Sci Fi - Masterworks 2006
Tangled Web UK: New Sci Fi - Masterworks Titles
2006
Arthur C. Clarke
Rendezvous with Rama
Pbk published April 2006 by Gollancz at £6.99
ISBN: 0 575 07733 6
The enigmatic object christened Rama was detected while still outside the orbit of Jupiter, and a first radar contact at such a distance was unprecedented, indicating that Rama was of exceptional size. As it raced through the Solar System, it became apparent that Rama was a cylinder so geometrically perfect that it might have been turned on a gigantic lathe. Mankind was about to receive its first visitor from the stars.
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. The books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when It was first written.
‘An amazing list – genuinely the best novels from sixty years of SF’ Iain M. Banks
'There are perpetual surprises, constant evocation of the sense of wonder, and occasions of the most breathless suspense' New York Times
'Quite masterly' The Times
'One of the best novels Clarke has written ... packed with suspense and mystery' Sunday Times
About The Author
Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Kt., CBE, was born on December 16, 1917, in Minehead, Somerset, England, to Charles W. Clarke, a farmer and lieutenant in the Royal Engineers, and Nora Mary (Willis) Wright. He was married to Marilyn Mayfield in 1953 and divorced in 1964. A resident of Colombo, Sri Lanka, since 1956, Sir Arthur received his CBE in 1989 and his knighthood (for services to literature) in 1998. In 1975, he was the fist noncitizen to receive Resident Guest status in Sri Lanka, where he is chancellor of the University of Moratuwa (1979-). He is also chancellor of the International Space University (1989-).
The author of over eighty books and five hundred articles and short stories, Sir Arthur was educated at Huish Grammar School in Taunton (1927-36), and King's College, London, 1946-48 (B.Sc., first class, physics and mathematics). Before becoming a full-time writer, he was an auditor in H.M. Exchequer and Audit Department (1936-41) and served in the Royal Air Force (1941-46) as an instructor at the No. 9 Radio School and then flight lieutenant with MIT Radlab's ground-controlled approach radar. He originated the concept of the geosynchronous communications satellite, published in Wireless World in 1945, and the lunar mass-driver (Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 1950). He was assistant editor of Physics Abstracts for the Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1949-50, and chairman of the British Interplanetary Society, 1947-50 and 1953. From 1955 to 1965, Sir Arthur was involved in underwater exploration in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and in the Indian Ocean near Sri Lanka.
From 1964 to 1968, Sir Arthur wrote, with film director Stanley Kubrick, the nove1 2001: A Space Odyssey, on which the film was based. This was followed by the book and film 2010 (1982), and the books 2061 (1988) and 3001 (1997). Other famous science fiction novels include Against the Fall of Night (1953), The Sands of Mars (1951), Childhood's End (1953), the four-part Rama series (1972-93), and The Hammer of God (1993), which Steven Spielberg optioned for the film Deep Impact. In 1952, his nonfiction work The Exploration of Space was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection.
Arthur C. Clarke covered United States space missions and the Apollo Moon landings for CBS from 1957 to 1970. He wrote and hosted the television series Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World, The World of Strange Powers, and Mysterious Universe in the 1980s and 1990s. He is an honorary vice president of the H. G. Wells Society, the honorary chairman of the Society of Satellite Professionals, president of the British Science Fiction Association, a life member of the British Science Writes, a board member of the National Space Society, the Planetary Society, and the Buckminster Fuller Institute, and a trustee of the Spaceguard Foundation, as well as a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
Awards and honors include honorary fellows of the British Interplanetary Society, the American Astronautical Association, the International Academy of Astronautics, and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics; the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Engineering Award, 1981; the IEE Centennial Medal, 1984; the Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Award, 1990; International Science Policy Foundation Medal, 1992; Nobel Peace Prize nomination, 1994; NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, 1995; Unesco Kalinga Prize, 1961; the von Karman Award, International Academy of Astronautics, Beijing, 1996; Oscar nomination, with Stanley Kubrick, for 2001 screenplay, 1969; Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America, 1986; and the Special Achievement Award, Space Explorers Association, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 1989.
Arthur C. Clarke's seventieth birthday, in December 1987, was marked by the unveiling of a plaque at his birthplace in Somerset; he was knighted in 1998 for his services to literature, shortly after his eightieth birthday, the first science fiction writer to be thus honoured.
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Lucius Shepard
Life During Wartime
Pbk published June 2006 by Gollancz at £6.99
ISBN: 0 575 07734 4
In the jungles of Guatemala, David Mingolla is slugging it out amongst the rotting vegetation and his despairing fellow foot soldiers. He knows he is nothing but an expendable pawn in an endless war. On R & R a few miles beyond the warzone he meets Debora - an enigmatic young woman who may be working for the enemy - and stumbles into a deadly psychic conflict where the mind is the greatest weapon. Thoughts are used to kill and escape is impossible, but David is a man with a mind of his own and he will fight to the death before killing the woman he loves.
‘His work is daring and unsettling in the way art should be’ Kirkus Reviews
‘Brings to mind the best work of Graham Greene, Robert Stone and Ward Just’ Wall Street Journal
‘A writer with breathtaking ability’ Locus
'The hottest ticket in this genre, currently writing in America' The Times
'Richly peopled, highly literate, and brilliantly drawn … one of the finest science fiction writers of all time' Science Fiction Chronicle
About The Author
Born in the USA in 1947, Lucius Shepard lived in various parts of the world from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s. In 1985 he won the John W. Cambell Award and in 1986 he won the Nebula for his story R&R which forms the first part of Life During Wartime. He has also won World Fantasy Awards for the short story collections, The Jaguar Hunter and The Ends of the Earth.
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