Secondhand Science Fiction Bargain Book Box SP2928

Secondhand Science Fiction Bargain Book Box SP2928

Seventeen SF paperbacks and hardbacks across four decades: Linda Nagata’s Vast, the finale of Paul McAuley’s Confluence, Orson Scott Card’s Homecoming, Pratchett and Baxter’s The Long War, Jack McDevitt’s Deepsix, early Wyndham, Poul Anderson, Shatner’s TekWar and the SF Masterworks War of the Worlds. A box with range from pulp to hard SF.

1. Vast — Linda Nagata — The Null Boundary is a starship crewed by the last modified humans, chasing the Chenzeme who sterilised their worlds, across centuries, while the ship itself may be turning on them. The finale of the Nanotech Succession and the hardest hard SF in the box.
2. Of Fire and Night — Kevin J. Anderson — Saga of Seven Suns book five: the hydrogues attack Earth, the Ildiran Empire is split, and the worldforest burns. Space opera at the scale of a season of TV.
3. Shrine of Stars — Paul J. McAuley — Yama finally learns what he is, on a world that’s a river with a million years of history on it. The Confluence trilogy’s ending, from the author of Fairyland.
4. The Deus Machine — Pierre Ouellette — A military AI designs a virus and sets it loose in Portland, and a cop and a scientist have days to find it. 1990s technothriller that predicted more than it meant to.
5. The Call of Earth — Orson Scott Card — Homecoming book two: Nafai’s family, chosen by the Oversoul, escapes the city of Basilica as it falls to a general who thinks he’s its saviour. Card’s Book of Mormon in space, and better than that sounds.
6. Tek Money — William Shatner — Jake Cardigan, ex-cop and ex-Tek addict, and a Mexican drug war run by people with implants. Shatner’s cyberpunk series, ghostwritten by Ron Goulart and fast.
7. Project Farcry — Pauline Ashwell — A space station, a telepath and an alien intelligence nobody knows how to talk to. Ashwell was an Analog regular from the 1950s; this was her first novel in forty years, and Piers Anthony blurbs it.
8. The Kassa Gambit — M.C. Planck — A pilot lands on a colony that’s just been destroyed, and a political officer sent to find out why is lying about everything. Thriller, political novel and space opera; L.E. Modesitt says so on the cover. Hardback.
9. Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Valiant — Michael Jan Friedman — Picard’s first command, the Stargazer, and the mission where the captain dies. The untold story the series kept referring to. Hardback.
10. Wanderers of Time — John Wyndham — Five early stories written as John Beynon in the 1930s, pulp and strange, before The Day of the Triffids. Coronet.
11. The Avatar — Poul Anderson — A T-machine gateway to the stars, a voyage to the Others who built it, and a woman called Caitlín who’s more than she seems. Big late Anderson. Sphere.
12. Deepsix — Jack McDevitt — A rogue gas giant will destroy the planet Maleiva III in three weeks, and the only expedition ever allowed to land there is stranded on it. McDevitt’s best standalone, with a countdown.
13. The Long War — Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter — The Long Earth’s second book: the stepping colonies want independence, the Datum wants its taxes, and the trolls are leaving. Slower than the first and more political.
14. The Dynostar Menace — Kit Pedler & Gerry Davis — A fusion reactor in orbit, a saboteur on the crew, and a countdown. From the men who created Doomwatch and the Cybermen.
15. The War of the Worlds — H.G. Wells — The Martians land at Woking, the heat-ray clears Surrey, and nothing stops them but a cold. SF Masterworks edition.
16. Netherspace — Andrew Lane & Nigel Foster — Aliens have been trading faster-than-light tech for humans for years and nobody knows what they do with them. A mission to find out. First of a trilogy.
17. Bareback — Kit Whitfield — Almost everyone is a werewolf, the few who aren’t police the full-moon nights, and one of them is attacked. Debut, and the Guardian called it gritty and original.