It seemed too good to be true... When marauding ships attack the Andromeda Ascendant, the Andromeda crew, desperate to save their ship, slipstream to a world called Festival, which fends off their mysterious attackers and welcomes the crew with open arms. The crew couldn't be happier. Festival wishes to join the Commonwealth, and, as its name implies, is a safe haven, a perfect place for relaxing and indulging in life's finer pleasures. But there's something not quite right about Festival. Captain Dylan Hunt is suspicious of the large number of armed soldiers who are ostensibly providing security for their visit. And when his crew finds a big underground bash, the revelers seem more tense than happy. Dylan and crew uncover a diabolical scheme seething beneath the planet's utopian façade: Festival's planetary government is really a powerful militant regime bent on forcing neighboring worlds to join the new Commonwealth against their own volition. Before the Andromeda crew can do anything about Festival's strong-arm tactics, they receive a distress call from a renowned peace ambassador whose ship is being attacked by space pirates. In a bloody battle, Dylan and his crew defeat the attacking pirates. After the smoke clears, they learn from the ambassador the rulers of Festival don't just want to join the Commonwealth . . . they want to rule it! Suddenly, Festival seems like the Andromeda's worst nightmare. Captain Hunt and the crew have their hands full escaping from the clutches of Festival's power-hungry government, and trying to keep the peace within the Commonwealth.

It seemed too good to be true... When marauding ships attack the Andromeda Ascendant, the Andromeda crew, desperate to save their ship, slipstream to a world called Festival, which fends off their mysterious attackers and welcomes the crew with open arms. The crew couldn't be happier. Festival wishes to join the Commonwealth, and, as its name implies, is a safe haven, a perfect place for relaxing and indulging in life's finer pleasures. But there's something not quite right about Festival. Captain Dylan Hunt is suspicious of the large number of armed soldiers who are ostensibly providing security for their visit. And when his crew finds a big underground bash, the revelers seem more tense than happy. Dylan and crew uncover a diabolical scheme seething beneath the planet's utopian façade: Festival's planetary government is really a powerful militant regime bent on forcing neighboring worlds to join the new Commonwealth against their own volition. Before the Andromeda crew can do anything about Festival's strong-arm tactics, they receive a distress call from a renowned peace ambassador whose ship is being attacked by space pirates. In a bloody battle, Dylan and his crew defeat the attacking pirates. After the smoke clears, they learn from the ambassador the rulers of Festival don't just want to join the Commonwealth . . . they want to rule it! Suddenly, Festival seems like the Andromeda's worst nightmare. Captain Hunt and the crew have their hands full escaping from the clutches of Festival's power-hungry government, and trying to keep the peace within the Commonwealth. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The Andromeda Ascendant is the last surviving ship of the long-dead Systems Commonwealth interstellar empire. It's captain, Dylan Hunt, with the crew of the Eureka Maru, has been trying to contact outlying planets who might rejoin the revived Commonwealth. But one such planet responds to the Andromeda's friendly advances with an all-out attack that cripples the Andromeda. Fleeing on the limited power that the ship can muster, Hunt, Beka Valentine and the rest of the crew seek a resupply depot, but none is near enough for them to reach before repairs, except for an abandoned station, uninhabited since the collapse of the empire. When Hunt, systems analyst Seamus Harper, and Andromeda's AI Rommie get into the station, they find it's not quite uninhabited. Strange presences assail them. Something very dark, evil, and entirely unknown. And while they try to get what they need without being killed by whatever is lurking on the station, something is attacking the Andromeda itself. There's plenty of action and suspense before this routine resupply mission can be finished . . . if it can be finished. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Suddenly, Captain Dylan Hunt isn't himself. Our heroes were travelling in deep space, navigating the Andromeda through a maze of space anomalies and wormholes when a surprise attack by an unidentified fleet of ships forced them into a space anomaly they could not avoid. Suddenly the crew finds themselves in another dimension. The Dylan they know is gone, his place taken by a green-skinned, cold, logical, Nietzschean Dylan who's more reptilian than human. The crew must band together and choose between an act of obedience or an act of mutiny as they follow a dangerous course into deeper space with an alien captain they cannot trust. Meanwhile, Dylan finds himself on a very different Andromeda in another dimension. His new crew is comprised of green-skinned reptilians, engaged in a deadly conflict with rebels who would have been, in Dylan's original dimension, the civilization he has tried to restore. His entire alien crew seems to be involved in a vast interstellar conquest, one that he must stop. The Captain realizes he must resolve a conflict in which his royalties are torn, and somehow get back to his original dimension. Can Dylan survive his alien ship? The decisions both Andromeda crews and captains make will affect not only them; their choices may cause ripple effects that save or destroy both dimensions.

R and R Between a Rock and a Hard Place Dylan Hunt and the Crew of the Andromeda Ascendant have been fighting the good fight to re-establish the Systems Commonwealth. They need some serious rest and relaxation. Fortunately, they arrive at Paradise Drift, an ideal spot for a quick vacation. In the drift, the crew can play at pirates, medieval knights, gladiators--almost anything imaginable--in the virtual gaming scenarios concocted for visitors' pleasure. Since the drift wishes to join the New Systems Commonwealth, the crew is given carte blanche to enjoy all of the drift's facilities for free. This is a welcome gift for the weary crew, but it doesn't take long for complications to arise. First, Trance Gemini vanishes without a trace. Then their tech-wizard Seamus Harper visits a harem, only to be confronted by a woman from his past who has a knife and a score to settle. Even worse, Pilot Beka Valentine is relentlessly pursued by a bounty hunter who desperately wants to claim the price on her head. And Captain Dylan Hunt hasn't been worrying about his losing streak at a glamorous gambling parlor, until he discovers that gambling debts on the drift are anything but virtual. Little does Dylan know, he could end up paying for his debts with his head! Meanwhile, back on the ship, warrior Tyr Anasazi and ship's AI Rommie are forced to defend the Andromeda Ascendant against aggression from an unlikely source. What follows is an exciting, suspenseful deep-space adventure that will surely satisfy viewers of the TV series and readers with a taste for space opera. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

People dreamed of cosmic exploration—winged spaceships and lunar voyages; space stations and robot astronauts—long before it actually happened. Space and the American Imagination traces the emergence of space travel in the popular mind, its expression in science fiction, and its influence on national space programs. Space exploration dramatically illustrates the power of imagination. Howard E. McCurdy shows how that power inspired people to attempt what they once deemed impossible. In a mere half-century since the launch of the first Earth-orbiting satellite in 1957, humans achieved much of what they had once only read about in the fiction of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells and the nonfiction of Willy Ley. Reaching these goals, however, required broad-based support, and McCurdy examines how advocates employed familiar metaphors to excite interest (promising, for example, that space exploration would recreate the American frontier experience) and prepare the public for daring missions into space. When unexpected realities and harsh obstacles threatened their progress, the space community intensified efforts to make their wildest dreams come true. This lively and important work remains relevant given contemporary questions about future plans at NASA. Fully revised and updated since its original publication in 1997, Space and the American Imagination includes a reworked introduction and conclusion and new chapters on robotics and space commerce.

An original space adventure based on the hit TV SF series Andromeda starring Kevin Sorbo

Examining popular images that have helped motivate the most ambitious civil space program in the world, McCurdy argues that the spacefaring dream tapped into several of America's most deeply rooted cultural ideals. He also explains how space advocates, playing on the public's Cold War fears, convinced politicians that control of space meant control of the earth.He also contends that the gaps between expectations and reality led to public policy obligated to entertain as well as inform. 43 photos.

Captain Beka Valentine and her crew accept an assignment to deliver a pregnant Nietzchean princess to safety, but their mission is complicated by Tyr Anasazi, a Nietzchean warrior on a mission to raise money for an army.

East German science fiction enabled its authors to create a subversive space in another time and place. One of the country's most popular genres, it outlined futures that often went beyond the party's official version. Many utopian stories provided a corrective vision, intended to preserve and improve upon East German communism. This study is an introduction to East German science fiction. The book begins with a chapter on German science fiction before 1949. It then spans the entire existence of the country (1949-1990) and outlines key topics essential to understanding the genre: popular literature, socialist realism, censorship, fandom, and international science fiction. An in-depth discussion addresses notions of high and low literature, elements of the fantastic and utopia as critical narrative strategies, ideology and realism in East German literature, gender, and the relation between literature and science. Through a close textual analysis of three science fiction novels, the author expands East German literary history to include science fiction as a valuable source for developing a multi-faceted understanding of the country's short history. Finally, an epilogue notes new titles and developments since the fall of the Berlin Wall.