One night in October when he was ten years old, Tyler Dupree stood in his back yard and watched the stars go out. They all flared into brilliance at once, then disappeared, replaced by a flat, empty black barrier. He and his best friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, had seen what became known as the Big Blackout. It would shape their lives. The effect is worldwide. The sun is now a featureless disk--a heat source, rather than an astronomical object. The moon is gone, but tides remain. Not only have the world's artificial satellites fallen out of orbit, their recovered remains are pitted and aged, as though they'd been in space far longer than their known lifespans. As Tyler, Jason, and Diane grow up, a space probe reveals a bizarre truth: The barrier is artificial, generated by huge alien artifacts. Time is passing faster outside the barrier than inside--more than a hundred million years per year on Earth. At this rate, the death throes of the sun are only about forty years in our future. Jason, now a promising young scientist, devotes his life to working against this slow-moving apocalypse. Diane throws herself into hedonism, marrying a sinister cult leader who's forged a new religion out of the fears of the masses. Earth sends terraforming machines to Mars to let the onrush of time do its work, turning the planet green. Next they send humans...and immediately get back an emissary with thousands of years of stories to tell about the settling of Mars. Then Earth's probes reveal that an identical barrier has appeared around Mars. Jason, desperate, seeds near space with self-replicating machines that will scatter copies of themselves outward from the sun--and report back on what they find. Life on Earth is about to get much, much stranger.

A millennium into the future two advancements have altered the course of human history:the colonization of the galaxy and the creation of the positronic brain.Isaac Asimov's Robot novels chronicle the unlikely partnership between a New York City detective and a humanoid robot who must learn to work together.Like most people left behind on an over-populated Earth, New York City police detective Elijah Baley had little love for either the arrogant Spacers or their robotic companions.But when a prominent Spacer is murdered under mysterious circumstances, Baley is ordered to the Outer Worlds to help track down the killer.The relationship between Life and his Spacer superiors, who distrusted all Earthmen, was strained from the start.Then he learned that they had assigned him a partner:R. Daneel Olivaw.Worst of all was that the "R" stood for robot--and his positronic partner was made in the image and likeness of the murder victim!

Philip K. Dick's searing metaphysical comedy of death and salvation is a tour de force of panoramic menace and unfettered slapstick, in which the departed give business advice, shop for their next incarnation, and run the continual risk of dying yet again.

"Twenty years ago, it was as if someone turned on a light. The future blazed into existence with each deliberate word that William Gibson laid down. Neuromancer didn't just explode onto the science fiction scene. It permeated into our consciousness, our culture, our science, and our technology. The winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards, Neuromancer showed us what we were capable of creating and what we were capable of destroying - and illuminated the dark corners of the path we were headed down." Today, we have this science fiction masterpiece to thank for the term "cyberpunk," for easing our way into the information age and Internet society. Neuromancer's virtual reality has become our own. And yet, William Gibson's vision still manages to inspire the minds that will take us ever further into the future.

In consequence of a number of stunning catastrophes, Arther Dent is surprised to find himself living in a hideously miserable cave on prehistoric Earth. However, just as he thinks that things cannot possibly get any worse, they suddenly do. He discovers that the galaxy is not only mind-bogglingly big and bewildering, but also that most of the things that happen in it are straggeringly unfair. This is volum three in the trilogy of five.

When all questions of space, time, matter and the nature of being have been resolved, only one question remains - "Where shall we have dinner?" "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" provides the ultimate gastronomic experience, and for once there is no morning after to worry about. This is volume two in the Trilogy of five.