The sixth volume of Brian Stableford's future history concludes the series and also refers back to its beginnings. Through five earlier volumes, Inherit the Earth, Architects of Emortality, The Fountains of Youth, The Cassandra Complex, and Dark Ararat, Stableford has mapped out for us in engaging stories the wonderful and sometimes disturbing world of the next thousand years, on Earth, throughout the solar system, and to worlds beyond, with emphasis on huge sociological changes and extraordinary alterations in the biological life of humans. It is one of the most detailed and plausible and fascinating projections in all of science fiction. Now, in The Omega Expedition, it takes us into another millennium, and is complete. The Omega Expedition is a philosophical novel, a sequel to The Fountains of Youth. It is the extraordinary life history of Adam Zimmerman, developer of the technology of emortality. The main part of the narrative describes his long-delayed awakening into the 35th century, a time of true immortals. His exotic hosts--inhabitants of a microworld in the outer solar system--have recruited various interested parties to help with the resurrection project, one of whom (inevitably) is the famous historian of death, the immortal Mortimer Gray, who is exceedingly anxious to gain what insight he can into the vagaries of the mortal mind. The Omega Expedition is a richly textured, serious SF novel that will resound like a huge bell, ringing down the halls of science fiction for years to come. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Awakening in the thirty-fifth century, Adam Zimmerman, a developer of emortality technology, is recruited to help his microworld hosts, one of whom is historian Mortimer Gray, on a project involving the vagaries of the mortal mind.

This new collection of critical essays on science fiction and fantasy literature and media features the following pieces: "The Last Chocolate Bar and the Majesty of Truth: Reflections on the Concept of 'Hardness' in Science Fiction," "How Should a Science Fiction Story End?," "The Third Generation of Genre Science Fiction," "Deus ex Machina; or, How to Achieve a Perfect Science-Fictional Climax," "Biotechnology and Utopia," "Far Futures," "How Should a Science Fiction Story Begin?," and "The Discovery of Secondary Worlds: Notes on the Aesthetics and Methodology of Heterocosmic Creativity." Brian Stableford is the bestselling writer of 50 books and hundreds of essays, including science fiction, fantasy, literary criticism, and popular nonfiction. He lives and works in Reading, England. I. O. Evans Studies In the Philosophy and Criticism of Literature No. 39.

This splendid volume is the most creative study ever made of Audubon's mammal paintings.

This volume contains descriptions of 1,245 books in nine fiction genres, including author or editor's name, publication information, story type, major characters, setting, plot summary, and more.

Born in 1842, Camille Flammarion was a French astronomer who wrote many popular books about science and astronomy, together with a number of novels which we would now consider to be science fiction. He was a contemporary of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, though his works never achieved their level of popularity. Omega: The Last Days of the World is an English translation of Flammarion’s novel La Fin du Monde, published in 1893. The book’s fictional premise is the discovery of a comet on a collision course with the Earth in the 25th century. However, this is mostly a pretext on which Flammarion can hang his interesting scientific speculations about how the world will end, together with philosophical thoughts about war and religion. Much of the scientific description he uses in the book, while accurately representing the knowledge and thinking of his time, has today been superseded by modern discoveries. For example, we now know the source of the Sun’s energy to be nuclear fusion rather than being due to gravitational contraction and the constant infall of meteorites. When talking about the ills of society, however, Flammarion could well be talking about today’s world. For example, he excoriates the vast waste of society’s resources on war, and demonstrates how much more productive each nation’s economy would be without it. He also depicts the media of his future world as having been entirely taken over by commercial interests, publishing only what will excite the greatest number of readers rather than serving the public interest. Omega ranges over a vast period of time, from prehistory through to millions of years in the future when mankind has been reduced to the last two doomed individuals. Nevertheless, the book ends on a hopeful and inspiring note. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

"A collection of meditations like polished stones--painstakingly worded, tough-minded, yet partial to mystery, and peerless when it comes to injecting larger resonances into the natural world." — Kirkus Reviews Here, in this compelling assembly of writings, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard explores the world of natural facts and human meanings. Veering away from the long, meditative studies of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek or Holy the Firm, Annie Dillard explores and celebrates moments of spirituality, dipping into descriptions of encounters with flora and fauna, stars, and more, from Ecuador to Miami.