Search Results for: star-winds

MARS: THE SKULL OF A PLANET PICKED CLEAN BY THE WIND OF TIME

North Beyond the desert of Meroe, past the ancient cliffs of the dust-locked continents, past the dry wharfs of a city that was old when Earth was new, the caravan crept into the unmapped waste called Umbra. It was into this shadowed land that the lost nation of the People had ridden and vanished-in a time beyond memory. It was here that the outworlder Ryker followed the golden-eyed Valarda and found the Child-of-Stars.

Unable to exceed the speed of light, he found ways around the law of nature, twisting space and time to his bidding. But the lure of FTL speeds could would not be forgotten…and the crew of the Flying Cloud – casts-offs from the great civilisations of the galaxy – found themselves breaking through the barriers of the past to discover new worlds – worlds from which they could never return!

Though Morgon the Riddle-Master was reunited with his beloved Raederle, his purpose in life and the reason for the stars on his forehead remained a mystery. All around him, the realm shook with war as mysterious shape-changers battled against mankind. Without the missing High One, Morgon must assume responsibility for all his world.

“Variety is the soul of pleasure,” And variety is what this comprehensive new collection of Connie Willis is all about. The stories cover the entire spectrum, from sad to sparkling to terrifying, from classics to hard-to-find treasures with everything in between – orangutans, Egypt, earthworms, roast goose, college professors, mothers-in-law, aliens, secret codes, Secret Santas, tube stations, choir practice, the post office, the green light on Daisy’s dock, weddings, divorces, death, and assorted plagues, from scarlet fever to “It’s a Wonderful Life.” And a dog.

Famous for her “sure-hand plotting, unforgettable characters, and top-notch writing,” Willis has been called, “the most relentlessly delightful science fiction writer alive,” and there are numerous examples here. Among them, Willis’s most famous stories – the Hugo- and Nebula-Award-winning “Fire Watch” and “Even the Queen” and “The Last of the Winnebagos” – along with undiscovered gems like Willis’s heartfelt homage to Jack Williamson, “Nonstop to Portales.” Her magical Christmas stories are here, too, from “Newsletter” to “Just Like the Ones We Used to Know…” which last year was made into the TV movie, Snow Wonder, starring Mary Tyler Moore.

We’ve collected stories from throughout Willis’s career, from early ones like “Cash Crop” and “Daisy, in the Sun,” right up to her newest stories, including the wonderful “The Winds of Marble Arch.” There’s literally something for everyone here. If you’re a diehard Willis fan, you’ll be delighted with hard-to-find treasures like the until-now uncollected, “The Soul Selects Her Own Society…” If you’ve never read Connie Willis, this is your chance to discover “A Letter from the Clearys” and, well, “Chance.” To say nothing of, “At the Rialto,” the funniest story ever written about quantum physicists. And Willis’s chilling, “All My Darling Daughters.”

And…oh, there are too many great stories here to list and pleasures galore. So enjoy!

Fourteen stories – including “Radiant Green Star”, winner of the 2001 Locus Award for Best Novella – make up this classic collection. Leading off the book is the Nebula Award-winning title story, in which a poor Honduran hunter is coerced into tracking the forbidden “Black Jaguar of Barrio Carolina.” Futuristic war, menacing wind spirits, parallel worlds, a six-thousand-foot dragon: this collection proves that Shepard is neither genre fantasist not strict realist, but one of the most intriguing writers we have today.

“I’ll need your help. Come night and the Oracle again, I’m going to try the final couplet.”
“Jinian,” Murzy breathed while Dodie looked white-eyed at me. “Dangerous.”
“And fatal not to,” I said, still smiling at them all…

I wove by forest and meadow, branch and leaf. I wove by stream and pool, by river and fall. I wove by cloud and air, by thunder and sunset glow. I wove by depths of the earth, rock and gem, glittering ores and crystals blooming in the dark, old bone and new. Beside me the others wove as well…

“And all within sound of my voice or reach of the wind,” I cried, thrusting my voice like a Sending, like a magic spear, driving it upward. “And all within sound of my voice or lick of the wave, or all within sound of my voice or stretch of the soil, or all within sound of my voice where green grows and leaf springs up. Named or unnamed, silent or speaking. Let this message be brought,

By the Eye of the Star,
Where Old Gods Are!”

He was Clear Blue Lou, perfect master of the Clear Blue Way, at one with the law of muscle, sun, wind and water governing Aquaria. She was Sunshine Sue, always in a hurry in a world that was too slow, Queen of Word of Mouth. Their meeting had been arranged – but by whom? and why? Beyond the beginning of where the world ended, beyond the highest peaks of its primeval majesty, lay a radio active hell and the lairs of the black sorcerers, the Spacers. The black scientists had not forgotten man’s old dream of touching the stars: they wanted the Age of Space reborn. But they needed a little help.

Like two giants the old enemies faced each other across the reaches of the galaxy – the Terran Empire and the Ythrian Domain. Terra was a Leviathan, encroaching ever further among the stars, promising peace and prosperity – but at the price of freedom. Ythri was smaller, but an empire in its own right, peopled by birdlike beings with a civilisation and intellect that easily matched Terra’s own.

And between the adversaries lay Avalon. One single planet, inhabited by human and Ythri alike. Both sides wanted to claim Avalon, by persuasion or by force, for it was a key world that could turn the tide of the war. But Avalon had developed a unique culture, a powerful blend of human and Ythrian thought. And Avalon had ideas of its own….

The sails were the product of the Old Technology, lost long ago in the depleted Earth, and they were priceless. For with those fantastic sheets of etheric material, ships could sail the sky and even brave the radiant tides between worlds and stars.

The alchemists who had replaced scientists still sough the ancient secrets, and Rachad, apprentice to such a would-be wizard, learned that the key to his quest lay in a book abandoned in a Martian colonial ruin long, long ago.

But how to get to Mars? There was one way left – take a sea vessel, caulk it airtight, steal new sails and fly the star winds in the way of the ancient windjammers.

Here is an intriguing, unusual and colourful novel of ships that sail the stars riding before the solar breeze that blows between worlds.

Arcot, Wade, Morey, and their computer, Fuller, put together a ship which will travel faster than light; they gave us what may have been the first space-warp drive. The concept was simple, to make it plausible wasn’t – unless you were John W. Campbell.

With this out-of-space drive they hightail it among the stars. They locate the fugitive planets of the Black Star, find a frozen cemetery-world of a lost race, then head out for another galaxy and wind up in a knock-down-drag-out interplanetary war!

The greatest quest man will ever undertake . . .

The original story from which If the Stars are Gods grew won the Nebula Award. Now the long-awaited magnificent full-length novel is complete. It tells the unforgettable story of the century-long search of a scientist-monk for the secret of alien intelligent life – a quest which leads him from the time-scoured deserts of Mars to the vast holes in the raging cloud-cover of Jupiter; from the radio winds of Titan to the true centre of a universe where Beings are collected like songs . . .