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2029: In Japan, a historically mono-cultural nation, childbirth rates are at an all-time low and the elderly are living increasingly longer lives. This population crisis has precipitated the mass immigration of foreign medical workers from all over Asia, as well as the development of finely tuned artificial intelligence to step in where humans fall short.

In Tokyo, Angelica Navarro, a Filipina nurse works as caretaker for Sayoko Itou, a moody, secretive woman about to turn 100 years old. When Sayoko receives a cutting-edge robot "friend" that will teach itself to anticipate Sayoko's every need, Angelica fears for her livelihood. But more than a mere job is at stake, especially given the robot's preternatural ability to uncover the most deeply buried secrets of the humans around it.

Plum Rains is a hundred-year saga of forbidden love, hidden identities, the legacy of colonialism and the future of our relationships in a distracted and uncertain world.

The Plot Against Earth

NEVER FOLLOW A FALLING STAR!

The humanoid worlds of the galaxy were alarmed! Somehow, somewhere the mind-destroying hypnojewels were being trafficked in.

An uneasy Earth, newcomer to the ranks of the civilized planets, sent Lloyd Catton to the Interworld Crime Commission on Morilar to investigate. Although the Commission had made little progress until then, after his arrival things started to happen fast.

For it didn't take Catton long to realize that the hypnojewels were but the thin edge of a murderous wedge that was calculated to shove the Earth back again into the helpless isolation of a world returned to savagery

Recruit for Andromeda

Many had gone - none had returned.

In addition to being the man who coined the term 'the Big Bang', world-renowned astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle also produced a fine body of science fiction. The Andromeda Anthology contains the acclaimed duology A for Andromeda and Andromeda Breakthrough, co-written with John Elliot.

The close-knit group of scientists who work at the new radio telescope are shocked to receive a mysterious signal from the heart of the Andromeda galaxy. Working with mathematician Christine Jones, Dr John Fleming interprets the signal as the instructions to build a super-computer. When the computer begins to relay the information it receives from Andromeda, scientists find themselves possessing knowledge previously unknown to mankind, knowledge that could threaten the security of human life itself.

Table of Contents:

• A for Andromeda (1962)
• Andromeda Breakthrough (1964)

It concerns a group of scientists who detect a radio signal from a distant galaxy that contains instructions for the design of an advanced computer. When the computer is built, it gives the scientists instructions for the creation of a living organism named Andromeda, but one of the scientists, John Fleming, fears that Andromeda's purpose is to subjugate humanity.

From the dead constellation of Andromeda flashed continuously a long and intensely complicated message. Picked up during the testing of the world's most powerful radio-telescope, it proved to be a blueprint of a computer so advanced that it made all earth-built computers seem like children's counting beads and even produced a thinking, living human-being to interpret its needs. Could this be part of a fantastic plan to take over the earth?

Table of Contents:

• Andromeda One Introduction - essay by Peter Weston
• Appearance of Life - (1976) - short story by Brian W. Aldiss
• Starthinker 9 - (1976) - short story by Michael G. Coney
• Waltz of the Bodysnatchers - (1976) - novelette by Bob Shaw
• Travellers - (1976) - novelette by Robert Holdstock
• Valley of the Bushes - (1976) - short story by Naomi Mitchison
• An Infinite Summer - (1976) - novelette by Christopher Priest
• Doll - (1976) - short story by Terry Greenhough
• A Beast for Norn - (1976) - novelette by George R. R. Martin
• The Giant Killers - (1976) - novelette by Andrew M. Stephenson
• Seeing - (1976) - novelette by Harlan Ellison

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1977) - essay by Peter Weston
• King, Dragon - (1977) - short story by Tom Shippey
• Agoraphobia, A.D. 2000 - (1977) - short story by Ian Watson
• Crossing the Line - (1977) - novelette by Bob Shaw
• Fidei Defensor - (1977) - short story by Michael Scott Rohan
• Heritage - (1977) - short story by Scott Edelstein
• A Small Event - (1977) - novelette by Robert Holdstock
• By the Flicker of the One-Eyed Flame - (1977) - short story by William F. Wu
• Three Into One, Recurring - (1977) - novelette by Robert J. M. Rickard
• Accretion - (1977) - short story by David Langford
• One Immortal Man - (1977) - novella by Richard E. Geis

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Peter Weston
• Not Absolute - novelette by Tom Shippey
• Connections - short story by David Langford
• Silver Paw - short story by William F. Wu
• Brother Ape - novelette by David Redd
• The Cremation - novelette by Christopher Priest
• A Time-Span to Conjure With - short story by Ian Watson
• Black Glass - novelette by Fritz Leiber
• Wanderers and Travellers We Were - short story by Darrell Schweitzer
• Flare Time - (1978) - novella by Larry Niven

The United States government stands warned that sterilization procedures for returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere. When a probe satellite falls to the earth two years later, and lands in a desolate area of northeastern Arizona, the bodies that lie heaped and flung across the ground, have faces locked in frozen surprise. The terror has begun.

Fifty years after The Andromeda Strain made Michael Crichton a household name--and spawned a new genre, the technothriller--the threat returns, in a gripping sequel that is terrifyingly realistic and resonant.

The Evolution is Coming...

In 1967, an extraterrestrial microbe came crashing down to Earth and nearly ended the human race. Accidental exposure to the particle--designated The Andromeda Strain--killed every resident of the town of Piedmont, Arizona, save for an elderly man and an infant boy. Over the next five days, a team of top scientists assigned to Project Wildfire worked valiantly to save the world from an epidemic of unimaginable proportions. In the moments before a catastrophic nuclear detonation, they succeeded.

In the ensuing decades, research on the microparticle continued. And the world thought it was safe...

Deep inside Fairchild Air Force Base, Project Eternal Vigilance has continued to watch and wait for the Andromeda Strain to reappear. On the verge of being shut down, the project has registered no activity--until now. A Brazilian terrain-mapping drone has detected a bizarre anomaly of otherworldly matter in the middle of the jungle, and, worse yet, the tell-tale chemical signature of the deadly microparticle.

With this shocking discovery, the next-generation Project Wildfire is activated, and a diverse team of experts hailing from all over the world is dispatched to investigate the potentially apocalyptic threat.

But the microbe is growing--evolving. And if the Wildfire team can't reach the quarantine zone, enter the anomaly, and figure out how to stop it, this new Andromeda Evolution will annihilate all life as we know it.

Hundreds of years in the future, much has changed. Advances in medicine, technology, and science abound. Humanity has gone to the stars, found alien life, and established an empire. But some things never change...

All her life, Lady Catherine Carletto--Cat--has lived for the next party, the next lover, the next expensive toy. Until, in a bloodthirsty power grab, Imperial Princess Ophelia and her cadre of synth assassins murder her brother, the emperor, and go on to purge the galaxy of his friends and allies--including Cat's family.

Now Cat is on the run. And, like countless others before her, she finds sanctuary among the most dangerous of society's misfits--the Legion. Cat becomes Andromeda McKee: a woman with a mission--to bring down Empress Ophelia--or die trying.

In a different world, Lady Catherine "Cat" Carletto would never have left her pampered life behind. But when Princess Ophelia became Empress Ophelia in a coup that claimed the lives of the princess's brother and all who supported him, including the Carletto family, Cat had to hide--or die.

She became Legionnaire Andromeda McKee, and now she's a battle-scarred veteran who knows how to kill. And when she's summoned to Earth to receive the Imperial Order of Merit from the Empress herself, Andromeda realizes that the moment is coming when her revenge will be at hand...

Now a platoon leader, Legionnaire Andromeda McKee seems to have successfully left behind her true identity of Lady Catherine "Cat" Carletto, one of the last two surviving members of the Carletto family targeted for death by Empress Ophelia.

After failing at her one shot at vengeance, Andromeda had been questioning her own resolve. But now her uncle has been killed in a government raid back on Earth, leaving her as the last Carletto standing--and the family's only chance for justice…

A chance that comes when the empress's ship crashes on a hostile planet and Andromeda is assigned to head up the rescue mission. As a legionnaire, Andromeda McKee has countless kills under her belt. But when faced with her greatest enemy, it will be Cat Carletto who has to pull the trigger on the one who really matters…

They slept for hundreds of years, dreaming of a new home in the Andromeda galaxy. When finally they awake, their dreams of peace are shattered. These colonists -- turian, salarian, asari, human, and more -- face an uncharted galaxy and threats beyond understanding.

The Nexus is the core from which the colonists will explore their new home. Yet even before the arks arrive, the massive space station sustains critical damage. The entire mission is placed in jeopardy, and security director Sloane Kelly must reassert order while racing to identify the nature of the threat that faces them.

If she fails, the Andromeda Initiative could crumble.

An original novel written by Hugo Award-winning author N. K. Jemisin and Mass Effect creative director Mac Walters

Lieutenant Cora Harper joined the Systems Alliance to develop and enhance her powerful biotic talents. She was assigned to the asari commando unit Talein's Daughters, where she honed her abilities to become a skilled and deadly huntress.

Returning to Earth, Cora finds herself a stranger among other humans, and joins the Andromeda Initiative as Alec Ryder's second-in-command. The mission will send 100,000 colonists on a one-way, 600-year-long journey into the unknown. When essential--and dangerous--tech is stolen, Cora is assigned to recover it before it can be used against the Initiative, and end the mission before it can begin.

When privateer Captain Catherine Blackwood is enlisted to rescue her brother from a treacherous warlord, she finds herself on her most dangerous mission yet.

It's been years since Catherine Blackwood left the stodgy, repressive colony world of Avalon. Now the captain of the privateer vessel Andromeda, she is the master of her own destiny. But Catherine soon finds herself back on Avalon after receiving a plea for help from a most unlikely source: her estranged father, esteemed Avalon Council member Augustus Blackwood.

It seems Catherine's brother, the heir to the Blackwood aristocracy, has gone off in search of treasure on the failed, chaotic world of Zanzibar. But Cecil Blackwood's plans have gone very, very wrong, and he has been taken hostage and held for ransom by a fearsome local warlord. Augustus, knowing his daughter is the only one who can be trusted to return his son safely, swallows his pride and hires Catherine to bring her brother home.

Catherine takes the job--but it won't be easy. Just getting to Zanzibar proves treacherous. And once she arrives, things only get worse. If she is to save her brother, Catherine Blackwood must face down danger at every turn and uncover a mystery four million years in the making.

DRAGON AWARD NOMINEE. Privateer Captain Blackwood and the crew of the Andromeda are back in this swashbuckling sequel to Her Brother's Keeper.

THE RAZOR'S EDGE OF TYRANNY AND FREEDOM

THE EXILED LEADER: He was known as the Butcher of Sargusport. Zander Krycek made a choice that saved his world of Ithaca, but doomed his reputation and banished him to a planet far, far away.

THE EVIL EMPIRE: The Orlov Combine intends to swallow Ithaca in the same way they have devoured so many worlds, creating a "company planet" where the residents are little better than slaves.

THE DAUGHTER: Adisa Masozi never knew her father, but was taught he was a monster. Now she must reclaim her father's legacy of leadership. And the place to start is with the mysterious aliens who also inhabit Ithaca.

THE NATIVES: The saurians have held themselves aloof from galactic politics for eons in order to regain the strength to exact their revenge on an ancient foe. They have the means to resist the Combine. If they can be convinced to help.

THE PRIVATEER: Enter privateer Captain Catherine Blackwood and her ship, the Andromeda. Blackwood and her crew have handled dangerous cargo and dicey situations before. Now, they'll have to navigate assassination attempts, warring factions, and civil unrest. But Catherine has made a promise, and the freedom of a world hangs in the balance.

Andromeda Nebula is an cosmic sf opera about a post-capitalist society one thousand or so years into the far future. The people of this society have made contact with extra-terrestrials via a long distance communications network known as 'the Great Circle'. In the novel the Great Circle pre-exists human contact. Humans of Earth made contact with the Great Circle -- an achievement made possible by the powerful engines, receivers and transmitters of a planetary society rationally organised in a post market fashion.

The activities with which most humans are creatively engaged are scientific research and artistic expression. The material necessities of life are produced by automatic machinery, or by the targeted use of human labour in industrial areas not completely automatized. The latter activities are voluntarily organised and are often conducted on a temporary basis in-between the more usual scientific and artistic activities.