Two Planets

Explorers find a Martian colony at the North Pole. The Martians want to share their knowledge with earth in exchange for a supply of air and energy, but human folly leads to war.

Building from his acclaimed anthology Tales of Two Americas, beloved writer and editor John Freeman draws together a group of our greatest writers from around the world to help us see how the environmental crisis is hitting some of the most vulnerable communities where they live. In the past five years, John Freeman, previously editor of Granta, has launched a celebrated international literary magazine, Freeman's, and compiled two acclaimed anthologies that deal with income inequality as it is experienced. In the course of this work, one major theme came up repeatedly: Climate change is making already dire inequalities much worse, devastating further the already devastated. But the problems of climate change are not restricted to those from the less developed world. Galvanized by his conversations with writers and activists around the world, Freeman engaged with some of today's most eloquent storytellers, many of whom hail from the places under the most acute stress--from the capital of Burundi to Bangkok, Thailand. The response has been extraordinary. Margaret Atwood conjures with a dys¬topian future in a remarkable poem. Lauren Groff whisks us to Florida; Edwidge Danticat to Haiti; Tahmima Anam to Bangladesh; Yasmine El Rashidi to Egypt, while Eka Kurniawan brings us to Indonesia, Chinelo Okparanta to Nigeria, and Anuradha Roy to the Himalayas in the wake of floods, dam building, and drought. This is a literary all-points bulletin of fiction, essays, poems, and reportage about the most important crisis of our times.

Novel, first published in 1897, of man's first encounter with beings from another planet when a group of German scientists, seeking the North Pole, come upon a Martian settlement in the arctic.

A Dweller on Two Planets is one of the most important texts of the 19th century Atlantis canon. The book was “channeled” to Frederick Spenser Oliver (1866-1899) at his Northern California home near Mount Shasta over a period of three years, beginning when he was seventeen. Oliver claimed not to have written any of the text, asserting that he was merely transmitting what Phylos revealed to him. In fact, professed Oliver, the manuscript was dictated to him out of sequence (much of it backward) so that he could not interfere with the outcome. Phylos was also Walter Pierson, a prospector in northern California during 1863-1866 who is the reincarnated Phylos from Atlantis. As Phylos/Pierson dictated the book to Oliver, Oliver produced the text in a form of automatic writing. The book begins with Phylos’ lives in Atlantis and the wonderful technology that those people had, including electricity and airships. In part two of the book, Phylos reincarnates as Walter Pierson and is taken inside Mount Shasta by a Chinese Master named Quong. During his time inside Mount Shasta Pierson is taken in his astral body to Venus; hence the title of the book. A better title might have been “From Atlantis to Mount Shasta.” While some have called the book brilliant speculative fiction (if somewhat disjointed), believers in reincarnation cannot help but think that there is some sort of reality to this strange book that goes into great detail about antigravity, mass transit, the employment of ‘dark-side’ energy (which today would be called ‘zero point energy’), and devices such as voice-operated typewriters. The cigar-shaped, highly maneuverable Atlantean flying machines, or vailx, have an eerie resemblance to 19th and 20th century UFO reports. Phylos also speaks of personalized heavens, almost like virtual realities, something very compelling.

The message had seemed simple, yet it was more complex than Don could have imagined. He was being called from Earth to an alien world for reasons unknown¾save only that his life depended on it. But setting out for Mars and getting there in good shape turned out to be a lot more complicated than Don ever would have guessed possible. It was trouble enough being inexplicably hounded by Earth's secret police. But when he was hijacked by Venusian rebels, Don suddenly realized that he was trapped in the center of a war between worlds that could change the fate of the Solar System forever! At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).

Margaret Sandahl believes she knows the challenges she faces when she leaves Earth on the first manned expedition to Mars. But she takes solace in her assumption that the Earth she leaves behind will be there, unchanged, when she returns three years later. A deadly virus changes everything. While the Arean Explorer speeds through space to its rendezvous with the red planet, researchers at the International Center for Disease Control detect a new encephalopathy, a lethal brain disease whose earliest symptom is loss of judgment. On Earth, ICDC directors Angie Munro and Mike Novak try to control a burgeoning epidemic, while Margaret and her twelve crew mates, face dangers they could never have imagined when one of the crew brings the virus aboard their craft, bound irreversibly toward the plains of Mars.

An astonishing exploration of planet formation and the origins of life by one of the world’s most innovative planetary geologists. In 1959, the Soviet probe Luna 3 took the first photos of the far side of the moon. Even in their poor resolution, the images stunned scientists: the far side is an enormous mountainous expanse, not the vast lava-plains seen from Earth. Subsequent missions have confirmed this in much greater detail. How could this be, and what might it tell us about our own place in the universe? As it turns out, quite a lot. Fourteen billion years ago, the universe exploded into being, creating galaxies and stars. Planets formed out of the leftover dust and gas that coalesced into larger and larger bodies orbiting around each star. In a sort of heavenly survival of the fittest, planetary bodies smashed into each other until solar systems emerged. Curiously, instead of being relatively similar in terms of composition, the planets in our solar system, and the comets, asteroids, satellites and rings, are bewitchingly distinct. So, too, the halves of our moon. In When the Earth Had Two Moons, esteemed planetary geologist Erik Asphaug takes us on an exhilarating tour through the farthest reaches of time and our galaxy to find out why. Beautifully written and provocatively argued, When the Earth Had Two Moons is not only a mind-blowing astronomical tour but a profound inquiry into the nature of life here—and billions of miles from home.