The story begins with a narrative of the early lives of the two main characters, jack Riordan and Susan Baker. Jack grows up on a farm in Australia, Susan in New Mexico, USA. Susans father is diagnosed with a terminal condition and decides to use his remaining time to take his family to Australia. Here, at university, the two meet and fall in love. Jack had always wanted to become an Army officer and joins the University Regiment. In the meantime, Susans father dies and her mother becomes frantic with worry that her daughters will want to marry and remain in Australia. Susan falls pregnant and her mother takes the family back to the US while Jack is away in the army. On his return, he cannot find out where they have gone. They are separated for three years. During this time their love never wavers, and their daughter, Jacqui is born. Jack is sent to fight in Vietnam, where he is engaged in several key battles and is decorated for his bravery and, by a stroke of good fortune, comes across Susans brother, Jimbo, who eventually tells him what had happened to Susan and their baby. Soon they are re-united and Jack brings his family back to Australia.

As the Babcock family faces a life-threatening illness, they must also deal with the opposing positions of medical science and their church.

Rebellious cellphones. Lustful holograms. A tourist vampire with a taste for spicy Indian blood. A conference of galactic gods. In twenty-five exhilarating stories, Manjula Padmanabhan brings her trademark twist to familiar reality, dreaming up inventive futures and capturing today's world with equal flair. From bejewelled party guests suddenly stripped naked to a teenager who steals time, from mosquitoes that infect people with Gandhian pacifism to a dystopia where everyone breathes canned air, this remarkable collection poses urgent questions: what does it mean to live in a society, and this one in particular? Where are we headed, and do we even want to get there? At once funny, provocative and profound, Stolen Hours and Other Curiosities is science fiction served up with a dab of ghee and a sprinkling of dark matter that will hold you captive till the very last page.

Enjoy this meticulously edited SF Collection, jam-packed with space adventures, dystopian apocalyptic tales and the greatest sci-fi classics: H. G. Wells: The Time Machine The War of the Worlds The Island of Doctor Moreau The Invisible Man… Jules Verne: Journey to the Center of the Earth 20.000 Leagues under the Sea The Mysterious Island… Mary Shelley: Frankenstein The Last Man Edgar Wallace: Planetoid 127 The Green Rust… Otis Adelbert Kline: The Venus Trilogy The Mars Series Malcolm Jameson: Captain Bullard Series Garrett P. Serviss: Edison's Conquest of Mars A Columbus of Space The Sky Pirate… Arthur Conan Doyle: The Professor Challenger Series Francis Bacon: New Atlantis Edwin A. Abbott: Flatland Jack London: Iron Heel The Scarlet Plague The Star Rover… Robert Louis Stevenson: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde George MacDonald: Lilith H. Rider Haggard: King Solomon's Mines She William H. Hodgson: The House on the Borderland The Night Land… Edgar Allan Poe: Some Words with a Mummy Mellonta Tauta… H. P. Lovecraft: Beyond the Wall of Sleep The Cats of Ulthar Celephaïs Edward Bellamy: Looking Backward: 2000–1887 Equality… Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court Owen Gregory: Meccania the Super-State Margaret Cavendish: The Blazing World Jonathan Swift: Gulliver's Travels William Morris: News from Nowhere Samuel Butler: Erewhon Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race James Fenimore Cooper: The Monikins Hugh Benson: Lord of the World Fred M. White: The Doom of London Ignatius Donnelly: Caesar's Column Ernest Bramah: The Secret of the League Arthur D. Vinton: Looking Further Backward Robert Cromie: The Crack of Doom Anthony Trollope: The Fixed Period Cleveland Moffett: The Conquest of America Richard Jefferies: After London Francis Stevens: The Heads of Cerberus Percy Greg: Across the Zodiac David Lindsay: A Voyage to Arcturus Stanley G. Weinbaum: Stories from the Solar System Edward Everett Hale: The Brick Moon Abraham Merritt: The Moon Pool The Metal Monster… C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne: The Lost Continent Lewis Grassic Gibbon: Three Go Back