So this follows the life of a man from birth to his end. If you like Job, which I did, then this makes for a compelling read. The world building is perhaps the best dystopian can offer. The world feels chillingly real and possible to me. The situations are not generic but layered and nuanced and ...
I first read this in High School, so it may be that my opinion of the book is bouyed by the passage of time, but I still think that this is a very engaging and fun book with good science (so far as a mythologist like myself can tell) and enjoyable characters. Reminds me of Arthur C Clarke in man...
Why I read this book: Fictionwise/eReader released their software as a free download for iPhones, and I was pleased to be able to read books I hadn't look at in years. Dark as Day seemed particularly interesting, so I checked it out from the MCPL as well. Charles Sheffield was my favorite America...
Hans Rebka, interstellar trouble-shooter, had solved the mystery of the gigantic Artefacts and defeated the warlike Zardala - but that was only the warm-up for the main event. In one arm of the galaxy, something is destroying whole stellar systems, rebka and his motley crew discover a battle begi...
The Zardalu had been the greatest menace in the galaxy until they became extinct. But a Zardalu horde has just awakened from suspended animation, ready and able to resume conquering and destroying. . . .
This early Sheffield book seemed like an attempt at something like the Heinlein juvenile SF novels of the 1950s, but much updated. While not great, it was very readable, and the story was exciting. My only complaint with it was that most of the adults acted like total idiots at least once during ...
Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Charles Sheffield returns to the Solar System of his novel Cold As Ice, to spin a tale of the years immediately following the Great War, a horrifying spasm that was over in weeks, but killed half the human race.
Nice collection of stories, though I primarily bought it for the title piece. Georgia on my Mind has nothing to do with the US state, nor of the Eastern European country, but with the small British Island off the coast of South America. This story covers the discovery of letters and remaining par...
Hans Rebka had been everywhere and done everything. Now he was going to try to solve the galaxy's most persistent mystery - he was going to penetrate Paradox.
In the 23rd Century, out of all the races of the galaxy, only humanity has discovered the secret of travel between the stars - not so much because we're smart, but because we are incredibly gadget-orientated. We are also, compared to the galaxy's highest sophisticated norms, very, very tough, whi...
Earth has been ravaged by galactic disaster--but the real devastation is yet to come.The end draws nigh....The year is 2053, and Earth has barely recovered from the Alpha Centauri supernova that destroyed much of the planet's infrastructure. Now the supernova's residual effect--a storm of high-en...
A young man raised by the powerful Trader's Guild in a world drastically changed by nuclear war discovers that his business of negotiation masks a hidden agenda. (Library Journal)
In the 22nd century biofeedback techniques have enabled humans the ultimate expression--the ability to transform the body into any viable form. What began as an innocent technique to reduce anxiety without drugs has raised fundamental questions about what it is to be human. Enter the Humanity Test.
There were problems with the Form Change process. One or two malfunctions at first: people emerging from the tanks in an incorrect form or completely unchanged. For three years it had been getting worse. Now there had been deaths, and on the Space Farms panic was setting in. People were refusing ...
In the 22nd century a combination of computer-augmented bio-feedback and chemo-therapy techniques has given man the ability not only to heal himself, but to change himself - to alter his very shape at will. But Form Change has its darker aspects, ranging from unautorized experimentation on human ...
The Indian traffic police apparently all went off duty at dusk. On the empty highways I pushed the car up to over a hundred, gritting my teeth at the scream of the over-revved engine. Even then I was passed a couple of times, once by a lunatic in a Ferrari and once by an old Rolls-Royce Silver Wr...
The naked figure on the table did not move. His chest rose and fell steadily, lifting with it the tangle of catheters and electrodes that covered the rib .cage. "Still no change." The woman who crouched over the oscilloscope made a tiny adjustment to the controls with her left hand. She was nervo...
I have observed a characteristic pattern in those whose ways wander far from socially acceptable behavior. It applies equally to bigamists, confidence tricksters, thieves, and murderers. Thus: At first, extreme caution is practiced. Every record is deleted, every step is double-checked, no trace ...
The very idea of sitting at a table for three hours, just reading and writing, was peculiar—even without other distractions. He fidgeted in his chair and looked around the room. He had thought that Professor Buckler's living quarters were full of books. But this place was books. From floor to cei...
The launch of a Saturn V rocket is an impressive sight. It is impressively noisy, impressively big and impressively risky. It is also one of Man's outstanding examples of conspicuous consumption, where a few thousand tons of fuel go up (literally) in smoke (literally) in a couple of minutes. And ...