Search Worlds Without End

It is the most powerful technology known to humanity, microscopically small, allowing its user to control and change other's moods and emotions, and even to reprogram his or her own genetic structure. Its potential as the ultimate weapon or an instrument of peace has led to its ban by the Commonwealth.

Someone has stolen this outlaw technology, the Bohr Maker, from the secret files of the Commonwealth Police, at the command of a man with a genetic time bomb coded into his DNA. Nikko Jiang-Tibayan has only weeks to live, and he will do anything to stay only weeks to live, and he will do anything to stay alive, even if it means the end of life as we know it.

But then the Bohr Maker falls into the hands of a beautiful young woman in the poverty-stricken slums of Sunda. Its technology will make her both fugitive and messiah. The object of frantic searches by a walking dead man and a high-tech police force, the Maker holds the key to the total destruction of humanity -- or its miraculous rebirth....

In a war of belief, faith is a virus, and it's spreading fast. Remnants of an alien nanotechnology infest the surface of the planet, Deception Well, giving rise to deadly plagues that make the Well uninhabitable-or so most believe.

Jupiter Apolinario saw it differently. He believed the planet was host to an ancient, alien mechanism of transformation meant to embrace all life forms in an ecstatic communion. Jupiter disappeared on the planet along with a handful of followers, though whether they were taken by death or transcendence, no one could say.

Ten years later, Jupiter's son, Lot, stands at the center of conflict. Like his father, Lot has a seductive presence, and a charismatic nature that seems more-than-human. People are helplessly drawn to him. Their faith in him is strong and their numbers are growing, but Lot is beset with doubts about his father's teachings. So he sets out to learn the truth about Jupiter, about his own powerful calling as a prophet, and about the real nature of Deception Well, where a razor-thin line divides bliss from damnation.

Enjoy all four books of the Nanotech Succession, a collection of stand-alone novels exploring the rise of nanotechnology and the strange and fascinating future that follows.

Aboard Null Boundary, a giant starship thousands of years old, four survivors of an ancient alien war are making a desperate journey: Lot, son of a fiery prophet and carrier of an insidious virus that spreads a cultlike religious mania among those it infects; Urban, Lot's boyhood friend from the city of Silk, and a man in search of challenge and adventure; Clemantine, cast adrift when her world was destroyed, and yearning for revenge; and Nikko, sometimes a living man, but always the ship's disembodied mind.

They are bound for unknown territory. Ahead of them loom vast, lightless clouds of dust and gas where stars are born, and where the alien Chenzeme are believed to live. The Chenzeme are an enigmatic race whose automated warships have ravaged the living worlds of the galaxy's Orion arm for millions of years. But why? Null Boundary's crew is driven to find out--though in their quest to discover the source of the Chenzeme, they must also explore the terrible truth of their own past, the meaning of revenge, and the price each one of them is willing to pay for survival. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

For Katie Kishida, the nanotechnology revolution begins with an act of love. Katie is a young mother with a successful career and a loving marriage, when her perfect life is shattered by the sudden death of her husband, Tom. Putting her faith in a science that hasn't been invented yet, Katie has Tom's body placed in cryonic suspension-frozen in liquid nitrogen against a time when advances in nanotechnology might heal his injuries and restore his life. Katie never suspects the consequences that will follow.

Tom's death and his costly entombment spark immediate political controversy. It's a debate that only grows more passionate as the years go by. Katie's life is taken over by the need to defend her husband's future and to shepherd into existence the controversial technologies that might let him live again . . . even as she's haunted by the question: Does Tom really want to come back?

Tech-Heaven is a compelling story of devotion and unyielding determination set amid the tumultuous politics of our time, in a world that is teetering on the cusp of a technological revolution like no other in history. Enjoy all four books of the Nanotech Succession, a collection of stand-alone novels exploring the rise of nanotechnology and the strange and fascinating future that follows-beginning tomorrow and reaching far into time.

Deception Well is a world on the edge, home to an isolated remnant surviving at the farthest reach of human expansion. All across the frontier, other worlds have succumbed to the relentless attacks of robotic alien warships, while hundreds of light years away, the core of human civilization--those star systems closest to Earth, known as the Hallowed Vasties--have all fallen to ruins. Powerful telescopes can see only dust and debris where once there were orbital mega-structures so huge they eclipsed the light of their parent stars.

No one knows for sure what caused the Hallowed Vasties to fail, but a hardened adventurer named Urban intends to find out. He has the resources to do it. He commands a captive alien starship fully capable of facing the dangers that lie beyond Deception Well.

With a ship's company of explorers and scientists, Urban is embarking on a voyage of re-discovery. They will be the first in centuries to confront the hazards of an inverted frontier as they venture back along the path of human migration. Their goal: to unravel the mystery of the Hallowed Vasties and to discover what monstrous life might have grown up among the ruins.

A Lost Ship - A New World

Urban is no longer master of the fearsome starship Dragon. Driven out by the hostile, godlike entity, Lezuri, he has taken refuge aboard the most distant vessel in his outrider fleet.

Though Lezuri remains formidable, he is a broken god, commanding only a fragment of the knowledge that once was his. He is desperate to return home to the ring-shaped artificial world he created at the height of his power, where he can recover the memory of forgotten technologies.

Urban is desperate to stop him. He races to reach the ring-shaped world first, only to find himself stranded in a remote desert, imperiled by a strange flood of glowing "silver" that rises in the night like fog - a lethal fog that randomly rewrites the austere, Earthlike landscape. He has only a little time to decipher the mystery of the silver and to master its secrets. Lezuri is coming - and Urban must level up before he can hope to vanquish the broken god.

"Tanjiri is not for you. You are not ready to encounter what exists there."

So Lezuri spoke in warning, long ago. Urban still possesses the strange gift--the impossible puzzle--Lezuri gave him that day. A needle, ultra-thin and twelve centimeters long, with a silvery surface that slices light into rainbow glints. All Lezuri's knowledge lies locked within that needle. Urban has only to discover the trick of opening it, to gain that knowledge for himself--but the needle remains an enigma.

Now Dragon and its fleet of outriders has reached the periphery of Tanjiri system. The belt of ruins lies ahead: a chaos of remnant megastructures from a fallen civilization. Farther in, an Earthlike world orbits in the company of a miraculous living moon created less than 4,000 years ago. An entity--one greater even than Lezuri--must have made that moon. And yet the system is silent. No one, nothing, has answered Dragon's hails.

Perhaps the entity is gone? But Urban doesn't believe that. He is sure that when the fleet enters Tanjiri system, he will meet this maker of worlds--with the lives of everyone he loves at stake. Better, safer, to encounter this entity from a position of strength, armed with all the knowledge and power contained within the needle.

The starship Dragon, accompanied by its fleet of outriders, is faring ever deeper into that region known as the Hallowed Vasties. Here, at the shattered heart of ancient human civilization, once-living worlds were ripped apart by the dimensional intrusions of a Blade. Yet despite the apocalyptic-scale destruction, the fleet's telescopes have picked out signs of life among the ruins and the ship's company is eager to go on--but should they?

From his post on Dragon's high bridge, Urban looks ahead to the smaller starship, Griffin, now far, far in front of the fleet. The mind that pilots that ship--a stern and colder version of his lover, Clemantine--has gone silent. The implication chills him. Like Dragon, Griffin was an alien warship, designed to destroy without mercy all living worlds, and it still has a mind of its own. The question that haunts Urban: Has that alien mind somehow reclaimed control of Griffin?

It's a question he must answer, and soon. Every wonder that lies ahead--and every ambition hidden within his heart--is at risk while Griffin's true nature remains unknown.