Sci Fiction 2005

File Updated: 23/10/2005

Tangled Web UK: New Sci Fiction Titles 2005

Brian Herbert Dune: The Battle of Corrin Pbk published March 2005 by Hodder & Stoughton at Ł7.99 ISBN: 0 34082338 0

Legends Of Dune 3
With Kevin J. Anderson
Humanity can still win – if it can make the final sacrifice
The Battle of Corrin
The universal computer mind Omnius has retreated to its last stronghold. where it plots a devastating new strategy that could undo the victories of the Butlerian Jihad. The surviving Titans are creating new lieutenants to do their will when at last they return to attack the human beings they once ruled.
In the years of peace too many of mankind have forgotten that their machine enemies never sleep.
But some have forgotten nothing - and learned from their triumphs. The brilliant military commander Vorian Atreides. son of a Titan, has the gift of long life from his terrifying father and knows the machines’ minds better than any man alive. Norma Cenva. the genius inventor of humanity’s best defences, dreams of new discoveries that will make man invincible.
And on the windswept desert planet Arrakis, the power that can give them victory waits.
'Compulsive reading' Anne McCaffrey
'Frank Herbert would surety be delighted and proud of. this continuation of his vision.’ Dean Koontz
About The Author
Frank Herbert, who created Dune, was born in 1920 and spent most of his early life in the Pacific Northwest of America. He was a professional photographer, journalist and occasional oyster-diver; he also had stints as a radio news commentator and jungle survival instructor.
Though he is best known for Dune, he was also the author of several other important science fiction novels including The Green Brain, The Dragon in the Sea and The White Plague. He was awarded the Nebula and Hugo awards - the highest literary accolades in the world of science fiction for Dune. He died in 1986.
Brian Herbert, his son, is a widely published science fiction author in his own right. This is his first novel to call on his father's work: previously, he has created his own worlds, sometimes in collaboration. He has also written Dreamer of Dune, a comprehensive biography of his illustrious father.
Kevin J. Anderson is best known for his world-wide best-selling novels based on the universes of Star Wars and The X-Files, and is also the author of several more critically acclaimed original novels. An expert on the US space programme, he worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for ten years.

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Ken MacLeod Newton's Wake Pbk published January 2005 by Orbit at Ł6.99 ISBN: 1841492248

The explosive new stand-alone epic of galactic conflict and human folly from a true master of far-future space opera.
The Hard Rapture took Earth’s best minds away. Now the rest are about to find out where they went ...
Centuries ago, space settlers and soldiers fled to the stars from the sentient Al war machines that engulfed Earth. They colonised Eurydice, a planet whose rocks contain traces of its own war machines - some of which still guard a vast, enigmatic artefact on a remote tundra.
When an expedition raids this strange artefact, the Eurydiceans discover that they weren’t the last survivors of humanity after all. Their leisured lifestyle is about to be disrupted by new arrivals for whom Eurydice is a prize worth fighting over.
And the long-dormant war machines are awakening ...
Newton’s Wake is a stunning stand-alone space opera, charting the struggle for human survival in a universe dominated by post-human intelligence.
Praise for Ken Macleod:
‘The modern-day George Orwell’ SFX
‘Stunningly assured, inventive and intelligent’ Iain M. Banks
‘A hectic ride, through slaloms of audacious complexity, irreverent ingenuity and paradox as purposeful as it is playful’ Guardian
‘Prose sleek and fast as the technology it describes’ Peter F. Hamilton
‘Magnificent ... a series you’d be wise to follow from the start’ Starburst
‘He is writing, revolutionary SF ... a novas has appeared in our sky’ Kim Stanley Robinson
`The wit and thrust are like a needle shower’ Mail On Sunday
About The Author
Ken MacLeod graduated with a BSc in Zoology from Glasgow University in 1976. Following research in biomechanics at Brunel University, he worked in a variety of manual and clerical jobs whilst completing an MPhil thesis. He previously worked as a computer analyst/programmer in Edinburgh, but is now a full-time writer. He is the author of six novels, three of which, The Star Fraction, The Cassini Division and Cosmonaut Keep have been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. His fourth novel, The Sky Road, was winner of the British Science Fiction Association Award for the best novel of 1999 and was also nominated for a Hugo Award. Ken MacLeod lives in West Lothian with his wife and children.

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Paul McAuley Mind's Eye Published September 2005 by Simon & Schuster at Ł12.99 ISBN: 0743238877
When Alfie Flowers chances on a strange piece of graffiti daubed on the window of a north London restaurant, the violence of his reaction takes him by surprise. The thorny circle of dashes and zigzags reaches right inside his brain and triggers a flashback to a terrifying childhood accident that left him with a peculiar form of epilepsy.
Convinced that the elusive graffiti artist, ‘Morph’, possesses clues to his past, Alfie sets out to track him down. His search, taking him down the back alleys of London’s street culture and involving him in a series of spectacularly gruesome murders, leads to the mysterious Nomads’ Club, the rituals of a lost tribe, and a secret history of espionage and mind-altering patterns - glyphs - connected with the disappearance of his father some twenty years before.
But the real source of the glyphs is hidden amidst e chaos of post-war Iraq. There, deep inside an ancient network of caves, lie powerful secrets sought by people with sinister and dangerous motives. People who are determined to do whatever it takes to prevent Alfie and the Nomads’ Club from interfering with their plans.
Paul McAuley’s mesmerizing new thriller combines breathless suspense with frighteningly plausible speculations on mind control, whose consequences are almost too horrifying to contemplate.
Praise for Paul Mcauley
‘This is the book Michael Crichton would write if only he could do believable characters and hard science that gripped’ Guardian
‘McAuley has Len Deighton’s gift for smuggling useful knowledge into a gripping tale’ New Scientist
‘The dedicated detective makes a personable but flawed hero in this fast-paced, complex thriller’ Sunday Telegraph
‘A chilling thriller from one of Britain’s best SF writers, now turning to crime fiction with awesome ease’ Guardian

About The Author
With his debut novel, Four Hundred Billion Stars, Paul J. McAuley became the first British author to win the prestigious Philip K. Dick Memorial Award. His fifth novel won the Arthur C Clarke and the John W Campbell Awards.
Born in Gloucestershire in 1955, he has a doctorate in botany and has worked as a research scientist in California and the United Kingdom. He is a frequent contributor to American science fiction magazines as well as the British magazine Interzone. He lives in North London.

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by Paul McAuley at Amazon.co.uk

Ian McDonald River of Gods Pbk published April 2005 by Pocket Books at Ł7.99 ISBN: 0 7434 67

August 15, 2047 - Happy Hundredth Birthday, India
One and a half billion people, twelve semi-independent nations, nine million gods. Mother India is all the things she has always been - beautiful and terrible, staggeringly poor and fantastically rich, unimaginably ancient and a leader of the technological revolution. Always changing, always the same.
On the eve of her hundredth birthday, ten people are doing ten very different things. In the next few weeks, they will be swept together to decide the fate of the nation.
As the gangster Shiv lets the holy river Ganges sweep away a bad night’s work, Mr Nandha prepares for another day as a Krishna Cop and his wife wonders how to pass the time. Shaheen Badoor Khan has no trouble occupying himself: the Prime Minister’s advisor has to deal with the failure of the monsoon, a potential war with Awadh, and the rabble-rouser N.K. Jivanjee.
Tomorrow, a stand-up comic will run a power company, a set designer will become a star, a young journalist will get the story of her life, and a scientist will land on an asteroid.
No one knows what will happen to Thomas Lull. Except Aj. Aj, the waif, the mind-reader, the prophet - the one who may hold the key to it all.
Ian McDonald has written a Great Indian Novel for the new millennium. River of Gods teems with the life of a nation choked with peoples and cultures - a war fought, a love betrayed, a message from a different world decoded - as the great river Ganges flows on.
‘He will be discovered with shouts of joy’ New Statesman
‘At once disturbing and beautiful; superbly realized’ The Times
‘Hugely readable’ Daily Mail
‘In terms of ideas, intellectual scope, detail, inventiveness, risk taking and sheer scale, McDonald’s novel is one of the most ambitious I have read in recent years. It is also a staggering achievement ... River of Gods is a brave, brilliant and wonderful novel’ Christopher Priest, Guardian
‘A triumphant panorama of mid-21st century India. Hugely adventurous and entertaining, sumptuously inventive and full of heart’ Locus
‘One hundred years after midnight’s children and the nation were born ... McDonald does it in style. River of Gods gathers pace quite superbly’ Starburst
‘One of the best SF books I’ve read this year’ Iain Banks
About The Author
Ian McDonald is the author of the critically acclaimed Chaga novels. Always noted for the beauty and brilliance of his prose style he won the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award for King of Morning, Queen of Day. He lives in Belfast.

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by Ian McDonald at Amazon.co.uk

John Meaney Resolution Published January 2005 by Bantam at Ł18.99 ISBN: 0-593-04
The sequel to Paradox and Context
The war against the Blight is over, and the subterranean realms of Nulapeiron have a chance for peace. But for Tom Corcorigan - revolutionary and war hero - there can be no respite. His association with Eemur’s Head, the flensed and bloody remains of a powerful Seer, is transforming him into something more than a poverty-stricken Lord and his growing understanding of the spacetime-warping science of Seers and Oracles brings new enemies and allies into his life.
And all the while, his story crystal, a gift from a mysterious Pilot so long ago, reveals more of the history and true nature of these strange Mu-space travellers - not least the existence of their home in a universe no ordinary human being can experience: the shifting, living fractal city that is Labyrinth.
But rising ominously above all this is the greater force that now threatens Tom’s world. It is called the Anomaly and it is all consuming - absorbing billions of beings, both human and alien, into itself.
As this new evil rips into Nulapeiron and begins to crush its human realms, only the forces commanded by Tom Corcorigan have the slightest chance of survival against such an overwhelming invader. For it has been foretold that only a warlord who is no longer quite human, who is willing to sacrifice everything, can deliver humanity from total darkness...
Revealing the shattering secret of the Oracles’ creation, Resolution concludes John Meaney’s trilogy of Nulapeiron tales featuring Tom Corcorigan and brings his story to a triumphant climax.
Acclaim for John Meaney
'John Meaney has rewired SF. Everything is different now' Stephen Baxter
‘Most impressive… Meaney’s creation amounts to an addictive appetizer; the reader is left hungry for more’ The Times
‘Meaney’s sustained inventiveness continues to dazzle… the rollercoaster plot is full of unexpected twists… Crackling tension continues to the very end. Nice one.’ David Langford, amazon.co.uk
‘Extraordinary. Unique. Challenging’ SFX

About The Author
John Meaney has a degree in physics and computer science, is a black belt in Shotokan karate and works in IT. He has been hooked on science fiction since the age of eight, and his short fiction has appeared in Interzone and in a number of anthologies. His debut novel, To Hold Infinity was published to great acclaim in 1998, shortlisted for the BSFA Award and subsequently selected as one of the Daily Telegraph’s ‘Books of the Year’.

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by John Meaney at Amazon.co.uk

L.E.Jr Modesitt The Ethos Effect Pbk published December 2004 by Orbit at Ł7.99 ISBN: 1-84149-3228

Following the unfortunate, yet unavoidable destruction of a civilian liner during a short but brutal space battle, Commander Van C. Albert is resigned to a life away from the military.
But then Van takes command of a starship for the Integrated Information Systems foundation and finds he is closer to the action than he ever was in the Space Force. For the IIS has far-reaching influence and their orders set Van and his crew in the path of a deadly interstellar battle that could spell destruction for every human world...
Praise for L.E.Modesitt,Jr.
‘Resplendent . . . fantasy with an inventive and expertly handled scenario, life-sized characters and flawless plotting’ Kirkus Reviews
‘Fascinating! A big, exciting novel of the battle between good and evil and the path in between’ Andre Norton
‘In this coming-of-age heroic fantasy. Modesitt has created an exceptionally vivid secondary world, so concretely visualized as to give the impression that Modesitt must himself have dwelt there’ L. Sprague de Camp
‘Adorned with a finely drawn, down-to-earth yet dangerous world, and an intriguingly ambiguous view of how good and evil interact’ Carole Nelson Douglas
About The Author
In addition to The Spellsong Cycle, L. E. Modesitt, Jr. is the author of the bestselling Recluce fantasy series and many science fiction novels. He lives in Cedar City, Utah.

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by L.E.Jr Modesitt at Amazon.co.uk

Richard Morgan Woken Furies Published March 2005 by Gollancz at Ł9.99 ISBN: 0 575 07325 X
Takeshi Kovacs has come home.
Home to Harlan’s World. An ocean planet with only 5% of its landmass poking above the dangerous and unpredictable seas. Try and get above the weather in anything more sophisticated than a helicopter and the Martian orbital platforms will burn you out of the sky.
And death doesn’t just wait for you in the seas and the skies. On land, from the tropical beaches and swamps of Kossuth to the icy, machine-infested wastes of New Hokkaido the hard won gains of the Quellist revolution have been lost. The First Families, the corporations and the Yakuza have a stranglehold on everything.
Embarked on a journey of implacable retribution for a lost love, Kovacs is blown off course and into a maelstrom of political intrigue and technological mystery as the ghosts of Harlan’s World and his own violent past rise to claim their due. Quellcrist Falconer is back from the dead, they say, and hunting her down for the First Families is a savage young Envoy called Kovacs, who’s been in storage for two hundred years and who isn’t about to share his new existence with a burnt out, ageing, criminal self.
There are gangsters, bounty hunters, religious cultists and hopeful revolutionaries, all wanting a piece of the action - and Kovacs is still trying to work out exactly what that action is. Amidst the rapidly mounting chaos, only one thing is certain - at some point, someone called Takeshi Kovacs is going to have to die. For good.
Reviews for Richard Morgan Altered Carbon
‘Outstanding. This seamless marriage of hardcore cyberpunk and hard-boiled detective tale is an astonishing first novel.’ The Times
`A first novel so exciting, so addictive and so bone crunchingly in your face that it beggars the need for such virtual reality as it occasionally employs. This is a ceaseless, permanently off-balance sprint through an all-too-grimly-familiar future where miraculous technologies are degraded through everyday use and abuse. There are occasional throwaway mentions of background details here that beg entire novels on their own; ubiquitous pieces of history dismissed in single lines that had my nose twitching, scenting something far bigger lurking, hidden under the surface.’ Infinity Plus
Broken Angels
‘Morgan unfurls the twisting plot and counter-plot of corporate greed an corrupt politics brilliantly’ The Times
‘Maintains the in-your-face savagery and thrilling intensity of Altered Carbon, but creates even more convoluted and ironic twists throughout the high-velocity storyline’ Dreamwatch
Market Forces
‘A bleak, violent portrait of a world that is only a few heartbeats fro our own… imagine Michael Moore, George Orwell and Philip K Dick collaborating on a novel and you’re halfway to realizing what a mind-blowing book this is’ INK
‘A fast-forward thriller from a major new talent’ SFX

About The Author
Richard Morgan is a tutor at Strathclyde University. This is his first novel

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Richard Morgan Market Forces Pbk published December 2004 by Gollancz at Ł6.99 ISBN: 0 575 07584 8

‘All over the world, men and women still find causes worth killing and dying for. And who are we to argue with them? Have we lived In their circumstances? Have we felt what they feel? No. it is not our place to say If they are right or wrong.
‘At Shorn Conflict Investment, we are concerned with only two things. Will they win? And will it pay?’

Chris Faulkner has just landed the job of his life. But Shorn Associates are market leaders in Conflict Investment. They expect results, they expect the best. Chris has one very high-profile kill to his name already but he will have to drive hard and go for kill after kill if he’s to keep his bosses happy. All he has to do in the meantime is stay alive…
'Morgan unfurls the twisting plot an counter-plot of corporate greed an corrupt politics brilliantly' The Times
About The Author
Richard Morgan is a tutor at Strathclyde University. This is his first novel

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by Richard Morgan at Amazon.co.uk

Larry Niven Ringworld Pbk published June 2005 by Gollancz at Ł6.99 ISBN: 0 575 07702 6

The artefact is a circular ribbon of matter six hundred million miles long and ninety million miles in radius. Pierson’s puppeteers, the aliens who discovered it, are understandably wary of encountering the builders of such an immense structure and have assembled a team of two humans, a mad puppeteer and a kzin, a huge cat-like alien, to explore it. But a crash landing on the vast edifice forces the crew on a desperate and dangerous trek across the Ringworld…
The Series SF Masterworks is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the help of today’s leading SF writers and editors. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written.
'Magnificent' James Blish
‘The return to the classical hard-science fiction of the kind popular in the Golden Age. Niven’s imagination is 3-D and detailed, and his style is lucid and appealing’ Frederik Pohl
‘Totally believable’ Observer
‘What a fantastic imagination! And what a writer! Sensational’ Vogue
About The Author
Larry Niven is a Nebula Award winner and has won the Hugo Award five times. He is the author of classics such as Ringworld, The Integral Trees, and, most recently, Destiny’s Road and Rainbow Mars. He is also the co-author of bestsellers The Mote in God’s Eye, Lucifer’s Hammer and Footfall. He is widely acknowledged as being one of the most important authors in science fiction. Larry Niven lives in Tarzana, California.

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Eric Nylund Halo: First Strike Pbk published February 2005 by Orbit at Ł6.99 ISBN: 1-84149- 422 4

The continuing saga of the award-winning Xbox game!

The Human-Covenant war rages on as the alien juggernaut sweeps inexorably toward its final goal: destruction of all human life!

Halo has been destroyed, and the threat it posed to sentient life, neutralized. But victory has come at a terrible cost for the UNSC. Thousands of valiant soldiers fell in the battle to prevent the alien construct from falling into the enemy’s clutches.
Now, everything depends on the Spartan known as the `Master Chief.’ Yet even with the aid of the artificial intelligence Cortana, the Master Chief will be hard-pressed to rescue survivors and evade the Covenant ships patrolling the remains of Halo in debris-strewn space.
Ahead lies a dangerous voyage home, through a gauntlet of Covenant forces. For the sake of all, the Master Chief and his war-torn squad must not only survive, but take the fight to the enemy with a decisive first strike.

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by Eric Nylund at Amazon.co.uk

Eric Nylund Halo: The Fall of Reach Pbk published February 2005 by Orbit at Ł6.99 ISBN: 1-84149-4208

The official prequel to the award-winning Xbox game!

As the bloody Human-Covenant War rages on Halo, the fate of humankind may rest with one warrior, the lone SPARTAN survivor of another legendary battle ... the desperate, take-no-prisoners struggle that led humanity to Halo - the fall of the planet Reach. Now, brought to life for the first time, here is the full story of that glorious, doomed conflict.

While the brutal Covenant juggernaut sweeps inexorably through space, intent on wiping out humankind, only one stronghold remains - the planet Reach. Practically on Earth’s doorstep, it is the last military fortress to defy the alien onslaught. But Reach’s defenders have another, higher priority: to prevent the Covenant from discovering the location of Earth.
Outnumbered and outgunned, the soldiers seem to have little chance against the Covenant, but Reach holds a closely guarded secret. It is the training ground for the very first ‘super soldiers.’ Code-named SPARTANs, these highly advanced warriors, specially bioengineered and technologically augmented, are the best in the universe - quiet, professional, and deadly.
Now, as the ferocious Covenant attack begins, a handful of SPARTANs stand ready to wage ultimate war. They will kill, they will be destroyed, but they will never surrender. And at least one of them - the SPARTAN known as the Master Chief - will live to fight another day on a mysterious and ancient artificial world called Halo ...

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by Eric Nylund at Amazon.co.uk

Stel Pavlou Gene Published January 2005 by Simon & Schuster at Ł12.99 ISBN: 0 7432 0859 5
3000 years. Two souls. One Fate
The highly anticipated second novel from the author of the bestselling Decipher Detective James North is called upon to deal with a young, mentally unstable man holding a child hostage at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. When he arrives, he is disturbed to discover that — although the bad guy is a complete stranger - he’s been asking for North by name.
The hostage situation goes wrong, and North finds himself injected with a substance that causes hallucinatory nightmares and flashes of memory that are not his own. He begins to hunt through New York for his attacker, a man he feels inexplicably compelled to kill - a man called Gene.
As he does so, North unlocks the secret of his past, a past that stretches back over 3000 years. Gene is the story of forgotten Greek warrior Cyclades who fought and died in the Trojan Wars, and was fated by the gods to be reincarnated seven times. Locked in a cycle of battle with the Babylonian Magi Athanatos, Cyclades must once again strive to defeat him and thwart his quest to achieve immortality.
Cyclades and Athanatos. North and Gene. But in this incarnation, neither man knows which is which, or why each of them has the instinctive need to kill the other.
Praise for the bestselling Decipher
‘It will satisfy anyone… written by someone who knows what they’re talking about’ Mail on Sunday
‘A fascinating blend of science, my theology, language and much more’ Independent
‘Exhilaratingly imaginative’ Sunday Times

About The Author
Stel Pavlou received a degree from Liverpool University. He recently wrote and co-produced the feature film The 51st State, starring Samuel L Jackson and Robert Carlyle, which will be released in the summer of 2001.
Gene is his second novel. He divides his time between Kent, Cyprus and Norway.

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