Brute Orbits

Author : George Zebrowski
Publisher : Open Road Media
ISBN 13 : 1497622832
Total Pages : 268 pages
Book Rating : 4.38/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Brute Orbits written by George Zebrowski and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “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 13 : 9780606173612
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Brute Orbits written by George Zebrowski and published by Turtleback. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 13 : 0810891239
Total Pages : 243 pages
Book Rating : 4.34/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Paratexts written by James Gunn and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2013-04-18 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 0743454057
Total Pages : 254 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Across the Universe written by George Zebrowski and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1999-10-01 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hawking left Earth during the 21st Century on a one-way mission to colonize a distant world. Due to the relativistic effects of pre-warp travel, it's crew has aged only thirty years while two centuries have passed outside the ship. When the Starship Enterprise™ comes to the rescue of the malfunctioning Hawking, the colonists find themselves thrust into a universe and an era that has left them behind. Captain Kirk intends to help the colonists adjust as best he can, but the task is not a simple one. The newcomers are survivors of a more violent, more paranoid time -- and the have brought old suspicions, and an ancient weapon of mass destruction, into a world of unexpected challenges and dangers.

Author : John Helfers
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 9780756405083
Total Pages : 324 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Future Americas written by John Helfers and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-06-03 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "16 original stories about America in the near and distant future"--Cover.

Author : Darrell Schweitzer
Publisher : Wildside Press LLC
ISBN 13 : 0809510723
Total Pages : 202 pages
Book Rating : 4.26/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Speaking of the Fantastic II written by Darrell Schweitzer and published by Wildside Press LLC. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Another selection of fascinating, informal conversations with the creators of Science Fiction and Fantasy, presented exactly as originally published.Here are authentic voices from 1983 through 2002: Peter S. Beagle, Octavia Butler, Philip Jose Farmer, Charles L. Harness, Michael Kandel, R.A. Lafferty, Jack McDevitt Tim Powers, Charles Sheffield, Susan Shwartz, Michael Swanwick, Evangeline Walton, Gene Wolfe, Jane Yolen, and George Zebrowski."

Author : Damien Broderick
Publisher : Wildside Press LLC
ISBN 13 : 080950927X
Total Pages : 270 pages
Book Rating : 4.70/5 ( download)

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Download or read book X, Y, Z, T written by Damien Broderick and published by Wildside Press LLC. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Damien Broderick has had a major impact as an Australian SF writer since 1964. He is undoubtedly the leading Australian theorist of the SF genre' (Russell Blackford, Van Ikin, Sean McMullen, Strange Constellations). Now, Broderick draws upon his skills as both critic and novelist to analyze science fiction of the last two decades, and its earlier roots. The book proposes sf as a distinctive form of writing, the extreme narrative of difference, then closely reads authors such as John Barnes, Jamil Nasir, Wil McCarthy, Robert Grossbach and Poul Anderson. While concentrating on exciting work published in the USA and Britain, Broderick does not neglect his own country's contributions, discussing sf by George Turner and other Australians. His critical voice is wry, entertaining and occasionally scathing.

Author : George Zebrowski
Publisher : Open Road Media
ISBN 13 : 1480494763
Total Pages : 362 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Swift Thoughts written by George Zebrowski and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 : James Gunn
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 1476673535
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.30/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Alternate Worlds written by James Gunn and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2018-08-10 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alternate Worlds was first published in 1975 and became an instant classic, winning a Hugo award. This third edition brings the history of science fiction up to date, covering developments over the past forty years--a period that has seen the advent of technologies only imagined in the genre's Golden Age. As a literature of change, science fiction has become ever more meaningful, presaging dangers to humanity and, as Alvin Toffler wrote, guarding against "the premature arrival of the future." The world has begun to recognize science fiction in many different ways, incorporating its elements in products, visual media and huge conventions.

Author : George Zebrowski
Publisher : Open Road Media
ISBN 13 : 1497635012
Total Pages : 440 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Sunspacers Trilogy written by George Zebrowski and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sunspacers Trilogy is a trio of novels of an alternate, earth-based civilization. In Sunspacer, young and idealistic philosophy student Joe Sorby must come to terms with adulthood while negotiating the gross injustices of interplanetary commerce. In Stars Will Speak, an alien signal is broadcast from the farthest reaches of the known galaxy . . . but will the scientists of earth decipher its warning in time? In Behind the Stars, young Max Sorby returns to Earth after spending all of his life on a mobile space habitat, fearing that the only home he has ever known will be lost to him forever.