Author: George Zebrowski Publisher: Open Road Media ISBN: 1497622832 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 268
Book Description
“Like his previous tales of technocratically engineered futures (Macrolife; Stranger Suns; etc.), Zebrowski's latest evokes the pioneering SF of social philosopher Olaf Stapledon... In the 21st century, Earth incarcerates its undesirables in mined-out asteroids launched into new orbits for the duration of their sentences. "This use of distance as a better prison wall" is more than just an ingenious application of technology to the penal system: it's also a convenient trick for disposing of the socially misfit, since orbits are "accidentally" miscalculated to prevent their return. The narrative follows the histories of several of these "rocks" as their prisoners fight, unite and ultimately set out to create superior, self-contained cultures free of the taint of earthly ways. Individual asteroids house specific groups of offenders, ranging from hardened convicts to sexual deviants, juvenile delinquents and unwanted foreigners... Zebrowski argues his points with conviction. Publishers Weekly "A brilliant and dramatic philosophical reflection on the nature of society, technology . . . and humanity itself. Zebrowski is a deep thinker who writes about the big questions' in the grand tradition of Wells, Stapledon, and Clarke." -- Jack M. Dann, award-winning author of The Silent and The Memory Cathedral High Crimes Call for High Punishment. It is the twenty-first century. Convicts are sentenced to asteroids that move in ever-widening solar orbits, timed to return when their terms run out. But a few ambitious administrators discover that small "errors" in velocity can rid them of selected groups altogether: the hardcore violent, the mentally defective, and especially the political dissidents. Enduring the black vise of interstellar space-time, these human rejects--men and women mixed together--create their own Darwinian societies, struggling to survive. Back on Earth, a handful of sympathetic and curious scientists have not forgotten these lost citizens. When a technological breakthrough makes it possible to overtake these scattered asteroids, a courageous team sets out to go where none has willingly gone before. What they discover in these "brute orbits" is both provocative and moving--a startling vision of humanity you will never forget.
Author: George Zebrowski Publisher: Turtleback ISBN: 9780606173612 Category : Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
It is the twenty-first century. Suffering from global warming and overpopulation, Earth is opening the solar system to industrialization. One of the largest growth industries -- "corrections" -- capitalizes on the opportunity, sending convicts to mine asteroids diverted into near-Earth orbits. Like the condemned digging their own graves, the convicts hollow out their own prisons, as the mined-out shells become deep-space cell blocks. Then an administrative genius realizes that the asteroid prisons can be inserted into solar orbits, timed to return to near-Earth space when terms run out. This not only adds further security, it removes the problem of abuse by guards, since they are no longer needed.
Author: James Gunn Publisher: Scarecrow Press ISBN: 0810891239 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 243
Book Description
In the mid-1980s, Easton Press began publishing a series of leather-bound collector editions called “Masterpieces of Science Fiction” and “Masterpieces of Fantasy,” which featured some of the most important works in these genres. James Gunn was commissioned to write introductions to these works, which allowed him to pay tribute to many authors who inspired and influenced his own work. In Paratexts: Introductions to Science Fiction and Fantasy, Gunn has collected the most significant essays produced for the Easton series, along with prefaces he wrote for reprints of his own novels. Cited here are some of the most significant works of 19th and 20th century science fiction and fantasy, such as The Island of Dr. Moreau, 1984, Stranger in a Strange Land, A Clockwork Orange, Speaker for the Dead, The Postman, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe, The Dead Zone, The Mists of Avalon, Dragon’s Eye, Nine Princes in Amber, Blue Mars, The Last Unicorn, and The Lord of the Rings. Drawing upon Gunn’s lifetime of work in the field, these introductions include analyses of the individual works and the fields in which they were written. Gunn also briefly discusses each novel’s significance in the science fiction canon. Collected here for the first time, these prefaces and introductions provide readers with insight into more than seventy novels, making Paratexts a must-read for science fiction and fantasy aficionados.
Author: George Zebrowski Publisher: Open Road Media ISBN: 1504009924 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 209
Book Description
The ten stories of this collection present glimpses of our near, middle, and far futures “Heathen God,” the author’s first Nebula Award finalist, reveals the consequences of learning that our solar system may have been engineered by an alien race. “In the Distance, and Ahead in Time” and “Wayside World” depict the rediscovery of a ruined Earth’s interstellar colonies by a new culture of mobile habitats. In “Transfigured Night” and “Between the Winds,” we enter two possible destinies as we tamper with human reality and humankind mutates into vastly different offshoots.
Author: George Zebrowski Publisher: Wildside Press LLC ISBN: 1479456411 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 23
Book Description
With the masterful poignance of a Clifford Simak, George Zebrowski delivers a stirring and tension-filled tale of the waning days of a plague-broken USA, where the last President must choose between a funeral pyre or a phoenix rebirth.
Author: George Zebrowski Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 0743454006 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 272
Book Description
When an abandoned space habitat is found within a distant asteroid belt, the Starship Enterprise is sent to investigate. Captain Kirk and his crew discover an artificial world full of technological marvels -- and unexpected dangers. But wonder and curiosity give way to fear when the habitat's shifting orbit sends it on a collision course with an inhabited planet within the same solar system. Now Kirk and Spock must find a way to save the planet without destroying a treasure trove of alien science, and time is running out...
Author: George Zebrowski Publisher: Open Road Media ISBN: 1480494828 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 317
Book Description
In this masterful collection of horror stories, George Zebrowski divides these nineteen tales into personal, political, and metaphysical terrors—stories to scare you individually, stories to frighten you as a social animal, and stories that should terrify the entire human race. In “I Walked with Fidel,” a young man encounters a once politically powerful zombie; “Jumper” focuses on a young woman with a dark and troubled past, while in “The Coming of Christ the Joker,” the lighthearted banter of a celebrity TV talk show becomes something far more serious. “A Piano Full of Dead Spiders” is an eerie story of genius, its demands, and its delusions; in “Passing Nights,” the truth behind a recurring nightmare is revealed; “The Soft Terrible Music” depicts a man who must hide his past even from himself. And in the title story, the novella “Black Pockets,” Zebrowski asks: What happens to a man when his desire for revenge becomes all-consuming? With an introduction by Howard Waldrop and an afterword by the author, George Zebrowski reveals himself in Black Pockets and Other Dark Thoughts as a writer who can play on our more disturbing emotions even as he impels us to deeper thoughts.
Author: George Zebrowski Publisher: Open Road Media ISBN: 1480494763 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 362
Book Description
This collection of stories showcases the work of George Zebrowski, one of science fiction’s masters and a writer Hugo and Nebula Award winner Robert J. Sawyer has called “one of the most philosophically astute writers in science fiction.” Like the writers Olaf Stapledon, Arthur C. Clarke, and Stanislaw Lem, Zebrowski explores the “big questions”—the expansion of human horizons, and the growth of power over our lives and the world in which we live. In the title story, scientists push the boundaries of human mentality to keep pace with ever-evolving AIs. In “The Eichmann Variations,” a finalist for the Nebula Award, exact copies of captured Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann stand trial for his crimes against humanity, while in “The Word Sweep,” all speech must be rationed because spoken words take on physical form. In “Wound the Wind,” another Nebula Award finalist, unchanged humans roam freely until captured by those who know what’s best for them, and in “Stooges,” a visiting alien hijacks the persona of Curly Howard. From hard science fiction (“Gödel’s Doom”) to alternate history (“Lenin in Odessa”) to first alien contact (“Bridge of Silence”), and with an introduction by renowned physicist/writer Gregory Benford, this collection presents one of the most distinctive voices writing in the field of science fiction today.
Author: Jack Dann Publisher: Wildside Press LLC ISBN: 1434447383 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 101
Book Description
Long before their award-nominated and awarded stories and novels, these two writers word-jammed together, learning the music of story writing and the blood and bones of distinctive prose. And all these early efforts were published! Here they are again, together in one place--ten riveting stories of science fiction--as entertaining as they were fun to write--including the previously unpublished tale, "The Standard Crisis Scenario"!
Author: George Zebrowski Publisher: Open Road Media ISBN: 148049478X Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 189
Book Description
A detective discovers bodies without brains—and wonders if he’s losing his mind—in this tale of nightmarish terror. What do you tell yourself when impossible things begin to happen? What can you say? You’re a police detective, but maybe you’re just not good enough and that’s what you have to admit, whether you like it or not. You see evidence of things that can’t be real, but you just don’t observe well enough to explain it in any natural way. Can you ask rational questions and still be crazy? Does it help any that you know your mind is gone? You’re trapped in a black comedy with a beautiful but fatal woman right out of an old poem by Keats, hoping to wake up from the nightmare, even if on a cold hillside—as long as you wake up sane. Detective William Benek is faced with an impossible crime: bodies are turning up without their brains and without any indication of how the organs were removed. His only lead—an attractive woman—becomes more than a lead, and then drives him into a world of terror, where his sanity is questioned and he must stop a monster he can barely comprehend. Listed as a Best Book of 2009 by Edge Boston.
Author: George Zebrowski
Author: George Zebrowski
Author: James Gunn
Author: George Zebrowski
Author: George Zebrowski
Author: George Zebrowski
Author: George Zebrowski
Author: George Zebrowski
Author: Jack Dann
Author: George Zebrowski