2061 Odyssey Three

Arthur C. Clarke’s 2061: Odyssey Three is truly a masterful elaboration on one man’s epic vision of the universe. Only rarely does a novelist weave a tapestry so compelling that it captures the imagination of the entire world. But that is precisely what Arthur C. Clarke accomplished with 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is even more unusual that an author is able to complement so well-received an invention with an equally successful sequel. But Arthur C. Clarke’s 2010: Odyssey Two enthralled a huge audience worldwide. Now, in 2061: Odyssey Three, Arthur C. Clarke revisits the most famous future ever imagined, as two expeditions into space are inextricably tangled by human necessity and the immutable laws of physics. And Heywood Floyd, survivor of two previous encounters with the mysterious monoliths, must once again confront Dave Bowman—or whatever Bowman has become—a newly independent HAL, and the power of an alien race that has decided Mankind is to play a part in the evolution of the galaxy whether it wishes to or not.

The mysteries of the monoliths are revealed in this inspired conclusion to the Hugo Award–winning Space Odyssey series—“there are marvels aplenty” (The New York Times). On an ill-fated mission to Jupiter in 2001, the mutinous supercomputer HAL sent crewmembers David Bowman and Frank Poole into the frozen void of space. Bowman’s strange transformation into a Star Child is traced through the novels 2010 and 2061. But now, a thousand years after his death, Frank Poole is brought back to life—and thrust into a world far more technically advanced than the one he left behind. Poole discovers a world of human minds interfacing directly with computers, genetically engineered dinosaur servants, and massive space elevators built around the equator. He also discovers an impending threat to humanity lurking within the enigmatic monoliths. To fight it, Poole must join forces with Bowman and HAL, now fused into one corporeal consciousness—and the only being with the power to thwart the monoliths’ mysterious creators. “3001 is not just a page-turner, plugged in to the great icons of HAL and the monoliths, but a book of wisdom too, pithy and provocative.” —New Scientist

From the author of Confessions of a Bookseller, a cankerous and darkly funny field guide to bookstore customers. It does take all kinds and through the misanthropic eyes of a very grumpy bookseller, we see them all. There’s the Expert (with subspecies from the Bore to the Helpful Person), the Young Family (ranging from the Exhausted to the Aspirational), Occultists (from Conspiracy Theorist to Craft Woman). Then there’s the Loiterer (including the Erotica Browser and the Self-Published Author), the Bearded Pensioner (including the Lyrca Clad), the The Not-So-Silent Traveller (the Whistler, Sniffer, Hummer, Farter, and Tutter), and the Family Historian (generally Americans who come to Shaun’s shop in Wigtown, Scotland).Don’t forget the Person Who Doesn’t Know What They Want (But Thinks It Might Have a Blue Cover) and the harried Parents Secretly After Free Childcare. Two bonus sections include Staff and, finally, Perfect Customer—all add up to one of the funniest books about books you’ll ever find. Shaun Bythell and his mordantly unique observational eye make this perfect for anyone who loves books and bookshops. Praise for Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops “Bythell continues his seriocomic take on his profession . . . he spares no one.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post “Cheers to Shaun Blythell for this delightful taxonomy of bookstore customers and visitors.” —Pamela Pescosolido, bookseller, The Bookloft “Bythell is having fun and it’s infectious.” —The Scotsman (UK) “Virtuosic venting . . . pantomime misanthropy is tempered with bursts of sweetness in the secondhand bookseller’s latest dispatches from Wigtown [Scotland].” —The Guardian “Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops (a parody of the sort of self-help titles Bythell absolutely loathes), is a series of Orwellian-incisive character sketches.” —The Critic (UK) “Bythell distills the essence of his experience into a warm, witty and quirky taxonomy of the book-loving public.” —The Week (UK)

Two expeditions into space are inextricably tangled by human necessity and the immutable laws of physics.

In eleven years time, a million members of an alien race will arrive at Earth. Years before they enter orbit, their approach will be announced by the flare of a thousand flames in the sky, their ships' huge engines burning hard to slow them from the vast speeds needed to cross interstellar space. These foreboding lights will shine in our night sky like new stars, getting ever brighter until they outshine even the sun, casting ominous shadows and banishing the night until they suddenly blink out. Their technology is vastly superior to ours, and they know they cannot possibly lose the coming conflict. But they, like us, have found no answer to the destructive force of the atom, and they have no intention of facing the onslaught of our primitive nuclear arsenal, or the devastation it would wreak on the planet they crave. So they have flung out an advanced party in front of them, hidden within one of the countless asteroids randomly roaming the void. They do not want us, they want our planet. Their Agents are arriving. "Fear the Sky is a brutal and powerful rendering of what would really happen if a race capable of interstellar travel set its sights on taking our planet from us. Book 1 in The Fear Saga sees very human protagonists pitted against an interesting and three-dimensional alien culture. It is as enjoyable as it is frightening." Reviewer - Chronicles Science Fiction Fantasy Community "Sometimes even a superior foe is worth fighting. Fear the Sky is an explosive story filled with awesome tech: from the best of today's military machines to the worst of tomorrow's death dealers." Reviewer - SyFy

Revisits the future created in the classic science fiction novel 2001: A Space Odyssey.

From Arthur C. Clarke, the brilliant mind that brought us 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Stephen Baxter, one of the most cogent SF writers of his generation, comes a novel of a day, not so far in the future, when the barriers of time and distance have suddenly turned to glass. When a brilliant, driven industrialist harnesses cutting-edge physics to enable people everywhere, at trivial cost, to see one another at all times—around every corner, through every wall—the result is the sudden and complete abolition of human privacy, forever. Then the same technology proves able to look backward in time as well. The Light of Other Days is a story that will change your view of what it is to be human. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The long awaited sequel to Gene Wolfe's four-volume classic, The Book of the New Sun. We return to the world of Severian, now the Autarch of Urth, as he leaves the planet on one of the huge spaceships of the alien Hierodules to travel across time and space to face his greatest test, to become the legendary New Sun or die. The strange, rich, original spaceship scenes give way to travels in time, wherein Severian revisits times and places which fill in parts of the background of the four-volume work, that will thrill and intrigue particularly all readers of the earlier books. But The Urth of the New Sun is an independent structure all of a piece, an integral masterpiece to shelve beside the classics, one itself. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.