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Prey

Michael Crichton

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 823 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Must have been enduring a divorce when he wrote this one! 2 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

While the science and the 'this could happen' ethos is a lot of fun, the book's start is astoundingly mysogynystic. His protagonist goes on AT LENGTH describing the normal day hundreds of millions of mothers world wide endure as if it's something novel. His male character whines about taking care of kids, how his wife doesn't call home when she's late, how it's hard to run into former pals who still make a paycheck. Honestly, no female author could ever have gotten such tripe published, but because our protagonist is a male, this is fodder for narrative. My husband and I howled at the beginning, and simply skipped entire chapters to get to the part he's good at: telling a scary story using potentially real science. But the guy sure was ticked off at some woman when he wrote this thing.

Editorial Review:

In the Nevada desert, an experiment has gone horribly wrong. A cloud of nanoparticles -- micro-robots -- has escaped from the laboratory. This cloud is self-sustaining and self-reproducing. It is intelligent and learns from experience. For all practical purposes, it is alive. It has been programmed as a predator. It is evolving swiftly, becoming more deadly with each passing hour.

Every attempt to destroy it has failed. And we are the prey.

As fresh as today's headlines, Michael Crichton's most compelling novel yet tells the story of a mechanical plague and the desperate efforts of a handful of scientists to stop it. Drawing on up-to-the-minute scientific fact, Prey takes us into the emerging realms of nanotechnology and artificial distributed intelligence-in a story of breathtaking suspense.

Prey is a novel you can't put down. Because time is running out.

I, Robot

Isaac Asimov

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 213 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The three laws of Robotics:
1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm
2) A robot must obey orders givein to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

With this, Asimov changed our perception of robots forever when he formulated the laws governing their behavior. In I, Robot, Asimov chronicles the development of the robot through a series of interlinked stories: from its primitive origins in the present to its ultimate perfection in the not-so-distant future--a future in which humanity itself may be rendered obsolete.

Here are stories of robots gone mad, of mind-read robots, and robots with a sense of humor. Of robot politicians, and robots who secretly run the world--all told with the dramatic blend of science fact & science fiction that became Asmiov's trademark.

Cyclops (Dirk Pitt)

Clive Cussler

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 44 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Great Pitt Novel 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Very fun Dirk Pitt novel. Great characters, both good and bad, and a fun plot. Dirk does it again in the 8th novel in the Pitt series.

Who reads fiction for facts? 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I loved this book! I see a lot of reviews these days that state "the author needs to get his facts straight!". Who cares about facts in fiction!! I read ficticious books soley for entertainment, and this book is pure entertainment. People, pull the stick out and you may really enjoy a good adventure book.

Editorial Review:

A wealthy American financier disappears on atreasure hunt in an antique blimp. From Cubanwaters, the blimp drifts toward Florida with acrew of dead men -- Soviet cosmonauts.DIRK PITT discovers a shocking scheme: acovert group of U.S. industrialists has put a colonyon the moon, a secret base they will defend at anycost. Threatened in space, the Russians are aboutto strike a savage blow in Cuba -- and onlyDIRK PITT can stop them. From a Cuban torturechamber to the cold ocean depths, Pitt is racing to defuse an international conspiracy thatthreatens to shatter the earth!

Red Mars (Mars Trilogy)

Kim Stanley Robinson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 362 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In his most ambitious project to date, award-winning author Kim Stanley Robinson utilizes years of research and cutting-edge science in the first of three novels that will chronicle the colonization of Mars.

For eons, sandstorms have swept the barren desolate landscape of the red planet. For centuries, Mars has beckoned to mankind to come and conquer its hostile climate. Now, in the year 2026, a group of one hundred colonists is about to fulfill that destiny.

John Boone, Maya Toitavna, Frank Chalmers, and Arkady Bogdanov lead a mission whose ultimate goal is the terraforming of Mars. For some, Mars will become a passion driving them to daring acts of courage and madness; for others it offers and opportunity to strip the planet of its riches. And for the genetic "alchemists, " Mars presents a chance to create a biomedical miracle, a breakthrough that could change all we know about life...and death.

The colonists place giant satellite mirrors in Martian orbit to reflect light to the planets surface. Black dust sprinkled on the polar caps will capture warmth and melt the ice. And massive tunnels, kilometers in depth, will be drilled into the Martian mantle to create stupendous vents of hot gases. Against this backdrop of epic upheaval, rivalries, loves, and friendships will form and fall to pieces--for there are those who will fight to the death to prevent Mars from ever being changed.

Brilliantly imagined, breathtaking in scope and ingenuity, Red Mars is an epic scientific saga, chronicling the next step in human evolution and creating a world in its entirety. Red Mars shows us a future, with both glory and tarnish, that awes with complexity and inspires with vision.

The Prefect

Alastair Reynolds

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

stands very well on its own 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I have never read any of Alastair Reynolds previous novels. Even so, the novel stood very well on its own and was easy to follow. The charecters were well developed and the plot engaging.

Space opera meets John Rebus 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Alastair Reynolds has been producing great space opera for several years now. This time he takes a somewhat different path. It's still great space opera, but he's added touches of Ian Rankin (the best current British mystery writer). Reynolds's main character -- Tom Drefyus, the Prefect of the title -- is very reminiscent of Rankin's John Rebus. He's a driven, cranky policeman, somewhat of an outcast despite his many years in the service. H is loyal to those who work for him, is sometimes at odds with his peers, and unwilling to give up when he gets his teeth into something. And of course he is brilliant at pulling together disparate elements.

I won't try to summarize the novel here. Several other reviews do a fine job with that. I'll just say that this is yet another very good novel from Reynolds. It may be his best, and is probably the one that I'd hand to anyone who hasn't read much SF but wants to find out what this "new space opera" stuff is all about. This will definitely be on my Hugo ballot next year.

Editorial Review:

A full-length novel set in the Revelation Space universe that’s “sublime entertainment” and “gripping in the extreme.”( Locus)

Tom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a law enforcement officer with the Panoply. His beat is the multi-faceted utopian society of the Glitter Band, that vast swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone, the teeming hub of a human interstellar empire spanning many worlds.

His current case: investigating a murderous attack against one of the habitats that leaves nine hundred people dead, a crime that appalls even a hardened cop like Dreyfus. But then his investigation uncovers something even more potentially dangerous—a covert plot by an enigmatic entity seeking nothing less than total control of the Glitter Band…

Immortality

Kevin Bohacz

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"Speaking as an evolved Transhuman, I applaud this very entertaining, intelligent, and thought provoking journey to the edges of humanity."
Danny Rubin, author and screenwriter of Groundhog Day.

"Immortality is a fine, tense, scientific mystery adventure that puts mankind in a challenge of survival with a short time limit. This is the way the world could end."
Piers Anthony, author of 21 New York Times best-selling novels.

Without warning, something has gone terribly awry. In the remote and unnoticed places of the world, small pockets of death begin occurring. As the initially isolated extinctions spread, the world's eyes focus on this unimaginable horror and chaos. Out of the ecological imbalance, something new and extraordinary is evolving and surviving to fill the voids left by these extinctions. Evolution is operating in ways no one could have expected and environmental damage may be the catalyst. Once discovered, this knowledge changes everything. Transhumans are among us.

Alien Voices: Time Machine (Cd) (Alien Voices)

H.G. Wells

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 325 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Excellent!! 4 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

As I stated in my other reviews, I normally don't enjoy science fiction novels; this book I had to read for school. As I read what I expected to be a boring and unentertaining novel, my opinion changed, and I became more open to enjoying the story. I found that it was an enchanting novel that no one should pass up. H. G. Wells made the story come alive and he made the setting, set in the future, somewhere you feel could possibly exist as his descriptions are so vivid and his wording fanominal. Read this story and your beliefs on time travel and the way earth will turn out in the future will change. H.G. Wells gives you somthing to ponder while you enjoy the sentences that flow together like the river he describes. H.G. Wells makes an unknown world seem familiar and is an expert in his proffesion. I guaranty this book will send powerful astonishment and awe up and through your mind.

Editorial Review:

In this fully dramatized version of H.G. Wells' classic, The Time Machine, Leonard Nimoy, John de Lancie, and cast members from Star Trek® feature films and all four series take you on an incredible journey.

When a time traveler seeks a better world 802,000 years into the future, his optimism is shaken when he discovers that the human race has turned upon itself in a primal display of horror.

Featuring virtuoso performances from the entire cast, riveting sound effects and original music, Alien Voices' production of The Time Machine is an adventure in sound.

Copyright © 1997 Alien Voices, Inc. All Rights reserved.
Performance Copyright 1997 Alien Voices, Inc. All Rights reserved.

Semper Mars: Book One of the Heritage Trilogy

Ian Douglas

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 66 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Year is 2040.

The Marines have landed on Mars to guard the unearthed secrets of an ancient and dangerous alien race: Ourselves.

Scientists have discovered something astonishing in the subterranean ruins of a sprawling Martian city: startling evidence of an alternative history that threatens to split humanity into opposing factions and plunge the Earth into chaos and war. The USMC -- a branch of a military considered, until just recently, to be obsolete -- has dispatched the Marine Mars Expeditionary Force, a thirty-man weapons platoon, to the Red Planet to protect American civilians and interest with lethal force if necessary.

Because great powers are willing to devastate a world in order to keep an ancient secret buried. Because something that was hidden in the Martian dust for half a million years has just been unearthed . . . something that calls into question every belief that forms the delicate foundation of civilization . . .

Something inexplicably human.