Port Eternity Their names were Lancelot, Elaine, Percivale, Gawain, Mordred, Lynette and Vivien, and they were made people, clone servants who worked aboard The Maid, an anachronistic fantasy of a spaceship. They had no idea of their origins, from those old storytapes of romance, chivalry, heroism and betrayal, until a ripple in the space-time continuum sucked The Maid and her crew into a no-man’s land from which there could be no return, and they were left alone to face a crisis which their ancient prototypes were never designed to master… Wave Without a Shore Freedom was an isolated planet, off the main spaceways and rarely visited by commercial spacers. It wasn’t that Freedom was inhospitable, the problem was that outsiders—tourists and traders—claimed that the streets were crowded with mysterious blue-robed aliens. Native-born humans, however, denied that these aliens existed—until a planetary crisis forced a confrontation between the question of reality and the reality of the question… Voyager in the Night Rafe Murray, his sister Jillian, and Jillian’s husband Paul Gaines, like many other out-of-luck spacers, had come to newly built Endeavor Station to find their future. Their tiny ship, Lindy, had been salvaged from the junk heap, and fitted to mine ore from the mineral-rich rings which circled Endeavor. But their future proved to be far stranger than any of them imagined, when a “collision” with a huge alien vessel provided them with the oddest first contact experience possible!

Wave watchers around the world know that no two waves are the same. Yet each and every wave that rises, peaks, and crashes onto the beach is generated by a much larger force originating thousands of miles away. Surf journalist team Evan Slater and Peter Taras capture the essence of waves and the swells that produce them in this breathtaking collection of wave photography. Slater characterizes four distinct swells from different corners of the globe and traces their journeys throughout the year from storm to seashore. His reflective, informative essays amplify these powerful images of hundreds of waves frozen in time, beautiful, simple, universal, yet wholly unique—and the best thing to watch on the planet.

The inspirational story of one woman learning to surf and creating a new life in gritty, eccentric Rockaway Beach Unmoored by a failed marriage and disconnected from her high-octane life in the city, Diane Cardwell finds herself staring at a small group of surfers coasting through mellow waves toward shore--and senses something shift. Rockaway is the riveting, joyful story of one woman's reinvention--beginning with Cardwell taking the A Train to Rockaway, a neglected spit of land dangling off New York City into the Atlantic Ocean. She finds a teacher, buys a tiny bungalow, and throws her not-overly-athletic self headlong into learning the inner workings and rhythms of waves and the muscle development and coordination needed to ride them. As Cardwell begins to find her balance in the water and out, superstorm Sandy hits, sending her into the maelstrom in search of safer ground. In the aftermath, the community comes together and rebuilds, rekindling its bacchanalian spirit as a historic surfing community, one with its own quirky codes and surf culture. And Cardwell's surfing takes off as she finds a true home among her fellow passionate longboarders at the Rockaway Beach Surf Club, living out "the most joyful path through life." Rockaway is a stirring story of inner salvation sought through a challenging physical pursuit--and of learning to accept the idea of a complete reset, no matter when in life it comes.

From legendary writer Paul Theroux comes an atmospheric novel following a big-wave surfer as he confronts aging, privilege, mortality, and whose lives we choose to remember.

A riveting and rollicking tour-de-force about the terrifying power of nature's most deadly phenomena — colossal waves — and the scientists and super surfers who are obsessed with them. The New York Times bestselling author of The Devil's Teeth probes the dramatic convergence of baffling gargantuan waves that pummel oil rigs and sink massive ships, the extreme surfers willing to stare down death in order to ride them, and the marine scientists trying to unlock the physics of these waves, the climate changes that are provoking them, and what chaos they might wreak. Susan Casey explores the phenomenon of monster waves and how they have become an obsession for extreme surfers like Laird Hamilton — who serves as the author's guide as she takes the reader into the intense, white-knuckle world of 100-foot waves.

Poetry. how can we say words to each other when each only shades into difference? i push myself into your palate. tu m'y attends. this absolves me of context, this unpins thought from tidy rows.