Short Story Collections

Otto McGavin is peaceful and idealistic by nature, an Anglo-Buddhist, who seeks employment with the Confederacion because he believes in it and its mission to protect the rights of humans and nonhumans. The only problem is that the Confederacion needs him as a Prime Operator for its secret service, the TBII, and the TBII wants Otto as a spy, a thief and an assassin. It's not, of course, a problem for the Confederacion, which simply uses immersion therapy and hypnosis for Otto's training, and then sends him out in deep cover on a variety of dangerous missions on a number of bizarre worlds. But for Otto, it's a different matter: what he has to witness and what he is forced to do take a terrible toll on him ...

A Science Fiction novel of both a speculative and fantasy nature, with a bit of social interaction and technology thrown in, by a well respected author in the genre

L'astronave Starschool (Scuola stellare), offre un'esperienza educativa unica per i giovani destinati a diventare i leader dei loro mondi, specialmente nei campi collegati alte relazioni politiche e commerciali interplanetarie. Durante i cinque anni del corso Starschool visiterà sedici pianeti della Confederazione terrestre, prescelti per il loro interesse culturale e storico (come M'walime o la Terra) o sulla base pragmatica della loro importanza politica. Su alcuni mondi, come Mundovidrio, gli studenti avranno modo di migliorare le loro possibilità mentali e culturali, passando ad esempio un mese nell'esplorazione sistematica degli stati della coscienza, ma su altri, come Hell, saranno sottoposti a terribili prove, in un breve ma arduo corso nelle discipline militari, perché in realtà l'universo non è poi molto interessato alla bella ciò che conta è la capacità dì sopravvivenza. E questa è la lezione numero uno da imparare a bordo delta gigantesca astronave d'addestramento. Quelli che non riescono a imparare la lezione numero uno raramente hanno motivo di preoccuparsi di ciò che accadrà in seguito...

This compilation of speculative fiction includes two novellas, "Seasons" and "You Can Never Go Back," four shorter works, and a running series of afterwords that reveal the author's inspiration and storybuilding methods

Includes four Confederacion stories, five essays, and several poems. Color dustjacket art by Tom Kidd.

An award-winning visionary and true master of worlds and wonders, the man whom author David Brin calls "one of the nest prophetic writers of our times" once again demonstrates the breathtaking scope and startling power of his imagination--transporting the reader across space and time, into the heart of darkness and the soul of madness. From the spinetingling account of an intergalactic poacher's rite of passage, to an erotic and ultimately uplifting modern fable of inner scars and otherworldly transformation, here are fifteen remarkable tales and "story poems"--featuring four HUGO and NEBULA Award-winners, including the classic novella THE HEMINGWAY HOAX. These are stories that sing with a unique and haunting voice--stories of war's monsters, of brutal art and lost stars. . .and a brief, miraculous moment called childhood, when a young girl can actually fly.

"Saul's Death" is a collection of poems from the mind and heart of award-winning novelist Joe Haldeman, author of "Forever Peace" and "The Forever War."

6 years of stories from the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author. Here are fifteen stories-never before collected-that tread upon familiar Haldeman territory, as well as explore the outer reaches of his phenomenal imagination.

Joe Haldeman has been one of the world's most universally admired and beloved science fiction writers for more than four decades. He has earned the respect of both lifelong science fiction fans and mainstream literary writers, both for the originality of his concepts and for the unsurpassed clarity of his prose, and his characters are among the most memorable in all of science fiction. This first career retrospective of Haldeman's finest work ranges from early tales such as 'Hero'--which instantly earned his reputation and provided the basis for his classic novel The Forever War--to mid-career masterpieces like 'Seasons' and 'The Hemingway Hoax,' his major tribute to a favorite literary godfather, to very recent stories such as 'Sleeping Dogs' and 'Complete Sentence.' Haldeman has provided original story introductions for this new landmark collection. What emerges from The Best of Joe Haldeman is a stunning portrait of a writer who may be more complex and varied than even his most devoted fans suspect. He can build a touching far-future romance from a Shakespeare sonnet ('For White Hill'), depict with ruthless intensity the horrors of war ('Graves'), and ask classic science fictional 'what if' questions worthy of Robert A. Heinlein, to whom Haldeman has often been compared as a worthy successor.