City on Fire (Metropolitan 2)

City on Fire (Metropolitan 2)

Walter Jon Williams

Science Fiction & Fantasy / Short Stories

Nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Award, City on Fire returns to the world-city of Metropolitan, dominated by plasm, the magical substance capable of both creation and destruction. With her help, Aiah’s lover Constantine has established himself in the metropolis of Caraqui---Aiah must fight not only for her revolution and for her place in the world, but for Constantine’s very soul.
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The Tang Dynasty Underwater Pyramid

The Tang Dynasty Underwater Pyramid

Walter Jon Williams

Science Fiction & Fantasy / Short Stories

Nebula Award-winning author Walter Jon Williams serves up a glorious novelette-sized mashup of intrigue, cutting-edge biotech, Aymara Indian spies, a Chinese cruise ship, ninjas, Andean folk music, and a tetrahedal menace from beneath the sea. But the greatest threat to our heroes comes in the form of a water ballet company, whose director insists on Total Artistic Control. “...A rapid, imaginative, and at times hilarious story, packed with action and great characters...[Williams’] story is complete, rounded, and a great read.” --Patrick Samphire
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Wall, Stone, Craft

Wall, Stone, Craft

Walter Jon Williams

Science Fiction & Fantasy / Short Stories

An alternative-history classic nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards! Young Mary Godwin has run away with the married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, but a chance encounter places them in the path of Lord Byron, the Hero of Waterloo. Byron wants Mary, and is willing to use Mary’s young, reckless sister Claire as a pawn in his heartless schemes. Exactly how heartless, and how audacious is only revealed on a storm-tossed lake in Switzerland, a tragic encounter that produces not only an alternate history, but an alternate literary monster, a new Frankenstein for a new world...
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The Crown Jewels

The Crown Jewels

Walter Jon Williams

Science Fiction & Fantasy / Short Stories

Peleng is a planet ripe for the plucking, and Drake Maijstral is an Allowed Burglar rated in the Top Ten by the Imperial Sporting Commission. But what should be a simple case of breaking-and-plundering turns into an intergalactic crisis when Maijstral steals something so rare, so valuable, so utterly desirable, that everyone wants it— everyone including well-armed Imperial spies, gun-toting human militias, a homicidal maniac with a very large sword, and a fanatical countess with a really, really nasty croquet habit.   The Crown Jewels, by award-winning author Walter Jon Williams, is sophisticated science fiction comedy at its best.
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Ylesia

Ylesia

Walter Jon Williams

Science Fiction & Fantasy / Short Stories

BONUS: This original novella includes an exclusive excerpt from Star Wars: New Jedi Order: Force Heretic I: Remnant and an interview with the author. RIPE FOR THE PLUCKING That's Jedi Knight Kyp Durron's opinion about the planet Ylesia, home base of the so-called Peace Brigade, a group of traitors dedicated to hindering the war efforts of the New Republic and hastening the ultimate victory of the merciless Yuuzhan Vong. Kyp's plan calls for a lightning-fast strike, backed with overwhelming force, to destroy the Brigade's offensive capabilities and teach prospective traitors that betrayal carries a heavy price. But young Jacen Solo, still bearing the scars of his imprisonment by the Yuuzhan Vong, has a better idea: a daring raid into the heart of Ylesia's capital, with the objective of capturing the Brigade's top leaders--including the newly sworn-in President, Thrackan Sal-Solo, cousin to Jacen and his twin, Jaina. But...
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Surfacing

Surfacing

Walter Jon Williams

Science Fiction & Fantasy / Short Stories

Nominated for Hugo and Nebula awards, “Surfacing” is the story of Anthony, an emotionally scarred researcher who finds it easier to talk to whales and to aliens than to members of his own species. Until a stranger named Philana enters his life, with a terrifying problem of her own that dares him to break through the surface of his world.
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The Accidental War

The Accidental War

Walter Jon Williams

Science Fiction & Fantasy / Short Stories

Blending fast-paced military science fiction and space opera, the first volume in a dynamic trilogy from the New York Times bestselling author of The Praxis, set in the universe of his popular and critically acclaimed Dread Empire's Fall series—a tale of blood, courage, adventure and battle in which the fate of an empire rests in the hands of a cadre of desperate exiles.It's been seven years since the end of the Naxid War. Sidelined for their unorthodox tactics by a rigid, tradition-bound military establishment, Captain Gareth Martinez and Captain the Lady Sula are stewing in exile, frustrated and impatient to exercise the effective and lethal skills they were born to use in fighting the enemy.Yet after the ramshackle empire left by the Shaa conquerors is shaken by a series of hammer blows that threaten the foundations of the commonwealth, the result is a war that no one planned, no one expected, and no one knows how to end.Now, Martinez, Sula, and...
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The Rift

The Rift

Walter Jon Williams

Science Fiction & Fantasy / Short Stories

In 1812 the quiet Missouri plains were split by an earthquake so powerful, it rang church bells in Boston. Two centuries later, almost no one in the Midwest knows the history of the New Madrid fault line. And no one knows that another quake is coming, a quake so massive it will kill tens of thousands, destroy cities, change the course of the Mississippi River itself. The first quake is the worst. reducing the central United States to the Stone Age. Then the fault line shakes again. And again. Fast-paced and terrifyingly real, The Rift is a blockbuster novel of destruction, heroism, and survival that’s sure to grab fans of such recent screen shockers as Deep Impact and Armageddon .
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The Praxis

The Praxis

Walter Jon Williams

Science Fiction & Fantasy / Short Stories

All will must bend to the perfect truth of The PraxisFor millennia, the Shaa have subjugated the universe, forcing the myriad sentient races to bow to their joyless tyranny. But the Shaa will soon be no more. The dread empire is in its rapidly fading twilight, and with its impending fall comes the promise of a new galactic order . . . and bloody chaos.A young Terran naval officer marked by his lowly birth, Lt. Gareth Martinez is the first to recognize the insidious plot of the Naxid -- the powerful, warlike insectoid society that was enslaved before all others -- to replace the masters' despotic rule with their own. Barely escaping a swarming surprise attack, Martinez and Caroline Sula, a pilot whose beautiful face conceals a deadly secret, are now the last hope for freedom for every being who ever languished in Shaa chains -- as the interstellar battle begins against a merciless foe whose only perfect truth is annihilation.
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Voice of the Whirlwind

Voice of the Whirlwind

Walter Jon Williams

Science Fiction & Fantasy / Short Stories

Steward is a clone. A beta. His memories are fifteen years old, because his alpha never did have a brain-scan update. And in those fifteen years, the entire world has changed: The Orbital Policorp which held his allegiance has collapsed; dozens of his friends died in an off-planet war which he survived; an alien race has established relations with humanity; both his first and second wives have divorced him. And someone has murdered him.From Publishers WeeklyWilliams's novel Hardwired was a well-written but standard entry in the cyberpunk sweepstakes launched by William Gibson's Neuromancer. This followup, however, is much more interesting and successful. Etienne Steward is the clone ("Steward Beta") of a hero of the Artifact Wars, in which multinational corporations fielded armies to plunder alien ruins. He's been given Steward Alpha's memories minus the last years of the hero's life: the war and its aftermath. Now Steward Beta begins an investigation, tracking down Alpha's wife, friends, enemies and fellow vets to fill in the picture and learn why Alpha was murdered. In particular, Beta probes the war, its horrors, its betrayals and The Powers, the aliens who ended it. Resonances of Vietnam-era moral concerns make this deft updating of the postWorld War II genre of psychological thrillers about amnesiacs one of the best of its kind. Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review''Slick and intelligent entertainment. The tension remains high throughout. A taut, satisfying tale of space-age skulduggery.'' --San Francisco Chronicle''Resonances of Vietnam-era moral concerns make this deft updating of the post-World War II genre of psychological thrillers about amnesiacs one of the best of its kind.'' --Publishers Weekly
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