(The Empire had ruined Captain Allison Spencer's life--for...)
The Empire had ruined Captain Allison Spencer's life--forcing his wife into the bed of another man and leaving him a junkie--but an alien threat requires that it rehabilitate him
Ambush at Corellia (Star Wars, The Corellian Trilogy #1) (Book 1)
(A trade summit on Corellia brings Han Solo back to the h...)
A trade summit on Corellia brings Han Solo back to the home world he left many years before. Arriving on the distant planet with Leia, their children and Chewbacca, Han finds Corellia overrun with agents of the New Republic Intelligence and finds himself part of a deceptive plan whose aim not even he understands. One thing is clear: the five inhabited worlds of the sector are on the brink of civil war and the once peaceful coexistence of the three leading races -- human, Selonian, and Drallan -- has come to an end.
Assault at Selonia (Star Wars: The Corellian Trilogy, Book 2)
(Imprisoned on the planet Corellia, Han Solo finds himsel...)
Imprisoned on the planet Corellia, Han Solo finds himself at the mercy of his evil cousin, Thracken Sal-Solo. Thracken plans to restore the Imperial system and seize total power -- no matter what the cost. Han has one chance to stop him. But to do so he must turn his back on his human cousin and join forces with a female alien. Dracmus was arrested as a ringleader in a plot against the corrupt Human League. Now she and Han will attempt a daring escape to Selonia in time to warn Leia, Luke Skywalker, and Lando of Thracken's plan. But can Han trust the alien to keep her word? Meanwhile, other questions threaten the New Republic -- and the lives of millions. Who is behind the deadly Starbuster plot? Why is someone attempting to take possession of Corellia's powerful planetary repulsors? And what is the secret behind the mysterious Centerpoint Station, and ancient, artificial world of unknown origin that has suddenly -- and inexplicably -- come alive?
Showdown at Centerpoint (Star Wars: The Corellian Trilogy, Book 3)
(In this third and final volume of the Corellian trilogy,...)
In this third and final volume of the Corellian trilogy, Han and Luke lead the Alliance in a mad scramble against the Selonian rebels for control of the planetary technology.
(The Corellian Trilogy is a trilogy of novels written by R...)
The Corellian Trilogy is a trilogy of novels written by Roger MacBride Allen-Ambush at Corellia, Assault at Selonia, and Showdown at Centerpoint. All three installments were released in 1995 by Bantam Spectra. The novels are set in 18 ABY and chronicle the Solo family's visit to Corellia.
(Time is of the essence when you're stranded in the future...)
Time is of the essence when you're stranded in the future.... Humanity is running out of time. The settled universe is filled with terraformed worlds linked by timeshafts -- temporal wormholes in deep space. These timeshafts are the only way to travel the vast distances between the stars. The Chronologic Patrol is charged with guarding the timeshaft wormholes and preventing time paradoxes at all costs. But one critical mission ends in disaster, turning Anton Koffield, captain of the Upholder, into a dark legend.... As ships carrying relief supplies to a crippled planet approach a timeshaft, they are mercilessly set upon by mysterious attackers -- their crews are murdered and the sanctity of time itself is at risk. In response, Koffield is forced to do the unthinkable: he must stop the invasion by destroying the timeshaft. Marooned eighty years in the future, he lives as a cursed figure, the villain who killed a world. And his odyssey through time has only just begun....
The Shores of Tomorrow (The Chronicles of Solace, Bk. 3)
(On the verge of extinction, only the gravest imaginable c...)
On the verge of extinction, only the gravest imaginable crime against humanity can save it...A bold new plan seeks to ignite a new Sunspot over Greenhouse, saving the habitat domes crucial to the survival of the Solacian people. But a secret clouds this symbol of much-needed hope: human space is contracting at a startling rate, threatening to wipe out all living worlds including Earth. The only answer lies in the hands of the founder of the planet Solace: Oskar DeSilvo, seemingly returned from the dead to save the worlds his frauds had doomed to destruction. But as the work begins, agents of the Chronologic Patrol step in to prevent interference with the past even at the risk of dooming humanity. Thwarted at every turn, DeSilvo and his onetime nemesis, Anton Koffield, propose one last wildly grandiose idea one final, desperate gamble. But if the only choice lies between madness and certain catastrophe is there any choice at all?
Mr. Lincoln's High-Tech War: How the North Used the Telegraph, Railroads, Surveillance Balloons, Ironclads, High-Powered Weapons, and More to Win the Civil War
(Thomas B. Allen’s expertise in military history and strat...)
Thomas B. Allen’s expertise in military history and strategy is combined with Roger MacBride Allen’s knowledge of technology to reveal a lesser-known yet fascinating side of the 16th president of the United States. Their authoritative narrative reveals Lincoln as our nation’s first hands-on Commander-in-Chief, whose appreciation for the power of technology plays a critical role in the North’s Civil War victory over the less developed South. Readers meet Lincoln as he exchanges vital telegraph messages with his generals in the field; we witness his inspection of new ship models at the Navy Yard; we view the president target-shooting with the designer of a new kind of rifle; and we follow Lincoln, the man of action, as he leads a daring raid to recapture Norfolk, VA. The book’s historic sweep also sets Abraham Lincoln in the context of his military era: we learn about the North’s Anaconda Plan, the South’s counter strategies, and how the concept of total war replaced the old Napoleonic way of fighting. Readers will come away with a rich sense of a leader who lived through one of the most exciting ages of technological and social change in America. With archival photographs, artwork, and maps, Mr. Lincoln’s High-Tech War brings alive a time when the railroad brought soldiers and to and from the battlefields, when hot-air balloons were used for surveillance, and when ironclad warships revolutionized naval warfare. The Allens’ detailed study demonstrates why Lincoln’s appreciation of the importance of technology, his understanding of the art of war, and his mastery of military strategy were key elements in the winning of the American Civil War. National Geographic supports K-12 educators with ELA Common Core Resources. Visit www.natgeoed.org/commoncore for more information.
(The world's first Time Capsule, filled with artifacts and...)
The world's first Time Capsule, filled with artifacts and documents that tell the story of 1930s America, was buried at the site of the 1939-1940 New York World's Fair. Time Capsule II was buried ten feet away at the 1964-1965 Fair. Together, the two Time Capsules comprise a message to the future, meant to be opened by the people of the year 6939 A.D. But what if, by that date, all knowledge of the Fairs, of New York City, of the English language itself, has been lost in the mists of time? How were the Futurians to find this hidden trove of knowledge, or know what it contained? The simple but wildly ambitious answer: The Book of Record of the Time Capsule--a treasure map in book form, intended to teach the Futurians our language, tell them who we were, and lead them to the buried treasure that awaits them. Time Capsule: The Book of Record precisely reproduces every page of the text typesetting and illustrations of the original Book of Record, and includes a brief but detailed history of the Time Capsules and the original Book of Record, brief biographies of the men who created The Book of Record, and a full index.
Roger MacBride Allen is, according to Jay Kay Klein in Analog, perhaps the youngest science fiction author who predates the space age.
Background
Roger Allen was born just eight days before the 1957 launching of the Sputnik satellite by the former Soviet Union, on September 26, 1957 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, United States. His father is an American historian and author Thomas B. Allen.
Education
Allen, the son of a published writer, "never let classes interfere with getting an education". A journalism major at Boston University, he absorbed enough knowledge in a variety of scientific fields to write about and extrapolate from them persuasively. He received Bachelor of Science degree in journalism in 1979.
Early in career, Allen worked variously as a waiter, clerk, temp, salesperson, and a telephone operator.
Allen and his wife lived in Brazil from 1994 to 1997. Since beginning his career as a fiction writer he became known for both his understanding of “hard science” and his love for old fashioned narrative, neither of which have prevented him from creating recognizably human characters and situations.
Allen’s first novel, Torch of Honor (1985), was “excellent conventional space opera” in the view of Analog columnist Tom Easton.
In The Orphan of Creation Allen focuses on the discovery in the United States by a paleoanthropologist of prehistoric human bones that curiously date from the time of the Civil War. From the questions raised by the discovery a search commences for a previously thought extinct form of human.
There followed Farside Cannon, a 1989 novel based on the near future, which involves lasers on the moon combined with political and social upheaval. His next novel, The War Machine, co-written with David A. Drake as the third volume in the latter’s “Crisis of Empire” series, involves a corrupt political system, the Pact, which holds the stellar system together. The hero of The War Machine defends the Pact against an enemy for no better political structure exists.
Another co-authored novel, Supernova, with Eric Kotani, involves the irradiation of the Earth after the explosion of a nearby star.
Shortly after the publication of Supernova, Allen began his “Hunted Earth” series, the first of which, The Ring of Charon, was released in 1991.
The second volume in the “Hunted Earth” epic did not appear until 1994, but when it did, it achieved promotion into hardcover publishing (its predecessor had been a paperback original). This sequel, The Shattered Sphere, presents the invasion of Earth’s new solar system by an age-old enemy of this new world’s native inhabitants. The story also continues the human survivors’ attempts to find their ancestral solar system.
Between the two “Hunted Earth” novels, Allen also published The Modular Man, a tale of robotics, in which a dying robot scientist has his mind transmitted into the body of one of his robots.
Robotics is also the subject of a trilogy of novels that Allen wrote as extrapolations of noted science fiction writer Isaac Asimov’s work on that subject. The first volume, Caliban, which was co-written with Asimov, explores the further ramifications of Asimov’s laws of robotics by setting them on a planet named Inferno that has been settled by humans who are excessively dependent on their robots. The second volume, Isaac Asimov's Inferno, elicited the comment from Tom Pearson, in Voice of Youth Advocates, that both novels were “worthy, and authorized, successors” to Asimov’s novels The Naked Sun and The Caves of Steel.
After publication of Inferno, Allen’s next four published novels would be based on the creations of others: a “Star Wars” trilogy (based on the films from George Lucas), published in 1995, and the third volume of the “Caliban” trilogy, Utopia: Isaac Asimov’s Caliban, in 1996.