340 pages | Tom Doherty Associates (June 27, 2006) | ISBN: 0765355167 | PDF | 1.3 MB

For forty years, the Twelve Colonies of Man experienced peace, united since the war against the man-made Cylons. The Cylons, mechanical beings created to perform the manual labor civilization required, were gone forever…or so humanity thought. But in those years, the Cylons developed new Cylons that looked and acted like humans–with one goal in mind: to destroy all humanity! When they suddenly attacked the Twelve Worlds, humanity’s extinction seemed inevitable. Only a single warship survived the massive attack: Battlestar Galactica, the oldest ship in the fleet, ready to be decommissioned and turned into a museum. Commander William Adama, himself set to retire, had but one course: to marshal the meager forces available, a ragtag crew of misfits and green recruits, to prevent their enemy from wiping out the last vestiges of the human race. But the Cylons, stronger, smarter, and driven to destroy their creators, may just be too powerful for them and all of humanity to survive.

654 pages | Tor Books (2000) | ISBN: 0312856422 | PDF | 2 MB

Jeffrey A. Carver, author of The Infinity Link and The Rapture Effect, returns with a new science fiction epic set against a sweeping backdrop of interstellar war, space piracy, and star-spanning conspiracy. After seven years of captivity at the hands of interstellar pirates, Star Rigger Renwald Legroeder escapes to the Centrist Worlds, thinking himself free to return to rigging. Instead, he finds himself a target of a conspiracy that stretches across light-years—from the Centrist Worlds to the pirate stars beyond—a conspiracy that has survived interstellar war and claimed the lives of millions, both human and alien.

387 pages | Tor Books (August 1996) | ISBN: 0312856091 | PDF | 1.1 MB

Interstellar troubleshooter John Bandicut returns for an amiably routine third installment (after Strange Attractors) in Carvel's Chaos Chronicles, journeying to a world where the dominant civilization, the Neri, live under the sea. There, Bandicut and his motley crew (comprised of three aliens, two robots and an artificial intelligence in Bandicut's brain), aided by "translator-stones" that let him communicate with other species, deal with two menaces: the Astari, land-dwelling survivors of a crashed starship, and the Maw of the Abyss, a sapient interstellar portal that has accidentally endangered the planet while trying to repair itself. The witty tale moves briskly, as Bandicut and company solve one puzzle after another, but the multiplicity of technological marvels leaves many of them underdeveloped or implausible. Flavorless dialogue, moreover, undermines not only the wit but the characterization, particularly of the aliens. Loyal fans of the series should enjoy this competent, but by no means exceptional, work.

319 pages | Tor Books (March 1995) | ISBN: 0312856415 | PDF | 1.1 MB

The second installment in the Chaos Chronicles dispatches genetically altered earthling John Bandicut to a massive planet-like place called Shipworld to help the alien Ik find his friend. In lieu of a preface, John\'s history and earlier adventures are revealed via one of Carver\'s several futuristic beings?a chaos-manipulating Quarx that lives inside the protagonist\'s head. Readers, too, might hope for the Quarx\'s clarifying assistance: characters\' motivations are somewhat hazy here?Why must John battle Shipworld\'s malevolent elements? What is Ik\'s secret agenda??and an assortment of odd keystrokes that supposedly identify the speakers in a series of inner and outer voices proves confusing. Also, Carver is slow to deliver on his implicit promise to deliver hard science. Still, his story is capably told, with welcome infusions of humor periodically bolstering the complex narrative.

325 pages | Tor Books (April 1994) | ISBN: 0312856407 | PDF | 1.1 MB

In this promising series kickoff about an astronaut exploring the surface of Neptune’s moon, Triton, Carver ( Dragons in the Stars ) masterfully captures the joy of exploration, although the story itself follows a fairly standard save-the-world plot. Pilot John Bandicut has been cut off from his internal link to the “datanet” by faulty technology, leaving him subject to maddening “silence-fugues.” His need for contact makes him a perfect candidate for a symbiotic relationship with the alien quarx, who are trying to save humanity from a mysterious disaster threatening Earth. The quarx, creations whose understanding of Terran culture comes mostly from monitoring old TV and radio programs, have a certain gee-whiz quality, although their interactions with the datanet are intriguing. A rather adolescent love story combines amusingly with an unlikely case of xenophobia, and a fiery conclusion sets Bandicut up for further adventures in yet another alien world, where Carver may find greater room to employ his gift for the fine rendering of difficult scientific concepts.