This is the story of a young man leaving family and friends on Earth for a job. He finds friends, a new family, drama, conflict, and war. He also finds love and a path to a better future.
Space is huge and governments control as much of the space around and between their systems as they can, but there are still a very small parts of space not claimed by any government. Very few people are born on the ships travelling between the stars, and even fewer are born in the unclaimed areas of space, but that one thousandth of one percent who are so born are called Space Born and have some very odd citizenship rights and duties.
As you read this, something very real and old is passing behind our Sun. We call it 3I/ATLAS, the third confirmed interstellar object ever detected. Each story that follows explores a different possible future that this ancient visitor might reveal to humanity as it comes around the Sun. These are meditations on what we might learn from something that has traveled far further than we know how to… (yet).
Once again it is up to Jamie Retief to save another diplomatic mission. Terra has recently signed a treaty with the planet Petreac. But revolution threatens and the Terrans must save the Nenni cast or their mission will end in abject failure.
Slippery Jim diGriz--a.k.a. The Stainless Steel Rat--is back in this classic adventure, originally published in the April, 1960 issue of Astounding Science Fiction! It might seem a little careless to lose track of something as big as a battleship. but interstellar space is on a different scale of magnitude. But a misplaced battleship--in the wrong hands!--can be most dangerous.
The Lost Continent is one of the least-known of Burroughs' thrilling science-fiction tales. In the year 2137, civilization has been in decline for nearly two centuries, and war-torn Europe is but a distant memory to the inhabitants of the isolated United States. But an American adventurer rediscovers the Old World, which has become a strange and savage land.
The ability to read minds isn't an unmixed blessing, so learns George Hanlon, Secret Operative of the Inter-Stellar Corps. His unique gift helps him with his assignments, of course -- except that he has a lot of trouble with alien minds. He encounters a whole planet full of alien minds on Estrella when the semi-human inhabitants of this Earth-like world of another sun decide that they want nothing to do with the Federation Planets.
A man retired from a secret government agency, hoped that his time with them was through. Little did he know that an enemy from the past was still on earth.