Charles Sheffield

In the 22nd century biofeedback techniques to control by will the processes of ones own body have reached their ultimate expression: the ability to transform the body into virtually any viable form whatsoever. What began as an innocent technique to reduce anxiety without recourse to drugs has raised fundamental questions about what it is to be human, since form is no longer sufficient nor even relevant.Enter the Humanity Test: in a future when other techniques can change the forms of animals, so far it has been a guaranteed one hundred percent successful means of determining whether a life form started out as human. But now strange life forms, vicious and bestial, are proliferating throughout the Solar System. They are clearly not human, and clearly their nervous systems are too underdeveloped for them to have been human. But though the beasts threaten havoc and death to all the far flung isolated stations, the simple solution of shooting the varmints is impossible: for life forms that according to the Humanity Test started out human the law is very clear: Thou Shalt Not Kill.

Physicist and writer Charles Sheffield very quickly built a reputation for imaginative, cleverly-plotted hard SF. In his second novel he posited the concept of a space elevator simultaneously to - but independent of - Arthur C. Clarke. This omnibus contains three of his finest works: debut novel, SIGHT OF PROTEUS; planetary romance, SUMMERTIDE; and space opera, COLD AS ICE.

Rob Merlin was the best engineer who had ever lived. That was why "The King of Space" had to have him for the most spectacular construction project ever - even though Rob was a potentially fatal threat to his power...Thus begins a breakthrough novel by the former President of the American Astronautical Society, about an idea whose time has come: a shimmering bridge between Earth and space that mankind will climb to the stars!

Lola Belman was a refugee. She and her younger brother were on one of the last ships to leave Earth as the bombs began to fall; by the time they left lunar orbit, they were orphans. Lola is now practicing as a therapist on Ganymede, and she has a new patient whose past is a mystery.During those years of chaos, many records were lost and histories forgotten, and it was an ideal time for anyone who wanted to conceal his or her identity. Now there is a small, dangerous group who will stop at nothing to keep Lola from exploring the past and discovering their existence.

In the 22nd century a combination of computer-augmented bio-feedback and chemo-therapy techniques has given man the ability not only to heal himself, but to change himself - to alter his very shape at will. But Form Change has its darker aspects, ranging from unautorized experimentation on human subjects to a threat to the very essence of humanity - a SIGHT OF PROTEUS.

The Solar System is finally recovering from the Great War - a war that devastated the planets and nearly wiped out the human race - and the population of the outer moons, orbiting Jupiter and Saturn, is growing. On one of those moons, Alex Ligon, scion of a great interplanetary trading family has developed a wonderfully accurate new population model and cannot wait until the newly reconstituted "Seine", the interlinked network of computers that spans the planets and moons and asteroids, comes back online. But when it does, and he extends his perfect model a century into the future, it predicts the complete destruction of the human race.On another moon, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence goes on, undaunted by generations of failure. And to her amazement, Millie Wu, a young genius newly recruited to the project, has found a signal... a signal that is coming from outside the solar system.And in his new retreat on a minor moon of Saturn, the cranky genius Rustum Battachariya is still collecting weapons from the Great War. He thinks he may have stumbled on an unexpected new one...but hell need to disarm it before it destroys the Sun.

Humans first reached out to the stars travelling at a painfully slow sublight crawl - then they found the Bose network, which allowed ships to jump instantaneously from one node in the galactic arm to another. Once in the Network they found the Artifacts: enigmatic structures, millions of years old, left by a vanished race. Incomprehensible to both human ad non-human minds, the Artifacts seemingly defy natural law. Now, after millions of years, a new Artifact has appeared - and previously discovered Artifacts are showing strange changes in their inexplicable activities. When a motley crew of human and alien scientists and adventurers set out to examine still more Artifacts, they should have considered the fat that some changes are more dangerous than others...

A collection of some of the finest short stories penned by a master of hard science fiction, this anthology includes Charles Sheffields highly acclaimed novelette, Georgia On My Mind, which won both the Hugo and Nebula when originally published in 1993. The accompanying stories were written by the author between 1987 and 1994.Table of Contents:The Feynman SaltationThe Bees KissMillenniumFifteen-Love on the Dead Mans ChestDeep SafariBeyond the Golden RoadHealth Care SystemHumanity TestThat Strain Again ...Destroyer of WorldsThe Fifteenth Station of the CrossTrapalandaObsolete SkillGeorgia On My Mind

Shelby Cheever is a spoiled brat. He is also the richest kid in the country. Actually, make that the universe. Bored with his all-the-amusements-money-can-buy life, he decides on a bit of interstellar action, Shelby-style. But it turns out life on a starship is not all fun and games. As part of a crew, Shelby has a few things to learn. Such as how to follow orders instead of simply giving orders. Can Shelby learn how to cooperate with his crewmates?He may not have a choice. When Shelby becomes the target of a hostage-for-ransom scheme, hell need all the help he can get.

Lionel Salkind was glad for a visit from his twin brother Leo; the two rarely saw each other. Tehn their plane went down, and as he lost consciousness Lionel knew that Leo was dead. Lionel woke up in a hospital, to the eerie news that he owed his life to bits of his dead brothers brain transplanted into his own skull. It was a very experimental operation, but it seemed to have been successful. And then the memories began. Terrifying snatches of memory that had no place in Lionels own quiet past. Leos memories, calling him somewhere to finish a job half-done - a dangerous job whose importance to the world Lionel had not even begun to grasp.

The Zardalu were the greatest menace ever known to the worlds of the spiral arm, enslaving entire races and exterminating others, guided by an unswerving belief in their own supremacy. Then their slaves rose up against them, and for eleven thousand years the Zardalu had been extinct and the spiral arm had known a kind of peace.But now the Zardalu are back . . .The search for the Builders, the legendary alien race whose unfathomable constructs continued to perplex scholars and explorers alike, had led Builder expert Darya Lang, adventurer Hans Rebka, and treasure hunters Louis Nenda and Atvar Hsial to an unknown Builder artifact far outside the spiral arm. There they found the Zardalu - just a few who had been trapped in stasis all those millennia, held there for purposes known only to the Builders. And in the struggle that ensued the Zardalu had been set loose, transported by Builder technology to to galactic parts unknown - free to ravage any world and any race within their grasp. The only chance to eliminate the Zardalu threat was to find them and wipe them out before they had time to breed back up to strength and once again threaten civilized beings everywhere. The problem was that no one believed the story. Only Darya Land and her companions had actually seen the aliens - and no evidence existed to support their claims. And so the course seemed clear: get a ship themselves and search out the Zardalu. But the way would not be easy. Even once they managed to locate the Zardalu, they still had the Builders to deal with. For the closer they got to their quarry, the more clear it became that the Zardalu and their world were closely entwined with the fate - and the plans - of the Builders themselves.

The end draws nigh....The year is 2053, and Earth has barely recovered from the Alpha Centauri supernova that destroyed much of the planets infrastructure. Now the supernovas residual effect - a storm of high-energy particles - is racing toward Earth, and an international effort has been launched out of the Sky City space colony to save the planet. But the controversial plan - to build a giant protective shield for Earth - is falling dangerously behind schedule. A series of unexplained murders has disrupted the Sky City workforce, so much so that a brilliant but monstrous criminal has been enlisted to track down the Sky City killer.Then comes more startling news. Evidence indicates that the original supernova was caused deliberately, and that the lethal particle storm will arrive sooner than anyone expected. But who - or what - tried to destroy the Earth? And will the answer come in time to save it from its final apocalypse?

Spacer Chan Dalton is torn between two masters. The pacifist aliens who hold Earth under Quarantine want him to find out why their starships have been disappearing in the Geyser Swirl, the Bermuda Triangle of the galaxy. Earths military, which has secretly discovered a way to break the quarantine, assumes that someone out there is making ships vanish, including Earths, and wants Dalton to find the culprits and hopefully stop them - with extreme prejudice, if necessary. The trouble is, the aliens hold the taking of intelligent life, even in selfdefense, to be the greatest of sins. It was Earths violent ways (in defense of the damned pacifist aliens!) that led to the quarantine in the first place -and if Dalton is forced to fight, it will unveil, and so destroy, Earths final chance to reach for the stars again. So when Dalton does indeed discover the hostile invaders responsible for the lost starships, he is faced with an impossible decision: Fight and lose access to space forever; or allow a rapacious enemy to run riot over all that he holds dear...

"One of the most imaginative, exciting talents to appear on the sf scene in recent years."Publishers WeeklyCharles A. Sheffield was an English-born mathematician, physicist and science fiction author, whose words are collected here in one of his most iconic short story collections ever published, Hidden Variables. Known for his ability to incorporate real science into his fiction, Sheffields stories exposed the potential flaws and triumphs of the human mind, by showing us that even if weve evolved enough to gain mastery of technology and advanced science, we can still fall prey to our selfish and emotional naturesbut on a scale that can affect the rest of humanity.In "The Man who Stole the Moon" Sheffield tells of the depths one man will descend to overcome the bureaucratic stifling of initiative that happens when those in power arent willing to grant someones visions for the future. Will simple red tape prevent Man from leaving Earth to make the greatest leap for all of humanity?In "Forefather Figure," can the wish for us to know more about the Cro-Magnons, our ancestors of an era long gone, justify creating the technology to help a man cheat death, only for the scientist to then use that life to achieve his own ends?And in "Hidden Variables," the story this collection was named after, can the mere potential for one mans greatest scientific achievement to have wide-ranging adverse consequences mean his murder is something that can be sanctioned?Whether its a short story on one mans atonement after a murder in "From Natural Causes," or the discovery of a child prodigy on a generational asteroid ship, bound for a new colony in "All the Colors of the Vacuum," or the breathtaking tale of loss and redemption in "Summertide", the variations in the stories Sheffield wrote can be quite profound, but his talent was by no means hidden.

Jay Hara is an ordinary young man growing up on the isolated planet of Erin. But Jay dreams of adventure and escapades and the legend of the lost "Godspeed" drive which allowed humans to travel at faster-than-light speeds.His life changes when he joins up with the seedy spacer, Paddy Enderton and Captain Daniel Shaker. Captain Shaker is a charming but ruthless adventurer who inspires both fear and admiration in equal measure, and he and his questionable crew are joined by Jay as they race to find the legendary drive Jay Hara used to dream about.Godspeed is a true coming-of-age tale told in the classic tradition of R.L. Stevensons Treasure Island. A modern day pirate story, set among the stars.

For millennia, humankind and the other intelligent races had studied the bizarre and unfathomable constructs of the legendary beings known as Builders. But for all that study, they were still no closer to figuring out who - or what - the Builders had been, or where they had gone. Then, on the world called Quake, in the midst of the violent planetary upheaval that was Summertide, a small group of humans and aliens witnessed the culmination of all those years of watching and waiting: the planet Quake opened up, and something came out - and it looked as if, at long last, the discovery of the Builders themselves was at hand.All her life, Darya Lang had dreamed of finding the Builders, whose artifacts she had single-handedly catalogued for the rest of the universe. Troubleshooter and adventurer Hans Rebka had his own dreams of unraveling the mystery of those artifacts. To Louis Nenda and the Cecropian Atvar Hsial, the Builder artifacts represented a once-in-a-lifetime shot at untold wealth. And close behind them came the others: Councilor Julius Graces, who did not trust anyone to make first contact unassisted; the slavesJmerlia and Kallik, who craved only a reunion with their masters; and the embodied computer E.C. Tally, charged with finding out just what the rest were up to.The trail that began at Quake led to unexpected Builder artifacts full of traps for the unwary and answers for those who knew how to ask the questions. But the biggest question of all would remain an enigma, while their search unleashed the greatest threat to civilization ever imagined...