Cirrus@Austlit

'I have died three times, and three times been reborn, though I am not yet twenty in the old earth years by which it is still the fashion to measure time. This is the story of my three deaths, and my life between. My name is Khemri.

'Taken from his parents as a child and equipped with biological and technological improvements, Khemri is now an enhanced human being, trained and prepared for the glory of becoming a Prince of the Empire. Not to mention the ultimate glory: should he die, and be deemed worthy, he will be reborn...Which is just as well, because no sooner has Prince Khemri graduated to full Princehood than he learns the terrible truth behind the Empire: there are ten million princes, and all of them want each other dead.' (Publisher's blurb)

'Vakov Fukasawa used to be a Reaper: a bio-enhanced soldier fighting for the Harmony, against a brutal invading empire. He's still fighting now, on a different battlefield: taking on stormtech. To make him a perfect soldier, Harmony injected him with the DNA of an extinct alien race, altering his body chemistry and leaving him permanently addicted to adrenaline and aggression. But although they meant to create soldiers, at the same time Harmony created a new drug market that has millions hopelessly addicted to their own body chemistry.

'Now, Vakov may have walked away from Harmony, but they still know where to find him . . .' (Publication summary)

'Eighteen-year-old art student Susan Arkshaw arrives in London in search of her father. But before she can question crime boss Frank Thringley he's turned to dust by the prick of a silver hatpin in the hands of the outrageously attractive Merlin. Merlin is one of the youngest members of a secret society of booksellers with magical powers who police the mythic Old World wherever it impinges on the New World - in addition to running several bookshops, of course! Merlin also has a quest of his own: to find the Old World entity who arranged the murder of his mother. Their investigations attract attention from enemies of the Old and New Worlds. Soon they become involved in an even more urgent task to recover the grail that is the source of the left-handed booksellers' power, before it is used to destroy the booksellers and rouse the hordes of the mythic past. As the search for the grail becomes strangely intertwined with both their quests, they start to wonder… Is Susan's long-lost father a bookseller, or something altogether more mysterious?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

In a universe where the laws of physics and the speed of light are completely alien to our own, the travellers on the ship Peerless have completed a generations-long struggle to develop advanced technology in a desperate attempt to save their home world. But as tensions mount over the risks of turning the ship around and starting the long voyage home, a new complication arises: the prospect of constructing a messaging system that will give the Peerless news of its own future.

The generation ship the 'Peerless' is suffering from a population explosion, and the only way to reduce the number of children is by drastically limiting the food intake of the females, which will trigger a natural response to famine and stop procreation. So population control consists of two barbaric choices: starvation, or suicide.

'In Yalda's universe, light has no universal speed and its creation generates energy. On Yalda's world, plants make food by emitting their own light into the dark night sky. As a child, Yalda witnesses one of a series of strange meteors, the Hurtlers, that are entering the planetary system at an immense, unprecedented speed. It becomes apparent that her world is in imminent danger–and the task of dealing with the Hurtlers will require knowledge and technology far beyond anything her civilization has yet achieved! Only one solution seems tenable: if a spacecraft can be sent on a journey at sufficiently high speed, its trip will last many generations for those on board, but it will return after just a few years have passed at home. The travelers will have a chance to discover the science their planet urgently needs, and bring it back in time to avert disaster.' (Trove record)

Collected together for the first time are twelve stories by the incomparable Greg Egan, one of those most exciting writers of science fiction working today.

In these glimpses into the future Egan continues to explore the essence of what it is to be human, and the nature of what - and who - we are, in stories that range from parables of contemporary human conflict and ambition to far-future tales of our immortal descendants.

Return to the universe of the meta-civilisation known as the Amalgam, which Egan explored in his critically acclaimed novel Incandescence: 'Riding the Crocodile', which recounts an epic endeavour a million years from now to bridge the divide between the Amalgam and the reclusive Aloof; 'Glory', set in the same future, in which two archaeologists strive to decipher the artefacts of an ancient civilisation, and 'Hot Rock', where an obscure, sunless world conceals mind-spinning technological marvels, bitter fractional struggles, and a many-layered secret history.

This superb collection also includes the title story, the Hugo Award-winning 'Oceanic': a boy is inducted into a religion that becomes centre of his life, but as an adult he must face evidence that casts a new light on his faith.

Oceanic: travel into the worlds of the future in the hands of a master craftsman. (Publisher's blurb)

'A million years from now, the galaxy is divided between the vast, cooperative meta-civilisation known as the Amalgam, and the silent occupiers of the galactic core known as the Aloof. The Aloof have long rejected all attempts by the Amalgam to enter their territory, but have occasionally permitted travellers to take a perilous ride as unencrypted data in their communications network, providing a short-cut across the galaxy's central bulge. When Rakesh encounters a traveller, Lahl, who claims she was woken by the Aloof on such a journey and shown a meteor full of traces of DNA, he accepts her challenge to try to find the uncharted world deep in the Aloof's territory from which the meteor originated.

'Roi and Zak live inside the Splinter, a world of rock that swims in a sea of light they call the Incandescence. Living on the margins of a rigidly organised society, they seek to decipher the subtle clues that might reveal the true nature of the Splinter. In fact, the Splinter is orbiting a black hole, which is about to capture a neighbouring star, wreaking havoc. As the signs of danger grow, Roi, Zak, and a growing band of recruits struggle to understand and take control of their fate. Meanwhile, Rakesh is gradually uncovering their remote history, and his search for the lost DNA world ultimately leads him to a civilisation trapped in cultural stagnation, and startling revelations about the true nature and motives of the Aloof.' (Publisher's blurb)

'It's late in the 21st century and bioengineering is now so common that people are able to modify their minds in any way they wish. It is an era which has been shaped by information systems so vast that security, in any form, is easily breached. Now, you can be whatever you want to be, and do whatever you want to do. On Earth anyway. One night, thirty three years ago, the stars went out. 'The Bubble' - a perfect sphere centred on the sun - appeared in the sky, isolating the solar system from the rest of the universe. For thirty-three years, humanity has lived with the religious cults and terrorism which spawned in the wake of the darkness. We are now alone. Humanity has been cut off: quarantined.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Distress is 'set in 2055 when the centre of Sydney is virtually deserted, as most work and entertainment is conducted at home via broadband optical fibre networks. Egan's main character, science journalist Andrew Worth, is sent to 'Stateless', a bioengineered Pacific coral island to interview a South African Nobel Prize winner who is intending to reveal a major breakthrough in human comprehension techniques. Various competing interests, however, descend on the island and Worth becomes an unwitting agent of change. Biotechnology implants, quantum physics, voluntary autism and mutant cholera are just some of the ingredients mixed into the mystery of who wishes to kill the Nobel Laureate, and for what purpose' (Colin Steele, SF Commentary No 77, p.54).

When an ancient golden bear is found walled up in a dilapidated St Petersburg bathhouse, researcher Daniel St Clare and his frosty colleague Em Hayward set out for Arkhanelsk to verify its age. But in the deep of night they are mysteriously set adrift. Lost and exhausted, they turn north, sinking ever deeper into the secrets and terrors of the Russian landscape. Daniel's lost love, the wild and beautiful Rosa Kovalenka, knows the only way to save him is to outwit the haunted Chenchikov family. But their home, deep in unknowable, impenetrable forests, is a shadowy tangle of grief, desire and treachery. Only Papa Grigory, full of tales and riddles of times past, seems to have the knowledge they need...But will he destroy them all in order for his world to survive? - from Libraries Australia catalogue entry (Pymble, 2005 imprint).

'Ten stories that delight, shock, intrigue, amuse and move the reader to tears with their imaginative reach, their dark humour, their subtlety, their humanity and depth of feeling: As part of a public execution, a young boy forlornly helps to sing his sister down. A servant learns about grace and loyalty from a mistress who would rather dance with Gypsies than sit on her throne. A terrifying encounter with a demonic angel gives a young man the strength he needs to break free of his oppressor. On a bleak and dreary afternoon a gleeful shooting spree leads to tragedy for a desperate clown unable to escape his fate.'

'Black Juice offers glimpses into familiar, shadowy worlds that push the boundaries of the spirit and leave the mind haunted with the knowledge that black juice runs through us all.'

'The first of a suite of novels inspired by the ancient myths of Northern Europe. Berlin in autumn: Christine Starlight is living in an artist's colony in the crumbling urban shadows of the old east. Her lover Jude is a painter whose patience and beauty have eased her long battle with chronic pain, but Christine begins to be haunted by recollections of her childhood, of a little girl's disappearance and the flapping of a blackbird's wings. Then her life is rocked by the return of her childhood friend - a crimson-haired beauty who presides over a land where a witch lives in a well, a wolf is the queen's counsellor, and fate turns on the fall of an autumn leaf. As Christine grows addicted to Mayfridh's faery world, where mortals feel no pain, so Mayfridh grows addicted to Christine's, and falls deeply and dangerously in love with Jude. But while jealousies, betrayals and secrets begin to unpick the threads of their lives, they are unaware of the ghastly threat which stalks them: the cruel and brilliant billionaire Immanuel Z, who is hunting faery bones for a grand sculpture.'

Source: Publisher's website www.voyageronline.com.au (Sighted 21/4/10)