Outlaws of Mars Otis Adelbert Kline
Jerry Morgan, fed up with Earthly frustrations, found plenty to occupy him when he swapped bodies with a hot-headed Martian from that red planet’s era of glory. For Jerry’s first moment there involved him in a costly mistake which was to throw him into conflict not only with the forces of evil and Mars’ many... read more »
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Behemoth Peter Watts
Five years ago you destroyed the world. The world had it coming. So you brought back a gift from the deep sea, a doomsday microbe to throw the planet on its side. Now DNA itself is on the way out. North America lies in ruins beneath the thumb of an omnipotent psychopath. Governments across the globe have fallen... read more »
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Freeware Rudy Rucker
Now, in 2053, 'moldies' are the latest robotic advancement--evolved artificial lifeforms made of soft plastic and gene-tweaked molds and algae, so anatomically inventive and universally despised that their very presence on the planet has thrown the entire low-rent future into a serious tailspin. So the moon is the... read more »
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Flyboy Action Figure Comes with Gasmask Jim Munroe
Ryan is a university student dealing with the normal problems of a 22-year-old guy -- shyness, virginity, weird roommates, and a massive crush on Cassandra, a waitress at his local greasy spoon. (Oh, and a freakish ability to change into a fly.) When he finally gets up the nerve to ask Cassandra for a date, he... read more »
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Toast Charles Stross
Toast is a collection of science fiction short stories first published in 2002. The subtitle of the collection refers to the way that predictions of the future in SF stories become rapidly obsolete by the progress of actual events. For example, the 1995 story Ship of Fools was a prediction of disaster due to the Y2K... read more »
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Wetware Rudy Rucker
In 2030, bopper robots in their lunar refuge have founds a way to infuse DNA wetware with their own software code. The result is a new lifeform: the meatbop. Fair is fair, after all. Humans built the boppers, now bops are building humans. . .sort of. Its all part of an insidious plot thats about to ensnare Della... read more »
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Software Rudy Rucker
Cobb Anderson created the 'boppers,' sentient robots that overthrew their human overlords. But now Cobb is just an aging alcoholic waiting to die, and the big boppers are threatening to absorb all of the little boppers--and eventually every human--into a giant, melded consciousness. Some of the little boppers aren't... read more »
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Tama of the Light Country Ray Cummings
Are all the artificial satellites circling the earth ours? How can we be sure that these little metal globes, these observational devices with their top-secret interiors, were all made on earth? Perhaps there is one up there that was not? When such a space satellite was located, it caused a furore. But that was... read more »
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Machine That Saved The World Murray Leinster
They were broadcasts from nowhere -- sinister emanations flooding in from space -- smashing any receiver that picked them up. What possible defence could Earth devise against science such as this? read more »
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The Moon Maid Edgar Rice Burroughs
In the late twentieth century, Admiral Julian 3rd can get no rest, for he knows his future. He will be reborn as his grandson in the next century to journey through space and make an ominous discovery inside the moon; he will live again in the dark years of the twenty-second century as Julian 9th, who refuses to bow... read more »
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The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow Cory Doctorow
In a Disney-dominated future, a transhuman teenager engages in high velocity adventures until he meets the meat girl of his dreams and is forced to choose between immortality and sex in one of Cory Doctorow's most daring novellas. Also included in this collection is Creativity vs. Copyright, a transcript of... read more »
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Maza of the Moon Otis Adelbert Kline
This astonishing science-fiction classic begins like a prophecy of today's space achievements--a missile is fired from Earth to hit the surface of the Moon. It is successful and the misslemen are heroes, until...the Moon fires back! Terrible Lunar missiles blast New York, London, and Paris. And an ultimatum is... read more »
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The Port of Peril Otis Adelbert Kline
When Vernia, empress of Reabon, mightiest land of all Venus, was kidnapped by the strange marauders of the sea, it presented the Earthman, Robert Grandon, with his greatest challenge. On a world replete with terrifying beasts and unearthly antagonists, Grandon had already achieved fame for his swordplay and courage... read more »
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The Runaway Skyscraper Murray Leinster
"I don't know how I'm going to say it so you'll understand, but time is just as much a dimension as length and breadth." He frowned. He wanted to talk about Wells's Time Machine but he knew that'd be no use -- these folks didn't read that sort of thing. "If the earth had settled down, we'd have been lower. If it had... read more »
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The Wailing Asteroid Murray Leinster
There was no life on the asteroid, but the miles of rock-hewn corridors through which the earth party wandered left no doubt about the purpose of the asteroid. It was a mighty fortress, stocked with weapons of destruction beyond man's power to understand. And yet there was no life here, nor had there been for untold... read more »
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Prince of Peril Otis Adelbert Kline
Through the discoveries of the scientist, Dr. Morgan, a young Martian's astral body is projected into the body of one Harry Thorne on Earth, and from Earth to Venus, or Zarovia, where the man of Mars becomes Prince Zinlo of the mighty empire of Olba. Zinlo is instructed by Morgan's fellow-scientist Vorn Vangal in... read more »
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A Brand New World Ray Cummings
The new planet Caem out of the infinite deeps of insterstellar space, moved in towards the sunlike a comet, and stayed -- a new member of the Solar System, between Earth and Venus. Xenephrene it was named and it made a pretty vision in the evening sky ... until other things began to appear in the heavens. flying... read more »
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The Exile of Time Ray Cummings
When a girl who said she had been kidnapped from the year 1777 appeared in modern New York, she was either deluded or the victim of an incredible time-spanning plot. And when it turned out the strange man with a mechanical servant who had kidnapped her had been seen in other centuries, it became clear that a... read more »
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Tarrano the Conqueror Ray Cummings
In a tale of the year 2430 A.D. -- a time somewhat farther beyond our present-day era than we are beyond Columbus' discovery of America. My desire has been to create for you the impression that you have suddenly been plunged forward into that time -- to give you the feeling Columbus might have had could he have read... read more »
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Pirate Cinema Cory Doctorow
When Trent McCauley's obsession for making movies by reassembling footage from popular films causes his home's internet to be cut off, it nearly destroys his family. Shamed, Trent runs away to London. A new bill threatens to criminalize even harmless internet creativity. Things look bad, but the powers-that-be... read more »
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Beyond the Stars Ray Cummings
Is the entire universe just one of the atoms of some even greater cosmos? Such was the conception of one scientist - and his effort to prove this theory was to take a party of Americans on an expdition to a place that was literally Beyond the Stars. Racing through the vast depths of space in a vehicle larger than... read more »
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On the Beach Nevil Shute
After a nuclear World War III has destroyed most of the globe, the few remaining survivors in southern Australia await the radioactive cloud that is heading their way and bringing certain death to everyone in its path. Among them is an American submarine captain struggling to resist the knowledge that his wife and... read more »