The song. That’s what London constable and sorcerer’s apprentice Peter Grant first notices when he examines the corpse of Cyrus Wilkins, part-time jazz drummer and full-time accountant, who dropped dead of a heart attack while playing a gig at Soho’s 606 Club. The notes of the old jazz standard are rising from the body—a sure sign that something about the man’s death was not at all natural but instead supernatural.Body and soul. They’re also what Peter will risk as he investigates a pattern of similar deaths in and around Soho. With the help of his superior officer, Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, the last registered wizard in England, and the assistance of beautiful jazz aficionado Simone Fitzwilliam, Peter will uncover a deadly magical menace—one that leads right to his own doorstep and to the squandered promise of a young jazz musician: a talented trumpet player named Richard “Lord” Grant—otherwise known as Peter’s dear old dad.

This is the second novel in "Remembrance of Earth’s Past", the near-future trilogy written by the China's multiple-award-winning science fiction author, Cixin Liu. In The Dark Forest, Earth is reeling from the revelation of a coming alien invasion — four centuries in the future. The aliens' human collaborators have been defeated but the presence of the sophons, the subatomic particles that allow Trisolaris instant access to all human information, means that Earth's defense plans are exposed to the enemy. Only the human mind remains a secret. This is the motivation for the Wallfacer Project, a daring plan that grants four men enormous resources to design secret strategies hidden through deceit and misdirection from Earth and Trisolaris alike. Three of the Wallfacers are influential statesmen and scientists but the fourth is a total unknown. Luo Ji, an unambitious Chinese astronomer and sociologist, is baffled by his new status. All he knows is that he's the one Wallfacer that Trisolaris wants dead.

“The first of my father’s illusions was that bears could survive the life lived by human beings, and the second was that human beings could survive a life led in hotels.” So says John Berry, son of a hapless dreamer, brother to a cadre of eccentric siblings, and chronicler of the lives lived, the loves experienced, the deaths met, and the myriad strange and wonderful times encountered by the family Berry. Hoteliers, pet-bear owners, friends of Freud (the animal trainer and vaudevillian, that is), and playthings of mad fate, they “dream on” in a funny, sad, outrageous, and moving novel by the remarkable author of A Prayer for Owen Meany and Last Night in Twisted River.

This is the life and times of T. S. Garp, the bastard son of Jenny Fields—a feminist leader ahead of her times. This is the life and death of a famous mother and her almost-famous son; theirs is a world of sexual extremes—even of sexual assassinations. It is a novel rich with "lunacy and sorrow"; yet the dark, violent events of the story do not undermine a comedy both ribald and robust. In more than thirty languages, in more than forty countries—with more than ten million copies in print—this novel provides almost cheerful, even hilarious evidence of its famous last line: "In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases."

The Three-Body Problem is the first chance for English-speaking readers to experience the Hugo Award-winning phenomenon from China's most beloved science fiction author, Liu Cixin.Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision.

A superior offering from the genre. Kim Jong Il invades South Korea in a surprise attack, and it's up to the brave plucky men (and one woman) of the US and South Korean military to fight them off. It all works out in the end, with the fighter pilot getting the girl (no Top Gun subtext here) and the rookie young officer becomes a Man. Still, a lot less jingoistic than most, and without the Mary Sues that pollute Clancy's offerings. And the author tricked me in the end just like he did the NKs, which is unusual in these books. 4/5.

The terrifying reality of war just around the corner...In a world no longer dominated by two superpowers, the theatre of conflict has shifted to the Third World - but with a deadly uncertainty never known before.The flashpoint is South Africa, where a repressive extreme-right administration has catapulted to power, determined to crush the slightest opposition.The result is a conflict that will rage across the whole of southern Africa, across deserts, across the veldt, in the cities, at sea; and in the air. It will realize many of humankind's worst fears, including the full-scale use of both chemical and nuclear weapons. It will raise the nightmare spectre of race war, global economic collapse, and Armageddon itself.As chaos threatens to spread across an entire continent, as Cuban forces mount a drive for control of one of the most strategically vital corners of the world, the United States mobilizes for the military operation code-named Brave Fortune, the campaign it cannot afford to lose.Here are the weapons and the warfare, the diplomatic intrigue and the blueprints for modern combat that exemplify the art of the techno-thriller at its finest.

I've read this book twice (gave it a decade between reads) and my results did not vary. There's a lot of good writing here and he renders a matter of fact approach to a limited nuclear war scenario. One only needs to read his account of a nuclear strike on an airbase from the perspective of the people in a nearby hangar to see how this writer can shine. The prose is decent and the characters are (mostly) believable and sympathetic.What rubbed me was his shoddy treatment of the larger picture. He failed to capture the actual horror of a situation like the one he proposes insofar as its certain effects on both society and environment. It seemed as if the affected areas were isolated spots of hell and everyplace else was pretty much okay. Cities with hundreds of thousands living in them take numerous airbusts but the novel speaks of this as if it were only an airbase or a chain of missile silos that were hit and the obvious repercussions of what would be millions in need of medical care and material support are pretty much avoided. It all falls into a black hole while the good ol' USA prosecutes a land war in Asia, able to fight a prolonged offensive campaign unfazed by what would be a complete breakdown of the production and supply chain that would result from the scenario as it's proposed. Unbelievably, the US expeditionary forces in east Asia aren't simply decimated despite being supplied from the sea. Such a stretch is the product of either ubernationalism or the shameless necessities of plot. I was also stuck by his somewhat comical ideas of what life in a Marine Corps unit must be like. Contrary to Mr. Harry's suggestion, grunts don't tend to address one another with ridiculous nicknames.At least he didn't have soppy delusions about what an opposed landing against a Soviet force might have looked like.Some aspects of this book rate a 4. Others rate a 2. I'll settle at 3.

It is a tale of revolution, of the rebellion of a former penal colony on the Moon against its masters on the Earth. It is a tale of a culture whose family structures are based on the presence of two men for every woman, leading to novel forms of marriage and family. It is the story of the disparate people, a computer technician, a vigorous young female agitator, and an elderly academic who become the movement's leaders, and of Mike, the supercomputer whose sentience is known only to the revolt's inner circle, who for reasons of his own is committed to the revolution's ultimate success.

The Culture - a humanoid/machine symbiotic society - has thrown up many great Game Players. One of the best is Jernau Morat Gurgeh, Player of Games, master of every board, computer and strategy. Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel &amp; incredibly wealthy, to try their fabulous game, a game so complex, so like life itself, that the winner becomes emperor. Mocked, blackmailed, almost murdered, Gurgeh accepts the game and with it the challenge of his life, and very possibly his death.

The war for survival of the planet Lusitania will be fought in the hearts of a child named Gloriously Bright.On Lusitania, Ender found a world where humans and pequininos and the Hive Queen could all live together; where three very different intelligent species could find common ground at last. Or so he thought.Lusitania also harbors the descolada, a virus that kills all humans it infects, but which the pequininos require in order to become adults. The Starways Congress so fears the effects of the descolada, should it escape from Lusitania, that they have ordered the destruction of the entire planet, and all who live there. The Fleet is on its way, and a second xenocide seems inevitable.

Under the streets of London there's a place most people could never even dream of. A city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, knights in armour and pale girls in black velvet. This is the city of the people who have fallen between the cracks.Richard Mayhew, a young businessman, is going to find out more than enough about this other London. A single act of kindness catapults him out of his workday existence and into a world that is at once eerily familiar and utterly bizarre. And a strange destiny awaits him down here, beneath his native city: Neverwhere.

Now available in mass market, the revised, definitive edition of the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning classic. In this second book in the saga set 3,000 years after the terrible war, Ender Wiggin is reviled by history as the Xenocide--the destroyer of the alien Buggers. Now, Ender tells the true story of the war and seeks to stop history from repeating itself. ...In the aftermath of his terrible war, Ender Wiggin disappeared, and a powerful voice arose: The Speaker for the Dead, who told the true story of the Bugger War.Now, long years later, a second alien race has been discovered, but again the aliens' ways are strange and frightening...again, humans die. And it is only the Speaker for the Dead, who is also Ender Wiggin the Xenocide, who has the courage to confront the mystery...and the truth.Speaker for the Dead, the second novel in Orson Scott Card's Ender Quintet, is the winner of the 1986 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 1987 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

Golan Trevize, former Councilman of the First Foundation, has chosen the future, and it is Gaia. A superorganism, Gaia is a holistic planet with a common consciousness so intensely united that every dewdrop, every pebble, every being, can speak for all—and feel for all. It is a realm in which privacy is not only undesirable, it is incomprehensible. But is it the right choice for the destiny of mankind? While Trevize feels it is, that is not enough. He must know. Trevize believes the answer lies at the site of humanity's roots: fabled Earth . . . if it still exists. For no one is sure where the planet of Gaia's first settlers is to be found in the immense wilderness of the Galaxy. Nor can anyone explain why no record of Earth has been preserved, no mention of it made anywhere in Gaia's vast world-memory. It is an enigma Trevize is determined to resolve, and a quest he is determined to undertake, at any cost.[ Original description here: Горстка смельчаков пытается найти прародину человечества - Землю, чтобы получить разгадку тайн истории Галактики. = A handful of brave souls trying to find humanity's ancestral home—the Earth, to get answers to the mysteries of the history of the Galaxy.]

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2004–2009 American science fiction television series, reimagining of a 1970s series

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