È il problema più Delicato che lei abbai mai dovuto affrontare: da una parte la vecchia Terra e dall’altra un Mondo Vergine, una civiltà enigmatica, aliena oltre i limiti. L’ambasciatrice è sola e deve Decidere. Forse contro di loro, forse contro se stessa.

Un’epoca lontana, Un Mondo profondamente diverso dal nostro tranne che per un particolare: le Donne devono lottare per la salvezza loro e del pianeta. È una razza che sembra schiava di abitudini Sessuali molto particolari… Da Eleanor Arnason, che è stratadefinita la "Ursula Le Guin" degli anni novanta.

Un impero grande come l’universo e contenente miliardi di mondi abitati; una forza politica, sociale e scientifica senza precedenti come la disciplina della psicostoria; l’enigma rappresentato dalle Fondazioni gemelle fondate da Hari Seldon per abbreviare il periodo d’interregno quando l’impero galattico fosse crollato… Sono questi, come ognuno sa, gli ingredienti fondamentali della vasta epopea futura che Asimov è venuto arricchendo negli anni, e che descrive il lontanissimo futuro dell’uomo con la stessa suspense di un thriller d’oggi. Ma con Fondazione e Terra siamo a un’importante svolta del ciclo asimoviano: il nostro pianeta entra di nuovo in gioco e sempre più chiare appaiono le mosse decisive di una partita che ha come posta le stelle.

Aquele homem poderia destruir um sistema solar, de modo que foi psico-sondado e condenado a morrer como uma criança. Amparado por uma camponesa solitária, foi gentilmente reconduzido à sua condição de homem. Caçado por reis e espiões, em uma rede de intrigas interplanetárias, Rik luta contra sua própria mente entorpecida e seu inimigo secreto em uma corrida solitária contra o tempo. Asimov nos traz, assim, mais um romance de um futuro inevitável, em que a humanidade leva o drama histórico de seu berço — a Terra —, rumo às estrelas, nossa herança...

Het vijfde boek in de Foundation-serie. Golan Trevize, raadsman van de Eerste Foundation, krijgt opdracht het ontstaan en de ontwikkeling van het Galactische Imperium te bestuderen. Daarvoor gaat hij op zoek naar Aarde, de plaats waar eonen geleden de mensheid ontstond. Maar Aarde schijnt op onverklaarbare wijze uit het Melkwegstelsel verdwenen te zijn en zelfs in de bibliotheken is geen enkele verwijzing meer terug te vinden. Heeft de tijd zijn werk gedaan of zijn hier andere krachten bezig geweest? Golan en zijn metgezellen moeten zien te achterhalen wie Aarde zo nonchalant heeft ‘zoek gemaakt’ en waarom.

Les psychohistoriens ont calculé que l'empire galactique court à sa perte. Saul Dornick, jeune étudiant, Hari Seldon et quelques autres sont exilés sur une planète située à l'extrémité de la Galaxie. Les siècles passent. L'empire décline toujours. La planète où ont été exilés les psychohistoriens maintient la civilisation ; elle signe des alliances avec les mondes environnants, conclut des traités, mène une grande guerre. Des ruines de l'empire galactique s'élève un nouvel empire, la Fondation, qui maintient un noyau de civilisation.

Qui est ce nouveau conquérant surnommé le Mulet ? Personne ne peut se vanter de l’avoir vu,mais personne, non plus, ne peut prétendreéchapper à son pouvoir. En cette année 12.866, il a conquis presque toutes les planètes de la Galaxie,cependant : il reste invisible. Agents secrets, savants, militaires, sont incapablesde le découvrir. Pourquoi se cache-t-il ? Le grand écrivain américain Asimov nous prouvedans le second volet de sa trilogie que,à l’aube du 14e millénaire,quand nous occuperons les 25 millions de planètesde la Galaxie, nos passions seront toujours les mêmes.

Sachant l’Empire Galactique sur le point des’effondrer, le psycho-historien Hari Seldon a créédeux Fondations, l’une officielle, l’autre secrète, quimanipulent l’évolution de l’Humanité. En 498 après leur établissement,la foudre, tout à coup, menace.Quelqu’un fausse les cartes du jeu.Est-ce la Seconde Fondation,que la première croyait avoir éliminée ? Est-ce une troisième force,qui oeuvrerait dans l’ombre et dont nul ne sauraitrien ? Commence alors une course-poursuiteau terme de laquelle se cache une surprise detaille, une surprise qui a pour nom les Robots… Car Isaac Asimov, en renouant le fil de son récitavec autant de fraîcheur et de verve que s’il l’avaitabandonné hier, y introduit les thèmes majeursde ses oeuvres ultérieures pour tisser une fresqued’une ampleur incomparabledans le domaine de la science-fiction.

La serie de la Fundación (Fundación, Fundación e Imperio, Segunda Fundación y Los límites de la Fundación) es la obra de ciencia ficción más leída de todos los tiempos. Como gran acontecimiento editorial, la saga monumental continúa con Fundación y Tierra, que es la quinta y más emocionante novela de la serie. Golan Trevize, ex consejero de la Primera Fundación, se encuentra con que debe realizar una tarea formidable: determinar el futuro del desarrollo galáctico. Pero, ¿qué fuerza instintiva ha llevado a Trevize a esta extraordinaria idea? ¿Procede acaso de lo más profundo de la Historia antigua de otro gran mundo llamado Tierra? Trevize tiene que saber la respuesta a estas preguntas. Al descubrir que toda referencia a la Tierra ha desaparecido misteriosamente de la Biblioteca Galáctica de Trantor, sale en busca del planeta «perdido». Y él y sus compañeros, el historiador Janov Pelorat y la hermosa gaiana Bliss, al viajar de un mundo prohibido a otro, se enfrentan audazmente a una odisea llena de peligros, de la que dependerá el destino del Imperio y de la propia Humanidad. Continuación de la serie «La Fundación». Ésta es una novela soberbia en la que vemos cómo la Humanidad, en un lejano futuro galáctico, busca sus orígenes en un planeta perdido llamado Tierra…

El sistema solar ha sido colonizado por la Tierra, unificada bajo el gobierno del Consejo de Ciencias. En el ejambre de asteroides que orbitan entre Marte y Júpiter, como antaño en los archipiélagos del Caribe, se ocultan los feroces corsarios del espacio, que han sustituido el velero por la astronave y el trabuco por el rayo desintegrador. Pero tras sus correrías y pillajes se esconde una amenaza mucho mayor, un terrible misterio que Lucky Starr, joven agente especial del Consejo de Ciencias, deberá desentrañar.

Tout le monde connait le nom d’Hari Seldon. Depuis des milliers d’années. On n’imagine même plus que ce personnage légendaire a été un homme ; qu’il y eut un temps reculé où il venait à peine d’inventer la psychohistoire et où il n’y voyait qu’une pure spéculation, sans applications pratiques… Mais dès qu’il fit sa communication, tout le monde comprit. La psychohistoire ne pouvait pas prédire l’avenir ? Les politiques s’en moquaient ! Ce qui comptait pour eux, c’est que les gens allaient y croire. Ensuite, les équations diraient ce qu’on leur ferait dire. Et si Seldon n’était pas d’accord, tant pis pour lui ! Alors le jeune chercheur s’enfuit en compagnie d’une belle historienne, Dors Venabili. Il sillona les dédales souterrains de la planète Trantor, capitale de l’Empire Galactique, toujours traqué par ceux qui voulaient contrôler sa découverte. Et ce qu’il vit le stupéfia. La ville géante se désagrégeait. Partout s’étaient constituées des communautés isolées, farouchement attachées à leur autonomie. Un terrain idéal pour affiner son modèle et formuler l’avenir inquiétant qui se dessinait sous ses yeux. Etait-il trop tard pour éviter la catastrophe ? Peut-être y avait-il une chance d’agir…

Mission surhumaine pour Golan Trevize : choisir le meilleur avenir pour l’humanité.Un avenir qui ne recréera pas les erreursde l’Empire galactique,entre le matérialisme de la Première Fondationet le mentalisme de la Seconde. Un avenir qui a pour modèle Gaïa, la planète pensante, et pour nom : Galaxia. Trevize a choisi mais il voudrait savoir pourquoi. Et la réponse à ses interrogations se trouve sur la Terre. Mais où la trouver, cette planète des origines, mystérieusement disparuede toutes les archives galactiques ? Trevize et ses deux compagnons, l’historien Pelorat et Joie, la belle Gaïenne, deviennent, bien malgré eux, trois personnagesen quête de Terre... Une quête qui va les mener de planète en planètejusqu’à ce but mythique, jusqu’à la révélation finale, qui leur fera découvrir que l’aventurene fait que commencer.

Next novel in the 'Gridlinked' sequence, with the resurrection of the terrifying Mr Crane, a massive android kiling machine… and one with a grudge. The knight errant Anderson is hunting a dragon on the primitive Out-Polity world of Cull, little knowing that far away a man — more technology than human flesh — has resurrected a brass killing machine to assist in a similar hunt that encompasses star systems. When agent Cormac learns that his old enemy still lives, he sets out in pursuit aboard the attack ship Jack Ketch… whilst scientist Mika begins discovering the horrifying truth about that ancient technology ostensibly produced by the alien Jain, who died out five million years ago. The people of Cull must struggle desperately to survive on a planet roamed by ferocious insectile monsters, while they build the industrial base that will enable them to reach their forefathers' starship still orbiting far above them. An entity calling itself Dragon assists them, but its motives are questionable having created genetic by-blows of humans and the hideous local autochthons, before growing bored with that game. And now Cull, for millennia geologically inactive, suffers earthquakes… Meanwhile the brass killing machine, Mr Crane, seeks to escape a bloody past he can neither forget nor truly remember. So mindlessly he will continues his search for sanity, which he might find in an instant or not for a thousand years.

Thousands have been killed on Samarkand and a terraforming project has been destroyed. Agent Cormac must reach it by ship to begin an investigation. But he has incurred the wrath of a vicious psychopath called Arian Pelter, who follows him across the galaxy with a terrifying android in tow.

During a war between two planets in the same solar systemeach occupied by adapted humanswhat is thought to be a cosmic superstring is discovered. After being cut, this object collapses into four cylindrical pieces, each about the size of a tube train. Each is densely packed with either alien technology or some kind of life. They are placed for safety in three ozark cylinders of a massively secure space station. There, a female research scientist subsequently falls pregnant, and gives birth to quads. Then she commits suicidebut why? By the end of the war one of the contesting planets has been devastated by the hilldiggersgiant space dreadnoughts employing weapons capable of creating mountain ranges. The quads have meanwhile grown up and are assuming positions of power in the post-war society. One of them will eventually gain control of the awesome hilldiggers.

The Polity is under attack from a melded AI entity with control of the lethal Jain technology, yet the attack seems to have no coherence. When one of Erebuss wormships kills millions on the world of Klurhammon, a high-tech agricultural world of no real tactical significance, agent Ian Cormac is sent to investigate, though he is secretly struggling to control a new ability no human being possess…and beginning to question the motives of his AI masters. Further attacks and seemingly indiscriminate slaughter ensue, but only serve to bring some of the most dangerous individuals in the Polity into the war. Mr Crane, the indefatigable brass killing machine sets out for vengeance, while Orlandine, a vastly-augmented haiman who herself controls Jain technology, seeks a weapon of appalling power and finds allies from an ancient war. Meanwhile Mika, scientist and Dragon expert, is again kidnapped by that unfathomable alien entity and dragged into the heart of things: to wake the makers of Jain technology from their five-million-year slumber. But Erebuss attacks are not so indiscriminate, after all, and could very well herald the end of the Polity itself…

From eight hundred years in the future, a runcible gate is opened into the Polity and those coming through it have been sent specially to take the alien maker back to its home civilization in the Small Magellanic cloud. Once these refugees are safely through, the gate itself is rapidly shut downbecause something alien is pursuing them. The gate is then dumped into a nearby sun. From those refugees who get through, agent Cormac learns that the Maker civilization has been destroyed by pernicious virus known as the Jain technology. This, of course, raises questions: why was Dragon, a massive biocontruct of the Makers, really sent to the Polity; why did a Jain node suddenly end up in the hands of someone who could do the most damage with it? Meanwhile an entity called the Legate is distributing pernicious Jain nodes and a renegade attack ship, The King of Hearts, has encountered something very nasty outside the Polity itself.

The Polity Collective is the pinnacle of space-faring civilization. Academic and insightful, its dominion stretches from Earth Central into the unfathomable reaches of the galactic void. But when the Polity finally encounters alien life in the form of massive, hostile, crablike carnivores known as the Prador, there can be only one outcome… total warfare. Chaos reigns as the Polity, caught unawares, struggles to regain its foothold and transition itself into a military society. Starships clash, planets fall, and space stations are overrun, but for Jebel Krong and Moria Salem, two unlikely heroes trapped at the center of the action, this war is far more than a mere clash of cultures, far more than technology versus brute force… this war is personal. Epic in scope, unrelenting in action, Prador Moon delivers the blistering battles and astounding literary pyrotechnics that fans of Neal Asher, author of Gridlinked, The Line of Polity, and The Skinner, have come to expect. Prador Moon is Asher's latest and most shocking excursion into the Polity's universe of over-the-top violence and explosive action. Asher delivers a vivid, visceral, brilliantly intense space opera that you won't soon forget.

Raised to adulthood during the end of the war between the human Polity and a vicious alien race, the Prador, Ian Cormac is haunted by childhood memories of a sinister scorpion-shaped war drone and the burden of losses he doesn't remember. Cormac signs up with Earth Central Security and is sent out to help restore and maintain order on worlds devastated by the war. There he discovers that though the Prador remain as murderous as ever, they are not anywhere near as treacherous or dangerous as some of his fellow humans, some closer to him than he would like. Amidst the ruins left by wartime genocides, Cormac will discover in himself a cold capacity for violence and learn some horrible truths about his own past while trying to stay alive on his course of vengeance.

Come visit a world where you cannot draw breath… should its horrifying wildlife allow you. Outlink station Miranda has been destroyed by a nanomycelium, and the very nature of this sabotage suggests that the alien bioconstruct Dragon — a creature as untrustworthy as it is gigantic — is somehow involved. Sent out on a titanic Polity dreadnought, the Occam Razor, agent Cormac must investigate the disaster, and also resolve the question of Masada, a world about to be subsumed as the Line of Polity is drawn across it. But the rogue biophysicist Skellor has not yet been captured, and he now controls something so potent that Polity AIs will hunt him down forever to prevent him using it. Meanwhile on Masada, the long-term rebellion can never rise above-ground, as the slave population is subjugated by orbital laser arrays controlled by the Theocracy in their cylinder worlds, and by the fact that they cannot safely leave their labour compounds. For the wilderness of Masada lacks breathable air…and out there roam monstrous predators called hooders and siluroynes, not to mention the weird and terrible gabbleducks.

Welcome to Spatterjay…where sudden death is the normal way of life; To the remote planet Spatterjay come three travellers with very different missions. Janer is directed there by the hornet Hive-mind; Erlin comes to find the sea captain who can teach her to live; and Keech — dead for seven hundred years — has unfinished business with a notorious criminal. Spatterjay is a watery world where the human population inhabits the safety of the Dome and only the quasi-immortal hoopers are safe outside amidst a fearful range of voracious life-forms. Somewhere out there is Spatterjay Hoop himself, and monitor Keech cannot rest until he can bring this legendary renegade to justice for atrocious crimes committed centuries ago during the Prador Wars. Keech does not realise that Hoop's body is running free on an island wilderness, while his living head is confined in a box on an Old Captain's ships. Nor does he know that the most brutal Prador of all is about to pay a visit, intent on wiping out all evidence of his wartime atrocities. Which means major hell is about to erupt in this chaotic waterscape.

Sable Keech is a walking dead man, and the only one to have been resurrected by nanochanger. Did he succeed because he was infected by the Spatterjay virus, or because he came late to resurrection in a tank of seawater? Tracing the man's last-known seaborne journey, Taylor Bloc wants to know the truth. He also wants so much else — adulation, power, control — and will go to any lengths to achieve them. An ancient hive mind, almost incomprehensible to the human race, has sent an agent to this uncertain world. Does it simply want to obtain the poison 'sprine' that is crucial to immortality — and, if so, maybe Janer must find it and stop it. Meanwhile, still faced with the ennui of immortality, Erlin has her solitude rudely interrupted by a very angry whelkus titanicus, and begins the strangest of journeys. Deep in the ocean the Spatterjay virus has wrought a terrible change that will affect them all. Something dormant for ten years is breaking free, and once again the aftershocks of an ancient war will focus on this watery world. And Sniper, for ten years the Warden of Spatterjay, finally takes delivery of his new drone shell. It's much better than his old one: powerful engines, more lethal weapons, thicker armour. He's going to need them.

CHAINING THE LADY is the second CLUSTER book. Melody, a product of Flint and the Andromedan’s mating in CLUSTER, must save the Milky Way Galaxy and create a place where creatures can transfer without limitations. Melody must survive in worlds unknown and alien to her and she does that where others fail when her aura augments her skills and abilities. The book opens with the discovery that Andromeda, the enemy galaxy of the first novel, has discovered the secret of involuntary hosting: a Kirlian aura that is sufficiently stronger than that of an individual can take possession of that individual. Andromeda has secretly infiltrated the highest levels of government in Sphere Sol and its allies and resurrect its plot to steal the energy of the Milky Way. Melody of Mintaka, a direct descendant of Flint of Outworld and his Andromedan nemesis, has a Kirlian aura of well over 200. She is pressed into service to “possess” and interrogate a captured Andromedan transferee. Melody, hosted in the young and beautiful body of Yael of Dragon, must, like her progenitor Flint, find a way to defeat the Andromedan threat and save the galaxy. The mysterious Ancients are present again in the form of their artifacts and sites. The themes of Tarot and of various myths of Sphere Sol (in this case that of Perseus and Andromeda) play a big part this novel. The interSphere fleet of starships has forms analogous to the Tarot suits of Disks, Cups, Wands and Swords.

The CLUSTER series of SF adventures is set in a future focused on colonization of distant planets. Sphere Sol is about 100 light years in diameter, centered on the Earth’s sun. Surrounding this sphere are other, similar spheres each centered on another star such as Polaris or Canopus. Colonization is accomplished by: instantaneous teleportation, called matter transmission or mattermission (very expensive); “freezer” ships in which colonists are sent in cryonic preservation at very high speeds (much decay and average 50% loss of colonists occurs during the voyages) and lifeships, slower, safer multigenerational vessels with voyages that run to centuries (during which the travelers regress in technical sophistication.) Because of the difficulty of colonization and the smaller population bases, all spheres suffer spherical regression — the greater the distance from source star to colony, the lower the level of technology that survives. Social organizations regress backward to historical periods of the home planet’s past. Outworld, Sphere Sol’s farthest colony, is populated by paleolithic tribes who hunt with flint spears and make fire. Colonists know about the interstellar empire and the home worlds mattermit government and security personnel to all colony worlds. Every living thing has a Kirlian aura that can be measured. Through transfer, a refinement of mattermission technology, the mind and personality of individuals with high aura can be sent to animate a body physically distant but a hosted aura fades at the rate of about 1 unit per Earth day and higher-Kirlian individuals last longer and thus have more freedom of movement. As CLUSTER opens, the alien envoy Pnotl of Sphere Knyfh seeks help from Sphere Sol in a shared galactic-level crisis: Galaxy Andromeda has discovered the secret of energy transfer and intends to use it to steal the basic energy of the Milky Way Galaxy. Knyfh offers the secret of aura transfer on the understanding that Sphere Sol will spread the technology to help create a galactic coalition to find and defeat agents of Andromeda. Sol’s highest-Kirlian individual is Flint, a green-skinned native of Outworld, who has a Kirlian aura of 200, an eidetic memory (useful for memorizing the complex equations of Kirlian transfer that he will need to communicate to other spheres). He has extraordinary intelligence, and is highly adaptable. His mission is complicated, however, by the fact that he is pursued everywhere by a very high Kirlian female Andromedan agent and, somehow, the Andromedans are able to detect and trace Kirlian transfers.

Bribed to explore a supposedly barren moon, Lt. Flandry finds it swarming with a hideous race of killers, controlled by a deranged computer brain!

Dominic Flandry, troubleshooter for the decaying Terran Empire, returns to the spaceways and becomes tangled up in the well-laid plans of his lifelong enemy, Aycharaych.

In A Stone in Heaven, Dominic Flandry finds friendship, maybe even love, after many years of being totally alone. After A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, Flandry’s life stood in ruins. His Emperor, unbeknownst to him at the time, was dead; his sons were incompetent. His love was dead; his son was dead; he didn’t believe in his job any longer, and he’d taken out his biggest adversary. So, what was left? This book shows the answer: plenty. The younger son of Hans Molitor now holds the throne in his incompetent grasp, and worse, does not like Flandry. So, although Flandry is now a Vice-Admiral and commands much respect, he isn’t thrown too many assignments. On the other hand, he is able to make his own schedule, so when Miriam Abrams, daughter of mentor Max Abrams (his superior in Ensign Flandry), manages to get to him to point out a major problem on Ramnau, he leaves. Once again, he finds intrigue and lots of it, problems, and pain. But unlike A Knight of Ghost and Shadows, Flandry this time finds more while he’s solving the mystery. He and Abrams reach an understanding, and more or less pair off by the end of the book. He also helps solve her problem, take out a would-be Emperor candidate, and rehabilitate his image with Emperor Gerhardt (the younger son of Hans Molitor) in the process, so it’s definitely not a wasted trip.

Idegen űrhajó száll le Angliában a keresztes háborúk idején azzal a céllal, hogy a Föld lakosságát kiirtsák, a használhatóbbakat rabszolgasorba vessék, s a bolygót lakhatóvá tegyék egyre terjeszkedő fajuk számára. Mivel e világon középkori állapotokat találnak, gyanútlanul és hatalmuk tudatában gondatlanul viselkednek, és ez a vesztüket okozza. A keresztesek vezére válogatott lovagjaival rajtaüt az űrhajón, s a váratlan támadást siker koronázza. Az idegeneket kardélre hányják, csak egy foglyot hagynak életben, akit megfelelő módszerekkel kényszerítenek rá, hogy beavassa őket az űrhajó működésébe… És megindul a nagy keresztes hadjárat.

Parts of this book were published before 1965 as separate titles. 1. Tiger by the Tail (1951) 2. The Warriors from Nowhere (1954) 3. Honorable Enemies (1951) 4. Hunters of the SkyCave, also known as A Handful of Stars and We Claim these Stars (1960) Flandry, here a captain, undergoes a series of adventures: He is abducted by the Scothians, an alien race hoping to invade the Terran Empire; rescues the Emperor’s kidnapped granddaughter; meets Aycharaych, his nemesis in league with the Merseians; and investigates a previously unencountered alien race that has invaded the distant colonial world of Vixen.

La favolosa età del Medio Evo si interseca ai viaggi intergalattici in un complesso misterioso e avvincente. Dalle profondità del cosmo, durante l’era delle Crociate, discende, presso una cittadino della Gran Bretagna, una potente astronave, i cui occupanti, esseri mostruosi, sono vinti da un gruppo di Crociati in attesa di partire per liberare il Santo Sepolcro. Essi si impadroniscono del vascello spaziale, e congetturano di usarlo per recarsi in Terra Santa. Per il tradimento di uno dei mostri superstiti che avrebbe dovuto pilotare l’astronave, i Terrestri si trovano proiettati nello spazio e devono conquistare il pianeta di origine dei Galattici. Avventura del tutto nuova che interesserà per lo spirito di abnegazione e per il coraggio di coloro che intensamente la vivono. Nominato per premio Hugo in 1961.