Showing results by narrator "Scott Aiello" in All Categories

Hanna is devastated when just a few weeks before her wedding, her fiancé drops the bomb that he doesn’t want to marry her. With the wedding bought and paid for (and completely non-refundable!), she decides to give it away to a deserving couple. Hanna chooses a pair of strangers that fate seems to put in her path, and then embarks on rearranging the wedding details with the help of the new bride-to-be’s brother.

Three offbeat stories of crime and conundrum, set in the present moment, from the New York Times best-selling, Edgar Award-winning author of Underground Airlines and The Last Policeman.

Jon Ryan was supposed to be dead. He wanted to be dead. But Jon wakes up in the far future with an alien burrowing in his chest for salvage. Someone was going to pay for this. Check that. Lots of people were going to pay for this. Jon was the first astronaut to download to an android host to find the population of doomed Earth a new home. But that was so long time ago. He is now literally lost in time.

Hugh Howey is known for crafting riveting and immersive tales of boundless imagination. Now comes Machine Learning, an impressive collection of Howey's science fiction and fantasy short fiction, including three stories set in the world of Wool, two never-before-published tales written exclusively for this volume, and 15 additional stories collected here for the first time. These stories explore everything from artificial intelligence to parallel universes to video games, and each story is accompanied by an author's note.

An expert, story-driven account of how Coinbase won the cryptocurrency game and set itself up to lead the future of banking and blockchain-based trading. This is the story of the people who made Coinbase, per PitchBook, “one of the most valuable startups in the US,” including the stoic, preppy founder and CEO Brian Armstrong and the bitcoin-obsessed former lumberjack Olaf Carlson-Wee, who turned their backs on the first generation of wild-eyed Bitcoin prophets to build something more profound and practical.

Jon Ryan is irreverent, cocky, funny, and walks with a swagger. The cocky fighter pilot turned astronaut is also Earth's only chance for survival. The planet Jupiter, thrown off orbit, will destroy Earth in less than a century. Jon volunteers for the most ambitious, desperate mission ever conceived: His consciousness must be transferred into an experimental android host, where he'll live an immortal—and lonely—life. Jon's only companion on his 50-year voyage is his ship's irritable AI.

Endless fighting. Hopeless odds. Then things got worse. Jon Ryan has beaten the odds so far. He saved humanity from a sinister alien threat, and he stopped the insane android president of the United States three separate times. But the president won't stay dead, and a super race threatens to end Jon's hopes for a peaceful future. Jon's mind-boggling alien technology has been enough to keep everyone alive. But, just when there's reason for hope, a new, more deadly race sets its sights on him. This threat may just be unstoppable.

Book 4 of a Progression Fantasy Epic set around a pseudo-medieval society clinging to existence on frozen post-apocalyptic Earth. Impossible odds, weak-to-strong progression, dungeon-delving, epic battles, scavenged tech, prophecy, magic, and mystery—12 Miles Below has something for everyone.

Extreme sub-zero temperatures suffocate the surface. Frozen structures of bygone eras span across massive ice-wastes. And the survivors closely guard any technology rediscovered within them. The only escape from the deadly climate is beneath the surface, but that doesn't mean it's safe... Monstrous machines lurk in the depths. Unhinged demigods war against them, dying over and over, treating it all like a game. The depths themselves shift over time, more contraption than rock.

Humanity's hour of reckoning draws near. Armed with Hexis's forbidden knowledge, forged by Tenisent's brutal trials, and driven by his own revolutionary engineering, Keith Winterscar stands ready to challenge the world itself. Likely among the strongest humans now walking the Earth, Keith's true mission is clear: liberate To'Wrathh from Relinquished's stranglehold. Their plan is audacious. Their target is legend.

A landmark short story collection that put the more character-based New Wave science fiction on the map, Dangerous Visions won several prestigious awards and was nominated for many others. This now-classic anthology includes thirty-three stories by thirty-two award-winning authors, over half of whom have won multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards.

When a fiendish fraudster has been fomenting financial falsehoods, who can find the finagler? The World’s Greatest Detective Agency, of course! Staffed by the eccentric man who calls himself Sherman Holmes and aided by his ever-composed assistant Watson, the duo will take on cases other agencies might consider helpless, hopeless, or downright preposterous. Which is how our fearless fellows find themselves investigating a Renaissance faire’s cooked books, with the finger of guilt pointing directly at their client.

These fourteen science fiction stories reveal Lem’s fascination with artificial intelligence and demonstrate just how surprisingly human sentient machines can be.

Trurl and Klaupacius are constructor robots who try to out-invent each other. Over the course of their adventures in The Cyberiad, they travel to the far corners of the cosmos to take on freelance problem-solving jobs, with dire consequences for their unsuspecting employers.

Jon Ryan had lived long enough to know better. But with age does not automatically come wisdom. He has saved mankind many times. He even resurrected Earth and all its inhabitants from never-having-existed. But he's still haunted, and haunted people do crazy things.

A few years earlier, the evil clan destroyed Earth. Jon and his team labored mightily to resurrect our lost civilization. But once they achieved that impossibility, Jon grew more and more obsessed with restoring Earth's original time line. He wants to give rebirth to his original life story, his history. In spite of pleas to the contrary by his friends, he was hellbent on achieving his unproven goal.

If it's peace you want don't ever be Jon Ryan. He's lived two billion years in the android host he transferred to when asked to save humankind. Darn thing won't wear out. Since successfully ensuring the survival of the population of doomed Earth, Jon wanted to die. He was switched off with the promise of never being powered up again. Yeah, Jon's never been that kind of lucky. He was forced to fight and win a war with the most powerful enemy he'd ever faced, the Berrillians. Then he longed for rest.

The mission seems simple enough: extract a pharmaceutical magnate from Russian soil, a volatile man who holds the secret to a deadly bio-weapon. But nothing is as it appears to be. A conspiracy of world-shattering scope unravels as Tucker and Kane struggle to keep one move ahead of their deadly...

Captain Ripley Willis Lee had faced danger before, but this new mission was even more threatening. Deep behind enemy lines, he and Primord Captain Dharek were forced to work together to unravel Zodark supply routes, sabotage infrastructure, and pave the way for the Republic’s liberation of Rass.

Humanity has seen its share of brutally oppressive regimes, but none have been by an artificial intelligence… until now. Unleashing its vicious star snakes, Glitch takes control of the system, killing thousands on Day One. Everyone loses someone. Captain Jack Hale and his crew are no exception. Outmatched by a corrupted AI, Jack Hale will need to change the rules if he’s to win. The odds are against him. But it's never a good idea to underestimate Captain Jack Hale.