Maxima Library

Can an experimental defense system stop North Korean missile strikes?

Nobody foresaw that millions would watch on real-time TV when people first walked on another world. And next time…?

An anthology of stories edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H Greenberg and Charles G Waugh

Suppose that elves, gremlins, and leprechauns are really tiny aliens marooned on Earth for hundreds of years. They want to go home, and human technology finally can make it possible—if they can get aboard NASA’s Mars rocket and hijack it! Pity the poor human who has to help them with the big heist…

Era notte nell'emisfero occidentale quando il Sole emise la sua grande fiammata, e questo salvò il continente americano dalla combustione totale. Ma non lo salvò dalle atomiche sovietiche che cominciarono subito a piovere. Perché, chi avrebbe potuto dar torto ai pochi russi superstiti sottoterra, nella stanza dei bottoni, se pensarono che l'attacco fosse venuto dall'America?

Das größte Abenteuer der Menschheit steht unmittelbar bevor: die erste bemannte Mars-Mission. Dies ist ihre Geschichte, eine Geschichte von menschlicher Größe und Tragik - und von der unglaublichsten Entdeckung aller Zeiten.

«Ein atemberaubendes Buch!» Ray Bradbury

Über den Autor

Ben Bova, 1932 in Philadelphia geboren, ist einer der bekanntesten Science-Fiction-Autoren unserer Zeit. Insbesondere mit seinen Romanen aus der sogenannten Sonnensytem-Reihe „Mars“, „Venus“, „Jupiter“ und zuletzt „Saturn“ ist er außerordentlich erfolgreich. Bova lebt mit seiner Familie in Florida.

It’s not easy running a hotel, and some of the most challenging problems are little ones!

DAS GRÖSSTE ABENTEUER DER MENSCHHEIT GEHT WEITER.

In ›Mars‹ schilderte Ben Bova die abenteuerliche Geschichte der ersten bemannten Mars-Mission.

Nun, einige Jahre später, kehrt ein Team aus Astronauten, Ingenieuren und Wissenschaftlern zum sagenumwobenen Roten Planeten zurück. Geleitet wird diese Expedition von Jamie Waterman, der bereits auf der ersten Reise dabei war und auf dem Mars Spuren intelligenten Lebens entdeckt hatte. Er hat es sich zu seiner Aufgabe gemacht, das Geheimnis unseres Nachbarplaneten zu lüften, und er würde alles dafür hergeben – selbst sein eigenes Leben.

Cities became ovens. Grasslands became seas of flame. As the touch of dawn swept westward across the spinning planet Earth, its fiery finger killed everything in its path. Glaciers in Switzerland began to melt, floodwaters poured down on the burning, smoking villages dotting the Alpine meadows. Paris became a torch, then London. North of the Arctic Circle, Lapplanders in their summer furs burst into flame as their reindeer collapsed and roasted on the smoking tundra.

The line of dawn raced westward across the Atlantic Ocean, but as it did the brightness diminished. The sun dimmed as quickly as it had brightened.

The Americas escaped the Sun’s wrath. Almost. A hard, dark book, the story of mankind after the fall… compulsive reading… the battle to rebuild Earth after its almost total destruction by a gigantic solar flare.

Part of this novel was published separately, in substantially different form, as ‘When The Sky Burned’, copyright © 1973 by Ben Bova.

Just in time for spring training, two power hitters return to our pages. Ben Bova not only writes about the future, he has helped create it. The author of more than eighty-five futuristic novels and nonfiction books, he has been involved in science and high technology since the very beginnings of the space program. President Emeritus of the National Space Society and a past president of SFWA, Dr. Bova is a frequent commentator on radio and television, and a widely popular lecturer. He has also been an award-winning editor and an executive in the aerospace industry. Rick Wilber has sold about a hundred short stories and poems, and over one thousand nonfiction articles. He is the SF reviewer for the St. Petersburg Times, and he edits the Fiction Quarterly for the Tampa Tribune. Mr. Wilber is a faculty member of the School of Mass Communications at the University of South Florida. He is also administrator of the Isaac Asimov Award for excellence in undergraduate writing that is co-sponsored by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts and by this magazine.

Lukka, a Hittite warrior, returns to the Hittite capital city to find it engulfed in civil war, his father murdered, and his wife and two young sons taken away by slavers. Along with a small cadre of soldiers under his command, Lukka launches an epic search for his family, which leads him to the gates of Troy as it is beseiged by the army of Agamemnon. Bova then proceeds to an original retelling of the final stages of the legendary Trojan War. In this account, Lukka serves as a literary mirror, revealing the personalities of some well-known characters, with a few surprising results. Odysseus, predictably, is practical, crafty, and a natural survivor in treacherous waters. Achilles is a born killer, but he is shown as short and ugly, and his death is decidedly unheroic. Helen is, of course, the babe of all babes, but she is also petty and whiny.

The dynamic new President of the United States, James J. Halliday, seems determined to singlehandedly turn an embittered nation around from economic, political, and social ruin. No one could be prouder than his devoted press secretary Meric Albano. But is the President accomplishing this monumental task alone? After one of the President’s rare public appearances, a derelict is found dead nearby. A derelict who not only looks like the President, but whose blood, retinas, even fingerprints match those of the man in charge. Is the real President, the man Albano swore loyalty to, still in office? Is this part of a plot to topple American democracy? That’s what Albano has to find out—if he doesn’t, his life, as well as his country, will be destroyed…

Some things are very simple—but far from easy!

The irrepressible Sam Gunn.

A hero without peer or scruples, Sam Gunn has a nose for trouble, money, and women--though not necessarily in that order. A man with the ego (and stature) of a Napoleon, the business acumen of a P. T. Barnum, and the raging hormones of a teenage boy, Sam is the finest astronaut NASA ever trained…and dumped.

But more than money, more than women, Sam Gunn loves justice. (And he really *does* love money and women.) Whether he's suing the Pope, helping twin sisters entangled in the "virtual sex" trade, or on trial for his life on charges of interplanetary genocide, you can be sure of one thing: this is one space jockey who'll meet every challenge with a smile on his lips, an ace up his sleeve…and a weapon in his pocket.

Now, for the first time between covers, Hugo-winner Ben Bova presents all the tales of Sam Gunn to date, including three never before collected in book form. Here is the entire chronicle of Sam Gunn, trailblazer and scoundrel, as he scams his way from one end of the Solar System to the other, giving bold new meaning to the term “venture capitalist.”

Pink scented smog, 3-D TV and earthquake-proof aluminium skyscrapers capable of hurtling themselves and their occupants to a safe Pacific splashdown should tremors exceed desired tolerances. This is the twenty-first century of Ben Bova’s hilarious novel, where the Vitaform Process grants nubile new bodies to the aged and a new 3-D TV series offering the illusion of almost live entertainment in the home is all that Bernard Finger, the cigar-chewing loudmouth mogul of Titanic Productions needs to save his company from the brink of financial disaster.

Enter one Bill Oxnard, inventor of the 3-D holographic system, Brenda Impanema, Finger’s sexy lady assistant, Ron Gabriel, hot-tempered hot-shot script writer who hates Finger nearly as much as Finger hates him, and you’ve got the winning formula for a smashing new family series guaranteed to bring 3-D to the heart of the viewing public and make a fortune for Titanic.

Or will it?

Stay tuned as the whole sick crew of Titanic Productions struggles to bring you the greatest intergalactic show on earth… THE STARCROSSED.

The Trikon Deception opens up the next frontier in technothriller excitement with a page-turning novel of intrigue and assassination in high orbit—co-written by the former commander of Skylab. 1998: Trikon is a vast steel island in the vacuum of space, the first industrial research laboratory to be built in orbit, designed as the only risk-free environment for genetic experiments too controversial—or dangerous—to be performed on Earth. Devised by a visionary scientist and industrialist, Trikon is a shared project of North America, Japan, and United Europe. In theory, the international companies that make up the Trikon consortium are supposed to be working together for the betterment of all humanity; in reality, espionage and sabotage are Trikon’s major projects. Mankind has gone to space, but he has brought all his greed and deceit, all his lust and violence, with him—and the hidden conspiracies aboard Trikon may bring the gigantic space station crashing down upon the innocent and the guilty alike. No one can write about space like someone who’s been there, and The Trikon Deception is an authentic space age thriller on the cutting edge of tomorrow.

A novelization of the 1971 film directed by George Lucas.

The perfectly controlled society.

Its citizens are conceived in test tubes, nourished in vats, educated intravenously, watched by monitors, made docile by drugs.

The Adam of this 25th century Eden is THX 1138; the Eve is his beautiful roommate LUH 3417. Having yielded to the temptation not to take her state-prescribed drugs, she lures THX into committing the same crime. How could anyone know? she argues.

But the electronic monitor is all-seeing; instead of archangels with flaming swords there are police robots with cattle prods—and if there are any gates to this Eden, no one knows where…

Dalla sceneggiatura originale di George Lucas e Walter Murch.

Ecco il nuovo film del regista di Guerre Stellari, nel magistrale romanzo scritto da Ben Bova. Siamo nel XXV Secolo e la Società, per il suo bene, naturalmente, è totalmente controllata. I cittadini vengono concepiti in provetta, sviluppati in recipienti, battezzati con una sigla, educati per via intravenosa e mantenuti in stato di innocenza mediante l’uso obbligatorio di droghe. Tutti poi, le precauzioni non sono mai troppe, sono sottoposti a costante controllo elettronico. Non si vede dunque come una certa scandalosa e antichissima storia potrebbe ripetersi. E invece, puntualmente, si ripete. Solo che l’Adamo di questo Eden sociale si chiama THX 1138, mentre la sua bella compagna di stanza che lo induce in tentazione (“Tanto” dice, “chi se ne accorgerà?”) risponde al nome di LUH 3417.

A young woman approaches the Emperor of the Hundred Worlds with a plan to save Earth—through astrophysics and engineering—before the Sun explodes and wipes out the last genetically unaltered humans in the universe.