Showing results for "Michael Scott" in Hard Science Fiction

A classic thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Crichton, Sphere is a bravura demonstration of what he does better than anyone: riveting storytelling that combines frighteningly plausible, cutting-edge science and technology with pulse-pounding action and serious chills.

Alex went for a walk in the woods and ended up changing the world. Chased by a bear, or maybe a squirrel, he finds a spaceship that lets him control an AI and nanomachines. Join his adventure as he changes the world and the galaxy as he builds the Nano Empire.

The premier's adult daughter begins to behave with an utter absence of wherewithal and insight. An admiral's dreamboat son engages in five years of profligate behavior after his sterling, top-of-his-class academy graduation. A doctor called in to examine both scions determines they're mutaclones.

Engineer Janet Thompson steps through a Doorport to San Diego, but lands in San Francisco instead. Trying to fix the portal system, she realizes that years of use have begun to have an effect on our world. As the space-time permutations become increasingly numerous and pervasive, Janet must save our dimension from complete collapse. The worldwide Doorport network had operated without a glitch for decades. What could possibly be going wrong?

After three people disappear into the mysterious portals that hold the empire together, Culann Penrose is called in to investigate. After he discovers that the ancient system binding the gates is crumbling, he orders them to be shut down. Meanwhile the Druids, still seething at his denunciation of magic 20 years ago, oppose Penrose’s plans.

This anthology, with an introduction by Robert Silverberg, offers a sweeping survey of robots as depicted throughout literature. Since the Iliad—in which we are shown golden statues built by Hephaestus “with minds and wisdoms”—humans have been fascinated by the idea of artificial life. From the Argonautica to the medieval Jewish legend of the Golem and Ambrose Bierce’s tale of a chess-playing robot, the idea of what robots are—and who creates them—can be drastically different.