A wildly original alien contact novel, set against a vivid backdrop of near-Earth corporate intrigue.
Trillionaire Igbal Renz has constructed a starship capable of making the twentyyear journey to Alpha Centauri. So why is he stopping at barely one-tenth that distance, with a cargo of a hundred frozen scientists and diplomats? Rumors abound that Renz Ventures, Inc., has made contact with … something.
And yet, as deadly stealth ships prowl the space lanes and as the corporate space race threatens to devolve into outright warfare, the Four Horsemen of space industry are discovering firsthand that even in a limitless and lawless frontier, no one can ever be truly self-sufficient.
THE LUNAR MONASTERY TAUGHT PEOPLE HOW TO LIVE IN SPACE . . . AND THEN ONE OF ITS STUDENTS WAS MURDERED Who owns the future? Homicide detective Raimy Vaught is a losing contestant on the biggest reality show ever: the colonization of Mars. Brother Michael is a Benedictine monk who just wants to help the future happen. Andrei Bykhovski is an asteroid miner desperately escaping indentured servitude. Bridget Tobin is a hydroponic farmer studying the greenhouses of Luna. 1 / 6 But when a fellow Mars contestant drops dead at a Lunar monastery, these four souls will find themselves on a collision course with forces far beyond the control of trillionaires or nation states. As labor disputes erupt across cislunar space, the actions of individual people will determine whose future will prevail . . . and whose will perish.
Conclusion to the groundbreaking Queendom of Sol series Once the Queendom of Sol was a glowing monument to humankind's loftiest dreams. Ageless and immortal, its citizens lived in peaceful splendor. But as Sol buckled under the swell of an immorbid population, space itself literally ran out. ... Conrad Mursk has returned to Sol on the crippled starship Newhope. His crew are the frozen refugees of a failed colony known as Barnard's Star. A thousand years older, Mursk finds Sol on the brink of rebellion, while a fanatic necro cult is reviving death itself. Now Mursk and his lover, Captain Xiomara "Xmary" Li Weng, are sent on a final, desperate mission by King Bruno de Towaji-one of the greatest terraformers of the ages-to literally crush the moon. If they succeed, they'll save billions of lost souls. If they fail, they'll strand humanity between death and something unimaginably worse. ...
EXILED FROM IMMORTALITY! Brash and idealistic, they were rebels without a cause in a world governed by science, reason ... and immortality. Banished for their troubles to the starship Newhope, they now face a bold future: to settle the worlds of Barnard's Star. Now King Bascal Edward de Towaji Lutui, former prince of the Queendom of Sol, together with Captain Xiomara "Xmary" Li Weng and her lover, first mate Conrad Mursk, face a perilous voyage with thousands of their fellow exiles. The journey will last a century, but with Queendom technology it's no problem to step into a fax machine and "print" a fresh, youthful version of yourself. But what this crew of rebels will find is far from the paradise they seek. Before long, their optimistic young colony has started to show signs of strain. And worst of all, death itself has returned with a vengeance.
A classic of hard SF from Wil McCarthy. Exploring what the economics of abundance will really look like. Humanity has conquered the Solar System. What's more, death itself has been vanquished. Wellstone-programmable matter-insures that no one need ever die, or indeed, age past adulthood. But for the children of immortal parents, life remains a constant state of arrested development. And a prince shall remain a prince forever, never inheriting the throne. So what is a minor royal to do? Bascal Edward de Towaji Lutui is tired of his parents-the Queen of Sol and her consort-treating his complaints as so much teenage whining. Exiled to a "summer camp" on a planette, where he will be out of his royal mother's hair, he decides to do something about his lot in life. Along with his fellow malcontents, he manages to make an improbable spaceship and set out for the far reaches of the colonized space. With hijacked weapons and programmable matter at their disposal, Bascal Edward de Towaji Lutui and his companions are set to prove themselves a force to be reckoned with.
A NEW NOVEL OF REAL SF FROM WIL McCARTHY Space: a tycoon's playground. From a space station full of women to a monastery on the Moon, from a Martian reality-TV contest to a solar shade large enough to cool the Earth, the dreams of a handful of trillionaires dictate the future of humanity. Outside the reach of Earthly law and with the vast resources of the inner solar system at their disposal, the "Four Horsemen" do exactly as they please. The governments of Earth are not amused; an international team of elite military women, masquerading as space colonists, are set to infiltrate and neutralize the largest and most dangerous project in human history. But nothing is that simple when rich men control the sky, as everyone involved is about to discover.
A MODERN SCIENCE FICTION CLASSIC FROM WIL MCCARTHY In the eighth decade of the Queendom of Sol, three commodities rule the day. The first is wellstone, a form of programmable matter capable of emulating almost any substance. The second is collapsium, a deadly crystal composed of miniature black holes, vital for the transmission of information and matter-including humans-throughout the Solar System. The third is the bitter rivalry between Her Majesty's top scientists. Bruno de Towaji, famed lover and statesman, dreams of building an arc de fin, an almost mythical device capable of probing the farthest reaches of spacetime. Marlon Sykes, de Towaji's rival in both love and science, is meanwhile hard at work on a vast telecommunications project whose first step is the construction of a ring of collapsium around the Sun. But when a ruthless saboteur attacks the Ring Collapsiter and sends it falling into the Sun, the two scientists must put aside personal animosity and combine their prodigious intellects to prevent the destruction of the Solar System-and every living thing within it.
What if all our legends are true? A rousing, fast-paced novel of time travel unlike any other, from acclaimed author Wil McCarthy. What if our legends are older than we think? All the Stone Age has left behind are rocks and bones; all other materials have rotted away, leaving no trace. But what if 'cave men' never existed, and the Stone Age was a time of great sophistication still preserved in our oldest stories? In a brilliant and dangerous brain hacking experiment, Harv Leonel and Tara Mukherjee are about to discover entire lifetimes of human memory coded in our genes, and reveal ancient legends - from knights and trolls, to flood myths, to the birth of humanity itself - that are as real as they are deadly. Before disaster erased the coastlines and river valleys of the Antediluvian age-before the Flood-men and women struggled and yearned and innovated in a world of savage contrasts into which Harv and Tara are thrust, unprepared. Will their science be enough to save them?
