The Culture--a human/machine symbiotic society--has thrown up many great Game Players, and one of the greatest is Gurgeh. Jernau Morat Gurgeh. The Player of Games. Master of every board, computer and strategy. Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel and incredibly wealthy, to try their fabulous game...a game so complex, so like life itself, that the winner becomes emperor. Mocked, blackmailed, almost murdered, Gurgeh accepts the game, and with it the ...

In Captive Soul, published to tie-in with the fantasy adventure TV series Highlander, warrior Duncan McLeod and his friend Methos notice a particular sword on display in a NY museum. Methos recognises the weapon from his days in Ancient Egypt.

A surprise assault on an Exploration Corps starship by implacably hostile, xenophobic aliens leaves its one remaining longboat as the only option for warning the home worlds of the existence of the predators. Unfortunately, the starship met disaster while thousands of light years from Earth. Theoretically, that sort of voyage in a longboat is possible but has never been attempted. In order to return, the crew has to stop on numerous unknown planets to renew ...

David A. Hardy's spectacular December cover illustrates a story as hard to capture in a single image as it was to imagine in the first place: "Formidable Caress," the latest of Stephen Baxter's "Tales of Old Earth." Old Earth, you may remember (though you don't have to) is a most peculiar place where time is layered, running at different rates at different altitudes. That's what makes it possible to experience a drama on such a ...