New Releases by Karl Schroeder

Centuries of sleep bring a young space voyager into a strange future where he must confront his own tyrannical brother in this epic space opera. When seventeen-year-old Toby McGonigal finds himself lost in space, his next drift into cold sleep to be his last. After all, the planet he’s orbiting is frozen and sunless, and dotted with dead cities. But when Toby wakes again, he’s surprised to discover a thriving planet, a strange and prosperous galaxy—and that he’s been asleep for 14,000 years. Welcome to the Lockstep Empire, where civilization is kept alive by careful hibernation. Here cold sleeps can last decades and waking moments mere weeks. Its citizens survive for millennia, traveling asleep on long voyages between worlds. Not only is Lockstep the new center of the galaxy, but Toby is shocked to learn that the Empire is still ruled by its founding family: his own. Toby’s brother Peter has become a tyrant. Suspicious of the return of his long-lost brother, whose rightful inheritance also controls the lockstep hibernation cycles, Peter sees Toby as a threat to his regime. Now, with the help of a lockstep girl named Corva, Toby must survive the forces of this new Empire, outwit his siblings, and save human civilization.

A remote village is determined to keep their robot teacher from being fired. A poetry-loving AI controls the wastewater treatment facility, but a series of malfunctions are beginning to cause concern. The biggest pop idol of the twenty-second century is trapped on Enceladus, and deeply alone. Latchko can talk to the banned AIs and now that his secret is out things are about to get complicated. A former child soldier is raised by a plant-like species but struggles to understand them. Ice fishing on Europa just keeps turning up rocks and things just got worse ... something is changing the world, making it better, but for whom? Short fiction is the heart of science fiction, introducing new voices, experimenting with ideas and technique, and paving the way for the future of the field. Thousands of stories are published every year in the many genre magazines, anthologies, collections, podcasts, and websites, as well as other less common venues. Each year, Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning editor Neil Clarke sifts through the myriad of offerings to select works that represent the best and the brightest, report on the state of the field, and recommend additional stories for further reading. In this volume, covering 2021, you'll find works by Aliette de Bodard, Meg Elison, Rich Larson, Ken Liu, Ray Nayler, Suzanne Palmer, Hannu Rajaniemi, Robert Reed, Karl Schroeder, Vandana Singh, Tade Thompson, and many more.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1873.

From Karl Schroeder, author of Lockstep, comes the near-future, science fiction, hacker’s heist, Stealing Worlds. The Verge—New Science Fiction and Fantasy Books to Check Out in June Sura Neelin is on the run from her creditors, from her past, and her father’s murderers. She can’t get a job, she can’t get a place to live, she can’t even walk down the street: the total surveillance society that is mid-21st century America means that every camera and every pair of smart glasses is her enemy. But Sura might have a chance in the alternate reality of the games. People can disappear in the LARP game worlds, into the alternate economy of Notchcoin and blockchains. The people who build the games also program the surveillance networks—she just needs an introduction, and the skills to play. Turns out, she has very valuable skills, and some very surprising friends. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The Complete Vigra Series discounted ebundle includes: Sun of Suns, Queen of Candesce, Pirate Sun, Sunless Countries, Ashes of Candesce Futurist Karl Schroeder groundbreaking space opera series envisions a world of endless sky, with no land, no gravity. This is Virga, a fullerene balloon universe three thousand kilometers in diameter. In this saga, we are given a rare and penetrating look into the post-human condition. Beginning in the seminal science fiction novel Sun of Suns, the saga of Virga introduces us to the people of stubborn pride and resilience who have made this world their home. But lurking beyond the walls of Virga is the mysterious threat known only as Artificial Nature. Virga is hard science fiction space opera taken to the next level. “Schroeder is a master.” --Cory Doctorow Tor books by Karl Schroeder Lady of Mazes Permanence Ventus Lockstep The Million At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Futurist and award-winning author Karl Schroeder imagines infiltrating the elite of a marginal society in The Million. Every thirty years, ten billion visitors overrun Earth during one month of madness: partying, polluting, and brawling. In between, the world is ruled by the Million; the inheritors and custodians of all of humanity’s wealth and history, they lead unimaginable lives of privilege and wealth, and they see it as their due. Gavin Penn-of-Chaffee is an illegal child—a visitor hidden among the Million. When the family that raised him in secret is torn apart, Gavin must impersonate a dead boy to survive. What he doesn’t know is that his new identity is expected at the School of Auditors—the Million’s feared police force, sworn to find and capture outcasts like him to keep the peace. In order to solve the murder of his adoptive father, Gavin must keep his disguise and his wits intact within the stronghold of those threatened by his very existence. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Why should we go to space? To learn more about the universe and our place in it? To extract resources and conduct commerce? To demonstrate national primacy and technological prowess? To live and thrive in radically different kinds of human communities? Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities takes on the challenge of imagining new stories at the intersection of public and private--narratives that use the economic and social history of exploration, as well as current technical and scientific research, to inform scenarios for the future of the New Space era. Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities provides fresh insights into human activity in Low Earth Orbit, journeys to Mars, capturing and mining asteroids, and exploring strange and uncharted exoplanets. Its stories and essays imagine human expansion into space as a kind of domestication--not in the sense of taming nature but in the sense of creating a space for dwelling, a venue for human life and curiosity to unfurl in all their weirdness and complexity.

Clarkesworld is a Hugo Award-winning science fiction and fantasy magazine. Each month we bring you a mix of fiction (new and classic works), articles, interviews and art. Our January 2015 issue, supersized for our 100th issue, contains: Original Fiction by Aliette de Bodard ("Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight"), Tang Fei ("A Universal Elegy"), Naomi Kritzer ("Cat Pictures Please"), Kij Johnson ("The Apartment Dweller''s Bestiary"), Zhang Ran ("Ether"), Catherynne M. Valente ("The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild"), and Jay Lake ("An Exile of the Heart"). Classic stories by Damien Broderick ("This Wind Blowing, and This Tide"), and Karl Schroeder ("Laika''s Ghost"). Non-fiction by Jason Heller (Song for a City-Universe: Lucius Shepard''s Abandoned Vermillion), an interview with Xia Jia, an Another Word column by Cat Rambo, and an editorial by Neil Clarke.

La corona Teven, una enigmática región del espacio situada más allá de Júpiter, es el hogar de millones de poshumanos que viven en un laberinto de realidades diferentes y solapadas llamadas colectores. Cada colector es una cultura en sí misma, con una historia, mitología y tecnología únicas, aunque virtuales. Para mantener la integridad de cada colector, la interacción entre estos mundos es limitada, y se reserva a unas pocas personas. Entre ellas está Livia Kodaly, una diplomática cuyas especiales dotes para ver más allá de la realidad virtual harán de ella la perfecta candidata para hacerle frente a una entidad conocida como 3340, que intenta derribar los horizontes entre culturas y destruir las barreras que mantienen las tecnologías bajo control.

"Jubilee" is a new story by Karl Schroeder. His new novel, Lockstep, will be published in March 2014. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

"Devoid of gravity, Virga is a massive balloon, three thousand miles in diameter. The humans that exist in this world must build their own fusion suns for warmth and their own spinning ''towns'' for gravity. Years ago, the nation of Slipstream came from the clouds and conquered their neighbour, Aerie, destroying their sun and killing the parents of Hayden Griffin. Hayden is bent on revenge, but in Virga, up is often down and Hayden''s plan may not go off as he''d hoped. On the brink of war, Hayden''s checkered past might just come in handy. One part steampunk adventure, one part sci-fi epic, and one part action spectacular, Virga: sun of suns is truly like nothing you''ve seen before"--Back cover.

An unabridged collection of the “best of the best” science fiction stories written in 2011 by current and emerging masters of the genre, edited by Allan Kaster. In “Dying Young,” by Peter M. Ball, cyborgs, clones and post-humans collide with a dragon bent on revenge in a post-apocalptic space western. “Martian Heart,” by John Barnes, chronicles a teenage couple taken to Mars as indentured servants in a “rags to riches” tale. In “Canterbury Hollow,” by Chris Lawson, two lovers on a planet orbiting a killer sun share their few remaining weeks together before they die. “The Choice,” by Paul McAuley, set in the author’s Jackaroo universe, follows two boys who set sail to investigate a beached alien vessel on the English coast. In “After the Apocalypse,” by Maureen McHugh, a mother and daughter traverse a ravaged U.S. in a tale that takes on McCarthy’s, The Road, from a female viewpoint. “Purple,” by Robert Reed, tells of a blind and maimed young man convalescing in an off-world menagerie of wayward alien species, prior to returning to Earth. In “Laika’s Ghost,” by Karl Schroeder, a Russian and an American search the steppes of the former U.S.S.R. for metastable weapons that terrorists could use to make nuclear bombs. “Bit Rot,” by Charles Stross, follows post-humans struggling to survive after their generation ship is struck by a Magnetar ray in this clever zombies-in-space tale. In “For I Have Laid Me Down on The Stone of Loneliness and I’ll Not Be Back Again,” by Michael Swanwick, Irishmen plot to strike back against alien occupiers by enlisting an Irish American tourist to their cause. Finally, Steve Rasnic Tem, tells of a young man awakened from suspended animation, on a future Earth, with the technological know-how of plant-like aliens in “At Play in the Fields.”

The fifth novel in this acclaimed space opera series returns the reader to the imaginative world of Virga.

After terrifying and titanic struggles, a godlike artificial intelligence gone rogue has finally been destroyed. But not before it scattered seeds of itself throughout the galaxy. On the terraformed planet Ventus, benign AIs -- the godlike Winds – which shaped and guarded its transformation, have fallen silent. Calandria May is sent down to the surface where she quickly finds that an extension of the rogue AI, a cyborg called Armiger, has planted a strange and powerful device in a young man named Jordan Mason. Jordan has visions. He is desperate to find their meaning and source -- desperate enough to risk awakening the Winds, perhaps invoking the power that can destroy technology to protect the environment they created. Ventus is an epic journey across a fascinating planet with two big mysteries -- why have the Winds fallen silent? And is Armiger, or Jordan, carrying a Resurrection Seed? At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.

Return to Virga, a bubble universe artificially separated from our own future universe, and the setting ofSun of Suns and Queen of Candesce. Chaison Fanning, the admiral of a fleet of warships, has been captured and imprisoned by his enemies, but is suddenly rescued and set free. He flees through the sky to his home city to confront the ruler who betrayed him. And perhaps even to regain his lovely, powerful, and subversive wife, Venera, who he has not seen since she fled with the key to the artificial sun at the center of Virga, Candesce. With Pirate Sun, Schroeder sets a whole new standard for hard science fiction space opera. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

It is the distant future. The world known as Virga is a fullerene balloon three thousand kilometers in diameter, filled with air, water, and floating chunks of rock. The humans who live in this vast environment must build their own fusion suns and "towns" —enormous wood and rope wheels that are spun for centripetal gravity. This complex and fascinating world is the setting for the novels of Virga, Karl Schroeder's interstellar far-future space habitat sealed off from contamination by the rest of the inhabited universe. These books have set a high standard for hard SF adventure in the last decade, and now the first two novels, Sun of Suns and Queen of Candesce, are brought out for the first time in one trade paper omnibus.

The Sunless Countries is the fourth novel in the Virga series of hard science fiction space opera adventures In an ocean of weightless air where sunlight has never been seen, only the running lights of the city of Pacquaea glitter in the dark. One woman, Leal Hieronyma Maspeth, lives and dreams of love among the gaslit streets and cafés. And somewhere in the abyss of wind and twisted cloud through which Pacquaea eternally falls, a great voice has begun speaking. As its cold words reach from space to the city walls—and as outlying towns and travelers' ships start to mysteriously disappear—only Leal has the courage to try to understand the message thundering from the distance. Even the city's most famous and exotic visitor, the sun lighter and hero named Hayden Griffin, refuses to turn aside from his commission to build a new sun for a foreign nation. He will not become the hero that Leal knows the city needs; so it is up to her to listen, and ultimately reply, to the voice of the worldwasp—because an astonishing disaster threatens Virga. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Venera Fanning was last seen falling into nothingness at the end of Sun of Suns. Now, in Queen of Candesce, Venera finds herself plunging through the air between the artificial continents of Virga, far from home and her husband, who may or may not be alive. Landing in the ancient nation of Spyre, Venera encounters new enemies and new friends (or at least convenient allies). She must quickly learn who she can trust, and who she can manipulate in order to survive. Queen of Candesce is her story. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Sun of suns: It is the distant future. The world known as Virga is a fullerene balloon three kilometers in diameter, filled with air, water, and aimlessly floating chunks of rock. The humans who live in this vast environment must build their own fusion suns and "towns" that are in the shape of enormous wood and rope wheels that are spun for centripetal gravity.

A collection of ten short stories combining adventure and speculation.

On the man-made world of Virga, Hayden Griffin sets out to avenge the death of his parents by murdering Admiral Chaison Fanning.

One of the new stars of hard SF returns to the same distant future in which "Ventus" is set, but employs a broader canvas to tell the story of Teven Coronal, a ringworld with a huge multiplicity of human civilizations.

"In spring 2005, the Directorate of Land Strategic Concepts of National Defense Canada (that is to say, the army) hired me to write a dramatized future military scenario. The book-length work, Crisis in Zefra, was set in a mythical African city-state, about 20 years in the future, and concerned a group of Canadian peacekeepers who are trying to ready the city for its first democratic vote while fighting an insurgency. Both the peacekeepers and the insurgents use a range of new technologies, some fantastic-sounding, but all in development in 2005. Needless to say, the good guys win, but not without consequences; the document explores everything from the evolution of individual soldiers'' kits to strategic considerations in world of pervasive instant communications. The project ran to 27,000 words and was published by the army as a bound paperback book." [http://www.kschroeder.com/foresight-consulting/crisis-in-zefra] -- From author''s website.

Ventus est une planète protégée par les Vents, êtres tout-puissants qui interdisent toute évolution technologique. Dans le reste de la galaxie, une machine inventée par les hommes, Armiger, cherche à éliminer Ventus pour s''emparer de toutes les ressources naturelles de la planète. Jordan et ses amis vont devoir percer le mystère des Vents pour réduire le demi-dieu Armiger à leur merci.