"In this thoughtful meditation on the future of humanity, colonists on Mars struggle to prevent their own extinction"--

In the parallel world first introduced in S. M. Stirling's The Sky People, aliens terraformed Mars (and Venus) 200 million years ago, seeding them with life-forms from Earth. Humans didn't suspect this until the twentieth century, but when the first probes landed on our sister worlds and found life-intelligent life, at that-things changed with a vengeance. By the year 2000, America, Russia, and the other great powers of Earth were all contending for...

A human expedition to another star system is jeopardized by the discovery of an immense bowl-shaped structure in space that leads to hostile alien encounters and profound revelations about humanity's place in the universe.

Darth Plagueis, a Sith Lord who knows the Dark Side so well that he has power over life and death, joins forces with his apprentice, one-day emperor Darth Sidious, to try to dominate the whole galaxy.

When her company relocates to another planet, Ofelia Falfurrias, 70, who expects to be downsized anyway, decides to remain behind. Thus she discovers the planet's population as it emerges from hiding, now that the humans have left. A meeting of cultures.

In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn't a primary concern. On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied 'droid -- a self-aware SecUnit that has...