From a multiple Hugo winner and Science Fiction Grand Master: Three mind-bending stories featuring future worlds, space travel, and aliens. Author Philip José Farmer blasts into space, races into the future, and travels back in time in three astoundingly original and thrilling science fiction adventures. The Lovers: Linguist Hal Yarrow catches a lucky break with an assignment on planet Ozagen, allowing him to escape the theocracy on thirty-first-century Earth. But he can’t shake Pornsen, his gapt—something like a personal guardian angel—who harangues him for even the slightest wrongdoing. Yarrow submits to Pornsen’s constant chaperoning, until he meets Jeannette Rastignac. She’s not his wife, his faith says any contact with her is sin, and there are other, odder warnings about Jeannette. But Yarrow’s in love . . . Dark Is the Sun: Fifteen billion years in the future, the Earth is cooling and dying. All the planet’s life forms have wildly mutated, civilization is primitive, and the sun is cold and black. Deyv, a young member of the Turtle Tribe, is on the hunt for his stolen soul egg, which has been purloined by the thieving creature Yawtl. Without his egg, he won’t be able to mate, so Deyv and his companions set out on a quest, leading them across a continent, through many wonders and terrors, to the lair of a mysterious off-worlder who may hold the key to an escape from their rapidly perishing planet. Riders of the Purple Wage: This Hugo Award winner introduces Chib, a young artist hiding out from the IRS in the ultimate welfare state, a society where everyone receives the same wage from birth and stays connected through a personal video device called “fido.” Chib must win a grant at his next art show—or he’ll be shipped to another society as part of a government exchange program. But his tendency toward provocation and blasphemy may be his undoing. Showcasing the epic range of Farmer’s imagination, these varied tales are brilliant, provocative, and endlessly entertaining.
