CATACLYSM

It's 2026, and catastrophe has struck from an unexpected source. The Alpha Centauri supernova has risen like a second sun, rushing Earth toward its last summer. Floods, fires, starvation and disease paralyze the planet. In a blue aurora flash of gamma rays, all microchips worldwide are destroyed, leaving an already devastated Earth without communications, transportation, weaponry, or medicine.

The disaster sets three groups of survivors on separate quests. A militant cult seizes the opportunity to free their leader, known as the Eye of God, from the long-term coma to which a court sentenced her. Three cancer patients also search for a man in judicial sleep: the brilliant scientist-and monstrous criminal--who alone can continue the experimental treatment that keeps them alive. From a far greater distance come the survivors of the first manned Mars expedition, struggling homeward to a world that has changed far beyond their darkest fears. And standing at the crossroads is one man, U.S. President Saul Steinmetz, who faces a crucial decision that will affect the fate of his own people . . . and the world.

Born to a crack cocaine-addicted mother who abandoned him, Job Napoleon Salk would live to survive the horrors of a corruptly-run orphanage, life on the streets--even first love. But could he survive the dreaded TANDI, the toxic, nuclear disposal unit for all of America's "unwanted?"

Charles Sheffield Bundle Volume I

Sight of Proteus

by Charles Sheffield

Proteus Unbound

by Charles Sheffield

Proteus in the Underworld

by Charles Sheffield

Trader's World

by Charles Sheffield

Godspeed

by Charles Sheffield

Charles Sheffield Bundle Volume II

Cold As Ice

by Charles Sheffield

The Ganymede Club

by Charles Sheffield

Dark As Day

by Charles Sheffield

Brother to Dragons

by Charles Sheffield

Vectors

by Charles Sheffield

Charles Sheffield Bundle Volume III

Aftermath

by Charles Sheffield

Starfire

by Charles Sheffield

The Mind Pool

by Charles Sheffield

Hidden Variables

by Charles Sheffield

Georgia on My Mind and Other Places

by Charles Sheffield

Twenty-five years ago there was a great interplanetary war in the Solar System. It was a suicidal spasm in which terrible weapons were created and used; in which nine billion people were killed. The rivalries that led to the war are not gone. And a few of those deadly weapons remain–some still orbiting the sun in the debris of destroyed ships, some deliberately placed in storage.

Now Cyrus Mobarak, the man who perfected the fusion engine, is determined to bring human settlement to the protected seas of Europa. Opposing him is Hilda Brandt, Europa's administrator. And caught between them are three remarkable young people: Jon Perry, Camille Hamilton, and Wilsa Sheer.

The Solar System is finally recovering from the Great War ñ a war that devastated the planets and nearly wiped out the human race ñ and the population of the outer moons, orbiting Jupiter and Saturn, is growing.

On one of those moons, Alex Ligon, scion of a great interplanetary trading family has developed a wonderfully accurate new population model, and cannot wait until the newly reconstituted "Seine," the interlinked network of computers that spans the planets and moons and asteroids, comes back on line. But when it does, and he extends his perfect model a century into the future, it predicts the complete destruction of the human race.

On another moon, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence goes on, undaunted by generations of failure. And to her amazement, Millie Wu, a young genius newly recruited to the project, has found a signal . . . a signal that is coming from outside the solar system.

And in his new retreat on a minor moon of Saturn, the cranky genius Rustam Battacharyia is still collecting weapons from the Great War. He thinks he may have stumbled on an unexpected new one . . . but heíll need to disarm it before it destroys the Sun.

A brilliant collection of visionary short fiction by the author of Cold as Ice and Godspeed, Georgia on My Mind and Other Places includes the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning title story, along with other widely praised works, including "The Feynman Saltation," "Millennium," "The Fifteenth Station of the Cross," and the novella "Destroyer of Worlds."

The Godspeed Drive. It is the faster than-than-light spaceship drive that made human colonization of the galaxy possible. But it was not invented by humans — it was found in the wreck of an alien ship that drifted into the solar system. No one understood everything about how it worked, but it linked a hundred star systems together, and made even marginal planets like Erin in the Maveen system habitable.

But one day the Godspeed ships stopped coming. Erin and the Forty Worlds around Maveen were cut off from Interstellar commerce, confined to the slow insystem shuttles that were the only spaceships that were left at Muldoon Port.

Jay Hara grew up on isolated Erin, longing for the legendary days when Godspeed ships spanned the galaxy, and a young man's dreams could take him to the stars. So when an old, sick spacer named Paddy Enderton showed Jay some very strange devices and told him that he had found a Godspeed base out in the asteroid belt, Jay was eager to believe, despite the doubts of his uncle Duncan and his friend, Dr. Eileen Xavier. But when Jay's farm was raided, his animals killed and his mother beaten, by men searching for Enderton, he became convinced that there was some truth in Enderton's ravings.

They won financing from the university, and have chartered a ship to take them out to the asteroid belt, in search of a small moving rock marked as Paddy's Fortune in Enderton's navigation device. But the ship is not what they think it is. And the crew and captain have a very different, and deadly, agenda once they find the Godspeed base.

1982 Locus Poll Award, Best Single Author Collection (Place: 15). Collects 14 stories with introduction and afterwords by the author, including: The Man Who Stole the Moon, The Deimos Plague, Forefather Figure, Moment of Inertia (McAndrew series), The New Physics: The Speed of Lightness, Curved Space, and Other Heresies, From Natural Causes, Legacy (later incorporated into the novel Proteus), The Softest Hammer (1982 Locus Poll Award, Best Short Story (Place: 19)), Hidden Variable, A Certain Place in History, All the Colors of the Vacuum (McAndrew series), Perfectly Safe, Nothing To Worry About, Summertide (later incorporated into the novel Summertide), The Marriage of True Minds.

HIGHER EDUCATION

When a misfired practical joke gets him kicked out of school, Rick Luban thinks he has nowhere to go but down. Instead, he gets a second chance—and a whole new life—when he signs up for a career in asteroid mining. Life in space proves more challenging than Rick expected. Competition is heated between the new recruits of Vanguard Mining, and the harsh realities of space allow absolutely no room for error. On his way to a brighter future, Rick faces ever more demanding tests, as well as the very real dangers of sabotage and murder....

In the 22nd century biofeedback techniques have enabled humans the ultimate expression--the ability to transform the body into any viable form. What began as an innocent technique to reduce anxiety without drugs has raised fundamental questions about what it is to be human.

Enter the Humanity Test. For those children who pass the test, life. For those who do not, the organ banks.

But ... what if the test itself cannot be trusted? Has humanity been culling its most valuable children?

There were problems with the Form Change process. One or two malfunctions at first: people emerging from the tanks in an incorrect form or completely unchanged. For three years it had been getting worse. Now there had been deaths, and on the space farms, panic was setting in. People were refusing to go into the tanks. Yet out in the Cloudlands, they needed continuous small form corrections just to stay effective. As the faults increased, their society was on an exponential curve to disaster.

In the twenty-second century, Earth is desperately over-populated and over-stressed, but technology has eased this somewhat by allowing humanity to expand into the Solar System, and biofeedback machines have made people's physical shape a matter of choice and taste.

But now underground experiments have started that may alter forever the very definition of "human", and which menace the delicate balance on which Earth's survival depends.

THE END DRAWS NIGH

The year is 2053, and Earth has barely recovered from the Alpha Centauri supernova that destroyed much of the planet's infrastructure. Now the supernova's residual effect—a storm of high-energy particles—is racing toward Earth, and an international effort has been launched out of the Sky City space colony to save the planet. But the controversial plan—to build a giant protective shield for Earth—is falling dangerously behind schedule. A series of unexplained murders has disrupted the Sky City workforce, so much so that a brilliant but monstrous criminal has been enlisted to track down the Sky City killer.

Then comes more startling news. Evidence indicates that the original supernova was caused deliberately, and that the lethal particle storm will arrive sooner than anyone expected. But who—or what—tried to destroy the Earth? And will the answer come in time to save it from its final apocalypse?

Charles Sheffield returns to the Solar System of his novel Cold As Ice, to spin a tale of the years immediately following the Great War, a horrifying spasm that was over in weeks, but killed half the human race.

Lola Belman was a refugee. She and her younger brother were on one of the last ships to leave Earth as the bombs beganto fall; by the time they left lunar orbit, they were orphans. Lola is now practicing as a therapist on Ganymede, and she has a new patient whose past is a mystery.

During those yars of chaos, many records were lost and histories forgotten, and it was an ideal time for anyone who wanted to conceal his or her identity. Now there is a small, dangerous group who will stop at nothing to keep Lola from exploring the past and discovering their existence.

CALLING ALL HUMANS...

In the 23rd century, out of all the races in the galaxy, only humanity has discovered the secret of travel between the stars--not so much because we're so smart, but because we are incredibly gadget-oriented. We are also, compared to the galaxy's highly sophisticated norms, very, very tough, which when a threat to all life in the galaxy arises from non-living biological constructs, suddenly the peculiar human virtues of valor and stubbornness make us the sword-wielding saviors of All...

Publisher's Note: A shorter and much different verison of this novel was published in 1986 as The Nimrod Hunt.

Drake Merlin's wife, the love of his life, is dying of a rare, fatal disease for which there is no cure. Not now, in the 21st century. But surely in the future...

For Drake there is only one solution: have Ana's body frozen until she can be cured. And he will go with her into the cryowomb. It is a desperate gamble born of folly, obsession ... and love.

Thus begins an epic journey across eons, as Drake is revived again and again, only to find that Ana is beyond help. Millions of years past his first sleep, he learns there is hope for her restoration—at the Omega Point, where the universe collapses, merging past and present. But first he will be awakened to become humanity's unwilling savior. For an alien menace is laying the galaxy to waste, and only an anachronism from the days of human barbarism can save an enlightened race. . . .

After worldwide war and economic collapse, a group of mercenary negotiators arose to bring order to chaos. Theirs was the most sophisticated intelligence network in the world, and soon the Traders were in demand all over to work out important deals and negotiate sensitive treaties.

Mikal Asparian owed his life to the Traders, who had rescued him from desert barbarians and trained him as one of their own. But the more missions he completed, the more he began to question just what it meant to be a Trader. He never suspected that his labors might have had a hidden purpose...

From the absurd to the sublime, the universe according to Sheffield

In Which You Will Encounter

Technological Telepathy
A Politician Who Discovers The Artful Art of Thought-control
A Natural Philosopher Who Invents The Steamship -- In Ancient Persia!
Erasmus Darwin, Brilliant Grandfather of Charles, In An Excitingly Different Kind Of Fantasy -- Or Is It Really Science Fiction
The Incredible Waldo Burmeister, Star Of Thermodynamic Dieting And The Martian Sewer System

Structured by an astounding range of scientific knowledge, here are some of the most entertaining flights of the imagination on which you will ever book passage, from the viewpoint of one of the most astonishing minds you will ever meet.