Mike Ashley The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction is a new collection that features 25 hard sci-fi stories that really push the boundaries, from names like Charles Stross, Robert Reed, Peter Hamilton, and Neal Asher. Highlights feature a perpetual war fought within a cosmic string; a machine that detects alternate worlds and creates a choice of Christs; murder in virtual reality; and a spaceship so large that there's an entire planetary system within it.

Chris Bentley From its launch 1965, TV Century 21 (later known simply as TV 21) was the smash-hit British comic of the 1960s. Its in-house tie-in with the science-fiction puppet series created by Gerry Anderson's Century 21 Productions guaranteed success with young fans excited to read more about their TV heroes, in an era before video technology enabled viewers to relive favorite TV shows at will. Thunderbirds, Lady Penelope, Fireball XL5, Stingray, Captain Scarlet, and Joe 90 all burst forth in full color from the magazine's packed pages, in stories illustrated by such giants of the comic industry as Frank Bellamy, Don Harley, Mike Noble, Ron and Gerry Embleton, and "Cervic," the pen-name used by the team of Carlos Pino and Vicente Alcazar. This superb showcase of Anderson's most popular characters will be an essential purchase for all Anderson fans and all enthusiasts for classic British comics.

Chris Bentley Meticulous research and painstaking attention to detail have gone into these multiangle views and cutaways. Skydiver, the futuristic gull-wing cars, the SHADO interceptors, the Space Intruder Detector, and installations such as SHADO's Moonbase complex have never looked so exciting or so realistic. Nick Foreman's CGI illustrations—the first time this technique has been used in an official Gerry Anderson book—are accompanied by detailed notes on design, specification, and performance. Following in the footsteps of The Complete Book of Gerry Anderson's UFO, this book will be a must-have purchase for all true Anderson fans.

Ben Bova

H.R. Giger

Alastair Reynolds Alastair Reynolds's first novel is "hard" SF on an epic scale, crammed with technological marvels and immensities. Its events take place over a relatively short period, but have roots a billion years old—when the Dawn War ravaged our galaxy.

Sylveste is the only man ever to return alive and sane from a Shroud, an enclave in space protected by awesome gravity-warping defenses: "a folding a billion times less severe should have required more energy than was stored in the entire rest-mass of the galaxy." Now an intuition he doesn't understand makes him explore the dead world Resurgam, whose birdlike natives long ago tripped some booby trap that made their own sun erupt in a deadly flare.

Meanwhile, the vast, decaying lightship Nostalgia for Infinity is coming for Sylveste, whose dead father (in AI simulation) could perhaps help the Captain, frozen near absolute zero yet still suffering monstrous transformation by nanotech plague. Most of Infinity's tiny crew have hidden agendas—Khouri the reluctant contract assassin believes she must kill Sylveste to save humanity—and there are two bodiless stowaways, one no longer human and one never human. Shocking truths emerge from bluff, betrayal, and ingenious lies.

The trail leads to a neutron star where an orbiting alien construct has defenses to challenge the Infinity's planet-wrecking superweapons.

At the heart of this artifact, the final revelations detonate—most satisfyingly. Dense with information and incident, this longish novel has no surplus fat and seems almost too short. A sparkling SF debut. —David Langford, Amazon.co.uk

Alastair Reynolds Late in the twenty-sixth century, the human race accidentally triggers the Inhibitors. Fifty years later, these alien killing machines-designed to detect intelligent life and destroy it-are fast approaching.

The only hope for humanity lies in the recovery of a secret cache of doomsday weapons-and a renegade named Clavain is determined to find them. But other factions want the weapons for their own devices.

And the weapons themselves have another agenda altogether...

Alastair Reynolds Set in the Revelation Space universe-the first short story collection by "one of SF's best and most ambitious novelists." (SFX)

With eight short stories and novellas- including three original to this collection- Galactic North imparts the centuries-spanning events that have produced the dark and turbulent world of Revelation Space.

Centuries from now, the basic right to expand human intelligence-beyond its natural limits-has become a war-worthy cause for the Demarchists and Conjoiners. Only vast lighthugger starships bind these squabbling colonies together, manned by the panicky and paranoid Ultras. And the hyperpigs just try to keep their heads down.

The rich get richer. And everyone tries not to think about the worrying number of extinct alien civilizations turning up on the outer reaches of settled space...because who's to say that humanity won't be next?

Alastair Reynolds Tanner Mirabel was a security specialist who never made a mistake - until the day a woman in his care was blown away by Argent Reivich, a vengeful young postmortal. Tanner's pursuit of Reivich takes him across light-years of space to Chasm City, the domed human settlement on the otherwise inhospitable planet of Yellowstone. But Chasm City is not what it was. The one-time high-tech utopia has become a Gothic nightmare: a nanotechnological virus has corrupted the city's inhabitants as thoroughly as it has the buildings and machines. Before the chase is done, Tanner will have to confront truths which reach back centuries, towards deep space and an atrocity history barely remembers.