Gregory Benford

Starship Century is an anthology by authors from both science and fiction writing backgrounds, illustrating some of the tech and ideology behind the illustrious goal of traveling to another star within the next century. Edited by Gregory Benford, New York Times bestselling science fiction author, and James Benford, leading expert on space propulsion, Starship Century includes science fiction by Neal Stephenson, David Brin, Joe Haldeman, Nancy Kress, Stephen Baxter, Gregory Benford, John Cramer, Richard A. Lovett, and Allen Steele, as well as scientific articles by Stephen Hawking, Freeman Dyson, Robert Zubrin, Peter Schwartz, Martin Rees, Ian Crawford, James Benford, Geoffrey Landis, Paul Davies and Adam Crowl. This groundbreaking anthology of science and science fiction is based on findings and discussions of the 100-Year Starship Symposium held in 2011. In it, top scientists tackle the opportunities for our long-term future in space. Alongside them, science fiction authors explore the dream and the possibilities.

Would your body work better with some artificial parts? Will you live longer, perhaps a lot longer, than you now expect. The next decade promises another qualitative shift in the way we view technology, as once purely fictional concepts - robots, cyborg parts, and the many variations in between - become part of reality. This book treats the landscape of human self-change and robotic development as poles of the same phenomenon. Can we go too far in making ourselves machinelike or making machines resemble us? Once made, what will such creatures think about us? These questions will arise in myriad ways in the next few decades, as we press against boundaries that only a short while ago existed only in works of the imagination. Written in a lively and provocative style, this is a readable book about the accumulation of small scientific advances that add up to something large and challenging.

The first manned mission to Mars has been a resounding success, and excitement grows as more new discoveries are made. However, one discovery continues to defy rational explanation - the 'marsmat' - a complex anaerobic life-form found in the planet's honeycomb of tunnels. This raises questions about the nature and meaning of life itself which will lead the curious and the driven to Pluto and beyond, to the cold void at the fringes of the solar system.

The Nebula Award-winning author's fifth installment of his classic Galactic Center series is reissued in this special edition that contains a teaser chapter from The Sunborn.

The fourth volume in the Galactic Center series follows the struggles of the small band of humans who have escaped the machine intelligence and have populated a new planet where grave dangers--including part-organic, part-machine beings--await them. Reprint.

A gripping new novel of the far future by Benford, the multiple award-winning author of "The Martian Race, Timescape," and "Eater. Beyond Infinity" takes a scientist's imagination to the ends of time. Set a billion years into the future, the novel involves the idea of a Library of Life, which preserves earlier life forms.

Lancer, a spaceship built to specifications found in the computers of an alien derelict, journeys to the star, Ra, from which the Earth has received mysterious radio transmissions in English. Reprint.

In 2034, the most powerful, most precisely tuned organization in the history of humankind, created to explore the solar system, depends on the judgment of a single man who finds that he must seek something that is beyond others' abilities to comprehend. Reprint.

Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy is one of the high-water marks of science fiction. It is the monumental story of a Galactic Empire in decline, and the secret society of scientists who seek to shorten the inevitable Dark Age with the science of psychohistory. Now, with the permission -- and blessing -- of the Asimov estate, the epic saga continues. Fate -- and a cruel Emperor's arbitrary power -- have thrust Hari Seldon into the First Ministership of the Empire against his will. As the story opens, Hari is about to leave his quiet professorship and take on the all but impossible task of administering 25 million inhabited worlds from the all-steel planet of Trantor. With the help of his beautiful bio-engineered "wife" Dors and his alien companion Yugo, Seldon is still developing the science that will transform history, never dreaming that it will ultimately pit him against future history's most awesome threat.

Scientists in the 60's struggle to interpret a message from the future and prevent catastrophe by changing the course of science itself.