Best Selling Books by Gregory Benford

From the Nebula Award-winning author comes a newly revised edition of this story in his classic Galactic Center series. 2076: Technology has propelled the world into a new age of enlightenment. Nigel (from In the Ocean of Night) has left Earth to explore space for alien life. But while on this captivating mission, humanity''s birthplace has fallen prey to attack and its seas are seeded with alien lifeforms. Now, Nigel is left to search for the only savior he knows-the one who saved him once before-the alien machine called the "Snark." Having left the solar system and turned traitor to its alien masters, Nigel is unsure of the Snark''s new allegiance. Is the Snark a friend? Or will it also turn on Nigel... proving to be a deadly foe?

Winner of the 1980 Nebula Award, Timescape has since become a classic of the science fiction genre, combining hard science, bold speculation, and human drama—a challenging and triumphant tale told by a master storyteller. 1998. Earth is falling apart, on the brink of ecological disaster. But in England a tachyon scientist is attempting to contact the past, to somehow warn them of the misery and death their actions and experiments have visited upon a ravaged planet. 1962. JFK is still president, rock ''n'' roll is king, and the Vietnam War hardly merits front-page news. A young assistant researcher at a California university, Gordon Bernstein, notices strange patterns of interference in a lab experiment. Against all odds, facing ridicule and opposition, Bernstein begins to uncover the incredible truth . . . a truth that will change his life and alter history . . . the truth behind time itself.

The third novel in the award-winning author''s classic Galactic Center series is available once again. "A challenging, pacesetting work of hard science fiction that should not be missed" (Los Angeles Times). Nearly 100,000 years after first contact with the machines that dominate the universe, a few hundred humans survive. Trapped on Snowglade, a barren world near the center of the galaxy, people like Killeen of Family Bishop and his child Toby are primitive scavengers, homeless and hunted by the ruling "mechs." Then suddenly, a strange cosmic entity-neither organic nor cybernetic nor living matter-reaches out from a black hole to speak with Killeen. But can this fallen descendant of starfarers understand this alien being in time-and seize his only chance to save his family and mankind from final annihilation?

A classic novel of man''s future and fate, written by the eminent American physicist and award-winning author of Timescape. 2034. An indistinguishable sound is heard from the depths of space and one member of the search and survey team, Nigel, believes he knows its origins. 15 years earlier, he was the astronaut sent to implode a firey comet as it hurtled toward the Asian subcontinent. Once inside the fissure he made an unlikely discovery: an abandoned alien ship. Against his better judgment, Nigel carried out his mission, destroying the vessel-but not before clandestinely removing alien data and technology from on board. Now, as the team sets forth on a new adventure of discovery, Nigel''s past will collide with the present, introducing him to wonders beyond human comprehension.

A gripping, masterfully written adventure set against the violent beauty of a planet in the throes of cataclymic transformation, "Against Infinity" is Gregory Benford''s timeless portrait of a young man''s comming of age. On the poisonous, icy surface of Ganymede, a man and a boy are on a deadly hunt.Their prey is the "Aleph"--an unknowable alien artifact that roamed and ruled Ganymede for countless millennia. Indescribable, infinitely dangerous, the Aleph haunts men''s dreams and destroys all efforts to terraform Ganymede into a habitable planet. Now in a modern world ancient struggle is joined, as a boy seeks manhood, a man seeks enlightenment, and a society seeks the power to rule the universe. On the poisonous, icy surface of Ganymede, a man and a boy are on a hunt for the Aleph--an alien artifact that ruled Ganymede for countless millenia, Infinitely dangerous, the Aleph haunts men''s dreams and destroys all efforts to terraform Ganymede into an habitable planet. Now an ancient struggle is joined, as a boy seeks manhood, a man seeks enlightenment, and a society seeks the power to rule the universe.

Now in a new, revised edition, the fourth book of the Nebula Award-winning author''s Galactic Center series is a classic tale of man''s future and fate--and the greatest mystery from outer space that humanity has ever encountered. Piloting an ancient starship, Killeen and the Bishop tribe escape the mech-ruled world of Snowglade. Seeking refuge on a far away planet, they discover vast wonders-an organic life-form as large as a world, a planet-coring cosmic string, a community of humans ruled by a brutal tyrant, and ultimately an alien race more awesome than any they have encountered. As they battle for survival against these myriad dangers, Killeen and his crew will gain an unforeseen ally-one that may determine humanity''s true destiny...

After an accident in a brilliant young physicist''s most ambitious experiment, it appears: a wondrous sphere the size of a basketball, made of nothing known to science. Before long, it will be clear that this object has opened a vista on an entirely different universe, a newborn cosmos whose existence will rock this world and test one woman to the limit: the physicist who has ignited this thrilling adventure. Only the author of the landmark novel Timescape could so plausibly take the reader behind the scenes of major scientific research, so boldly speculate about the consequences of paradigm-shifting discovery, and so vividly capture the intense human drama as the forces of academia, government, theology, and the mass media battle for control of a mysterious new reality. COSM is Gregory Benford at his provocative best, exploring ideas at the frontier of mankind''s understanding, and posing profound questions about Creation, human destiny, and the riddle of godhood.

The classic sci-fi saga continues in this “intriguing and engrossing” first installment of a new trilogy that “extends and embellishes Asimov’s vision” (Kirkus). Isaac Asimov''s Foundation Trilogy is one of the high-water marks of science fiction. It is the monumental story of a Galactic Empire in decline, and the secret society of scientists who seek to shorten the inevitable Dark Age with the science of psychohistory. Now, with the permission—and blessing—of the Asimov estate, the epic saga continues. Fate—and a cruel Emperor''s arbitrary power—have thrust Hari Seldon into the First Ministership of the Empire against his will. As the story opens, Hari is about to leave his quiet professorship and take on the nearly impossible task of administering 25 million inhabited worlds from the all-steel planet of Trantor. With the help of his beautiful bio-engineered "wife" Dors and his alien companion Yugo, Seldon is still developing the science that will transform history, never dreaming that it will ultimately pit him against future history''s most awesome threat.

Impending personal tragedy is dimming the brilliant light of Dr. Benjamin Knowlton''s world. On the threshold of their greatest achievement, the renowned astrophysicist''s beloved wife and partner -- ex-astronaut-turned astronomer -- is dying. But something looms alarningly on the far edge of the solar system: at once a scientific find of unparalleled importance that could ensure the Knowltons'' immortality, and a potential earth-shattering cataclysm that dwarfs their private one. For Benjamin and Channing have discovered "Eater," an eons-old black hole anomaly that devours stars and worlds. Yet its most awesome and devasting secrets are still to be revealed...and feared.

The complete version of the unforgettable masterpiece that went from Nebula Award-winner to a timeless classic. Aliens have come to Earth in search of a man who knows the stars, and that man is Bradley Reynolds. They want to know whether the sun loves us. And what Reynolds finds in the end is a transformation so glorious as to be far beyond his capacity to dream--a universe where beings are collected like songs.

Once upon a moment, the One spoke to He and She, and learned that infinity and eternity are slippery concepts. At best. Don''t miss Gregory Benford''s mindbending short story The Final Now, a Tor.com Original. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

From the Nebula Award-winning author of "Timescape" and "Foundation''s Fear" comes a hard-science thriller about the race to Mars that will tie into NASA''s upcoming landing on the planet.

This new, special edition of the classic concluding volume of this defining series by the eminent physicist and Nebula Award-winning author contains a teaser chapter from Benford''s, The Sunborn. The final chapter of humanity''s future has begun, and three men hold the key to survival. As the fierce, artificially intelligent mechs pursue their savage and unstoppable destruction of the human race, it soon becomes apparent that three men-three generations in a family of voyagers-are their targets. Toby Bishop, his father Kileen, and his longdead grandfather each carry a piece of the lethal secret that can destroy their relentless pursuers. There is only one problem: They have no idea they possess the only weapon that can save humanity.

“A fascinating plunge into a new world. I loved the idea of the SETI Library on the moon. Chasing wormholes is also a wild ride!” —Jack McDevitt, bestselling author of Octavia Gone Shadows of Eternity is legendary author Gregory Benford’s return to interstellar science fiction as a discovery within the SETI library on the moon turns out to be deadly. Shadows of Eternity is a novel set two centuries from now. Humanity has established a SETI library on the moon to decipher and interpret the many messages from alien societies we have discovered. The most intriguing messages are from complete artificial intelligences. Ruth, a beginner Librarian, must talk to alien minds—who have aggressive agendas of their own. She opens doors into strangeness beyond imagination—and in her quest for understanding nearly gets killed doing it. Gregory Benford is one of science fiction’s iconic writers, having been nominated for four Hugo Awards and twelve Nebula Awards. Shadows of Eternity marks Gregory Benford’s return to the sweeping galactic science fiction that readers have been waiting for.

Glorious continues the hard science fiction Bowl of Heaven series from multi-award-winning authors Gregory Benford and Larry Niven. Audacious astronauts encounter bizarre, sometimes deadly life forms, and strange, exotic, cosmic phenomena, including miniature black holes, dense fields of interstellar plasma, powerful gravity-emitters, and spectacularly massive space-based, alien-built labyrinths. Tasked with exploring this brave, new, highly dangerous world, they must also deal with their own personal triumphs and conflicts. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

New York Times bestselling author Gregory Benford creates an alternate history about the creation of the atomic bomb that explores what could have happened if the bomb was ready to be used by June 6, 1944. Karl Cohen, a chemist and mathematician who is part of The Manhattan Project team, has discovered an alternate solution for creating the uranium isotope needed to cause a chain reaction: U-235. After convincing General Groves of his new method, Cohen and his team of scientists work at Oak Ridge preparing to have a nuclear bomb ready to drop by the summer of 1944 in an effort to stop the war on the western front. What ensues is an altered account of World War II in this taut thriller. Combining fascinating science with intimate and true accounts of several members of The Manhattan Project, The Berlin Project is an astounding novel that reimagines history and what could have happened if the atom bomb was ready in time to stop Hitler from killing millions of people.

SHAPESHIFTER The Changeling could become anyone or anything--man, woman, child, animal. It was endowed with an inborn lust for disorder and destruction. Now it had chosen the plague-ridden planet of Alvea for its next mission--to throw an entire world into eternal chaos and madness. The Earth Consortium could send only an embittered killer and an untrained anthropologist to hunt down the Changeling. Yet, dangerous though it was, the Changeling was not the only peril the Earthmen faced on Alvea, or the worst--for the Alveans feared and hated Earth. Even a hint of the hunters'' identities would leave them dead and dismembered within minutes.... Gregory Benford and Gordon Eklund, authors of the Nebula-winning "If the Stars Are Gods," have crafted a taut, memorable SF thriller.

Concepts once purely fiction -- robots, cyborg parts, artificial intelligences -- are becoming part of everyday reality. Soon robots will be everywhere, performing surgery, exploring hazardous places, making rescues, fighting fires, handling heavy goods. After a decade or two, they will be as unremarkable as the computer screen is now in offices, airports or restaurants. Cyborgs will be less obvious. These additions to the human body are interior now, as rebuilt joints, elbows and hearts. Soon we will cross the line between repair and augmentation, probably first in sports medicine, then spreading to everyone who wants to make a body perform better, last longer, than it ordinarily could. Controversy will arise, but it will not stop the desire to live longer and be stronger than we are. Gregory Benford and Elisabeth Malartre''s Beyond Human treats the landscape of human self-change and robotic development as poles of the same general phenomenon. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Science fiction-roman.

The Jovian Astronautical-Biological Orbital Laboratory, a.k.a. "the Can", is the only home 17-year-old Matt Bohles has ever known. Concerned about the aging space station''s failure to find evidence of alien life on Jupiter or its moon, the cost-conscious powers back home have determined that all non-essential personnel must be evacuated. Now, unless Matt can somehow prove himself to be an invaluable member of the scientific team, he faces exile to a dangerous, frightening, and unfamiliar place: Earth.

An archaeologist discovers a mysterious ancient object in Greece that could destroy the world in this science fiction adventure. A small cube of black rock has been unearthed in a 3,500-year-old Mycenaean tomb. An incomprehensible object in an impossible place; its age, its purpose, and its origins are unknown. Its discovery has unleashed a global storm of intrigue, theft, and espionage, and is pushing nations to the brink of war. Its substance has scientists baffled. And the miracle it contains does not belong on this Earth. It is mystery and madness—an enigma with no equal in recorded history. It is mankind’s greatest discovery . . . and worst nightmare. It may have already obliterated a world. Ours is next. Praise for Artifact “What do you get if you cross a James Bond movie with an Indiana Jones movie? A Gregory Benford novel. That seems to be a pretty accurate description of the pace and theme of Artifact. It’s an engaging tale. . . . Artifact skillfully blends physics and archeology with a fast-paced plot worthy of any blockbuster action flick.” —SF Site

The Nebula Award-winning author''s fifth installment of his classic Galactic Center series is reissued in this special edition that contains a teaser chapter from The Sunborn. Trying to escape the relentless mechs, the last humans from planet Snowglade take their ancient starship on a dangerous course straight into the Eater, the black hole at the galactic center. Hungry and desperate, the refugees begin to question the leadership of Captain Killeen, who believes the center holds their one hope of survival. Meanwhile, Killeen''s son Toby struggles with the microchips that were implanted in his spine-a technology that now threatens his sanity. Caught between their genocidal pursuers and peril in the galactic center, Killeen and Toby bring humanity to its final destiny.

In this thematic sequel to Gregory Benford’s award-winning bestseller Timescape, a history professor finds that he is able travel back to 1968, the year he was sixteen—here, he finds a slew of mentors with the same ability, including Robert Heinlein, Albert Einstein, and Philip K. Dick and becomes a successful Hollywood screenwriter until some wicked time travelers try to subvert him. It’s 2002, and Charlie, in his late forties, is a bit of a sad-sack professor of history going through an unpleasant divorce. While flipping the cassette of an audiobook he gets into a car accident with a truck, and wakes up, fully aware as his adult mind, in his sixteen-year-old body in 1968. Charlie does the thing we all imagine: he takes what he remembers of the future and uses it for himself in his present, the past. He becomes a screenwriter, anticipating the careers of Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg, and then, in a 1980s life of excess, he dies, and wakes up again in his bedroom at sixteen in 1968. Charlie realizes things he didn’t see the first time: that there are others like him, like Albert Einstein, Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein. In fact, there is a society of folks who loop through time to change the world for their agenda. Now, Charlie knows he has to do something other than be self-indulgent and he tries to change one of the events of 1968 in this clever thriller.

The dramatic sequel to Larry Niven and Gregory Benford''s New York Times bestselling novel, Bowl of Heaven Science fiction masters Larry Niven (Ringworld) and Gregory Benford (Timescape) continue the thrilling adventure of a human expedition to another star system that is jeopardized by an encounter with an astonishingly immense artifact in interstellar space: a bowl-shaped structure cupping a star, with a habitable area equivalent to many millions of Earths. And which, tantalizingly, is on a direct path heading toward the same system the human ship is to colonize. Investigating the Bowl, or Shipstar, the human explorers are separated—one group captured by the gigantic structure''s alien inhabitants, the other pursued across its strange and dangerous landscape—while the mystery of the Shipstar''s origins and purpose propel the human voyagers toward discoveries that transform their understanding of their place in the universe. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Physicist and writer Gregory Benford draws from his own research to craft this third collection of science fiction stories, available for the first time in book form.

The multiple award-winning author of Timescape and Eater, Gregory Benford returns with a gripping new novel set in the same dynamic future as his wildly popular The Martian Race. The first manned mission to Mars has been successful. However, there is a gathering mystery surrounding "marsmat"- the complex, anaerobic life-form that the expedition discovered inside a honeycomb of tunnels below the planet''s surface. The search for the answers to humanity''s ultimate questions about life in the universe will lead to the fringes of the solar system-to the dark and cold void beyond the planet Pluto.

Gregory Benford expands Arthur C. Clarke''s novella, Against the Fall of Night, into a novel-length adventure set billions of years in the future about human destiny among the stars.

A Tor.com original, Nebula Award-winning author Gregory Benford''s Grace Immaculate is the awe-inspiring story of first contact--and the beginning of something more. Earth picked up the signals from 134 light years away. Humanity''s leaders quickly established contact with the alien Hydrans, engaging in a cultural exchange lasting centuries. But maintaining a communicative understanding between two very different species over such a long distance results in altering both societies beyond expectation... At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

SF masters Gregory Benford and Larry Niven spin a tale of alien encounters and strange technologies on an epic scale In Bowl of Heaven, the first collaboration by science fiction authors Larry Niven (Ringworld) and Gregory Benford (Timescape), the limits of wonder are redrawn once again as a human expedition to another star system is jeopardized by an encounter with an astonishingly immense artifact in interstellar space: a bowl-shaped structure half-englobing a star, with a habitable area equivalent to many millions of Earths...and it''s on a direct path heading for the same system as the human ship. A landing party is sent to investigate the Bowl, but when the explorers are separated—one group captured by the gigantic structure''s alien inhabitants, the other pursued across its strange and dangerous landscape—the mystery of the Bowl''s origins and purpose propel the human voyagers toward discoveries that will transform their understanding of their place in the universe. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

What would have happened if history had been different: if the major events that shaped our times had occurred in a different way-or not at all? From a Trojan War in which Helen surrenders to a Civil War fought with robots, from a World War I in which Teddy Roosevelt tries to recapture the glory of San Juan Hill to a World War II in which the race is not for atomic weapons but for orbital rockets, these bold excursions in time depict bizarre new worlds-oddly familiar, disturbingly different.

Regein was the first human colony struck by the Quarn - aliens never seen by man, yet who sow a strange death through man''s crumbling empire. In humanity''s wreckage, Ling Sanjen, a rare half-breed Caucasian, sets forth to find what - and who - has broken the spirit of mankind...

The first collaboration between the Nebula Award-winning authors of Timescape and Startide Rising, Heart of the Comet is a breathtaking novel about a handful of men and women who ride a cold, hurtling ball of ice to a distant, unknowable future. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Arthur C.Clarke''s early novel Against the Fall of the Night, set far in the future, and a sequel by Gregory Benford. Alvin, the only child for many centuries born in what is believed to be the only city left on Earth, leads a renaissance. Man is reclaiming the Earth, but evil has also returned.