1. Metaplanetary
1.1 Amazon
1.1.1 paperback
1.1.2 hardcover
1.2 e-book
1.2.1 Kindle
1.2.2 Mobipocket
1.2.3 other formats
1.3 synopsis
1.3.1 Once or twice in a score of years, the boundlessly inventive realm of speculative fiction reveals a vision of tomorrow that dwarfs everything that came before. These are the dreams of the Asimovs and the Heinleins, the Bears and the Brins. Now Tony Daniel brilliantly dreams the future -- and reinvents humanity itself -- in an epic chronicle of civil war and transcendence that plays out on an enormous stage encompassing the solar system in its entirety -- its asteroids, its comets, and all its people, transmuted into astounding forms and living astonishing lives. The human race has extended itself into the far reaches of our solar system -- and, in doing so, has developed into something remarkable and diverse and perhaps transcendent. The inner system of the Met -- with its worlds connected by a vast living network of cables -- is supported by the repression and enslavement of humanity's progeny, nanotechnological artificial intelligences -- beings whom the tyrant Amés has declared non-human. There is tolerance and sanctuary in the outer system beyond the Jovian frontier. Yet few of the oppressed ever make it post the dictator's well-patrolled boundaries. But the longing for freedom cannot be denied, whatever the risk. A priest of the mystical religion called the Greentree Way senses catastrophe approaching. A vision foretells that the future of our bitterly divided solar system rests in the hands of a mysterious man of destiny and doom who has vanished into the backwater of the Met in search of his lost love. But the priest is not the only one who grasps this man's importance. The despot Ames is after the some quarry -- and until now there has been no power in the inner solar system willing to oppose Amés and his fearsome minions. But now a line has been drawn of Neptune's moon Triton. Roger Sherman, a retired military commander from Earth's West Point and a Greentree ally, will not let Amés prevail. Though dwarfed by the strength and wealth of the Met, the cosmos under Sherman's jurisdiction will remain free at all cost -- though defiance will ensure the unspeakable onslaught of the dictator Amés's wrath -- a rage that will soon ravage the solar system. A rage that will plunge all of humankind into the fury of total war. With Metaplanetary, author Tony Daniel fulfills the great promise of his critically acclaimed earlier works. A new master has reached for the stars, with a stunning speculative masterwork of enormous scope and conceptual daring -- an adventure of grand victories and horrific villainy, both human and meta-human alike.
1.4 reviews
1.4.1 Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Astonishingly different ... immensely rewarding ... a sweeping tale of a great solar war fought across our solar system some 1,000 years from now."
1.4.2 Publishers Weekly
"A cross between Bruce Sterling and Doc Smith that teems with vivid characters and surprising action."
2. Superluminal
2.1 Amazon
2.1.1 paperback
2.1.2 hardcover
2.2 B&N
2.2.1 paperback
2.2.2 hardcover
2.3 e-book
2.3.1 Kindle
2.3.2 Mobipocket
2.3.3 other formats
2.4 Synopsis
2.4.1 The future is at war for the soul of humankind ... It is a time when civilization has extended itself far into the outer reaches of the solar system, and in doing so has developed into something remarkable. But humanity's progeny -- the nanotechnological artificial intelligences called "free converts" -- face extermination at the hands of the tyrant Amés and his invincible armies, and once the Napoleonesque Director develops superluminal flight, his "Final Solution" will be all but assured. But hope remains alive in the outer system. From the fleeing refugees of a dozen moons and asteroids, General Roger Sherman has amassed an effective and adaptable military force, already forged into a formidable weapon in the fires of battle. However, time is a commodity the courageous Federal Army lacks, as total war erupts between the vast cloudships of the outer system and the deadly armada of the Met, a glorious and terrible conflict that will rage among the stars ... and within the hearts and minds of every human being.
2.5 Review
2.5.1 Washington Post
Tony Daniel's new book, Superluminal, a sequel to Metaplanetary (2001), is the kind of recomplicated postmodern space opera that requires literally 60 pages of appendices to totally explicate its characters, technology, plot and milieu. Fully assimilating this book requires a good deal of attention, concentration and creative interpolation on the part of the reader. But its rewards are commensurate with its demands. Daniel has created an awesomely weird yet logical future that bears little resemblance to any lazy off-the-shelf scenarios.
3. The Robot's Twilight Companion
3.1 e-book
3.1.1 Electricstory
3.2 hardcover
3.2.1 B & N
3.2.2 Amazon
3.3 review
3.3.1 SF Site
One of the best books I read last year, and the most original short fiction collection I've stumbled across in a long time. The Robot's Twilight Companion is a collection of nine stories and novellas, all originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction magazine between 1992 and 1999. They include the Hugo nominee "Life on the Moon," the title story and the basis for the novel Earthling and the near-masterpiece "A Dry Quiet War," a tale of warfare and loss at the end of time. The book opens with "Life on the Moon," the tale of Henry Colterman, a poet who loses his wife to the moon when she accepts the position of chief lunar architect. Like "Aconcagua," the story of a die-hard mountain climber who discovers more than he bargained for in a near-disastrous solo expedition, "Life on the Moon" is only peripherally science fiction, dealing more with relationships -- and the sudden end of relationships -- than with the usual trappings of SF. There's a similar theme in "Radio Praha," in which a KGB agent in Prague discovers the skilled artisans of a dying profession -- vacuum tube manufacturers -- have transcended not only their art, but quite possibly the laws of physics; and in "Black Canoes," where a woman who can traverse dimensions discovers that her role in the universe has changed dramatically. As enjoyable as these tidbits are, for me the jewels of the collection are the longer pieces, including especially "A Dry, Quiet War," "Mystery Box," and the dense and enigmatic "Grist." While they're not all linked, most share a powerful connecting vision of a gradually transformed humanity -- an ambitious, baffling, and (how to say this delicately?) only partially comprehensible vision of a human race radically changed by nanotechnology and collective consciousness. This is what a trip to the future should feel like: packed with strange wonders, only a handful of which are easily grasped, but all of which hint at a vast, unfolding destiny for the human race.
4. Earthling
4.1 hardcover
4.2 paperback
4.3 synopsis
4.3.1 Orf is an intelligent drilling machine, designed to probe to the very center of the Earth. What he finds deep under the Earth's crust is a living force so radically unexpected that our life on the surface is altered by its discovery. But as the world around him changes, and the Pacific Northwest is transformed by cataclysmic earthquakes and social upheavals, Orf must change as well, becoming both myth and monster, savior and sage to future generations of humanity. Lyrical and compelling, Earthling is a novel of the future unlike any you have ever read.
4.4 review
4.4.1 New York Times Book Review
The temptation to play God is an occupational hazard for science fiction writers. A case in point: the richly imagined, consistently engaging and self-destructively ambitious EARTHLING, by Tony Daniel. The novel opens with a stylistic tour de force in which apparently random entries in a geologist's field journal coalesce into the memories of a dead man that have been downloaded into the electronic brain of a mining robot. Although the robot has access to these sophisticated memories, its own awakening consciousness is appropriately childlike. Designed to bore through the earth's crust and mantle to the core of the planet, the robot patiently endures years of abandonment as its human creators fall victim to a social convulsion that changes the face of the land as well as the structure of civilization. By the time the robot has achieved a semblance of maturity, it has learned to think for itself, to read (Jane Austen's ''Emma'' is a favorite) and to feel: ''The robot feels one of the legs'' of its mobile unit ''jerk spasmodically. Then the other jerks, without the robot wishing it to do so. The robot . . . jitters and shakes for a long time. This is the way the robot cries.'' This is dazzling stuff. But just when we have become intimate with the robot -- who has acquired a gender (male) and the name Orf (short for Orpheus) -- the focus suddenly shifts. We are still on the Olympic Peninsula in the Pacific Northwest, but years have passed, political authority has splintered among antagonistic ''tribal'' units, and we are now inside the head of Jarrod, a ranger of the fiercely independent Park Service whose single-minded dedication to protecting the trees of the Olympic National Forest leaves no room for the joys and burdens of human reproduction. After an initial reluctance to leave Orf the robot behind, I was enthralled by Daniel's account of Jarrod's journey of self-discovery through a much-altered Western America. But my pleasure was tempered by a sense that the larger narrative was veering out of control. Far below the earth's surface, Orf has encountered godlike beings, who begin to play a larger and larger role in the story. Whenever the spotlight falls on these deities, the novel's otherwise precise language turns fuzzy. They are described as ''sentient ecologies'' and ''immensely complex children,'' and they inspire writing like this: ''It's a long trip to the stars and the way lies through beauty. . . . You walk the beauty lines, the traceries of pattern and purpose that are folded and dimpled into reality as surely as are gravity wells and electromagnetic fields.'' As New Age reveries go, this is better than most. But by the emphatically uplifting conclusion, I found myself longing for the literally down-to-earth voice of the earlier Orf, whose relief when Jane Austen's Emma finally realizes that she loves Knightley is expressed in these carefully clunky terms: ''It is as if some clogged line in the robot's hydraulics had a sudden release of pressure or rock that had long been hard and tough became easy to move through.''
5. Warpath
5.1 paperback
5.2 hardcover
5.3 Alibris
5.4 synopsis
5.4.1 In the far future the bulk of humanity has spread to the stars - only to discover that the American Indians got there first! Long before Columbus, a tribe of Mississippi Indians discovered the metaphysical Effect that makes space travel possible and paddled their birchbark canoes to distant worlds light-years from Earth. Now an interstellar Indian nation, armed with spears and guided missiles, comes into conflict with colonists from a technological civilization so advanced that even their homes and newspapers possess artificial intelligences. History seems poised to repeat itself, but on a galactic scale. Will James is a reporter on the icy planet Candle. He is also a five hundred year old transmission from Earth's distant past. Reborn into a future that amazes him, Will is torn between his ties to the settlers, his friendship with an Indian Wanderer, and his feelings for a strange young woman who may not be entirely human. But, in the end, he may be the only person who stands between the universe and an endless ... Warpath. Combining stunning science fiction concepts with powerful human drama, Warpath is an engrossing novel of extraordinary richness.
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