The Killing Machine
10 best books like The Killing Machine (Jack Vance): Mother of Storms, Bones of the Earth, A Case of Conscience, Mission Child, Learning the World: A Scientific Romance, Rama II, Bug Jack Barron, Mindbridge, Tower of Glass, The Stochastic Man
Author | John Barnes |
ISBN | 0812533453 |
In the middle of the Pacific, a gigantic hurricane accidentally triggered by nuclear explosions spawns dozens more in its wake.
A world linked by a virtual-reality network experiences the devastation first hand, witnessing the death of civilization as we know it and the violent birth of...
Author | Michael Swanwick |
ISBN | 0380812894 |
World-renowned paleontologist Richard Leyster's universe changedforever the day a stranger named Griffin walked into his office with a remarkable job offer . . . and an ice cooler containing the head of a freshly killed Stegosaurus. For Leyster and a select group of scientific colleagues an impossible...
Author | James Blish |
ISBN | 0345438353 |
Father Ruiz-Sanchez is a dedicated man--a priest who is also a scientist, and a scientist who is also a human being. He has found no insoluble conflicts in his beliefs or his ethics . . . until he is sent to Lithia. There he comes upon a race of aliens who are admirable in every way except for their total reliance...
Author | Maureen F. McHugh |
ISBN | 0380791226 |
Mission Child is an expansion of Maureen McHugh's "The Cost to Be Wise," a fascinating novella from the original anthology Starlight 1.
Janna's world was colonized long ago by Earth and then left on its own for centuries. When "offworlders" return, their superior technology upsets the balance...
Author | Ken MacLeod |
ISBN | 0765351773 |
Humanity has spread to every star within 500 light-years of its half-forgotten origin, coloring the sky with a haze of habitats. Societies rise and fall. Incautious experiments burn fast and fade. On the fringes, less modified humans get on with the job of settling a universe that has, so far, been empty...
Author | Arthur C. Clarke |
ISBN | 2290032042 |
So. Two stars. That’s a really low rating for me. Normally, if I really don’t like a book, I just move on with my life. But this one had elements that hit close to home for me.
Sorry, I realize that I was just speaking Midwestern Understatement. What I meant to say was that this book is a tangible...
Author | Norman Spinrad |
ISBN | 1585675857 |
With over a hundred million viewers, Jack Barron is a media star of the highest celebrity—think Jerry Springer crossed with Ted Koppel—and his call-in talk show is the perfect platform for reform. But every man has his price, and when a cryogenics millionaire makes Jack an offer he can't refuse—immortality—anything...
Author | Joe Haldeman |
ISBN | 0575071141 |
The discovery of a remarkable alien technology light years from Earth could have devastating consequences for humanity in this science fiction classic by the author of the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning novel The Forever War
In the far future, the accidental scientific breakthrough known...
Author | Robert Silverberg |
ISBN | 0575070978 |
Simeon Krug has a vision--and the vast wealth necessary to turn dream into reality. What he wishes is to communicate with the stars, to answer signals from deep space. The colossal tower he's constructing for this purpose soars above the Arctic tundra, and the seemingly perfect androids building it...
In a not-too-distant future, the assassination of an all-powerful New York City Mayor has plunged the five boroughs back into a dangerous cesspool of crime, drugs, and prostitution. Professional prognosticator Lew Nichols joins the campaign team of a fast-rising politico running for the city's...
Author | Poul Anderson |
ISBN | 0451079000 |
An oddly Heinleinian offering by Poul Anderson.
True, the two grandmasters share an affinity for the physical and the libertarian, and both have a natural talent for world building – but Anderson steers this ship clearly along the Missourians path. This is similar to The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress...
Author | David Gerrold |
ISBN | 0553264656 |
When HARLIE Was One is a 1972 science fiction novel by David Gerrold. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1972 & the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1973. The novel is a fix-up of previously published short stories. A revised version, subtitled "Release 2.0", was published in 1988.
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Author | Frederik Pohl |
ISBN | 0345446674 |
In Book Two of the Heechee Saga, Robinette Broadhead is on his way to making a fortune by bankrolling an expedition to the Food Factory--a Heechee spaceship that can graze the cometary cloud and transfor the basic elements of the universe into untold quantities of food. But even as he gambles on the breakthrough...
Author | Jeffrey A. Carver |
ISBN | 0812534433 |
Jeffrey A. Carver, author of The Infinity Link and The Rapture Effect, returns with a new science fiction epic set against a sweeping backdrop of interstellar war, space piracy, and star-spanning conspiracy.After seven years of captivity at the hands of interstellar pirates, Star Rigger Renwald...
Author | Walter Jon Williams |
ISBN | 0061054429 |
Aiah worked for the Plasm Authority, metering the shimmering substance that powered the world-city, until she fell in love with Constantine, the rebel Metropolitan fighting a war to overthrow the corrupt dynasty of the Keremaths. Now the war is over, and Aiah is at the mercy of the tyrant she created....
Author | Arthur C. Clarke |
ISBN | 0446356018 |
In 1994, the Marines test a new missile. After launch it mysteriously disappears. If it reaches civilian areas they'll be in big trouble. Carol Dawson, a journalist, is alerted by an unusual sight of whales in the Miami area & decides to write about it.
Armed with equipment provided by her friend,...
Author | Frederik Pohl |
ISBN | 0812535197 |
A distinguished veteran of science fiction, Frederik Pohl was one of the Futurians, a New York City club of the 1930s and '40s that included Isaac Asimov. Author of The Other End of Time and The World at the End of Time, his latest novel features Dan Dannerman, a poorly paid government agent in the not-too-distant...