Best Selling Books by Greg Bear

Greg Bear is one of the greatest science fiction writers of the late twentieth century. He has a powerful voice, combining the intense rationality of science with the intensely passionate characters that can only be created by a writer who loves humanity. Bear’s novel Moving Mars won the Nebula Award in 1994, and he did it again, in 2000, with Darwin’s Radio. He has been honored with Hugo and Nebula nominations for novel-length work eight more times. But Greg Bear’s short fiction is even more astounding, as this powerful career retrospective demonstrates. This collection contains Bear’s earliest published fiction from the late 1960s and early 1970s as well his remarkable award-winning work from the ‘80s and ‘90s—stories like the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novella- length version of “Blood Music” and the Hugo and Nebula Award-winner “Tangents.” This Collection is enhanced by brand-new introductions for each story, commentary, and reminiscences by Greg Bear.

The New York Times–bestselling author of Eon continues the interstellar saga of the Way. A devastating war has left Earth a nuclear wasteland. Orbiting the planet is the asteroid-starship containing the civilization of Thistledown, humanity’s future descendants. For decades, they have worked to heal their world and its survivors, but their resources are finite. They need to reopen the Way. An interdimensional gateway to a multiverse of realities, the Way was severed from Thistledown to stop an alien invasion and now exists as its own universe. Reopening the gate would not only benefit Earth but would also help the asteroid’s residents return home. But on the alternate world of Gaia, Rhita Vaskayza, daughter of mathematician Patricia Vasquez, has taken up her mother’s cause to find her own Earth, one that was never touched by nuclear war. There is a gateway on Gaia that could lead Rhita there—or unleash an even greater apocalypse across the multiverse . . . “Whether he’s tinkering with human genetic material or prying apart planets, Bear goes about the task with intelligence and a powerful imagination. Eternity offers many delights” (Locus).

A harrowing thriller based on real-life discoveries in cell theory and the battle against aging and death by the bestselling author of Darwin’s Radio and War Dogs Scientist Hal Cousins is on the brink of success in his quest to determine the biological underpinnings of immortality. Funded by angel investors, the brilliant researcher makes a trip by submersible to the bottom of the sea, searching for primitive one-celled organisms that may be related to the earliest life forms on Earth. But the trip turns into a nightmare when Cousins’s pilot goes berserk and turns on him. The homicidal attack is only the first in a series of events that sends the biochemist on the run, pursued by faceless enemies who want his studies terminated and Cousins dead. Cousins must face the realization that his research has brought him into contact with a vast conspiracy. Across the country, scientists are being murdered to cover up the fact that someone has discovered how to control minds through bacterial manipulation—and that the trigger bacteria now infects much of the world’s population. Discredited and not knowing whom to trust, Cousins must gamble everything with Earth’s very survival at stake. Award-winning author Greg Bear creates a tense, stunningly plausible thriller all too firmly rooted in scientific fact.

HUGO AWARD FINALIST • “WOW! What a splendid (scary) notion: a human upgrade! What a superb plot! Darwin''s Radio is bloody damned good.”—Anne McCaffrey “Virus hunter” Christopher Dicken is a man on a mission, following a trail of rumors, government cover-ups, and dead bodies around the globe in search of a mysterious disease that strikes only pregnant women and invariably results in miscarriage. But when Dicken finds what he’s looking for, the answer proves to be stranger—and far deadlier—than he ever could have imagined. Something that has slept in human DNA for millions of years is waking up. Molecular biologist Kaye Lang has spent her career tracing ancient retroviruses in the human genome. She believes these microscopic fossils can come to life again. But when Dicken’s discovery becomes public, Lang’s theory suddenly turns to chilling fact. As the outbreak of this terrifying disease threatens to become a deadly epidemic, Dicken and Lang must race against time to assemble the pieces of a puzzle only they are equipped to solve—an evolutionary puzzle that will determine the future of the human race . . . if a future exists at all. Praise for Darwin’s Radio “Bear is one of our very best, and most innovative, speculative writers.”—New York Daily News “Superb . . . Bear''s novel is frighteningly believable with a lot of clearly explained hard science, but the personal struggles of the well-realized characters keep everything on a human level.”—Focus “Bear is a writer of passionate vision.”—Locus “Darwin’s Radio scores a high rating on the thrill monitor.”—Birmingham Post (England) “Absorbing and ingenious.”—Kirkus Reviews

This doomsday masterpiece from the author of Eon and Hull Zero Three was a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards. On July 26, Arthur Gordon learns that Europa, the sixth moon of Jupiter, has disappeared. Not hiding, not turned black, but gone. On September 28th, Edward Shaw finds an error in the geological records of Death Valley. A cinder cone was left off the map. Could it be new? Or, stranger yet, could it be artificial? The answer may be lying beside it—a dying Guest who brings devastating news for Edward and for Planet Earth. As more unexplained phenomena spring up around the globe—a granite mountain appearing in Australia, sounds emanating from the earth’s core, flashes of light among the asteroids—it becomes clear to some that the end is approaching, and there is nothing we can do. In The Forge of God, award-winning author Greg Bear describes the final days of the world on both a massive, scientific scale and in the everyday, emotional context of individual human lives. Facing the destruction of all they know, some people turn to God, others to their families, and a few turn to saviors promising escape from a planet being torn apart. Will they make it in time? And who gets left behind to experience the last moments of beauty and chaos on earth? Nominated for the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards, The Forge of God is an engrossing read, breathtaking in its scope and in its detail.

A Nebula Award–winning novella by the author of Moving Mars and the Eon trilogy. Humans have been engaged in a long war against an advanced alien race, the Senexi. But the possibility for peace may finally exist, thanks to a young girl who learns of the enemy’s larger role and humanity’s opportunity to evolve, in this award-winning story by the author of Darwin’s Radio and many other highly acclaimed works of science fiction.

Corona An awesome, sentinent force of protostars -- Corona -- has taken control of a stranded team of Vulcan scientists. The U.S.S Enterprise™ has come on a rescue mission, with a female reporter and a new computer that can override Kirk''s command. Suddenly, the rescuers must save themselves and the entire Universe -- before Corona unleashes a Big Bang!

The “reigning master of hard-edge science fiction takes a chilling look at the plausible near-future” in this cyberpunk sequel to Queen of Angels (Seattle Post-Intelligencer). In the second half of the twenty-first century, nanotechnology has transformed every aspect of society. Humans can now change their abilities, their appearance, their very bodies on microscopic level. Advanced psychotherapy seems to have wiped away violence and illness. The world is sane and in balance. However, that balance teeters with the grisly murder of two prostitutes and a series of suicides. Soon, public defender Mary Cho’s investigation finds a dark danger lurking in the recesses of the “dataflow.” Entertainment, virtual pornography, neo-Luddite separatists, an unknown artificial intelligence—everything seems to be intertwined in a vast conspiracy. As technology fails so too does the society perched high atop it. Perfection is a high pedestal from which to fall.

Nebula Award Finalist: A genetic engineering breakthrough may portend the destruction of humanity in this cyberpunk novel by the author of The Forge of God. This Hugo and Nebula Award finalist follows present-day events in which the fears concerning the nuclear annihilation of the world subsided after the Cold War and the fear of chemical warfare spilled over into the empty void it left behind. An amazing breakthrough in genetic engineering made by Vergil Ulam is considered too dangerous for further research, but rather than destroy his work, he injects himself with his creation and walks out of his lab, unaware of just how his actions will change the world. Author Greg Bear’s treatment of the traditional tale of scientific hubris is both suspenseful and a compelling portrait of a new intelligence emerging amongst us, irrevocably changing our world.

Hugo Award Finalist: A near-future novel of artificial intelligence, human nature, and mass murder that “succeeds on virtually every level” (The New York Times Book Review). In Los Angeles in 2047, advances in the science of psychology have made crime a rare occurrence. So it’s utterly shocking when eight bodies are detected in an apartment, and not long afterward the perpetrator is revealed as well: noted poet Emmanuel Goldsmith. The LAPD’s Mary Choy—who has had both her appearance and her police work enhanced by nanotechnology—is tasked with arresting the killer, while psychotherapy pioneer Martin Burke prepares to explore his mind. Meanwhile, Goldsmith’s good friend and fellow writer reels at the news—while, far from all of them, a space probe makes a startling discovery. This “excellent” novel about technology, identity, and the nature of consciousness is a thought-provoking stunner by the Nebula Award–winning author of the Eon series and the Forerunner Saga (Chicago Tribune).

Greg Bear’s Nebula Award–winning novel, Darwin’s Radio, painted a chilling portrait of humankind on the threshold of a radical leap in evolution—one that would alter our species forever. Now Bear continues his provocative tale of the human race confronted by an uncertain future, where “survival of the fittest” takes on astonishing and controversial new dimensions. Eleven years have passed since SHEVA, an ancient retrovirus, was discovered in human DNA—a retrovirus that caused mutations in the human genome and heralded the arrival of a new wave of genetically enhanced humans. Now these changed children have reached adolescence . . . and face a world that is outraged about their very existence. For these special youths, possessed of remarkable, advanced traits that mark a major turning point in human development, are also ticking time bombs harboring hosts of viruses that could exterminate the “old” human race. Fear and hatred of the virus children have made them a persecuted underclass, quarantined by the government in special “schools,” targeted by federally sanctioned bounty hunters, and demonized by hysterical segments of the population. But pockets of resistance have sprung up among those opposed to treating the children like dangerous diseases—and who fear the worst if the government’s draconian measures are carried to their extreme. Scientists Kaye Lang and Mitch Rafelson are part of this small but determined minority. Once at the forefront of the discovery and study of the SHEVA outbreak, they now live as virtual exiles in the Virginia suburbs with their daughter, Stella—a bright, inquisitive virus child who is quickly maturing, straining to break free of the protective world her parents have built around her, and eager to seek out others of her kind. But for all their precautions, Kaye, Mitch, and Stella have not slipped below the government’s radar. The agencies fanatically devoted to segregating and controlling the new-breed children monitor their every move—watching and waiting for the opportunity to strike the next blow in their escalating war to preserve “humankind” at any cost.

A galaxy-altering scientific breakthrough on Mars inspires treachery and revolution in this Nebula Award–winning science fiction epic. The child of one of the oldest, most revered family-corporate units on colonized Mars, Casseia Majumdar has spent her entire life in the tunnels that run beneath the surface of her homeworld. As a young college student in 2171, the fifty-third year of the Martian settlement, she experiences a profound political awakening, and her embrace of radical activism only intensifies following a failed diplomatic mission to Earth. As she rises up through the political ranks back on Mars—with tensions increasing between an oppressive “Mother Earth” and her rebellious “Red Rabbit” children—Casseia soon realizes that an enlightened ideology alone will not save her planet and its people. But it is a staggering scientific discovery by Martian physicist Charles Franklin—Casseia’s mentor and former lover—that will ultimately reveal the depths of the perfidy of the “Terries,” forcing an imperiled civilization to alter forever the map of the universe. A two-time winner of the Nebula Award and a multiple Hugo and Arthur C. Clarke Award nominee, the great Greg Bear has been called “the complete master of the grand scale sf novel” (Booklist). His Moving Mars is a masterful extrapolation of contentious humanity’s possible future and a modern classic to be shelved alongside the acclaimed Mars novels of Ben Bova and Kim Stanley Robinson. It’s “as good as hard science fiction gets” (The Oregonian).

Science fiction-roman.

An evil spawned from the horrors of World War II wreaks havoc on a small New Mexico town in this novel from the “master of the grand-scale SF novel” (Booklist). Curiosity may kill Larry Fowler. A scientist from New Mexico, Fowler is hot on the trail of a mysterious phenomenon that is known to freeze animals instantly and can demolish an entire town. Part ghost story, part science fiction, part political treatise, Greg Bear''s novel tracks Fowler on his journey to discover the true nature of the PSYCHLONE.

The final installment in the New York Times bestselling series In the last years of the Forerunner empire, chaos rules. The Flood-a horrifying shape-changing parasite-has arrived in force, aided by unexpected allies. Internal strife within the ecumene has desperately weakened Forerunner defenses. Too little, too late, the legal rate of Juridicals is only now investigating possible crimes by the Master Builder and others. Evidence-gathering agents known collectively as Catalog have been dispatched to collect testimony from the Librarian and both Didacts: the Ur-Didact, treacherously abandoned in a Flood-infested system, and the Bornstellar Didact, who accompanies the Librarian as she preserves specimens against the dire possibility of Halo extermination. Facing the imminent collapse of their civilization, the Librarian and the Ur-Didact reveal what they know about the relationship between the long-vanished Precursors and the Flood. The Precursors created many technological species, including humanity and the Forerunners. But the roots of the Flood may be found in an act of enormous barbarity, carried out beyond our galaxy ten million years before. Because of that barbarism, a greater evil looms. Only the Ur-Didact and the Librarian - husband and wife pushed into desperate conflict - hold the keys to a solution. Facing the consequences of a mythic tragedy, one of them must now commit the greatest atrocity of all time-to prevent an insane evil from dominating the entire universe.

A starship hurtles through the emptiness of space. Its destination - unknown. Its purpose - a mystery. Now, one man wakes up. Ripped from a dream of a new home - a new planet and the woman he was meant to love in his arms - he finds himself wet, naked, and freezing to death. The dark halls are full of monsters but trusting other survivors he meets might be the greater danger. All he has are questions -- Who is he? Where are they going? What happened to the dream of a new life? What happened to Hull 03? All will be answered, if he can survive the ship.

Hailed by readers and critics alike, The Venging has been described as an “excellent collection” and its author praised as “one of the freshest writers to break into the science fiction field in many a year.” This is the first published collection of short stories by one of the foremost voices in science fiction today. This significant volume contains many characters and situations that later evolved into their own novels. “Mandala” features technologically perfect cities that eject their sinful human occupants, a premise that can be found at the root of Bear’s later novel, Strength of Stones. In “Hardfought,” Bear brilliantly handles the classic science fiction dilemma of human communication with aliens. Other stories include “The Wind From a Burning Woman” in which a woman holds the world hostage by controlling a giant asteroid; “Scattershot,” in which the inhabitants of many universes meet in an undefined limbo space; and the Nebula Award finalist “Petra,” a story of a world where chaos rules, stone moves, and the mind controls reality.

Artificially intelligent cities rise up against humanity in this “excellent novel. It came on me as a surprise, and it knocked me out!” (Harlan Ellison). In a theocratic world far into the future, cities control their own movements and organization. Constantly moving, growing and decaying, taking care of every need their inhabitants might think of, the cities have decided that humans are no longer a necessary part of their architecture, casting them out to wander in the wilderness and eke out a meager subsistence. To the exiled humans, the cities represent a paradisiacal Eden, a reminder of all they cannot attain due to their sinful and unworthy natures. But things are beginning to change. People are no longer willing to allow the cities to keep them out, choosing instead to force an entry and plunder at will. The cities are starting to crumble and die because they have no purpose or reason to continue living without citizens. One woman, called mad by some and wise by others, is the only human allowed to inhabit a city. From her lonely and precarious position at the heart of one of the greatest cities ever, she must decide the fate of the relationship between human society and the ancient strongholds of knowledge, while making one last desperate attempt to save the living cities.

“A minor classic. A small book but with big characters . . . and great ideas” from the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author of Dinosaur Summer (SF Reviews). The planet Hegira is the universe’s melting pot. Hundreds of tribes in dozens of cities intermingle in the vast uncharted territory. The only thing holding the people together are the massive Obelisks, the chronicles of all the truths and falsehoods each tribe has brought to Hegira. Young Bar‐Woten is in search of knowledge and he knows the key to the truth about his homeland is contained in the writings of the Obelisks. With his fellow companions, Bar‐Woten must travel through Hegira’s exotic cities to discover the lies within the words of thousands.

The “provocative and entertaining follow-up” to The Forge of God: Exiled from their planet, humans unite with one alien race in the fight against another (Publishers Weekly). The Ship of the Law travels the infinite enormity of space, carrying eighty-two young people: fighters, strategists, scientists—and children. After one alien culture destroyed their home, another offered the opportunity for revenge in the form of a starship built from fragments of the Earth’s corpse, a ship they now use to scour the universe in search of their enemy. Working with sophisticated nonhuman technologies that need new thinking to comprehend them, they’re cut off forever from the people they left behind. Denied information, they live within a complex system that is both obedient and beyond their control. They’re frightened. And they’re waging war against entities whose technologies are unimaginably advanced and vast, and whose psychology is ultimately, unknowably alien. In Anvil of Stars, the multimillion-selling, Nebula Award–winning author of Eon and other science fiction masterpieces “fashions an action-packed and often thrilling plot; by using each of the well-depicted alien races to mirror human behavior, he defines what it means to be Homo sapiens. . . . A gripping story” (Publishers Weekly).

From a New York Times–bestselling author: A new kind of phone awakens the dead in this technological horror novel “reminiscent of Koontz at his best” (Booklist). Ever since his life was shattered by the kidnapping and murder of his young daughter, Peter Russell has become a ghost of a man. Once a successful director of adult films, he has been reduced to running questionable errands for an eccentric California millionaire. But everything changes when a Los Angeles start-up offers him the opportunity to create promotional videos for their revolutionary new technology, Trans. The product offers exceptionally powerful, crystal-clear mobile communication that can operate anywhere and everywhere—and Peter sets out to put it into every palm. But as he uses the device himself, he starts to see his murdered little girl . . . Soon, there are other voices—disembodied, confused, angry—emanating from a newly invaded dimension. Many are even malevolent . . . and hungry . . . and deadly. As the death toll of Trans-users skyrockets, Peter’s life begins a new spiral downward. Now, he must race to make sense of the horror Trans has wrought before the gateway to Hell bursts wide open. With Dead Lines, author of the Eon series Greg Bear transforms the literary realm of Dean Koontz, Peter Straub, and Stephen King into something unique by ingeniously blending the speculative with the supernatural. You’ll never look at your phone the same way again.

From the New York Times–bestselling and award-winning author of The Infinity Concerto, the fantasy saga continues . . . After five years trapped in the Realm of the Sidhedark, Michael Perrin has returned home. He wants nothing more than to live a normal life—but the unearthly music of Arno Waltiri continues to play on. The song of power has weakened the veil between the human and faerie worlds. The streets of Los Angeles are haunted by uncanny beings, strange bodies have been discovered in a dilapidated hotel, and an ancient creature calls to Michael from the waters of a loch in Scotland. The Sidhe have followed Michael home. To repair the rift between Earth and Realm, man and fae, he will have to wield the magic he wished he never learned—and complete an unfinished symphony linked to the ethereal melody of Waltiri’s Opus 45, the Infinity Concerto. This follow-up to The Infinity Concerto is a work of fresh, out-of-the-ordinary fantasy by an acclaimed winner of the Nebula and Hugo Awards, the author of The Forge of God, the Forerunner Saga, and other reader favorites.

In the wake of the apparent self-destruction of the Forerunner empire, two humans âe" Chakas and Riser âe" are like flotsam washed up on very strange shores indeed. They find themselves on an inverted world where horizons rise into the sky and where humans of all kinds are trapped in a perilous cycle of neglect. They have become strategic pawns in a cosmic game whose madness knows no end âe" a game of ancient vengeance between the powers who seeded the galaxy with life, and the Forerunners. In the company of a young girl and an old man, Chakas begins an epic journey across a lost and damaged Halo in search of a way home, an explanation for the warrior spirits rising up within, and for the Librarianâe(tm)s tampering with human destiny. This journey will take them into the domain of a powerful and monstrous intelligence who claims to be the Last Precursor, and who now has control of both this Halo and the fate of Forerunners and humans alike. Called the Primordial by ancient human warriors, this intelligence may control the fate of not only Chakas, Riser, and the rest of humanity, but all of sentient life.

Music, myth, and magic mix in this tale of a melody not meant for human ears, from the New York Times–bestselling and award-winning author of Darwin’s Radio. Michael Perrin is an aspiring poet, struggling to express the chaotic cadences of his thoughts on paper. He finds a kindred spirit in Arno Waltiri, the film score composer behind several of Michael’s favorite classic movies. The maestro’s greatest piece, however, was performed in front of a live audience only once. The concerto Opus 45, Infinity left its listeners entranced, altered to the very core of their souls. Waltiri’s composition is a song of power. Never meant to be heard by human ears, its melody is as captivating as a siren’s call, its notes ring out like a death knell, and its rhythms shake the very foundations of reality. The music’s otherworldly tones have led Michael through the gate between Earth and the Realm of the Sidhedark, where faeries reign by rule of magic—and where Michael must find his muse if he’s ever to return home. The Infinity Concerto is a fantasy masterpiece by the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author of the Forerunner Saga, Eon, and other imaginative classics.

A long time ago, I was a living, breathing human being. I went mad. I served my enemies. They became my only friends.

This saga of parallel universes from a Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author “may be the best constructed hard SF epic yet” (The Washington Post). One of the world’s preeminent New York Times–bestselling authors of hard science fiction mesmerizes readers with a mind-expanding, three-volume masterwork about the creation of an alternate universe that breaks down all barriers of time and space, and its consequences for future and past generations. Legacy: In the stunning prequel to Eon and Eternity, an agent of the masters of the Way—a man-made tunnel through countless dimensions—follows a renegade fanatic and his four thousand acolytes to a remarkable world of flora/fauna hybrids, where he is plunged into the terrible chaos of a raging civil war. Eon: As nuclear tensions rapidly reach a breaking point in a volatile twenty-first century, a hollowed-out asteroid appears, mysteriously hovering above the Earth’s surface. The asteroid contains the remains of Thistledown, an abandoned city that was once home to survivors of a nuclear holocaust. Scientists must race to unravel its secrets before the human race is annihilated in the impending apocalypse. Eternity: A devastating war has left Earth a nuclear wasteland. Orbiting the planet is an asteroid-starship containing the civilization of Thistledown, humanity’s future descendants. For decades, they have worked to heal their world and its survivors, but their resources are finite. They need to reopen the Way, a gate that would not only benefit Earth but also help the asteroid’s residents return home. Greg Bear’s classic Eon trilogy is an astonishing feat of the imagination that combines humanism, cutting-edge science, and brilliant extrapolation. This masterful science fiction saga has no equal in contemporary speculative fiction.

A sweeping Elizabethan historical fantasy from an internationally renowned author that evokes the seafaring adventures of Robert Louis Stevenson and the magic of The Bear and the Nightingale Reynard, a young apprentice, seeks release from the drudgery of working for his fisherman uncle in the English village of Southwold. His rare days off lead him to strange encounters—not just with press gangs hoping to fill English ships to fight the coming Spanish Armada, but with strangers who seem to know him, one of whom casts a peculiar shadow. The village’s ships are commandeered, and after a fierce battle at sea, Reynard finds himself the sole survivor of his uncle’s devastated boat. For days he drifts, starving and dying of thirst, until he is rescued by a galleon, also lost—and both are propelled by a strange current to an unknown northern island. Here, Reynard must meet his destiny in a violent clash between humans and gods.

6 dazzling stories, freshly revised for this volume, plus new introductions, commentary, and reminiscences from the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author of War Dogs, Eternity, and The Forge of God Greg Bear is the author of more than 30 books, from thrillers (Darwin’s Radio, Vitals) to science fiction (Blood Music, Eon, Hull Zero Three) to pure fantasy (The Infinity Concerto, The Serpent Mage). He has won 5 Nebula and 2 Hugo Awards, his works have been translated into more than 20 languages, and his titles have sold millions of copies worldwide. But his skills are not confined to writing at full-length novels: He is also the author of dozens of brilliant short stories, novellas, and novelettes. Far Thoughts and Pale Gods contains 6 highly acclaimed stories, each newly revised by the author, that illustrate Bear’s abundant breadth of talent. The volume includes: · “Heads,” which marks the first time the concept of quantum computing appears in science fiction—though it is a vision of 400 frozen heads that will remain in the reader’s memory; · “The Wind from a Burning Woman,” the first story set in the universe that spawned the novels Eon and Eternity; · “Plague of Conscience,” which explores what it means to be alien—and whether that can be comprehended without understanding what it means to be human; · “Scattershot,” beginning “The teddy bear spoke excellent Mandarin,” a gripping deep-space adventure that is also a tribute to legendary female science fiction writer James Tiptree Jr. These and the remaining entries—“Mandala” and “Petra”—form a remarkable collection showcasing the talents of a major American writer. Each story is accompanied by an introduction and an afterword written especially for this volume.

You''ve seen the movie The Phantom Menace. You''ve read the #1 New York Times best-selling book based on George Lucas''s masterpiece. Now, before the eagerly awaited release of Episode II, comes a stunning new Star Wars novel, from one of science fiction''s greatest talents, Greg Bear. Rogue Planet is an unforgettable journey stretching from the farthest reaches of known space to the battlefield of a young boy''s heart, where a secret struggle is being waged that will decide the fate of billions. That boy is twelve-year-old Anakin Skywalker. The Force is strong in Anakin so strong that the Jedi Council, despite misgivings, entrusted the young Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi with the mission of training him to become a Jedi Knight. Obi-Wan - like his slain Master, Qui-Gon - believes Anakin may be the chosen one, the Jedi destined to bring balance to the Force. But first Obi-Wan must help his undisciplined, idealistic apprentice, who still bears the scars of slavery, find his own balance. Dispatched to the mysterious planet Zonama Sekot, source of the fastest ships in the galaxy, Obi-Wan and Anakin are swept up in a swirl of deadly intrigue and betrayal. For there are others who covet the power such superfast ships could bring. Raith Siener, a brilliant but unscrupulous weapons and ship designer, has the brains to decipher the Zonama Sekot ship design. Commander Wilhuff Tarkin has at his

Classic fantasy stories from the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author, “one of our very best, and most innovate, speculative writers” (New York Daily News). Collecting six stories in old paradigms, Sleepside features Greg Bear’s outstanding fantasy writing: “Webster,” “The White Horse Child,” “Sleepside Story,” “Dead Run,” “Through Road No Whither,” and the Nebula Award finalist “Petra.” This edition also includes the special introduction by the author: “On Losing the Taint of Being a Cannibal."

The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem has been blown to bits by extremists, and, in retaliation, thousands have died in another major attack on the United States. Now the FBI has been dispatched to deal with a new menace. A plague targeted to ethnic groups--Jews or Muslims or both--has the potential to wipe out entire populations. But the FBI itself is under political assault. There''s a good chance agents William Griffin, Fouad Al-Husam, and Jane Rowland will be part of the last class at Quantico. As the young agents hunt a brilliant homegrown terrorist, they join forces with veteran bio-terror expert Rebecca Rose. But the plot they uncover--and the man they chase--prove to be far more complex than anyone expects.

Set two hundred years in the future, a science fiction novel in which William Pearce is searching for the elusive absolute zero, and his wife has brought many cryogenically frozen heads in the hope of reading them for information, unaware of the danger of their actions. From the author of DARWIN''S RADIO, EON and THE FORCE OF GOD.