Mark Strang is asked to travel far back in time to the period of Caesar and the great Roman Triumvirate, in order to investigate the disappearance of a fellow time agent. What he discovers is that Caesar has been subverted by a Closer representative and that the Triumvirate has been undermined with civil war, mutual destruction, and the rewriting of history looming in the near future.

In a sequel to A Million Open Doors, John Barnes writes another novel in the universe of the Thousand Cultures. Humanity dwells in colonies (some natural and some artificial) spread over hundreds of planets that lost touch with each other for over a thousand years. Due to the invention of the springer, an instantaneous teleportation device, the worlds are communicating again. But after centuries of isolation, reunification results in intense cultural and economic stress.

Giraut and Margaret, characters from the earlier book, are now a husband and wife diplomatic team for the Council of Humanity. They also do clandestine work for the Office of Special Projects, an undercover organization that deals with serious problems that result when local governments prove intractable. Their next assignment: promote peace and cooperation on Briand, a hellish planet whose physical hostility is matched only by the hatred its two cultures show to each other.

Tamil Mandalam was founded by classical Tamils, and Kintulum was founded by classical Mayans. Tamils believe themselves to be perfect and believe that once the springer does open Briand to humanity, they will show the rest of the universe how to live. The Mayans, when they communicate at all, apparently feel the same way. The magnificence of each culture's accomplishments in art and literature is overshadowed by citizens' bigotry.

A difficult assignment indeed; as if high gravity, high temperatures and ethnic attacks weren't enough, Giraut and Margaret's mission grows even more troublesome because of their marital problems, Margaret's depression, and the bureaucratic thick-headedness of Briand's Ambassador. —Bonnie Bouman

A skilled SF author who's been publishing novels since 1987, John Barnes seems underrated in the field—perhaps because he is so versatile. His 1990s work included the disaster blockbuster Mother of Storms, the doom-ridden political tragedy Earth Made of Glass, and—the only whimsical fantasy to rival William Goldman's The Princess Bride—Barnes—Barnes's One for Morning Glory.

Finity could be called his Philip K. Dick novel. Opening in a future where Hitler won and American expats huddle in the remaining free countries like New Zealand, it features several Dick-style chatty machines and what seems to be an increasing breakdown of reality. The hero Lyle Peripart, an "abductive logic" expert, confronts the great mystery of 2062: what happened to the USA, which is vaguely accepted as still existing but can't be visited, can't be phoned, can't even be thought about for long?

Soon Peripart faces assassination, but some of the forces manipulating the world seem to be on his side—his own gentle fiancée saves him by switching mysteriously into an armed secret agent with hair-trigger reflexes, and back again. All the people our hero knows have mutually incompatible pasts ... Answers await within the former USA, whose idealistic Department for the Pursuit of Happiness did something deeply strange to quantum reality: Peripart joins a crazy expedition to learn just what. The ultimate surprises are daft and delightful. This is great fun. —David Langford

John Barnes writes hard SF with a heart; his speculations are always grounded in working things out from first principles, but he remembers to think also about how his imaginary situations might feel. "Gentleman Pervert, Out on a Spree", for example, starts with some speculation about tagging, and the speed with which an information age can make a marginal life get worse—Ken is photographed kerb-crawling and is then divorced and sacked before he even gets home.

It moves, though, in unexpected directions—no excuses are made for Ken and his compulsions, and yet we get to know and even love him like a deeply flawed younger brother. When Barnes writes of the fall of civilisation to Christianity and/or barbarism, his rationalism does not rule out empathy for other ways of seeing—and a sense that armed conflict always involves collateral losses of more than just lives. The doomed soldier of "Advice to the Civilized" knows that in that regret lies the whole difference between civilisation and barbarism. The stories come packaged with some non-fiction—Barnes writes well about building a world and his views on style and criticism; inspirationally about education and his hopes for the future. —Roz Kaveney

In The Merchants of Souls, a new movement on Earth seeks to use the recorded personalities of the dead as their helpless virtual reality playthings. To the worlds of the interstellar Thousand Cultures, where the reborn are accepted as normal citizens, its a monstrous crime and reinforces their distaste for Earth. If Earth cannot be stopped from ratifying its plans, the entire structure of galactic human civilization will collapse.

"They don't make 'em like that any more!" say fans of the classic juvenile SF novels, Alexei Panshin's Rite of Passage (1968) and the run of Robert A. Heinlein novels that begins with Rocket Ship Galileo (1947) and ends with Podkayne of Mars (1963). Except—John Barnes has made one like that: The Sky So Big and Black. The book's brilliant teenage protagonist, hard science, brisk pace, didactic moments, and strong characterization make it clear that Barnes is working consciously in the tradition of Panshin and Heinlein (especially Heinlein's Red Planet [1949] and Podkayne of Mars). Like his models, Barnes does a superb job. The Sky So Big and Black is a classic. Read it, and give it to any smart, perhaps-outcast young reader whom you want to infect with the science fiction meme.

Terpsichore "Teri" Murray lives on Mars, an eco-prospector-in-training and the daughter of a widowed ecospector. Instead of gold, ecospectors seek underground rivers and gas pockets, which they blast to the Martian surface in hopes of earning fabulous wealth. The ecospector life is hard, primitive, dangerous, and perhaps doomed to extinction, as the Martian atmosphere thickens and the genetically engineered "Mars-form" humans increase their population. An Earth-form human, Teri doesn't want to give up ecospecting, which she loves as much as she hates the city and school where she's forced to spend part of every year. But she finds herself with new, far more ominous worries when a devastating planetwide disaster isolates the colonies from one another, strands Teri in the Martian outback with several injured young children, and opens the entire planet to attack by One True, the collective intelligence that rules Earth in a terrifyingly total dictatorship. —Cynthia Ward

Fifteen hundred years in the future: after seven wars with the alien Rubahy, after settlement upon settlement and resettlement of every piece of dirt available, after every imaginable religious and political upheaval. Mars has been terraformed for a thousand years, glaciers cover Europe, central Africa is Earth's breadbasket, some space freighters have twentieth-generation crews. More people live in space than on Earth. And no one has found a way around the light-speed limit; the human race is still confined to one solar system, though now we share it with the Rubahy.

Six thousand human nations, ranging from the mighty Hive to puny tribes of a few thousand. Hundreds of zybots, secret conspiracies to reshape all of human history. Thousands of sovereign economic monopolies ranging from powerful the powerful Duchy of Uranium to the tiny Barony of Paper Clips. The complex faith of the Wager, with its hundreds of variants and heresies. A world of unimaginable complexity.

Into this world steps Jak Jinnaka, eighteen years old, a handsome intelligent natural athlete with secrets unknown even to himself in his past, and one thing on his mind: "Dude, where's the party?"

Then thugs kidnap Jak's girlfriend, beating Jak and his friends to a pulp, Jak's kindly old uncle turns out to be a spymaster, Jak is suddenly on a secret mission — and then the weird parts begin to happen. Looks like he found the party ....

The sequel to A Million Open Doors and Earth Made of Glass

Special agent Giraut Leones, betrayed by his superior and closest friend, swore he would never work for the Office of Special Projects again—but now he must. A new movement on Earth seeks to use the recorded personalities of the dead as helpless virtual reality playthings, and to the worlds of the Thousand Cultures—where the reborn are accepted as normal citizens—it—it's a monstrous crime. If Giraut cannot stop Earth from ratifying its plans, the tenuous structure of interstellar human civilization will collapse.

Complicating matters, Giraut's brain now hosts a second consciousness-the revived mind of his long-dead friend Raimbaut. Together, Giraut and Raimbaut must confront their shared past while struggling with a deadly present.

A Martian monarch has taken possession of a priceless relic: the lifelog diary of the mysterious messiah who founded the Wager, the religion that forms the basis of all interstellar society. The Hive Intel conglomerate wants the lifelog and hires Jak to get it. It's a simple job, until other spies-including Ambassador Dujuv, Uncle Sib, and Jak's evil ex-girlfriend-arrive on Mars and turn the assignment into a wild ride of mind control, murder, and looming interplanetary war. For the lifelog contains a devastating secret that can overturn the status quo of whole worlds-a secret that Hive Intel will suppress at all costs. In the past, Jak has completed missions by betraying his friends. Now in order to succeed, Jak Jinnaka must betray the entire human race...

Giraut Leones, special agent for the Thousand Cultures’ shadowy Office of Special Plans, is turning fifty—and someone is trying to kill him.

Giraut’s had a long career; the number of entities that might want him dead is effectively limitless. But recently Giraut was approached by the Lost Legion, an Occitan underground linked to an alliance of illegally human-settled worlds beyond the frontier. Also, it turns out that the Lost Legion colony has a "psypyx" —a consciousness-recording—of Shan, onetime boss of the Office of Special Plans. If they have that, they have literally thousands of devastating secrets.

Now, returning to his native Nou Occitan, Giraut will encounter violence and treachery from human and artificial consciousnesses alike. As bigotry and mob violence erupt throughout the rapidly destabilizing interstellar situation, Giraut will be called on the make the ultimate sacrifice, for the sake of civilization itself