Risultati Editore "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Epopea spaziale

A rich Komarran merchant fleet has been impounded at Graf Station in distant Quaddiespace after a bloody incident involving the convoy's Barrayaran military escort. But Lord Miles Vorkosigan and his wife, Lady Ekaterin, have other things on their minds, such as getting home in time to attend the long-awaited births of their first children.

When a shipwrecked stranger washed up on the beach near research scientist Samantha Bryton's home, she was unaware that he was something more than human. He said his name was Turner Pascal - but Pascal was dead, killed in a car wreck. This man only held the remainder of Pascal's consciousness in a technologically enhanced humanoid body.

Pandora's humans have been recovering land from its raging seas at an accelerated pace since The Lazarus Effect. The great kelp of the seas, sentient but electronically manipulated by humans, buffers Pandora's wild currents to restore land and facilitate the booming sea trade. New settlements rise overnight, but children starve in their shadows. An orbiting assembly station is near completion of Project Voidship, which is the hope of many for finding a better world.

In The Jesus Incident, Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom introduced Ship, an artificial intelligence that believed it was God, abandoning its unworthy human cargo on the all-sea world of Pandora. Now centuries have passed. The descendants of humanity, split into Mermen and Islanders, must reunite--because Pandora's original owner is returning to life.

In the distant future, the Skolian Empire rules one third of the human galaxy, and is the most powerful of all. For the ruling family has the power of telepathy, and through it, the ability to communicate faster than light, across interstellar space. But their most determined enemy, the traders, who thrive on human pain, need to interbreed with a Skolian to gain their powers. And now they have her.

The Skolian Empire rules a third of the civilized galaxy through its mastery of faster-than-light communication. But war with the rival empire of the Traders seems imminent, a war that can only lead to slavery for the Skolians or the destruction of both sides. Destructive skirmishes have already occurred. A desperate attempt must be made to avert total disaster.

Telescopes on Earth have detected an Earth-sized planet circling a star some 30 light-years away. Now the race is on to get pictures of that distant world that show whether or not the planet is truly like Earth - and if it bears life. Farside observatory will have the largest optical telescope in the solar system and the most sensitive radio telescope, insulated from the interference of Earth’s radio chatter by a thousand kilometers of the moon’s solid body. But building Farside is a complex, dangerous task. And what they ultimately find stuns everyone, and humanity will never be the same.

For millennia, the planet Harmony has been protected by the Oversoul, an artificial intelligence programmed to prevent thoughts of war and conquest from threatening the fragile remnant of Earth's peoples. But as the Oversoul's systems have begun to fail, a great warrior has arisen to challenge its bans.

Harry Silver has already had a lifetime of trouble from ordinary Berserkers, the automated killing machines programmed an age ago to denude the galaxy of life. And now one of these machines has gone rogue - and kidnapped his own family. What worse devilry will a deviant killing machine attempt? How will he stop it? And even if he can, will he ever see his family alive again?

Charon, a ruthless criminal and practitioner of illegal robotics, has died, and General Thomas Wharington believes his team has deleted all the electronic copies the inventor created of himself. But one major problem remains: Alpha, the sole survivor of Charon's cybernetic empire. Outwardly indistinguishable from a human woman, Alpha has superhuman capabilities, some of which are still unknown. Wharington's superiors want her dismantled and studied, but to Wharington, it feels like murder.

On the edge of a war-weary and devastated galaxy, charismatic Lewis Orne has landed on Hamal. His assignment: To detect any signs of latent aggression in this planet's population. To his astonishment, he finds that his own latent extrasensory powers have suddenly blossomed, and he is invited to join the company of "gods" on this planet - and the people here place certain expectations on their gods.

Our wars were behind us. Mankind was moving out from the planet of its birth. New worlds were settled, and with the wealth of the galaxy at hand, poverty was eliminated. Then, out of a clear summer sky, came the first berserker attack. This collection of short stories continues the ongoing saga of the berserker wars with “The Machinery of Lies”, “Masque of the Red Shift”, “In the Temple of Mars”, “Brother Berserker”, and “Smasher.”

To defeat the ultimate weapon, you must become one! Once mankind feared the berserkers, killer machines determined to eradicate all life in the universe. But the Berserker Wars are over and the threat of the sentient doomsday devices is over. Or is it?

Five hundred years have passed since the combined fleets of humanity met and broke the berserker armada at Stone Place. But though the human victory was total, one of the killer machines (weaponless, its star drive a ruin) managed to limp to a secret sanctuary on a planet called Hunter's World. Over the years, a new cult has arisen there, a cult dedicated to Death as the only and ultimate Good.

In a distant galaxy of colonized planets, the atrocity of slavery is alive and well. Young Thorby was just another bedraggled orphan boy sold at auction, but his new owner, Baslim, is not the disabled beggar he appears to be. Adopting Thorby as his son, Baslim fights relentlessly as an abolitionist spy. When the authorities close in on Baslim, Thorby must find his own way in a hostile galaxy. Joining with the Free Traders, a league of merchant princes, Thorby must find the courage to live by his wits and fight his way up from society's lowest rung.

Dan Davis, an electronics engineer, had finally made the invention of a lifetime: a household robot that could do almost anything. Wild success was within reach, but then Dan's life was ruined. In a plot to steal his business, his greedy partner and greedier fiancée tricked him into taking the "long sleep": suspended animation for 30 years.

The first interstellar ship, John Glenn, fled a solar system populated by rogue AIs and machine/human hybrids, threatened by too much nanotechnology, and rife with political dangers. The John Glenn’s crew intended to terraform the nearly pristine planet Ymir in hopes of creating a utopian society that will limit intelligent technology, but by some miscalculation they have landed in the wrong system.

For decades, the spacefaring species of known space have battled over the largest artifact - and grandest prize - in the galaxy: the all-but-limitless resources and technology of the Ringworld. Now, without warning, the Ringworld has vanished, leaving behind three rival war fleets. If the fallen civilization of the Ringworld can no longer be despoiled of its secrets, the puppeteers will be forced to surrender theirs - everyone knows that they are cowards. But the crises converging upon the trillion puppeteers of the Fleet of Worlds go far beyond even the onrushing armadas.

Covert agent Sigmund Ausfaller is Earth's secret weapon, humanity's best defense against all conspiracies, real and imaginary, and all foes both human and alien. Who better than a brilliant paranoid to expose the devious plots of others?

But Sigmund may finally have met his match in Nessus, representative of the secretive Puppeteers, the elder race who wield vastly superior technologies.

The newly liberated humans of the Fleet of Worlds and Sigmund Ausfaller, who had been transported by the Puppeteers from Earth to the Fleet, must contend not only with the sly Puppeteers but also the threat of the Pak, a very smart and utterly ruthless species who are fleeing the exploding galactic core in an armada of ships at near light speed. The Pak are headed towards the Fleet of Worlds, having destroyed entire planets in their wake.