Biddy And The Silver Man And Four Day Planet

Armchair Fiction presents classic science fiction double novels with original illustrations. The first novel is Harlan Ellison's "Biddy and the Silver Man." Her name was Biddy, and she was just a kid. She was different from the other kids in Sage Band, though. She'd had polio and one of her legs was withered and crippled. But she could still get around with the help of an easy-going burro named Buck. Biddy and Buck had explored all the desert lands around Sage Bend-she knew every square foot. Then one day a cave appeared in the side of a rock wall that hadn't been there before. In that cave Biddy found a strange man, a strange machine, a cure for her malady, and the key to mankind's future? "Biddy and the Silver Man" is a wonderful short novel. It's the story of a young family's struggles in a desert town that had little going for it. It's a tale of the twists and turns that can shape a man's character-for good or evil. It's a tale of aliens and spacecraft and ultimate ultimatums. But most of all, it's a tale of mankind's defining moment, in which all of humanity must choose to either step forwards or backwards. The second novel is "Four-Day Planet" by H. Beam Piper. Fenris was a planet forgotten in the backwash of a great frontier movement. It suffered from an appalling climate and uniformly hostile animal life and barely maintained a population of space bums, fugitives, and a few rough-and-ready colonists. Yet it was home to Walter Boyd, the only one he had known for eighteen years, and Walter found that any home was worth fighting for-even in a far-off place as inhospitable and as dangerous as Fenris? In this exciting science fiction thriller from the past, Henry Beam Piper creates a strange, sometimes desolate, sometimes humorous world of the future as a background for a tale filled with adventure and excitement, as well as some thoughts about human beings, which are valid in any time or place. "Four-Day Planet" was clearly one of Piper's best novels.

Armchair Fiction presents classic science fiction double novels with original illustrations. The first novel is Harlan Ellison's "Biddy and the Silver Man." Her name was Biddy, and she was just a kid. She was different from the other kids in Sage Band, though. She'd had polio and one of her legs was withered and crippled. But she could still get around with the help of an easy-going burro named Buck. Biddy and Buck had explored all the desert lands around Sage Bend-she knew every square foot. Then one day a cave appeared in the side of a rock wall that hadn't been there before. In that cave Biddy found a strange man, a strange machine, a cure for her malady, and the key to mankind's future? "Biddy and the Silver Man" is a wonderful short novel. It's the story of a young family's struggles in a desert town that had little going for it. It's a tale of the twists and turns that can shape a man's character-for good or evil. It's a tale of aliens and spacecraft and ultimate ultimatums. But most of all, it's a tale of mankind's defining moment, in which all of humanity must choose to either step forwards or backwards. The second novel is "Four-Day Planet" by H. Beam Piper. Fenris was a planet forgotten in the backwash of a great frontier movement. It suffered from an appalling climate and uniformly hostile animal life and barely maintained a population of space bums, fugitives, and a few rough-and-ready colonists. Yet it was home to Walter Boyd, the only one he had known for eighteen years, and Walter found that any home was worth fighting for-even in a far-off place as inhospitable and as dangerous as Fenris? In this exciting science fiction thriller from the past, Henry Beam Piper creates a strange, sometimes desolate, sometimes humorous world of the future as a background for a tale filled with adventure and excitement, as well as some thoughts about human beings, which are valid in any time or place. "Four-Day Planet" was clearly one of Piper's best novels.

Fenris isn't a hell planet, but it's nobody's bargain. With 2,000-hour days and an 8,000-hour year, it alternates blazing heat with killing cold. A planet like that tends to breed a special kind of person: tough enough to stay alive and smart enough to make the best of it. When that kind of person discovers he's being cheated of wealth he's risked his life for, that kind of planet is ripe for revolution.

From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York’s work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations—featuring all-new advice! There’s a reason Alison Green has been called “the Dear Abby of the work world.” Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don’t know what to say. Thankfully, Green does—and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You’ll learn what to say when • coworkers push their work on you—then take credit for it • you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit “reply all” • you’re being micromanaged—or not being managed at all • you catch a colleague in a lie • your boss seems unhappy with your work • your cubemate’s loud speakerphone is making you homicidal • you got drunk at the holiday party Praise for Ask a Manager “A must-read for anyone who works . . . [Alison Green’s] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work.”—Booklist (starred review) “The author’s friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers’ lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience.”—Library Journal (starred review) “I am a huge fan of Alison Green’s Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces—and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor.”—Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide “Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way.”—Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together

“An extraordinary real picture of human beings numbed by catastrophe but still driven by the unconquerable determination of living creatures to keep on being alive.” —The New Yorker “Alas, Babylon.” Those fateful words heralded the end. When the unthinkable nightmare of nuclear holocaust ravaged the United States, it was instant death for tens of millions of people; for survivors, it was a nightmare of hunger, sickness, and brutality. Overnight, a thousand years of civilization were stripped away. But for one small Florida town, miraculously spared against all the odds, the struggle was only just beginning, as the isolated survivors—men and women of all ages and races—found the courage to come together and confront the harrowing darkness. This classic apocalyptic novel by Pat Frank, first published in 1959 at the height of the Cold War, includes an introduction by award-winning science fiction writer and scientist David Brin.

By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas | Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize Selected by Time as One of the Ten Best Books of the Year | A New York Times Notable Book | Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post Book World, The Christian Science Monitor, Rocky Mountain News, and Kirkus Reviews | A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist | Winner of the ALA Alex Award | Finalist for the Costa Novel Award From award-winning writer David Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new. Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys’ games on a frozen lake; of “nightcreeping” through the summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falklands War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian emigré who is both more and less than she appears; of Jason’s search to replace his dead grandfather’s irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of first cigarettes, first kisses, first Duran Duran LPs, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher’s recession; of Gypsies camping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons. Pointed, funny, profound, left-field, elegiac, and painted with the stuff of life, Black Swan Green is David Mitchell’s subtlest and most effective achievement to date. Praise for Black Swan Green “[David Mitchell has created] one of the most endearing, smart, and funny young narrators ever to rise up from the pages of a novel. . . . The always fresh and brilliant writing will carry readers back to their own childhoods. . . . This enchanting novel makes us remember exactly what it was like.”—The Boston Globe “[David Mitchell is a] prodigiously daring and imaginative young writer. . . . As in the works of Thomas Pynchon and Herman Melville, one feels the roof of the narrative lifted off and oneself in thrall.”—Time