New Releases by Vernor VINGE

A novel with one foot in the future.

Multiple Hugo Award winner Vernor Vinge''s first full-length novel As a mud-spattered youngster, Tatja quickly realized she was different from the stone-age primitives with whom she grew up. Her insatiable curiosity and thirst for knowledge could not be quenched among them; she had to explore and learn more about the strange world she lived on. She finds the bastion of all culture, arts, entertainment and history for the entire planet, the seven-hundred-year-old science fiction magazine Fantasie, which is produced entirely aboard a gargantuan floating vessel the size of a small city. But despite the printing presses, sail-powered vessels, and mind-expanding technology, Tatja is still dissatisfied. Rising through the ranks, she finds that the people on the enormous barge are just as unintelligent as the primitives she grew up with. But others have come to the planet who not only challenge her intelligence, but offer her a tantalizing opportunity to uncover answers to mysteries that have long plagued her. But with opportunity comes risk. And if she acts unwisely, she could bring doom to the only world she knows. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The exciting sequel to The Peace War by the author of A Fire Upon the Deep

The novel that garnered Vinge his first "Best Novel" Hugo Finalist nomination, back in print after thirteen years. With a combination of hard-SF concepts, tight plotting, and appealing characters, Vinge tells a now-classic story of the Few triumphing over the Many. The Peace Authority, wielding a new state-of-the-art weapon, takes over the world, and claims to be "maintaining the peace" while really controlling the scattered survivors of the new world. The inventor of their weapon, which was never meant to be a weapon at all, leads a resistance of high-tech "tinkers" who fight to defeat the "Peace."

From his earliest stories in the mid-1960s, to his longer works of the 1970s and ''80s, these pieces display Vinge''s sense of wonder. Those who love his novels will find his short fiction even more impressive. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

A collection of articles and essays about the new frontier of the Internet, especially a direct interface between brain and computer that enables game players of the future to actually experience the world of their fantasies.

Dans la Galaxie, l''étoile Marche-Arrêt représente une énigme : elle observe un cycle de deux cent cinquante ans, s''éteint pendant deux cent quinze puis se rallume pour trente-cinq ans. Son unique planète est habitée par des araignées intelligentes qui viennent d''inventer la radio. Le système de Marche-Arrêt n''a jamais été exploré. Et voilà que deux expéditions, attirées par les signaux radio, s''y installent. L''une a été montée par les Qeng Ho, un peuple marchand qui parcourt l''espace en achetant et vendant des informations technologiques. L''autre par une civilisation violente et sadique, dite des Emergents, qui a fait de la lutte pour le pouvoir son mode de vie. Son chef, Tomas Nau, cherche à se rendre maître de la planète des Araignées pour exploiter ses ressources. Il lui faut d''abord détruire la flotte Qeng Ho ou s''en emparer. Mais parmi les Qeng Ho se cache une figure mythique, Pham Nuwen, né mille ans plus tôt, qui connaît tous les tours...

The story of the Spiders, inhabitants of a planet where the sun regularly stops shining for periods of 200 years, during which they are frozen in ice. The novel picks them up emerging from their most recent hibernation in a frenzy of activity and innovation to make up for lost time.

Un feu sur l''abîme, énorme à tous les sens du terme, renoue avec la grande tradition épique de la Science-Fiction, où l''extravagant est de rigueur et où l''impossible ne constitue qu''une difficulté passagère. Mais l''imagination effervescente de Vernor Vinge respecte toujours les lois de la logique et autant que possible celles de l''univers. Une expédition straumlienne, explorant une Archive dans la presque Transcendance, a déchaîné une Perversion sur la galaxie entière. Un unique navire est parvenu à fuir dans la nuit épouvantable. A travers l''espace, il fonce vers le centre de la galaxie, vers Les Lenteurs où l''on ne peut pas dépasser la vitesse de la lumière, où les systèmes informatiques les plus performants - même les si lentes intelligences biologiques - subissent une perte de leurs facultés. Il cherche un monde où se poser. Les deux seuls survivants de l''expédition détiennent sans le savoir la clé du salut de millions de civilisations, dont certaines sont bien plus anciennes que l''humanité : ce sont deux enfants, Johanna et Jefri, abandonnés à eux-mêmes sur un monde médiéval, dont les conflits et les cruautés ne le cèdent en rien à ceux de la galaxie. Et ceux qui voudraient les aider, et sauver du même coup la galaxie civilisée, se trouvent encore à des milliers d''années-lumière...

Encompassing time-travel, powerful mystery and the future history of humanity to its last handful of survivors, Across Realtime spans millions of years and is an utterly engrossing SF classic.

In a short novel and six never-before-collected stories, one of science fiction''s finest authors takes science and humanity to the limit. For fans of Larry Niven, Carl Sagan, and others. From the author of Marooned in Realtime.

Collects five science fiction short stories about adventures in the strange world of the future