An Ace Book

[Comment by Kim Stanley Robinson, on The Guardian's website]: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin (1969) > One of my favorite novels is The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K Le Guin. For more than 40 years I've been recommending this book to people who want to try science fiction for the first time, and it still serves very well for that. One of the things I like about it is how clearly it demonstrates that science fiction can have not only the usual virtues and pleasures of the novel, but also the startling and transformative power of the thought experiment. > In this case, the thought experiment is quickly revealed: "The king was pregnant," the book tells us early on, and after that we learn more and more about this planet named Winter, stuck in an ice age, where the humans are most of the time neither male nor female, but with the potential to become either. The man from Earth investigating this situation has a lot to learn, and so do we; and we learn it in the course of a thrilling adventure story, including a great "crossing of the ice". Le Guin's language is clear and clean, and has within it both the anthropological mindset of her father Alfred Kroeber, and the poetry of stories as magical things that her mother Theodora Kroeber found in native American tales. This worldly wisdom applied to the romance of other planets, and to human nature at its deepest, is Le Guin's particular gift to us, and something science fiction will always be proud of. Try it and see – you will never think about people in quite the same way again.

Lily Carlyle has lied, cheated, and stolen her way through life.But in death, she'll really get to be bad...When her little sister is brutalized, a vengeful Lily determines to exact her own justice. She succeeds at the cost of her own life, but as she lies dying, she is given a second chance. Lily can earn her way into Paradise by becoming an assassin for the forces of good.It's the job Lily believes she can really get into—but she doesn't realize that she may not be able to get out.

Kaz is the star of the latest Vidz movie, which transports her to a world much like her own in which she has helped invent a time machine, but she interferes with the time line while trying to identify and stop the villain.

Kate Daniels has quit the Order of Merciful Aid, but starting her own business isn't easy when the Order starts disparaging her good name. And being the mate of the Beast Lord doesn't bring in the customers, either. So when Atlanta's premier Master of the Dead asks for help with a vampire, Kate jumps at the chance. Unfortunately, this is one case where Kate should have looked before she leapt.

When Imre Bergamasc, the First Prime of the Returned Continuum, is kidnapped by an unknown entity, which results in the deaths of innocent people, he is forced to return to Earth where saboteurs and dissidents threaten to destroy his empire.

While trying to find out the truth about her demonic heritage, Tess Corday, an agent with the Occult Special Investigations squad, finds herself at odds with her undead boyfriend during an unauthorized investigation into an addictive new street drug that results in a paranormal showdown.

The operatives of the Carnacki Institute--J. C. Chance, Melody Chambers, and Jack Palmer--are sent into the private research center of one of the biggest drug companies in the world to investigate a distress signal that led to the disappearance of police and a national security team.

"Half-breed Queen Laela Taranisãii is in more danger than ever before. Her subjects hate her, her closest allies, including her griffin, have fallen, and, most worryingly, the Night God's immortal assassin, The Shadow That Walks, is bent upon reaping vengeance. As her enemies close in on all sides, her methods of maintaining power increase in desperation--and violence. Laela's half-brother, Kullervo, is supposed to be her strongest ally. But as he comes to terms with both who he is and what his sister's reign means to the land, he begins to doubt his once strong loyalties. With the conflict drawing to its bloody close, he must decide what he's truly prepared to fight for, a choice that could have dire consequences for all he once held dear. Meanwhile, a new threat is lurking in the darkness, the Night God's final, deadly pawn. It is this shadow that will decide the outcome of the war--and its power that will seal the fates of all involved."--Page of cover.