Morgan Russell, Sienna Borden, and Lenore Huston almost always see each other in the infusion lab of the Oncology Department of The Center. All three are being treated by Dr. Lucille Peyton, a hardworking, dedicated physician and friend. All of them are battling one common enemy: cancer. While life itself is a constant challenge in the course of their treatment, The Center is undergoing rapid changes under new management that are determined to keep the hospital from bankruptcy. Dr. Jerry Cherry, an accountant, currently heads the board of directors. His resolve to downsize the hospital staff and departments for financial stability clashes with the doctors’ ethos and primary duty: the treatment of patients to the best of their abilities. For unknown reasons, the Oncology Department seems to be the hardest hit by layoffs, and Dr. Peyton becomes the recipient of charges for company violations that threaten to end her career as physician forever.

The Starship Rhea has discovered a cluster of carbon planets that seems to be the source of the quantum energies rippling through a section of space. A landing party finds unusual life-forms inhabiting one of the planets. One officer, Lieutenant T'Ryssa Chen -- a half-Vulcan -- makes a tenuous connection with them. But before any progress can be made, the Rhea comes under attack from the Einstein -- a Starfleet vessel now controlled by the Borg. The landing party can only listen in horror as their comrades are assimilated. The Borg descend to the planet, and just as Chen accepts that she will be assimilated, the lieutenant is whisked two thousand light-years away. A quantum slipstream -- instantaneous transportation -- is controlled by these beings in the cluster, and in the heart of the cluster there is now a Borg ship. Cut off from the rest of the Borg collective, the Einstein cannot be allowed to rejoin it. For the sake of humanity, the Borg cannot gain access to quantum slipstream technology. Starfleet Command gives Captain Picard carte blanche: do whatever he must to help the beings in the cluster, and stop the Einstein no matter the cost.

From physics to information theory and cosmology, from the structure of animal societies to the linguistic analysis of human writing, systems consisting of many interacting constituents often show a collective behaviour not predictable from the interaction of the individual constituents. In More than the Sum of the Parts, Helmut Satz addresses different forms of this complex behaviour, which have been thoroughly investigated only in the past decades. Although these studies originate in physics, the behaviour is found to be universal, ranging from the structure of the early universe to the formation of flocks of birds, and to the frequency of words in literary texts. Complexity is thus becoming an increasingly important interdisciplinary field for future scientific research. In a conceptual and non-technical way, Satz opens up this exciting field for a general readership and those studying any field of the natural sciences.

The ultimate collection of classic science fiction stories and poems from the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author of the Forever War Series. An omnibus edition of his collections None So Blind and Dealing in Futures, this volume features the best of Joe Haldeman’s short speculative fiction, including such gems as the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning “The Hemingway Hoax,” in which a forged Hemingway manuscript takes the reader on a journey through time and multiple universes; the Hugo and Locus Award–winning “None So Blind;” the World Fantasy and Nebula Award–winning “Graves;” and the Rhysling Award–winning poem “Saul’s Death.” From stories steeped in the horrors of the Vietnam War to tales of cyborg transformations and space explorations, Haldeman flexes his narrative powers to deliver works that will live on for generations to come. “If there was a Fort Knox for science fiction writers who really matter, we’d have to lock Haldeman up there.” —Stephen King “One of the most prophetic writers of our times.” —David Brin

Greater Than Sum, the second book in the Lake Parking Trilogy, is a series of poems using 21 words or less. Stylistically, the poetry was shaped through use of language, a curious exploration of vocabulary, board games & cards, a poetic musicality, and in response to wanting to take an alternate road from the first book in the Trilogy. While it’s a darker journey, splendor is not overlooked in surveying the wide assortment of themes and issues fostered within this book. We’re confronted with both the rational and unreasonable. It’s a puzzle of art and life seen through a looking glass.

Presents 250 multi-step math problems for students in grades four through eight, covering whole numbers, decimals, fractions, measurement, geometry, percents, ratio, and probability, and algebra and statistics; and includes an answer key.