Phoenix Pick: 180 books

Nancy Kress is unrivaled in her treatment of genetic engineering. In 1991 she wrote the ground-breaking classic novella "Beggars in Spain" (Hugo/Nebula) and since then has only enhanced her reputation for telling outstanding stories set in the near future and dealing with genetics.This collection...

A collection of some of the finest short stories penned by a master of hard science fiction, this anthology includes Charles Sheffield's highly acclaimed novelette, Georgia On My Mind, which won both the Hugo and Nebula when originally published in 1993. The accompanying stories were written by the...

From multi-award winning author, L. Neil Smith:Captain Agot Edmoot Mav, Extraordinary Inquirer for Their Majesties’ Bucketeers, must solve the unsolvable mystery of who has killed a famed, but controversial, scholar.For the killing was done in a windowless room which was locked and...

One of the original novels of post-nuclear-holocaust America, The Long Tomorrow is considered by many to be one of the finest science fiction novels ever written on the subject. The story has inspired generations of new writers and is still as mesmerizing today as when it was originally written. Len...

Nancy Kress is famous for creating realistic near-future societies based on technological advances and then studying the impact those technological changes have on our society.Here is a collection of three outstanding storiesby her that deal with innovation in medical science and how that impacts our lives.

Menedemos, the young dashing sea captain, and his helper, the scholarly Sostratos, are sea-traders from the Greek island of Rhodes. Fearless sailors, they will travel any distance to make a profit or to search for rich treasures. While they trade in fineries such as wine and silk (and even,...

“A taut near-future thriller”—Publishers Weekly “Should appeal to fans of hard sf and technothrillers.”—Library Journal “An amazingly tense and for-all-the-marbles thriller.”—SF Site A geopolitical miscalculation tainted the world’s major oil fields with radioactivity...

“Gripping. Impossible to put down.”— Jack McDevitt “Leave it to Edward M. Lerner to take a notion, run with it, squeeze every ramification out of it, and put it altogether in an irresistible page-turner. Dark Secret is a crackerjack novel—hard science fiction at its best.”— Robert...

When Brent Cleary, demonstrating a beta-test protective “nanosuit” to potential customers, gets trapped in a massive pipeline explosion, only the nanosuit saves him. Smart nanobots integrated into the suit will do whatever it takes to protect the wearer …The explosion kills hundreds....

“Good science and entertaining writing make this a fast, entertaining read.”—Publishers Weekly Fools’ Experiments is a near-future technothriller—a tale of artificial life, artificial intelligence, and world-threatening hubris. In a nutshell: We are not alone, and it’s our...

Set in the time of Dionysios I of Syracuse, at the beginning of the 4th century BC, The Arrows of Hercules tells the tale of Zopyros of Tarentum, an engineer who invents an improved type of catapult.He is quickly drafted by Dionysios into Syracuse’s war efforts against Carthage, which sets...

Welcome back to the world of Reboots—a world where zombies, vampires and werewolves live side by side with humans and eke out whatever existence they can, doing whatever jobs they can, including space travel where they make the perfect crew members given their lack of normal needs.Humph and his...

“In Joan Slonczewski’s Brain Plague...a starving artist on the planet Veledon agrees to let a colony of “brain enhancers” occupy her skull. These microscopic creatures live in the brain’s outer linings, causing bursts of genius—or irreparable harm. The creatures themselves are like tiny...

Menedemos, the young dashing sea captain, and his helper (and cousin) the scholarly Sostratos, are back in their third adventure.This time around the two cousins end up in the Sacred Land, Jerusalem, where they encounter a strange religion. This fascinates Sostratos, who wants to learn as much...