Great Reads | Columbus Metropolitan Library

Merge / Disciple: Two Short Novels from Crosstown to Oblivion

Walter Mosley

Walter Mosley's talent knows no bounds. Merge and Disciple are but two of six fragments in the Crosstown to Oblivion short novels in which Mosley entertainingly explores life's cosmic questions. From life's meaning to the nature of good and evil, these tales take us on speculative journeys beyond the reality we have come to know. In each tale someone in our world today is given insight into these long pondered mysteries. But how would the world really receive the answers? Merge Raleigh Redman loved Nicci Charbon until she left him heartbroken. Then he hit the lotto for twenty-four million dollars, quit his minimum wage job and set his sights on one goal: reading the entire collection of lectures in the Popular Educator Library, the only thing his father left behind after he died. As Raleigh is trudging through the eighth volume, he notices something in his apartment that at first seems ordinary but quickly reveals itself to be from a world very different from our own. This entity shows Raleigh joy beyond the comforts of twenty-four million dollars....and merges our world with those that live beyond. Disciple Hogarth "Trent" Tryman is a forty-two-year-old man working a dead-end data entry job. Though he lives alone and has no real friends besides his mother, he's grown quite content in his quiet life, burning away time with television, the internet, and video games. That all changes the night he receives a bizarre instant message on his computer from a man who calls himself Bron. At first he thinks it's a joke, but in just a matter of days Hogarth Tryman goes from a data-entry clerk to the head of a corporation. His fate is now in very powerful hands as he realizes he has become a pawn in a much larger game with unimaginable stakes--a battle that threatens the prime life force on Earth.

Slow Apocalypse

John Varley

Despite wars with Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as 9/11, the United States' dependence on foreign oil has kept the nation tied to the Middle East. A scientist has developed a cure for America's addiction--a slow-acting virus that feeds on petroleum, turning it solid. But he didn't consider that his contagion of an Iraqi oil field could spread to infect the fuel supply of the entire world… In Los Angeles, screenwriter Dave Marshall heard this scenario from a retired US marine and government insider who acted as a consultant on Dave's last film. It sounded as implausible as many of his scripts, but the reality is much more frightening than anything he could have envisioned. An ordinary guy armed with extraordinary information, Dave hopes his survivor's instinct will kick in so he can protect his wife and daughter from the coming apocalypse that will alter the future of Earth--and humanity…

The Cassandra Project

Jack McDevitt; Mike Resnick

Two science fiction masters--Jack McDevitt and Mike Resnick--team up to deliver a classic thriller in which one man uncovers the secret history of the US space program… Early in his career, Jerry Culpepper could never have been accused of being idealistic. Doing public relations--even for politicians--was strictly business...until he was hired as NASA's public affairs director and discovered a client he could believe in. Proud of the agency's history and sure of its destiny, he was thrilled to be a part of its future--a bright era of far-reaching space exploration. But public disinterest and budget cuts changed that future. Now, a half century after the first moon landing, Jerry feels like the only one with stars--and unexplored planets and solar systems--in his eyes. Still, Jerry does his job, trying to drum up interest in the legacy of the agency. Then a fifty-year-old secret about the Apollo XI mission is revealed, and he finds himself embroiled in the biggest controversy of the twenty-first century, one that will test his ability--and his willingness--to spin the truth about a conspiracy of reality-altering proportions...

Fate of Worlds: Return from the Ringworld

Larry Niven; Edward M. Lerner

For decades, the spacefaring species of Known Space have battled over the largest artifactNand grandest prizeNin the galaxy: the all-but-limitless resources and technology of the Ringworld. Without warning the Ringworld has vanished, leaving behind three rival war fleets.

The Hydrogen Sonata

Iain M. Banks

The Scavenger species are circling. It is, truly, provably, the End Days for the Gzilt civilization. An ancient people, organized on military principles and yet almost perversely peaceful, the Gzilt helped set up the Culture ten thousand years earlier and were very nearly one of its founding societies, deciding not to join only at the last moment. Now they've made the collective decision to follow the well-trodden path of millions of other civilizations; they are going to Sublime, elevating themselves to a new and almost infinitely more rich and complex existence. Amid preparations though, the Regimental High Command is destroyed. Lieutenant Commander (reserve) Vyr Cossont appears to have been involved, and she is now wanted - dead, not alive. Aided only by an ancient, reconditioned android and a suspicious Culture avatar, Cossont must complete her last mission given to her by the High Command. She must find the oldest person in the Culture, a man over nine thousand years old, who might have some idea what really happened all that time ago. It seems that the final days of the Gzilt civilization are likely to prove its most perilous.

The Unincorporated Future

Dani Kollin; Eytan Kollin

Sandra O'Toole is the president of the Outer Alliance, which stretches from the asteroid belt to the Oort Cloud beyond Pluto. Resurrected following the death of Justin Cord, the unincorporated man, O'Toole has become a powerful political figure and a Machiavellian leader determined to win the Civil War against the inner planets at almost any cost. And the war has been going badly, in part because of the great General Trang, a fit opponent for the brilliant J. D. Black. Choices have to be made to abandon some of the moral principles upon which the revolution was founded. It is a time of great heroism and great betrayal, madness, sacrifice, and shocking military conflict. Nothing is predictable, even the behavior of artificial intelligences. There may be only one way out, but it is not surrender.

KOP Killer

Warren Hammond

KOP Killer, a darkly dystopian science fiction thriller from Warren Hammond Juno Mozambe once had a life. That was when he was a dirty cop, married to a woman who suffered such profound abuse that she murdered her vile, drug kingpin father. Juno loved his wife and did his best to help her survive her guilt, her drug habit, and her desire to end her life on the dead-end planet of Lagarto. When she died, however, Juno's life went downhill. And then his first partner, the corrupt chief of the Koba Office of Police, was murdered. The man responsible, Emil Mota, is using the KOP for his personal gain. Juno has been laying low, but now he's ready to do whatever it takes to take down the bastard. Rather than working from inside the system, he's decided that the only way to take down the KOP is to create an independent base of power. So he gets involved with a team of dirty cops and starts working as a rent-a-thug for a whorehouse that needs protection. Juno's last partner knows that his risky plan has a purpose, but she's that rarest of creatures on the hothouse planet of Lagarto: an honest cop. She can't help him. When Juno discovers a series of profoundly twisted murders, he faces a bleak possibility: in his desperate quest for vengeance against the man who targeted him for death, Juno may have placed himself beyond any hope of redemption... .

The Rapture of the Nerds

Cory Doctorow; Charles Stross

Welcome to the fractured future, at the dusk of the twenty-first century. Earth has a population of roughly a billion hominids. For the most part, they are happy with their lot, living in a preserve at the bottom of a gravity well. Those who are unhappy have emigrated, joining one or another of the swarming densethinker clades that fog the inner solar system with a dust of molecular machinery so thick that it obscures the sun. The splintery metaconsciousness of the solar-system has largely sworn off its pre-post-human cousins dirtside, but its minds sometimes wander... and when that happens, it casually spams Earth's networks with plans for cataclysmically disruptive technologies that emulsify whole industries, cultures, and spiritual systems. A sane species would ignore these get-evolved-quick schemes, but there's always someone who'll take a bite from the forbidden apple. So until the overminds bore of stirring Earth's anthill, there's Tech Jury Service: random humans, selected arbitrarily, charged with assessing dozens of new inventions and ruling on whether to let them loose. Young Huw, a technophobic, misanthropic Welshman, has been selected for the latest jury, a task he does his best to perform despite an itchy technovirus, the apathy of the proletariat, and a couple of truly awful moments on bathroom floors.

Redshirts

John Michael Scalzi

Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid , flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. It's a prestige posting, and Andrew is thrilled all the more to be assigned to the ship's Xenobiology laboratory.Life couldn't be better...until Andrew begins to pick up on the fact that (1) every Away Mission involves some kind of lethal confrontation with alien forces, (2) the ship's captain, its chief science officer, and the handsome Lieutenant Kerensky always survive these confrontations, and (3) at least one low-ranked crew member is, sadly, always killed.Not surprisingly, a great deal of energy below decks is expendedon avoiding, at all costs, being assigned to an Away Mission. Then Andrew stumbles on information that completely transforms his and his colleagues' understanding of what the starship Intrepid really is...and offers them a crazy, high-risk chance to save their own lives.

Blue Remembered Earth

Alastair Reynolds

With his critically acclaimed Revelation Space novels, Alastair Reynolds confirmed "his place among the leaders of the hard-science space opera renaissance." ( Publishers Weekly ) With Blue Remembered Earth, the award-winning author begins a new epic, tracing generations of one family across more than ten thousand years of future history--into interstellar space and the dawn of galactic society… One hundred and fifty years from now, Africa has become the world's dominant technological and economic power. Crime, war, disease and poverty have been eliminated. The Moon and Mars are settled, and colonies stretch all the way out to the edge of the solar system. And Ocular, the largest scientific instrument in history, is about to make an epochal discovery… Geoffrey Akinya wants only one thing: to be left in peace, so that he can continue his long-running studies into the elephants of the Amboseli basin. But Geoffrey's family, who control the vast Akinya business empire, has other plans for him. After the death of his grandmother Eunice--the erstwhile space explorer and entrepreneur--something awkward has come to light on the Moon, so Geoffrey is dispatched there to ensure the family name remains untarnished. But the secrets Eunice died with are about to be revealed--secrets that could change everything...or tear this near utopia apart.

Terminal Point

K. M. Ruiz

Blade Runner meets X-Men in this follow-up to Mind Storm where humanity faces extinction and it's up to a group of rogue psions to save society Fans of Charles Stross and Hannu Rajaniemi will lose themselves in this adventure as Threnody Corwin and her team of rogue Strykers contend with the aftermath of the events in Mind Storm and the unlocking of a new kind of psion power. They're on the run with Lucas Serca, who is closer than ever to destroying the World Court and his father's grip on the planet. Targeting the hidden cache of the planet's food supply meant to transform Mars into a paradise for the chosen few, Lucas triggers an escalating fight with the ruling government as worldwide chaos ensues. It's up to Threnody to save society before it destroys itself, but the cost is high and in the end, there is no such thing as compromise. There is only survival.

After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall: A Novel

Nancy Kress

The year is 2035. After ecological disasters nearly destroyed the Earth, 26 survivors-the last of humanity-are trapped by an alien race in a sterile enclosure known as the Shell. Fifteen-year-old Pete is one of the Six-children who were born deformed or sterile and raised in the Shell. As, one by one, the survivors grow sick and die, Pete and the Six struggle to put aside their anger at the alien Tesslies in order to find the means to rebuild the earth together. Their only hope lies within brief time-portals into the recent past, where they bring back children to replenish their disappearing gene pool. Meanwhile, in 2013, brilliant mathematician Julie Kahn works with the FBI to solve a series of inexplicable kidnappings. Suddenly her predictive algorithms begin to reveal more than just criminal activity. As she begins to realize her role in the impending catastrophe, simultaneously affecting the Earth and the Shell, Julie closes in on the truth. She and Pete are converging in time upon the future of humanity-a future which might never unfold. Weaving three consecutive timelines to unravel both the mystery of the Earth's destruction and the key to its salvation, this taut adventure offers a topical message with a satisfying twist.

Immobility

Brian Evenson

When you open your eyes things already seem to be happening without you. You don't know who you are and you don't remember where you've been. You know the world has changed, that a catastrophe has destroyed what used to exist before, but you can't remember exactly what did exist before. And you're paralyzed from the waist down apparently, but you don't remember that either. A man claiming to be your friend tells you your services are required. Something crucial has been stolen, but what he tells you about it doesn't quite add up. You've got to get it back or something bad is going to happen. And you've got to get it back fast, so they can freeze you again before your own time runs out. Before you know it, you're being carried through a ruined landscape on the backs of two men in hazard suits who don't seem anything like you at all, heading toward something you don't understand that may well end up being the death of you. Welcome to the life of Josef Horkai... .

The Fourth Wall

Walter Jon Williams

Dagmar Shaw got out of the game... and into the movies. Sean is a washed-up child actor reduced to the lowest dregs of reality television to keep himself afloat. His life was a downward spiral of alcoholism, regret, and failure... until he met Dagmar. Except Sean has secrets, dark even for the Hollywood treadmill of abuse, addiction, and rehab. And Dagmar is a cipher. There are dark rumors about her past, the places she's been, the things she was involved in. People tend to die around her and now, she wants Sean for something. A movie, she says, but with her history, who's to say what her real game is?

Triggers

Robert J. Sawyer

On the eve of a secret military operation, an assassin's bullet strikes President Seth Jerrison. He is rushed to the hospital, where surgeons struggle to save his life. At the same hospital, researcher Dr. Ranjip Singh is experimenting with a device that can erase traumatic memories. Then a terrorist bomb detonates. In the operating room, the president suffers cardiac arrest. He has a near-death experience-but the memories that flash through Jerrison's mind are not his memories. It quickly becomes clear that the electromagnetic pulse generated by the bomb amplified and scrambled Dr. Singh's equipment, allowing a random group of people to access one another's minds. And now one of those people has access to the president's memories- including classified information regarding the upcoming military mission, which, if revealed, could cost countless lives. But the task of determining who has switched memories with whom is a daunting one- particularly when some of the people involved have reason to lie...

Emperor Mollusk versus the Sinister Brain

A. Lee Martinez

Emperor Mollusk. Intergalactic Menace. Destroyer of Worlds. Conqueror of Other Worlds. Mad Genius. Ex-Warlord of Earth. Not bad for a guy without a spine. But what's a villain to do after he's done . . . everything. With no new ambitions, he's happy to pitch in and solve the energy crisis or repel alien invaders should the need arise, but if he had his way, he'd prefer to be left alone to explore the boundaries of dangerous science. Just as a hobby, of course. Retirement isn't easy though. If the boredom doesn't get him, there's always the Venusians. Or the Saturnites. Or the Mercurials. Or . . . well, you get the idea. If that wasn't bad enough, there's also the assassins of a legendary death cult and an up-and-coming megalomaniac (as brilliant as he is bodiless) who have marked Emperor for their own nefarious purposes. But Mollusk isn't about to let the Earth slip out of his own tentacles and into the less capable clutches of another. So it's time to dust off the old death ray and come out of retirement. Except this time, he's not out to rule the world. He's out to save it from the peril of THE SINISTER BRAIN!

Exogene

T. C. McCarthy

Catherine is a soldier. Bred by scientists, she and her sisters will win this war, no matter the cost. And the costs are high. On their 18th birthday they are discharged. Lined up and shot like cattle. Catherine and her sisters may not be strictly human, but they're not animals. Catherine may have only known death, but she dreams of life and will get it at any cost. Original.

Arctic Rising

Tobias S. Buckell

Global warming has transformed the Earth, and it's about to get even hotter. The Arctic Ice Cap has all but melted, and the international community is racing desperately to claim the massive amounts of oil beneath the newly accessible ocean. Enter the Gaia Corporation. Its two founders have come up with a plan to roll back global warming. Thousands of tiny mirrors floating in the air can create a giant sunshade, capable of redirecting heat and cooling the earth's surface. They plan to terraform Earth to save it from itself - but in doing so, they have created a superweapon the likes of which the world has never seen. Anika Duncan is an airship pilot for the underfunded United Nations Polar Guard. She's intent on capturing a smuggled nuclear weapon that has made it into the Polar Circle and bringing the smugglers to justice. Anika finds herself caught up in a plot by a cabal of military agencies and corporations who want Gaia Corporation stopped. But when Gaia Corp loses control of their superweapon, it will be Anika who has to decide the future of the world. The nuclear weapon she has risked her life to find is the only thing that can stop the floating sunshade after it falls into the wrong hands.

2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America

Albert Brooks

June 12, 2030 started out like any other day in memory -- and by then, memories were long. Since cancer had been cured fifteen years before, America's population was aging rapidly. That sounds like good news, but consider this: millions of baby boomers, with a big natural predator picked off, were sucking dry benefits and resources that were never meant to hold them into their eighties and beyond. Young people around the country simmered with resentment toward "the olds" and anger at the treadmill they could never get off of just to maintain their parents' entitlement programs. But on that June 12th, everything changed: a massive earthquake devastated Los Angeles, and the government, always teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, was unable to respond.

The Company of the Dead

David Kowalski

Can one man save the Titanic? March 1912. A mysterious man appears aboard the Titanic on its doomed voyage. His mission? To save the ship. The result? A world where the United States never entered World War I, thus launching the secret history of the 20th Century.

Boneyards

Kristine Rusch

A space opera filled with battles old and new, scientific dilemmas, and questions about the ethics of friendship, Boneyards looks at the influence of our past on our present and the risks we all take when we meddle in other peoples lives.

In the Lion's Mouth

Michael Flynn

Third entry in Flynn's far-future space opera, following Up Jim River (2010, etc.), wherein two human empires, the Confederation of Central Worlds and the United League of the Periphery, struggle for dominance.

Red Thunder

John Varley

Humorous SF. Red Thunder pays homage to Robert Heinlein's youthful SF: it's an ebullient "let's build a rocket and go to Mars!" light SF adventure packed with oddball characters, devil-may-care humor, and haphazard science. Travis Broussard, former astronaut and current drunk, is nearly run over by a group of misfits on Daytona Beach, including Dak and Manny -- who are complete space nuts, so they're tickled pink to meet Travis. When Travis's quirky cousin Jubal invents an endless power supply, the race is on to mount an independent mission to Mars in advance of Chinese astronauts. Fans of early Heinlein, Spider Robinson, and/or Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle will be rolling in the aisles.

Spin

Robert Charles Wilson

SF. Three best friends witness the end of the stars one night: it's later discovered that an alien-erected barrier has locked the Earth in a soon-to-be fatal time warp. Outside the barrier, time hurtles forward by light years; inside, the sun's life expectancy is merely decades. Jason becomes a scientist, bent on somehow saving the world; his sister Diane fearfully alternates between debauchery and religious fervor in the face of the world's end; Tyler becomes a doctor, and -- as Jason's confidante -- chronicles their lives. Plans to terraform Mars for colonization offer a measure of hope...but far stranger and more dazzling possibilities emerge as this remarkable marriage of space opera and human drama unfolds.

Red Mars

Kim Stanley Robinson

Near-future SF. A hundred settlers from a desperately overpopulated Earth are sent to make Mars' barren, freezing wastes habitable. Individuals with unique skills struggle to help ensure humanity's survival on Mars -- but as more and more settlers arrive from Earth, personal and political tensions threaten to make life impossible on either planet. Red Mars is 1st in the author's now-iconic Mars trilogy (continued in Blue Mars and Green Mars), in which human conflicts play out against a vividly drawn Martian landscape. Although Gregory Benford's Galactic Center series explores humanity's foibles on a larger interplanetary stage, fans of one series may also like the other.

In the Courts of the Crimson Kings

S. M. Stirling

Soft SF. The acclaimed author of The Sky People returns to its parallel worlds in this stunning portrait of Mars. While hominids on Venus remain primitive creatures in the far future setting of this world, Earthlings can't brag much. When we were still primordial ooze, our Martian cousins had mysterious, vast, sophisticated civilizations. Terran (human) archaeologist Jeremy Wainman stands poised to explore the secrets of Mars' ancient ruins at last; Martian mercenary Teyud Zha-Zhalt, hired as his guide, has an agenda as deeply buried and powerful as the lost city they seek. If you love atmospheric, classic SF adventures like Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom series (or H.P. Lovecraft's short stories about creepy elder-gods-from-space), In the Court of the Crimson Kings is a must-read.

Count to a Trillion

John C. Wright

SF. Gunslinger and mathematical prodigy Menelaus Montrose comes of age in an alt-future Texas town where he dreams of changing alien-influenced past events that rolled humanity's progress back centuries. An experimental space mission to claim an alien relic finally offers Montrose his chance to change Earth's past, present, and future potential into something greater -- but the personal risks are high, and ultimately he's playing against alien foes who always collect their due. Fans of the author's Golden Age series will thrill to this engaging, idealistic gun-toting hero; although it isn't as epic in concept as Vernor Vinge's Zones series, Count to a Trillioncould be a fun standalone read for its fans, too.

Marsbound

Joe Haldeman

SF. Likable teen Carmen Dula departs with her family on an ultimate near-future vacation -- to be short-term colonists of Mars. But long-distance travel in cramped discomfort with the fam doesn't sweeten any teen's disposition: Carmen's got attitude to spare upon arrival; taking it out on colonial authorities quickly lands her a deadly solo walk in the Martian wastes. What she discovers there will change everything -- if she lives to tell the tale. Fans of the author's signature hard-SF details will not be disappointed by Carmen's story, and this gutsy youthful protagonist gives this book teen appeal. Greg Bear's Moving Mars and Robert Heinlein's classic Red Planet are similarly recommended.

Steel and Other Stories

Richard Matheson

SF. This anthology features 15 short stories from the acclaimed author of I Am Legend. Two newer stories (from 2009-2010) appear, but most debuted in 1950s pulp serials like Fantastic Universe and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. General SF fans will love taking a nostalgic glimpse into the genre's roots, with stories like "Steel" (the source for 2011's fightin' robot flick Real Steel), and "The Doll That Does Everything" (about parents who hope a robot nanny can teach their brat some manners). The author's fans will appreciate how this anthology's selections each spotlight his unique ability to explore human psychology through speculative fiction.

After the Apocalypse: Stories

Maureen F. McHugh

Near-future SF. Hugo Award-winning author Maureen F. McHugh subtly weaves classic SF concerns -- medical ethics, social order, definitions of humanity, and more -- throughout nine edgy stories of life on Earth as a fierce, fast-moving apocalypse (cause: unknown) turns most of the globe into a zombified wasteland. Characters pushed miles beyond their emotional and physical limits pursue bizarre but effective survival strategies, whether by fabricating "reborns" (human infant replacements) in "Useless Things," evolving bird-like flight skills in "Going to France,"or developing "bacterial computers" (of ambiguous intent) for sale overseas. If you like SF that raises complex implications about humanity without offering pat resolutions, don't miss After the Apocalypse: Stories.

Wolf Among the Stars

Steve White

Military SF. Earth has recently repelled colonization by the Lokar, a hostile alien race, and unseated totalitarian political authorities who supported the aliens' cause, but the planet's administration remains a hotbed of intrigue. Captain Andrew Roark, a veteran of the rebellion against the Lokar, makes a chilling discovery while investigating a superior officer's death: a new enemy, the shape-shifting Kappainu, who hope conquer humans and Lokar alike, has infiltrated Earth. Roark uneasily joins forces with Lokaran Reislon'Sygnath, who claims to support his people's more peaceful future -- but can the word of any Lokar be trusted? This fast-paced, intrigue-laden, battle-packed sequel to Eagle Among the Stars should also appeal to David Weber fans.

Debris

Jo Anderton

SF. Sentient energy particles called pions control physical reality in Tanyana's world, and she is among an elite few who can see and direct them. Tanyana gains fame using pions to build monumental statues for her country's wealthiest, most powerful citizens. That is, until a horrific attack suddenly knocks her from the towering height of her latest project: she survives, but the fall destroys her ability to see pions. No one will believe that the fall wasn't an accident -- or wants to hear what she now knows are the dangerous side-effects of pionic manipulation. Tanyana seeks allies to re-make her life -- and possibly her world -- in a soft SF story that inventively explores pride, power, and the dark side of creative potential.