Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Treasury (The Future in Question / Space Mail)

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Julie E. Czerneda and Jana Paniccia

"In our modern-day world where rumors of conspiracies and covert organizations can spread with the speed of the internet, it's often hard to separate truth from fiction. Down through the centuries there have been groups sworn to protect important artifacts and secrets, perhaps exercising their power and connections -- possibly even mystical affiliations -- to guide the world's future. Now some of science fiction's and fantasy's finest minds offer up fourteen stories of those unseen powers operating for their own purposes, whether on our own world or in far-distant places and other times -- even in fantastical realms. From an unexpected ally who aids Lawrence in Arabia, to an assassin hired to target the one person he'd never want to kill, to a young woman who stumbles into an elfin war in the heart of London, to a man who steals time -- here are unforgettable tales that will start you wondering whether someone is watching you from the shadows or changing your destiny at this very moment"--P. [4] of cover.

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Piers Anthony

Knot, mutant-bred and exiled from mankind to serve on an alien world, has personal reasons for opposing the Galactic Empire's omnipotent Coordinating Computer. But Finesse, a sensuous, seductive imperial agent--added by Hermine, a slyly psychic weasel, and Mit, a telepathic hermit crab--lures Knot into serving the Computer. Their perilous odyssey takes them across time and space to a forbidding world ruled by the renegade Piebald, who has harnessed the fearsome extrasensory forces of his lobotomized minions...has gained mastery over the Computer...and who now threatens the very future of humanity.

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Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels

As a small child, Jules Bashir underwent illegal genetic enhancements that forever altered the natural course of his life. As an adult, ever since the day he discovered what his parents had done, Dr. Julian Bashir has wondered what he might have become if "Jules" had been allowed to live, certain he would never know the answer. But when the lure of a strange alien artifact in the Gamma Quadrant inexplicably begins to reverse Bashir's enhancements, the person he had thought long dead is given a second chance at life. Ninety thousand light-years away, as the crew of Deep Space 9 ™ tries to comprehend a shocking tragedy, Ro Laren makes a fateful decision about her life aboard the station. And although political maneuverings and failing diplomacy have already extinguished all hope of a real, lasting peace between Bajor and Cardassia, one man's search for his true calling may lay a new foundation for the future.

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(by) E.E. 'Doc' Smith

From back cover of Jove/HBJ paperback February 1979: **terror from space** The pirates of Boskone raided at will, menacing the whole structure of interstellar civilization. Masterminded by a super-scientist, their fleets outgunned even the mighty space cruisers of the Galactic Patrol. When lensman Kim Kinnison of the Patrol found the secret Boskonian base, it was impregnable to outside attack. But a single infiltrator **might** penetrate its defenses -- if he wanted to take on million-to-one odds! Kinnison took them -- with the future of the civilized Universe riding on his shoulders!