Most Popular Books by John C. Wright

Science fiction roman.

Within these pages lie eighteen stories, from eighteen worlds shaped by some of today’s best writers of science fiction and fantasy, all guests on the Aurora Award-winning podcast The Worldshapers during its first year. Some are international bestsellers. Among them are winners and nominees for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Aurora, Sunburst, Aurealis, Ditmar, British Science Fiction Association, and Dragon Awards. Some have been writing for decades, others are at the beginning of their careers. All have honed their craft to razor-sharpness. A teenage girl finds something strange in the middle of the Canadian prairie. An exobiologist tries to liberate a giant alien enslaved on its homeworld by humans. The music of the spheres becomes literal for an Earth ship far from home. A superhero league interviews for new members. Strangers share a drink on a world where giant starships fall. Two boys, one a werewolf, one a mage, get more than they bargained for when they volunteer to fight an evil Empire. A man with amnesia accepts a most unusual offer. A young woman finds unexpected allies as she tries to win a flying-machine race in steampunk London . . . Ranging from boisterous to bleak, from humorous to harrowing, from action-filled to quiet and meditative; taking place in alternate pasts, the present day, the far, far future, and times that never were; set on Earth, in the distant reaches of space, in fantasy worlds, and in metaphysical realms, each of these stories is as unique as its creator. And yet, they all showcase one thing: the irrepressible need of human beings to create, to imagine, to tell stories. To shape worlds.

The rave reviews for John Wright''s science fiction trilogy, The Golden Age, hail his debut as the most important of the new century. Now, in The Last Guardian of Everness, this exciting and innovative writer proves that his talents extend beyond SF, as he offers us a powerful novel of high fantasy set in the modern age. Young Galen Waylock is the last watchman of the dream-gate beyond which ancient evils wait, hungry for the human world. For a thousand years, Galen''s family stood guard, scorned by a world which dismissed the danger as myth. Now, the minions of Darkness stir in the deep, and the long, long watch is over. Galen''s patient loyalty seems vindicated. That loyalty is misplaced. The so-called Power of Light is hostile to modern ideas of human dignity and liberty. No matter who wins the final war between darkness and light, mankind is doomed either to a benevolent dictatorship or a malevolent one. And so Galen makes a third choice: the sleeping Champions of Light are left to sleep. Galen and his companions take the forbidden fairy-weapons themselves. Treason, murder, and disaster follow. The mortals must face the rising Darkness alone. An ambitious and beautifully written story, The Last Guardian of Everness is an heroic adventure that establishes John Wright as a significant new fantasist. It is just the start of a story that will conclude in the companion volume, Mists of Everness. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The epic and mind-blowing finale to this visionary space opera series surpasses all expectation: Menelaus Montrose, having forged an uneasy alliance with his immortal adversary, Ximen del Azarchel, maps a future on a scale beyond anything previously imagined. No longer concerned with the course of history across mere millennia, Montrose and del Azarchel have become the architects of aeons, bringing forth minds the size of planets as they steer the bizarre intellectual descendants of an extinct humanity. Ever driving their labors and their enmity is the hope of reunion with their shared lost love, the posthuman Rania, whose eventual return is by no means assured, but who may unravel everything these eternal rivals have sought to achieve. John C. Wright''s The Architect of Aeons is the latest in his millennia spanning space opera.

Beginning with The Golden Age, continuing with The Phoenix Exultant and now concluding in The Golden Transcendence, John C. Wright''s grand space opera is a SF adventure saga in the tradition of A. E. van Vogt and Roger Zelazny. It is an astounding story of super-science, a thrilling wonder story that recaptures the excitements of SF''s golden agewriters in the suspenseful and passionate tale of a lone rebel unhappy in utopia. The end of the Millennium is imminent, when all minds, human, posthuman, cybernetic, sophotechnic, will be temporarily merged into one solar-system-spanning supermind called the Transcendence. This is not only the fulfillment of a thousand years of dreams, it is a day of doom, when the universal mind will pass judgment on all the races of humanity and transhumanity. The mighty ship Phoenix Exultant is at last in the hands of her master; Phaethon the Exile is at her helm. But the terrible truth has been revealed: he is being hunted by the agents from a long-lost dead star, the eerie and deadly Lords of the Silent Oecumene, whose super-technology plumbs depths even the all-knowing Earthmind cannot fathom. Humanity will be helpless during the Golden Transcendence. Phaethon''s enemies plan to use the opportunity to destroy the population of the Inner System, man and machine alike. To do this, they must take control of Phaethon''s beloved starship and turn her unparalleled power to warlike uses. Phaethon''s memories are incomplete - but he knows a spy for the Silent Ones is already aboard. And when the all-encompassing Mind of the Golden Transcendence wakes - who will it condemn? Which future will it chose? Are Phaethon''s dreams of star-flight about to revolutionize the Golden Age into an age even more glorious than gold, or will they kindle the first open war fought across the immensity of interstellar space? At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The first book in an all-new space adventure!

The Chronicles of Everness continue. Young Galen Waylock is the last watchman of the Dream Gate, beyond which the ancient evils wait, hungry for the human world. For a thousand years, Galen''s family has stood guard, scorned by a world that dismissed the danger as myth. Even Galen''s father deserted their post. Discarding his belief in the other world, he left Castle Everness and the lonely coast of Maine to travel the world as a soldier. But the warning bell has sounded in the dream world, unheeded. Now, the minions of Darkness have stirred in the deep and the long watch is over. An army of mythic monsters has invaded our world, and Galen and his friends have begun to fight them. To join the battle with universal darkness, even his father returns. The forces of light have gathered in Castle Everness, which must stand, or all is lost. John Wright has been called the most important talent of the new century, and received rave reviews for each volume of his debut SF trilogy, The Golden Age. Now, in Mists of Everness he continues the towering fantasy begun in The Last Guardian of Everness, a stirring epic that will inspire readers everywhere. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

"Those who like sophisticated fantasy with a mild erotic charge will be most rewarded" by this "intriguing" fantasy about teens held hostage by Greek gods ( Publishers Weekly). John C. Wright burst onto the SF scene with the Golden Age trilogy. His next project was the ambitious fantasy sequence, The Last Guardians of Everness. Wright''s new fantasy is a tale about five orphans raised in a strict British boarding school who begin to discover that they may not be human beings. The students at the school do not age, while the world around them does. The children begin to make sinister discoveries about themselves. Amelia is apparently a fourth-dimensional being; Victor is a synthetic man who can control the molecular arrangement of matter around him; Vanity can find secret passageways through solid walls where none had previously been; Colin is a psychic; Quentin is a warlock. Each power comes from a different paradigm or view of the inexplicable universe: and they should not be able to co-exist under the same laws of nature. Why is it that they can? The orphans have been kidnapped from their true parents, robbed of their powers, and raised in ignorance by super-beings no more human than they are: pagan gods or fairy-queens, Cyclopes, sea-monsters, witches, or things even stranger than this. The children must experiment with, and learn to control, their strange abilities in order to escape their captors.

John C. Wright established himself at the forefront of contemporary fantasy with Orphans of Chaos, which launched a new epic adventure. Wright''s new fantasy, continuing in Fugitives of Chaos, is about five orphans raised in a strict British boarding school who begin to discover that they may not be human beings. The students at the school do not age, while the world around them does. The orphans have been kidnapped from their true parents, robbed of their powers, and raised in ignorance by super-beings: pagan gods, fairy-queens, Cyclopes, sea-monsters, witches, or things even stranger. Amelia is apparently a fourth-dimensional being; Victor is a synthetic man who can control the molecular arrangement of matter around him; Vanity can find secret passageways through solid walls; Colin is psychic; Quentin is a warlock. Each power comes from a different paradigm or view of the inexplicable universe, and they should not be able to co-exist under the same laws of nature. They must learn to control their strange abilities in order to escape their captors. Something very important must be at stake in their imprisonment.

"Faithfully emulates van Vogt''s labyrinthine plot twists and energetic prose while answering questions. . . . that have burned in fans'' minds for decades." — Booklist In this heart-stopping sequel to A.E. van Vogt''s World of Null-A, Gilbert Gosseyn, the superhuman amnesiac with a double brain, must pit his wits once more against the remorseless galactic dictator Enro the Red and the mysterious shadow-being known as The Follower. And he must do it while he is being hurled headlong through unimaginable distances in space, in time, and through alternate eternities to fend off the death and complete the rebirth of the Universe itself! Praise for John C. Wright "An exciting voice, adding richness to hard science fiction." —David Brin, Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author of Existence

The year is 10,515 AD. The Hyades Armada, traveling at near lightspeed, will reach Earth in just four centuries to assess humanity''s value as slaves. For the last 8,000 years, two opposing factions have labored to meet the alien threat in very different ways. One of them is Ximen del Azarchel, immortal leader of the mutineers from the starship Hermetic and self-appointed Master of the World, who has allowed his followers to tamper continuously with the evolutionary destiny of Man, creating one bizarre race after another in an apparent search for a species the Hyades will find worthy of conquest. The other is Menelaus Montrose, the posthuman Judge of Ages, whose cryonic Tombs beneath the surface of Earth have preserved survivors from each epoch created by the Hermeticists. Montrose intends to thwart the alien invaders any way he can, and to remain alive long enough to be reunited with his bride Rania, who is on a seventy-millennia journey to confront the Hyades'' masters, tens of thousands of light-years away. Now, with the countdown to the Hyades'' arrival nearing its end, del Azarchel and Montrose square off for what is to be their final showdown for the fate of Earth, a battle of gunfire and cliometric calculus; powered armor and posthuman intelligence. Judge of Ages is the wildly inventive third volume in a series exploring future history and human evolution from John C. Wright.

And now The Phoenix Exultant, a second epic novel of an heroic quest in a far future world of super-science from an important new talent. The Phoenix Exultant is a continuation of the story begun in The Golden Age and, like it, a grand space opera in the tradition of Jack Vance and Roger Zelazny (with a touch of Cordwainer Smith-style invention). At the conclusion of the first book, Phaethon of Radamanthus House, was left an exile from his life of power and privilege. Now he embarks upon a quest across the transformed solar system--Jupiter is a second sun, Mars and Venus terraformed, humanity immortal--among humans, intelligent machines, and bizarre life-forms, to recover his memory, to regain his place in society and to move that society away from stagnation and toward the stars. And most of all Phaethon''s quest is to regain ownership of the magnificent starship, the Phoenix Exultant, the most wonderful ship ever built, and to fly her to the stars. It is an astounding story of super-science, a thrilling wonder story that recaptures the verve of SF''s Golden Age writers The Phoenix Exultant is a suitably grand and stirring fulfillment of the promise shown in The Golden Age and confirms John C. Wright as a major new talent in the field. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A kaleidoscopic vision of future history and human evolution, as witnessed by the one man who may hold the key to humanity''s salvation against an approaching alien threat.

Fantasy roman.

The Vindication of Man is the epic and mind-blowing continuation of John C. Wright''s visionary space opera series surpasses all expectation. Menelaus Montrose, having renewed his enmity with his immortal adversary, Ximen del Azarchel, awaits the return of the posthuman princess Rania, their shared lost love. Rania brings with her the judgment of the Dominions ruling the known cosmos, which will determine the fate of humanity, once and for all. Vindication or destruction? And if it is somehow both, what manner of future awaits them?

"A novel of the Eschaton sequence"--Cover.

ufeff Since the Cold War, outer space has become of strategic importance for nations looking to seize the ultimate high ground. World powers establishing a presence there must consider, among other things, how they will conduct warfare in orbit. Leaders must dispense with "Buck Rogers" notions about operations in space and realize that policies there will have serious ramifications for geopolitics. How should nations view space? How should they fight there? What would space warfare look like and how should strategists approach it? Offering critical observations regarding this unique theater of international relations, a military professional explores the strategic implications as human affairs move beyond Earth''s atmosphere.

"Shoot him with an elf arrow!"Learn why this may be author John C. Wright''s most famous line!A collection of brilliant and thought-provoking essays by the science fiction grandmaster John C. Wright. From the history of the Golden Age of science fiction to the ideology of the gender wars presently dividing hard science fiction from urban fantasy-romance, Wright''s commentary is always intelligent, observant, and precisely to the point.In the 16 essays that make up the collection, Wright addresses a wide spectrum of ideas. He considers the darker possibilities of transhumanism, provides a professorial lesson on the mechanics of writing fiction, explains the noble purpose underlying science fiction, and shows how the genre''s obsession with strong female characters is nothing less than an attack on human nature. In every essay, Wright exhibits his compassion, his humanity, and his deep and abiding love for literature.John C. Wright has been described as one of the most important and audacious authors in science fiction today. In a recent poll of more than 1,000 science fiction readers, he was chosen as the sixth-greatest living science fiction writer.