ONE GIANT LEAP FOR MANKIND Those were Neil Armstrong’s immortal words when he became the first human being to step onto another world. All at once, the horizon expanded; the human race was no longer Earthbound. Edge of Infinity is an exhilarating new SF anthology that looks at the next giant leap for humankind: the leap from our home world out into the Solar System. From the eerie transformations in Pat Cadigan’s Hugo-award-winning “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi” to the frontier spirit of Sandra McDonald and Stephen D. Covey’s “The Road to NPS,” and from the grandiose vision of Alastair Reynolds’ “Vainglory” to the workaday familiarity of Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s “Safety Tests,” the thirteen stories in this anthology span the whole of the human condition in their race to colonise Earth’s nearest neighbours. Featuring stories by Hannu Rajaniemi, Alastair Reynolds, James S. A. Corey, John Barnes, Stephen Baxter, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Elizabeth Bear, Pat Cadigan, Gwyneth Jones, Paul McAuley, Sandra McDonald, Stephen D. Covey, An Owomoyela, and Bruce Sterling, Edge of Infinity is hard SF adventure at its best and most exhilarating.

This book tells the story of Michael O'Brien, one of the most popular Catholic novelists and painters of our times. It covers his life from his childhood in the Canadian Arctic to the crucial decision in 1976 to devote himself wholly to Christian sacred arts, followed by his inspiration to write fiction and his best-selling apocalyptic novel, Father Elijah. The story then continues to the present with explorations of O'Brien's other works. O'Brien's life is one of struggle against all odds to reestablish Christian culture in the materialist void created by the modern Western world. It is a timely reminder of hope in trials and sufferings, of endurance during marginalization and poverty. This is the first biography of O'Brien, and it also provides an introduction to his novels, paintings, and essays. The author, Clemens Cavallin, was granted unrestricted access to Michael O'Brien's personal archive, including his diary from the late 1970s until the present day. By revealing sides of O'Brien's interior creative life--including mystical experiences, spiritual battles, and illuminations—he has painted a portrait of a contemporary visual and literary artist whose inspiration arises from an intense fusion of imagination and active faith.

In the past, they were recognized as the most destructive force in nature. Now, following a cascade of astonishing discoveries, supermassive black holes have undergone a dramatic shift in paradigm. Astronomers are finding out that these objects may have been critical to the formation of structure in the early universe, spawning bursts of star formation, planets, and even life itself. They may have contributed as much as half of all the radiation produced after the Big Bang, and as many as 200 million of them may now be lurking through the vast expanses of the observable cosmos. In this elegant, non-technical account, Melia conveys for the general reader the excitement generated by the quest to expose what these giant distortions in the fabric of space and time have to say about our origin and ultimate destiny.

From popular culture to politics to classic novels, quintessentially American texts take their inspiration from the idea of infinity. In the extraordinary literary century inaugurated by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the lyric too seemed to encounter possibilities as limitless as the U.S. imagination. This raises the question: What happens when boundlessness is more than just a figure of speech? Exploring new horizons is one thing, but actually looking at the horizon itself is something altogether different. In this carefully crafted analysis, James von der Heydt shines a new light on the lyric craft of Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and James Merrill and considers how their seascape-vision redefines poetry's purpose. Emerson famously freed U.S. literature from its past and opened it up to vastness; in the following century, a succession of brilliant, rigorous poets took the philosophical challenges of such freedom all too seriously. Facing the unmarked horizon, Emersonian poets capture—and are captured by—a stark, astringent version of human beauty. Their uncompromising visions of limitlessness reclaim infinity's proper legacy—and give American poetry its edge. Von der Heydt's book recovers the mystery of their world.

One of few truly gifted essayists who have turned their talents to science, Wyn Wachhorst here fashions a luminous meditation on the meaning of space exploration from a montage of images and reflections on humanity's dream of spaceflight. In a survey of major figures from Johannes Kepler to Wernher von Braun, he sees in the rise of spaceflight a metaphor of modern history as a recurrent story of transformation and rebirth. Other essays offer new perspectives on the nature of wonder, recall the romantic vision of the decades prior to Sputnik ("nostalgia for a bygone future"), and look at the larger meaning of the moon landing, seeing in spaceflight not only a spiritual quest in the broadest sense of the word, but a cure for the withered capacity for wonder that afflicts the postmodern mind.

'Science has never had an advocate quite like David Deutsch ... A computational physicist on a par with his touchstones Alan Turing and Richard Feynman, and a philosopher in the line of his greatest hero, Karl Popper. His arguments are so clear that to read him is to experience the thrill of the highest level of discourse available on this planet and to understand it' Peter Forbes, Independent In our search for truth, how far have we advanced? This uniquely human quest for good explanations has driven amazing improvements in everything from scientific understanding and technology to politics, moral values and human welfare. But will progress end, either in catastrophe or completion - or will it continue infinitely? In this profound and seminal book, David Deutsch explores the furthest reaches of our current understanding, taking in the Infinity Hotel, supernovae and the nature of optimism, to instill in all of us a wonder at what we have achieved - and the fact that this is only the beginning of humanity's infinite possibility. 'This is Deutsch at his most ambitious, seeking to understand the implications of our scientific explanations of the world ... I enthusiastically recommend this rich, wide-ranging and elegantly written exposition of the unique insights of one of our most original intellectuals' Michael Berry, Times Higher Education Supplement 'Bold ... profound ... provocative and persuasive' Economist 'David Deutsch may well go down in history as one of the great scientists of our age' Scotsman

Jack Blank confronts his destiny in this action-packed conclusion to the trilogy Publishers Weekly calls a “no-holds-barred adventure.” Ever since Jack Blank learned that he came from the amazing country of the Imagine Nation, he’s known that his fate could go down two very different paths—he could either be the greatest hero the world has ever known, or its greatest villain. Now the final battle is here, and it’s time for Jack to discover the direction of his destiny. The action-packed trilogy concludes with more surprises, twists, and adventure than ever—along with the same humor and heart that has brought so many fans to Jack’s story.