John C. Wright

Texas gunslinger and genius Menelaus Illation Montrose is awakened from cryo-suspension to harness developing forces of evolution and social engineering to counter a threat against another historical period.

Five unusual students at an isolated English boarding school—Amelia, Vanity, Colin, Quentin and Victor—fought to uncover their true secret identities in Orphans of Chaos (2005), only to have their memories stolen (again) by their teachers, who are really their jailers. In this exciting sequel, Amelia remembers enough to convince her friends of their shared trouble, and together the five students set out to escape the school, regain their memories, rediscover their individual powers and remain free. Wright keeps the tension high as the students struggle to outwit the teachers and their minions, but never lets us forget his characters are teenagers, prone to all the usual teen troubles as well as the problems posed by their secret "higher" identities.

"The epic and mind-blowing continuation of John C. Wright's visionary space opera series surpasses all expectation. Menelaus Montrose, having renewed his enmity with his immortal adversary, Ximen del Azarchel, awaits the return of the posthuman princess Rania, their shared lost love. Rania brings with her the judgment of the Dominions ruling the known cosmos, which will determine the fate of humanity, once and for all. Vindication or destruction? And if it is somehow both, what manner of future awaits them?"--

"The alien monstrosities of Ain at long last are revealed, their hidden past laid bare, along with the reason for their brutal treatment of Man and all the species seeded throughout the galaxy. And they have still one more secret that could upend everything Montrose has fought for and lived so long to achieve"--Provided by publisher.

Heir to the philosophical-fantastical tradition of Borges, Calvino, and Perec, The Golden Age is Michal Ajvaz’s greatest and most ambitious work. The Golden Age is a fantastical travelogue in which a modern-day Gulliver writes a book about a civilization he once encountered on a tiny island in the Atlantic. The islanders seem at first to do nothing but sit and observe the world, and indeed draw no distinction between reality and representation, so that a mirror image seems as substantial to them as a person (and vice versa); but the center of their culture is revealed to be “The Book,” a handwritten, collective novel filled with feuding royal families, murderous sorcerers, and narrow escapes. Anyone is free to write in “The Book,” adding their own stories, crossing out others, or even appending “footnotes” in the form of little paper pouches full of extra text—but of course there are pouches within pouches, so that the story is impossible to read “in order,” and soon begins to overwhelm the narrator’s orderly treatise.

Five non-human orphans raised in a strict British boarding school have discovered their true natures, harnessed their strange abilities, and escaped into the world, where their true battle for survival begins.

"The year is 10,515 AD. The Hyades Armada, traveling at near lightspeed, will reach Earth in just four centuries to assess humanity's value as slaves. For the last 8,000 years, two opposing factions have labored to meet the alien threat in very different ways. One of them is Ximen del Azarchel, immortal leader of the mutineers from the starship Hermetic and self-appointed Master of the World, who has allowed his followers to tamper continuously with the evolutionary destiny of Man, creating one bizarre race after another in an apparent search for a species the Hyades will find worthy of conquest. The other is Menelaus Montrose, the posthuman Judge of Ages, whose cryonic Tombs beneath the surface of Earth have preserved survivors from each epoch created by the Hermeticists. Montrose intends to thwart the alien invaders any way he can, and to remain alive long enough to be reunited with his bride Rania, who is on a seventy-millennia journey to confront the Hyades' masters, tens of thousands of light-years away. Now, with the countdown to the Hyades' arrival nearing its end, del Azarchel and Montrose square off for what is to be their final showdown for the fate of Earth, a battle of gunfire and cliometric calculus; powered armor and posthuman intelligence"--

A tale about five orphans raised in a strict British boarding school who begin to discover that they may not be human beings. The students at the school do not age, while the world around them does. The children begin to make sinister discoveries about themselves. Amelia is apparently a fourth-dimensional being; Victor is a synthetic man who can control the molecular arrangement of matter around him; Vanity can find secret passageways through solid walls where none had previously been; Colin is a psychic. Each power comes from a different paradigm or view of the inexplicable universe: and they should not be able to co-exist under the same laws of nature. Why is it that they can?

"John C. Wright burst upon the SF scene a decade ago with the Golden Age trilogy, an innovative space opera. He went on to write fantasy novels, including the popular Orphans of Chaos trilogy. And now he returns to space opera in Count to a Trillion. After the collapse of the world economy, a young boy grows up in what used to be Texas as a tough duellist for hire, the future equivalent of a hired gun. But even after the collapse, there is space travel, and he leaves Earth to have adventures in the really wide open spaces. But he is quickly catapulted into the more distant future, while humanity, and Artificial Intelligence, grows and changes and becomes a kind of superman"-- After the collapse of the world economy, Menelaus grew up in what was once Texas as the future equivalent of a hired gun. He is recruited for a manned interstellar mission to investigate the Monument, and artifact of alien origin. He awakes two centuries later from cryo-suspension to find Earth transformed in strange and disturbing ways-- and that the Monument still carries a secret he must decode to determine humanity's true fate in the universe.

Young Galen Waylock is the last watchman of the Dream Gate, beyond which the ancient evils wait, hungry for the human world. For a thousand years, Galen's family has stood guard, scorned by a world that dismissed the danger as myth. Even Galen's father deserted their post. Discarding his belief in the other world, he left Castle Everness and the lonely coast of Maine to travel the world as a soldier. But the warning bell has sounded in the dream world, unheeded. Now, the minions of Darkness have stirred in the deep and the long watch is over. An army of mythic monsters has invaded our world, and Galen and his friends have begun to fight them. To join the battle with universal darkness, even his father returns. The forces of light have gathered in Castle Everness, which must stand, or all is lost.

A. E. van Vogt was one of the giants of the golden age of classic sf, the 1940s. Of his masterpieces, The World of Null-A is perhaps most influential. It was the first major trade SF hardcover ever, in 1949, and has been in print ever since. The careers of Philip K. Dick, Keith Laumer, Alfred Bester, Charles L. Harness, and Philip José Farmer were created or influenced by The World of Null-A. It is required reading for anyone who wishes to know the canon of SF classics. John C. Wright has been inspired to write a sequel to the stories of Null-A. To do this, he has trained himself to write in the exciting pulp style and manner of van Vogt. So return again to the Null-A future, in which the superhuman amnesiac with a double brain, Gilbert Gosseyn, must pit his wits once more against remorseless galactic dictator Enro the Red and the mysterious shadow-being known as the Follower, while he is hurled headlong through unimaginable distances in space and in time and through alternate eternities to fend off the death, and to complete the rebirth, of the universe itself!