Nightwings, Robert Silverberg’s 1969 work is a very Ursula K. LeGuin type novel.It is actually, three novellas put together to make a novel sized work, anchored by the Hugo award-winning novella Nightwings.This is set in the far future, thousands of years, and the earth has survived, generations ago, a cataclysmic apocalypse which destroyed the “second cycle”. The first cycle would be where we are now, the second beginning when we first met aliens. Society is regimented into occupational guilds, similar to what was described by Ayn Rand in Anthem and by Lois Lowry’s The Giver. Earth has become an alien tourist attraction backwater and humans are coping with their new station in the cosmic pecking order.Like his 1969 novel Downward to the Earth, there is a spiritual journey and rebirth. A ubiquitous theme in Silverberg’s cannon is open sexuality and Nightwings is no exception, though this is less erotic than others. Telepathy and shared consciousness may also be a common theme in his work and is represented hereThe far future setting is also reminiscent of Poul Anderson’s Orion Shall Rise, especially in his description of the changes in geography and cultural icons.

In the Penultimate Age of the Archonate, callow young fop Filidor Vesh is perfectly content to spend his days in the pursuit of shallow amusements, until he is summoned by a wizened old dwarf in need of a voluntary good deed -- deliver a parcel to his uncle, the all-powerful and original 98th Archon, sole ruler of the world. So begins Filidor's reluctant odyssey through peculiar provinces peopled with odious denizens, including such road killers as mutant rodents, alien ants, and a vengeful thamaturge. Now in terra incognito, his narrow conception of life shaken to the extreme, Filidor will strive to say and do the right things...and grow up in the process.

The Sun is bloated, diseased, dying perhaps. Beneath its baneful light, Shadrapar, last of all cities, harbours fewer than 100,000 human souls. Built on the ruins of countless civilisations, surviving on the debris of its long-dead progenitors, Shadrapar is a museum, a midden, an asylum, a prison on a world that is ever more alien to humanity.Bearing witness to the desperate struggle for existence between life old and new, is Stefan Advani, rebel, outlaw, prisoner, survivor. This is his testament, an account of the journey that took him into the blazing desolation of the western deserts; that transported him east down the river and imprisoned him in verdant hell of the jungle's darkest heart; that led him deep into the labyrinths and caverns of the underworld. He will treat with monsters, madman, mutants. The question is, which one of them will inherit this Earth?

And I caught Mirdath the Beautiful by her shoulders, and shook her very soundly, in my anger. And afterward, I sent the maid onward; and she, having no word from her Mistress to stay, went forward a little; and in this fashion we came at last to the hedge-gap, with the Lady Mirdath very hushed; but yet walking anigh to me, as that she had some secret pleasure of my nearness. And I led her through the gap, and so homeward to the Hall; and there bid her good-night at a side door that she held the key of. And, truly, she bid me good-night in an utter quiet voice; and was almost as that she had no haste to be gone from me that night.

Multiple Hugo and Nebula award-winning author, Greg Bear is one of science fictionâ€™s most accomplished writers. Bold scientific speculation, riveting plots, and a fierce humanism reflected in characters who dare to dream of better worlds distinguish his work. Now Bear has written a mind-bendingly epic novel that may well be his masterpiece.Do you dream of a city at the end of time?In a time like the present, in a world that may or may not be our own, three young peopleâ€“Ginny, Jack, and Danielâ€“dream of a doomed, decadent city of the distant future: the Kalpa. Ginnyâ€™s and Jackâ€™s dreams overtake them without warning, leaving their bodies behind while carrying their consciousnesses forward, into the minds of two inhabitants of the Kalpaâ€“a would-be warrior, Jebrassy, and an inquisitive explorer, Tiadbaâ€“who have been genetically retro-engineered to possess qualities of ancient humanity. As for Daniel: He dreams of an empty darknessâ€“all that his future holds.But more than dreams link Ginny, Jack, and Daniel. They are fate-shifters, born with the ability to skip like stones across the surface of the fifth dimension, inhabiting alternate versions of themselves. And each guards an object whose origin and purpose are unknown: gnarled, stony artifacts called sum-runners that persist unchanged through all versions of time.Hunted by others with similar powers who seek the sum-runners on behalf of a terrifying, goddess-like entity known as the Chalk Princess, Ginny, Jack, and Daniel are drawn, despite themselves, into an all but hopeless mission to rescue the futureâ€“and complete the greatest achievement in human history.

A whisperjewel has summoned Dirk t’Larien to Worlorn, and a love he thinks he lost. But Worlorn isn’t the world Dirk imagined, and Gwen Delvano is no longer the woman he once knew. She is bound to another man, and to a dying planet that is trapped in twilight. Gwen needs Dirk’s protection, and he will do anything to keep her safe, even if it means challenging the barbaric man who has claimed her. But an impenetrable veil of secrecy surrounds them all, and it’s becoming impossible for Dirk to distinguish between his allies and his enemies. In this dangerous triangle, one is hurtling toward escape, another toward revenge, and the last toward a brutal, untimely demise.

In this science fiction classic, we are transported millions of years from now, to the boughs of a colossal banyan tree that covers one face of the globe. The last remnants of humanity are fighting for survival, terrorised by the carnivorous plants and the grotesque insect life.Contents:· Hothouse · Brian W. Aldiss · nv F&amp;SF Feb ’61 · Nomansland · Brian W. Aldiss · nv F&amp;SF Apr ’61 · Undergrowth · Brian W. Aldiss · na F&amp;SF Jul ’61 · Timberline · Brian W. Aldiss · nv F&amp;SF Sep ’61 · Evergreen · Brian W. Aldiss · na F&amp;SF Dec ’61

"Prologue (Sunfall)" essay by C.J. Cherryh"The Only Death in the City" short story by C.J. Cherryh"The Haunted Tower" novelette by C.J. Cherryh"Ice" short fiction by C.J. Cherryh"Nightgame" short fiction by C.J. Cherryh"Highliner" short fiction by C.J. Cherryh"The General" short fiction by C.J. CherryhMen had gone to the stars, they had trod the soil of distant planets and settled their colonies; yet the homeworld of Earth remained. It was legend; it was a place of nostalgia for mankind's lost youth; it was always there. For every son or daughter who had departed for the stars, there were those who preferred the original skies and winds of the world which had first endured humanity's trials and triumphs.C.J. Cherryh, many honored author, has produced in SUNFALL a book of marvels in which six mighty cities laden with the grandeur of history confront their fates... and those of the Earth-born who loved them. This is a truly unique work.

Enter a decaying far, far future society, a time when anything and everything is possible, where words like 'conscience' and 'morality' are meaningless, and where heartfelt love blossoms mysteriously between Mrs Amelia Underwood, an unwilling time traveller, and Jherek Carnelian, a bemused denizen of the End of Time.The Dancers at the End of Time, containing the novels An Alien Heat, The Hollow Lands and The End of All Songs, is a brilliant homage to the 1890s of Wilde, Beardsley and the fin de siècle decadents, satire at its sharpest and most colourful.

Recently voted the greatest fantasy of all time, after The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun is an extraordinary epic, set a million years in the future, on an Earth transformed in mysterious and wondrous ways, in a time when our present culture is no longer even a memory. Severian, the central character, is a torturer, exiled from his guild after falling in love with one of his victims, and journeying to the distant city of Thrax, armed with his ancient executioner's sword, Terminus Est. This edition contains the first four volumes of the series.

IN THE WASTELANDS OF A FUTURE WORLD, THE PASTEL CITY STYRUGGLES IN THE GRIP OF THE SIGN OF THE LOCUST...Viriconium: The Pastel City was the last bastion of the civilzed world where Queen Methvet Nian ruled supreme. Now she watched, helpless, as the Time of the Locust became a monstrous reality, turning the inhabitants into hiedous, mindless insects.Cellur, the Bird Lord, emerged from his underground exile, the first to respond to the call. Soon he was joined by Tomb, the Iron Dwarf, and the first of the Reborn Men, Alstath Fulthor. They journeyed to the desolate plains of the North in search of the evil's sources, only to encounter a paralysing menace that threatened to destroy their very minds...A STORM OF WINGS is the new novel in the 'Viriconium' sequence - a brilliant tour-de-force of fantasy fiction by one of hte most strikingly original talents on the contemporary scene.'Harrison's writing is excellent.' - Michael Moorcock

Tales of Zothique is a collection of fantasy short stories by Clark Ashton Smith, and edited by Lin Carter. It was first published in paperback by Ballantine Books as the sixteenth volume of its celebrated Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in June 1970. It was the first themed collection of Smith's works assembled by Carter for the series. The stories were originally published in various fantasy magazines in the 1930s, notably Weird Tales. The book collects one poem and all sixteen tales of the author's Zothique cycle, set on the Earth's last continent in a far distant future, with an introduction and map and epilogue by Carter. Contents:"Introduction: When the World Grows Old", by Lin Carter "Zothique" (poem) "Xeethra" "Necromancy in Naat" "The Empire of the Necromancers" "The Master of the Crabs" "The Death of Ilalotha" "The Weaver in the Vault" "The Witchcraft of Ulua" "The Charnel God" "The Dark Eidolon" "Morthylla" "The Black Abbot of Puthuum" "The Tomb-Spawn" "The Last Hieroglyph" "The Isle of the Torturers" "The Garden of Adompha" "The Voyage of King Euvoran" "Epilogue: The Sequence of the Zothique Tales", by Lin Carter

The first book in the Viriconium series: In the distant future, a medieval system rises from the ruins of a technology that destroyed itself. Armored knights ride their horses across dunes of rust, battling for the honor of the Queen. But the knights find more to menace them than mere swords and lances. A brave quest leads them face to face with the awesome power of a complex, lethal technology that has been erased from the face of the Earth--but lives on, underground.

I did not like this book much the first time I read it, but after reading it a second time while visualizing its characters as puppets, I found I liked it much more.This book—particularly the first three stories—irritated me. I found its wizards to be contemptible creatures, morally inferior products of a degenerate age, capable only of memorizing a few detailed spells and casting them by rote (“Vancian Magic,” which later became a key element of “Dungeons and Dragons”). I was also appalled by their sexism: even the best try to fashion ideal women from scratch, while the majority desire only to catch women, cage them and rape them—the real reason for all their pathetic little spells. In addition, the book's prose—particularly the wizards' speeches—is grandiloquent and eccentric, harsh and grating, and crammed full of hard words. Such words—I remember thinking to myself—remind me of what Shakespeare's Angus says of Macbeth's titles: they “hang loose about him, like a giant's robe/ Upon a dwarfish thief.”This Renaissance reference must have unearthed old memories, for soon I was transported back to grad school at Ohio State, some forty years ago. At the time I was studying John Marston, and I was having a good deal of trouble enjoying his tragedies (Antonio and Mellida, Antonio's Revenge) because the speeches were so pompous, so ridiculously passionate, the plots so elaborate and absurd. Then I discovered a fact that changed my reaction completely. Whereas Shakespeare wrote for a general audience at an open air theater featuring adult actors, Marston wrote for an elite audience in a candlelit indoor theater featuring an acting company of children. Each of these passionate, pompous speeches—filled with mammoth emotions and murderous intent—had been declaimed in chiaroscuro by a costumed child. Knowing this, I could now appreciate Marston's mix of humor and biting satire. He was using grand speeches in the mouths of children to show us the littleness of man, a poor paltry creature of monumental passions trapped in a flickering world.So I read The Dying Earth again, as if it were a Punch and Judy show mounted with magnificent sets. Puppet wizards and puppet women now moved through a muted landscape, in a world of distilled evil dominated by a decadent sun. Sometimes they seem like mischievous children, sometimes like degenerate dwarfs, but at other times they seem like creatures of some new myth, a promise of stories to come beyond this dying world.So my advice is: stick with it. Imagine the characters as puppets or children or mice if you have to, but read this book all the way through until you get to the end. These stories—which are among Vance's first—get better as they go along, and the last three are very good indeed. The most interesting, at least as a literary influence, is “Ulan Dhor Ends a Dream.” This account of a metropolis where two different peoples live side by side, completely unable to perceive each others existence, bears striking similarities to China Mieville's The City and the City,. My favorite is “Liane the Wayfarer,” about a quest for a tapestry possessed by “Chun the Unavoidable,” but equally as good is the novella about the inquisitive “Guyal of Sfere,” who has many questions to ask the Curator of “The Museum of Man.”

Dying Earth is a subgenre of science fantasy or science fiction which takes place in the far future at either the end of life on Earth or the end of time, when the laws of the universe themselves fail. Themes of world-weariness, innocence (wounded or otherwise), idealism, entropy, (permanent) exhaustion/depletion of many or all resources (such as soil nutrients), and the hope of renewal dominate. Not to be confused with post apocalyptic!

What Great Minds Lie In The Dust - Dying Earth Books

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