The Mammoth Book Of Extreme Science Fiction

Here are 25 stories of science fiction that push the boundaries, by the biggest names in an emerging crop of high-tech futuristic writers including Charles Stross, Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, Peter Hamilton and Neal Asher.

Here are 25 stories of science fiction that push the envelope, by the biggest names in an emerging new crop of high-tech futuristic SF - including Charles Stross, Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, Peter Hamilton and Neal Asher. High-tech SF has made a significant comeback in the last decade, as bestselling authors successfully blend the super-science of 'hard science fiction' with real characters in an understandable scenario. It is perhaps a reflection of how technologically controlled our world is that readers increasingly look for science fiction that considers the fates of mankind as a result of increasing scientific domination. This anthology brings together the most extreme examples of the new high-tech, far-future science fiction, pushing the limits way beyond normal boundaries. The stories include: "A Perpetual War Fought Within a Cosmic String", "A Weapon That Could Destroy the Universe", "A Machine That Detects Alternate Worlds and Creates a Choice of Christs", "An Immortal Dead Man Sent To The End of the Universe", "Murder in Virtual Reality", "A Spaceship So Large That There is An Entire Planetary System Within It", and "An Analytical Engine At The End of Time", and "Encountering the Untouchable."

Here are 25 stories of science fiction that push the envelope, by the biggest names in an emerging new crop of high-tech futuristic SF - including Charles Stross, Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, Peter Hamilton and Neal Asher. High-tech SF has made a significant comeback in the last decade, as bestselling authors successfully blend the super-science of 'hard science fiction' with real characters in an understandable scenario. It is perhaps a reflection of how technologically controlled our world is that readers increasingly look for science fiction that considers the fates of mankind as a result of increasing scientific domination. This anthology brings together the most extreme examples of the new high-tech, far-future science fiction, pushing the limits way beyond normal boundaries. The stories include: "A Perpetual War Fought Within a Cosmic String", "A Weapon That Could Destroy the Universe", "A Machine That Detects Alternate Worlds and Creates a Choice of Christs", "An Immortal Dead Man Sent To The End of the Universe", "Murder in Virtual Reality", "A Spaceship So Large That There is An Entire Planetary System Within It", and "An Analytical Engine At The End of Time", and "Encountering the Untouchable."

The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction is a new collection that features 25 hard sci-fi stories that really push the boundaries, from names like Charles Stross, Robert Reed, Peter Hamilton, and Neal Asher. Highlights feature a perpetual war fought within a cosmic string; a machine that detects alternate worlds and creates a choice of Christs; murder in virtual reality; and a spaceship so large that there's an entire planetary system within it.

The art of writing great science fiction is that it challenges the imagination, pushing it to extreme limits and in this anthology, selecting some of the best modern science fiction from the last fifty years, twenty leading authors of the genre ask the question 'What if...?' and then give their own very personal views of the changes and surprises which may befall humanity in the centuries to come. In Ulla, Ulla Eric Brown recounts the first manned Martian expedition and discovers that H. G. Wells may have been right after all. In The Infinite Assassin Greg Egan polices the dimensions, seeking those who are taking over their alternate selves. Geoffrey A. Landis takes us into the depths of a black hole in Approaching Perimelasma. Is the ultimate Utopia heaven or hell? Robert Sheckley finds out in the classic A Ticket to Tranai. These and other stories by James White, Eric Frank Russell, Robert Reed, H. Beam Piper and H. Chandler Elliot make this one of the most entertaining and thought-provoking science fiction anthologies in lightyears.

The last sixty years have been full of stories of one or other possible Armageddon, whether by nuclear war, plague, cosmic catastrophe or, more recently, global warming, terrorism, genetic engineering, AIDS and other pandemics. These stories, both pre- and post-apocalyptic, describe the fall of civilization, the destruction of the entire Earth, or the end of the Universe itself. Many of the stories reflect on humankind's infinite capacity for self-destruction, but the stories are by no means all downbeat or depressing - one key theme explores what the aftermath of a cataclysm might be and how humans strive to survive.

After Arthur Conan Doyle created the detective, Sherlock Holmes, many writers borrowed him to be the hero of their stories. The anthology offers a selection, old and new.

Representing a half century of outstanding science fiction, this entertaining anthology features a collection of short stories by such acclaimed authors as Brian W. Aldiss, Connie Willis, Stephen Baxter, Geoffrey A. Landis, Greg Egan, Robert Sheckley, Philip K. Dick, and other notables. Original.