Showing results by author "Peter Watts" in All Categories

Set in 2082, Peter Watts' Blindsight is fast-moving, hard SF that pulls readers into a futuristic world where a mind-bending alien encounter is about to unfold. After the Firefall, all eyes are locked heavenward as a team of specialists aboard the self-piloted spaceship Theseus hurtles outbound to intercept an unknown intelligence.

It's the eve of the 22nd century: a world where the dearly departed send postcards back from Heaven and evangelicals make scientific breakthroughs by speaking in tongues; where genetically engineered vampires solve problems intractable to baseline humans. And it's all under surveillance by an alien presence. Daniel Bruks is a field biologist in a world where biology has turned computational.

A huge international corporation has developed a facility along the Juan de Fuca Ridge at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to exploit geothermal power. They send a bio-engineered crew - people who have been altered to withstand the pressure and breathe the seawater - down to live and work in this weird, fertile undersea darkness.

How do you stage a mutiny when you're only awake one day in a million? How do you conspire when your tiny handful of potential allies changes with each job shift? How do you engage an enemy that never sleeps, that sees through your eyes and hears through your ears, and relentlessly, honestly, only wants what's best for you? Trapped aboard the starship Eriophora, Sunday Ahzmundin is about to discover the components of any successful revolution: conspiracy, code - and unavoidable casualties.

Lenie Clarke has destroyed the world. The horror she unleashed—an ancient, apocalyptic microbe called ßehemoth—has been free in the world for half a decade now. North America lies in ruins. Digital monsters have taken Clarke's name, wreaking havoc throughout the decimated remnants of something that was once called Internet. Governments have fallen across the globe; warlords and suicide cults rise from the ashes, pledging fealty to the Meltdown Madonna. All because five years ago, Lenie Clarke had a score to settle.

This is the way the world ends: A nuclear strike on a deep sea vent. The target was an ancient microbe—voracious enough to drive the whole biosphere to extinction—and a handful of amphibious humans called rifters who'd inadvertently released it from three billion years of solitary confinement. The resulting tsunami killed millions. It's not as through there was a choice: saving the world excuses almost any degree of collateral damage. Unless, of course, you miss the target.

It's the eve of the 22nd century: a world where the dearly departed send postcards back from heaven and evangelicals make scientific breakthroughs by speaking in tongues; where genetically engineered vampires solve problems intractable to baseline humans. And it's all under surveillance by an alien presence. Daniel Bruks is a field biologist in a world where biology has turned computational. He's turned his back on humanity, but awakens one night to find himself at the center of a storm that will turn all of history inside-out.

In Sydney, siblings Donald and Sarah Macintosh battle for their father's approval, and control of his empire, while their cousin David fights the enemy across the continents. US Marine Pilot James Duffy defies his grandfather's wishes, and a number of times, death, protecting Australian skies from the Japanese. Below, trapped in the jungles of Malaya, Diane Duffy is caught between saving the lives of hundreds of orphaned children, or that of her son. While Tom Duffy finds himself enlisting in yet another world war, his daughter, Jessica, narrowly escapes slaughter at a mission station.

As the son of 'the Colonial', legendary Queen's Captain Ian Steele, Josiah Steele has big shoes to fill. Although his home in the colony of New South Wales is a world away, he dreams of one day travelling to England so he can study to be a commissioned officer in the Scottish Regiment. After cutting his teeth in business on the rough and ready goldfields of Far North Queensland's Palmer River, he finally realises his dream and travels to England, where he is accepted into the Sandhurst military academy.

Lenie Clarke has grown sick to death of her own cowardice. For five years, she and her bionic brethren have hidden in the mountains of the deep Atlantic. The facility they commandeered was more than a secret station on the ocean floor. Atlantis was an exit strategy for the corporate elite, a place where the world's Movers and Shakers had hidden from the doomsday microbe ßehemoth. For five years "rifters" and "corpses" have lived in a state of uneasy truce, united by fear of the outside world.

In October 1863, Ian Steele, having taken on the identity of Captain Samuel Forbes, is fighting the Pashtun on the north-west frontier in India. Half a world away, the real Samuel Forbes is a lieutenant in the third New York Volunteers and is facing the Confederates at the Battle of Mission Ridge in Tennessee. Neither is aware their lives will change beyond recognition in the year to come. In London, Ella, the love of Ian's life, is unhappily married to Count Nikolai Kasatkin.

An unabridged audio collection of the "best of the best" science fiction stories published in 2010 by current and emerging masters of the genre as narrated by top voice talents. Stories in this year's collection include "Under the Moons of Venus" by Damien Broderick; "The Shipmaker," winner of the 2011 British Science Ficiton Association Award for short fiction, by Aliette de Bodard; Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain" by Yoon Ha Lee, "Re-Crossing the Styx" by Ian R. MacLeod; "Eight Miles" by Sean McMullen; and more.

It is 1857. Colonial India is a simmering volcano of nationalism about to erupt. Army surgeon Peter Campbell and his wife, Alice, in India on their honeymoon, have no idea that they are about to be swept up in the chaos. Ian Steele, known to all as Captain Samuel Forbes, is fighting for queen and country in Persia. A world away, the real Samuel Forbes is planning to return to London - with potentially disastrous consequences for Samuel and Ian both. Then Ian is posted to India, but not before a brief return to England and a reunion with the woman he loves.

It is 1885. After a decade spent fighting for Queen and Country across the globe, Colonel Ian Steele is enjoying the quiet life in the colony of New South Wales, reunited with his friend Conan Curry and watching over his children and numerous business enterprises. But the British Empire's pursuits are ceaseless, and when the colony's soldiers are required to assist a campaign in Sudan, North Africa, Ian's son Lieutenant Josiah Steele heeds the call, despite an ultimatum from the love of his life, Marian.

As the Allied forces fight to repel invaders in the Pacific, the Duffy and Macintosh clans face their greatest challenges at home. Sergeant Jessica Duffy relishes her work as a code breaker in MacArthur's headquarters but is secretly reporting on the Americans to the Prime Minister. Captain James Duffy, a decorated fighter pilot with the United States Marine Corps, is expected to wait out the war assisting the bond effort. Major David Macintosh has survived prison camps, torture and countless battles, but can he endure the machinations of his obsessive cousin, Sarah?

After fighting in two world wars, Tom Duffy's purchase of his ancestral property Glen View means a home for the next generation of Duffys. But the Macintosh family won't easily surrender this land, and when they challenge his ownership, he knows he's in for one hell of a fight.

Private Patrick Duffy was forced to flee Malaya as a child and was left orphaned when his mother died in a Changi prison. Now, returning to fight a fearless enemy, he must confront the ghosts of his past if he is to find any hope for the future. Michael Macintosh is forging his own path to escape his mother's obsessive control. Sailor, soldier and mercenary, he will soon face war again in the brutal jungles of Vietnam. Sarah Macintosh ruthlessly crushes anyone who gets in her way and has vowed to destroy her sister-in-law, Jessica Duffy-Macintosh.

In Iraq, Captain Matthew Duffy, recruited by British Intelligence, once more faces a German enemy. But Matthew is confused by his attraction to Diane, now working for the Germans, and finds himself having to make a hard decision. Just as he is coming to terms with his choice, he meets his estranged son, James Barrington Jnr. Back in Sydney, George Macintosh is determined to keep control of his business empire and to prevent his nephew David from taking a seat on the Board. Meanwhile, George’s son Donald is packed off to the family station Glen View.

This unabridged audio collection spotlights the “best of the best” hard science-fiction stories published in 2017 by current and emerging masters of the genre.

When Major Patrick Duffy's beautiful wife, Catherine, leaves him for another, he is propelled out of the Sydney Macintosh home and into yet another bloody war. However the battlefields of Africa, fighting the Boers, bring him in contact with one he thought long dead and lost to him. Back in Australia, the mysterious Michael O'Flynn mentors Patrick's youngest son, Alex, and takes him on a journey to the Queensland property, Glen View. But will the terrible curse that has inextricably linked the Duffys and Macintoshes for generations ensure that no true happiness can ever come to them?