Abner Harris was sent to Earth on a mission of extreme urgency. The universe was in danger of enslavement by the Medlins, and the fight against them called for Harris to assume the disguise of a flesh-and-blood Earthman. But he discovered that the real villains of space were not the Medlins or the people of Earth: they were his own kind. Suddenly he was alone, alienated from his own race, hated by the Medlins, and an impostor on Earth. No matter what side he chose he’d be a traitor. Yet choose he must… or forever remain a man without a planet.

Two enthralling novels by Robert Silverberg about a future in which the minds of the living can be changed for a price—often with dire consequences.In To Live Again, thanks to the Scheffing Institute, death is not the end. For a hefty fee, the soul bank stores the personas of those who have died and inserts them into the brains of willing, living hosts. It's a process that integrates the two minds, imbuing the host with a menu of highly valuable abilities, memories, and traits. The more personas one absorbs, the greater his social status. When banking mogul Paul Kaufmann dies, many people apply to receive his persona. The leading applicants—his bitter business rivals—are locked in a battle to claim his soul. The Institute follows strict rules to ensure that the host always remains in control, but of course accidents do happen . . . In The Second Trip, Paul Macy wears the Rehab badge, the sign of healing that advertises his status as a reconstruct job. When society derides capital punishment and opts, instead, for personality rehabilitation, criminals undergo mindpick operations in which their identities are stripped and extinguished. Given a new bank of memories and a fresh identity, they are offered a second chance at life. For Paul, though, this gift comes without a price. His former self still lingers inside him, waiting for the opportunity to emerge and battle Paul’s new self for ultimate control. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Robert Silverberg including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

The universe of the mind is a limitless expanse of wonders, filled with worlds and secrets that cannot be fully explored within the pages of a single novel. Here, science fiction's most beloved and highly honored writers revisit their best-known worlds in perhaps the greatest concentration of science fiction ever in one volume.

The death-stars had come, and they had kept on coming for hundreds of thousands of years, falling upon the Earth, swept upon it by a vagrant star that had passed through the outer reaches of the solar system. They brought with them a time of unending darkness and cold. It was a thing that happened every twenty-six million years, and there was no turning it aside. But all that was done with now. At last the death-stars had ceased to fall, the sky had cleared of dust and cinders, the sun’s warmth again was able to break through the clouds. The glaciers relinquished their hold on the land; the Long Winter ended; the New Springtime began. The world was born anew. Now each year was warmer than the last. The fair seasons of spring and summer, long lost from the world, came again with increasing power. And the People, having survived the dark time in their sealed cocoons, were spreading rapidly across the fertile land. But others were already there. The hjjks, the somber cold-eyed insect-folk, had never retreated, even at the time of greatest chill. The world had fallen to them by default, and they had been its sole masters for seven hundred thousand years. They were not likely to share it gladly now.

The best stories of the year, as selected by the one of the world's most honoured science fiction authors and his long-time collaborator. Here in one affordable volume is the best short science fiction of the year as selected from magazines, anthologies and journals. It is the first in a prestigious new series from ibooks. Robert Silverberg, a multiple winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards as a writer, has complied a distinguished record as an anthologist over the past 35 years. Among the famous books he has edited are THE SCIENCE FICTION HALL OF FAME, THE NEW DIMENSIONS, UNIVERSE and THE ALPHA SERIES. His long list of science fiction and fantasy novels include such titles as DYING INSIDE and THE ALIENS YEARS.