The human race is on the run from alien attack and have established a colony world with only medieval level technology so the aliens can't find them by radio frequency transmissions, etc. There is one man in suspended animation in a satellite as a store of knowledge for the future. The medieval humans are at war so the satellite guy wakes up and intervenes in an Iron Man-style suit. The book was the first in a trilogy I think and published maybe late '90s.  That's all I can remember but any help greatly appreciated
81812
Between 2005-2008, I entered a Barnes and Noble and came across a book in the New Releases section that I regretted not purchasing. I remember only the following from the back-panel summary of the book:   Humanity was more or less wiped out. The remains of humanity were put into a deep sleep on one (or more) large spaceship(s). When they arrived a new planet, they had a society where religion was/wasn't outlawed (can't remember anymore). A lot of bad stuff went down after humanity rebuilt itself on this new planet.
31954
There's a book that I read several years ago that I'd like to find.  However, I cannot remember enough about it to find it myself.  Neither the title nor author remain in my mind, nor any keyword or phrase that's unique enough for the Grand Google to nail for me.  Hence my desperate plea here.  In the book, there is an interstellar civilization composed of several power blocks.  The entire civilization did not fill the galaxy, but it did span several stellar systems.  Maybe 10s or 100s.  I seem to remember that one of the civilizations was a decentralized group referred to as the Brotherhood and they seemed to have been keen on preserving old learning and political ideals.  A derelict alien spacecraft from outside all of this had been discovered and at least two of the power blocks sent ships to recover it.  I don't recall if they knew at the time about the power the alien ship had, but they must have had some clue since there was some urgency in capturing this ship.  One of the ships sent to capture the Alien craft was commanded by somebody who was rather shaken up, to say the least.  He had had some big trauma in his past (like... the last ship he captained was annihilated with all hands.) so he was kinda bummed out about things and wasn't really putting his heart into getting this done.  He was assisted by the ship's AI who had a lot of soul-to-soul chats with the captain, and at one point almost relieved him of command because he was just not getting the job done.  I think the ship's name was Boaz.  These were the "good guys".  There was at least one other ship sent from the "bad guys."  The alien craft had some remarkable powers.  The interior volume was apparently infinite and the operators could see and manipulate anything in the universe.  There might have been some example given where all the rats somewhere were found and disposed of.  Whoever had control was tempted by the ole absolute power corrupts absolutely problem, but nobody but nobody could stop them because of their power.  They could eat and multiply within the ship and become real bad-asses.  But alas... (or hurray, depending upon which side you're one) everything fails eventually, and whoever controlled the ship would eventually succumb to some horrible end.  Whereupon the ship became derelict again until some other lucky race found it and repeated the cycle.  The ship had an AI that was real interested in taking the power for itself, but there was some mechanical, spring-loaded, mechanism outside of its control that needed to be worked in order to execute power.  The AI apparently never figured out how to "work the spring" and this made him crazy angry.  The ending is equally foggy for me.  I'm pretty sure the good guys got the ship.  They agonized over what to do with it.  Apparently it was indestructable and nobody wanted to taste the temptation of all that power.  In the end they dumped it on the surface of a neutron star.  There it sat forever more, probably with the crazy AI really pissed off about being there.  If you've read this book, you'll recognize it immediately from these clues.  I'm looking forward to finding out the name of this book.  Thanks!
101208
Looking for a book from the 80-90s. Earth has been infected by alien life forms, sort of seeded. The planet has been transformed, and a group of humans are fighting it, I believe they were a military hold over.  There was a lot of sexual innuendo, with the characters having to traverse through a giant "sphincter" to get to the heart of the invasion to attack, and humanity has shifted to more of an androgynous/bisexual side.  The main character, however, is a man's man, not interested in that lifestyle, and actually has an interest in one of the lead females, part of the team.
7593
In the book, humans were in a long war with an alien race that had a slight upper hand in numbers and technology, and so were slowly losing ground.  At the start of the war, Earth had cut itself off from all contact with the rest of humanity; I think this was hundreds of years before the events in the book.  As the book opens, a single spaceship from Earth arrives at the human's capital world, IIRC to pick up an ambassador to travel to the alien's home world for peace negotiations.  Some more plot points dredged from memory:    The Earth ship had a small crew, somewhere around 4 or 5. The Earth humans had psychic powers, but galactic humans didn't. Earth had gone through a lot of social upheaval during its isolation from the rest of the galaxy. I think the aliens were telepathic (the Earth humans didn't tell the galactic ambassador about all their plans because he couldn't shield his thoughts).   The ending went along these lines:      After the peace mission, the aliens invade Earth with a large part of their military and trigger a booby trap that destroys them along with Earth.  After that, the balance of power is in humanity's favor.   If it helps, I would have read the book in the late 1970s or early 1980s, but I believe it was published some time before that.
35007
Desperate to locate and re-read exceptional book/series, but cannot remember the title. The high concept: The U.S. has just sent the first successful expedition to Mars, and it has just landed. As the astronauts make their initial exploration outside their ship, a tear in the fabric of space opens up right in front of them, and they look through to the insides of a laboratory (at a California university?) and two students who just figured out how to create arbitrary portals between two points in the Universe. The rest of the novel/series is a consequence of this breakthrough. But I can't remember the author and title(s). Surely someone reading this forum will remember it well! TIA.  (Reposted .)
63704
It was a series of 3 or 4 books.  The crew of a ship were on a mission to recover something ( rings I think) from different planets.  Humans had been genetically altered to live on each planet.  Volunteers were permanently altered to blend in on the planet to complete their missions.
23414
Plot Summary/Details  The sharpest memory I have of this one is that it was unusually dense reading. Much more difficult going than most of the sci-fi stuff I'd read by that time (I was 10 or 11, I think).  What I remember in terms of plot is that there is a starship, sent either to explore, or colonize, a distant star system.  I don't remember the names of any of the characters, but I think maybe they discover they are clones?  In any case, something happens to the computer system that the onboard AI becomes sentient and develops a measure of omniscience and omnipotence.  It effectively becomes a god of sorts.  The next part I can remember, and I'm not sure this is the same book or not, is that the ship has forcibly settled the crew on a hostile planet.  All sorts of nasty indigenous life forms live here, and guards are post on the wall outside the settlement to destroy them as they try to enter.  I remember there is a female character standing watch, and she goes over the bestiary in her mind.  One particularly nasty creature paralyzes you, and then burrows up your spine into your brain (or something like that) if it gets a hold of you.  That's all I can recall.  Not a lot of detail, unfortunately, but I'm having a tough time remembering much about this one.  I never finished the book(s), as they were mostly "over my head" at that age.
70701
Humans in a spaceship orbiting an alien planet have a machine that they can hook their heads up to that lets them take telepathic control (and receive the senses of) of massive (I think at least something like Rhinoceros-size) six-legged leonine creatures on the planet below. Not direct muscle control -- the creature just feels an intense desire to go in the direction the orbiting human in the headset wants it to go. The main human character, stays in daily contact with one creature over a few weeks. The main character gradually realizes through the link that the creature being coerced to travel to a coast (far outside of its usual hunting range) is actually intelligent.  The feline-like aliens don't see with eyes, instead having IR-sensing plates, I think perhaps due to a perpetually darkly overcast atmosphere.  At the end the main chracter actually meets the creature in person, I think (a shuttle touches down on the coast). I don't remember why the humans were there -- research? Maybe prospecting for resources? The planet was not remotely hospitable to humans -- I think it was either too dense, too hot, wrong gas mix, or some combination.  I had a copy of the paperback book that someone gave me, that was missing the front cover (maybe they got it from a book store's discards that are supposed to be pulped), but on the back was a picture of the snarling or roaring face of one of the creatures, black-furred like a panther. I think it was a gray- or silver-background cover.  This book would probably have been from the 1990s or 1980s.
77551
Looking for the title of an old sci-fi book, pretty sure it is a Baen or Del Rey imprint. Basically, mankind has reached the stars and expanded throughout the galaxy. Suddenly, an unknown race appears and begins a war of extermination against man. Finally, the galaxy is desolate, and one man remains. He is in a starship with an AI and becomes injured in the battle.  The ship's AI takes over and speeds out into the unknown, followed by the last remaining member of the unknown alien race. As all speeds are at tremendous multiples of the speed of light, the man cannot get away, but the alien cannot catch up.  Finally, communication is opened, at which point the man asks "why?" The alien tells him that man had discovered immortality, but that it required the death of a member of a race known as the Flower People for every human who achieved immortality. The alien says that Man would have found the answer eventually, but that genocide was so intolerable that the aliens came from another dimension, to which they could never return, to stop Man, which resulted in the war of extermination.  Finally, the light speeds become so great that the two remaining living beings in the universe approach the Big Crunch. As the Man begins to dive into the singularity, with the alien hot on his heels, he says that maybe there will be room in the next universe for both races to live in peace, and the final line is "not with a whimper, but with a roar of triumph"!
86873
Looking for a book I read in the 90's (not sure if it was published in the 90's or not).  The story as far as I can remember goes like this. Human-looking aliens evolve on a very hostile planet. They encounter some big bad threat and they cast about for help. They encounter a rich industrialist on Earth and they send a woman to recruit him. She teaches the guy to use magic and how to transform his body. They build a ship and travel to her planet but just before they arrive, she vanishes and he crash lands on this hostile planet.  He goes through many trials and tribulations in order to get to her and eventually he has enough and uses the ability she teaches him on how to transform his body. He transforms himself into a half-man, half-dragon-like creature which allows him to travel to the other side of the planet to get to the girl. On the way he manages to neurally link into a large flying creature that flies very fast, only to discover that it is intelligent and they soon become friends. When he gets to the girl she doesn't recognise him so he gets mad and starts attacking only to realise that it's all been a test set up by these people to allow him to reach higher levels of magic.   There were supposed to be sequels but I never got around to reading them.  I remember the cover art depicted a large dragon like creature with a torso of a man and a woman standing in front of it looking back at him.  Any idea what this book may be?
89295
I trying to remember the name of a book I read 20 or 30 years ago. A man is stranded on an alien world.  He gets badly injured and a bug like alien heals him by creating a organic heart.  The aliens are solar powered and must wall themselves off at night for protection from predators. All their technology is based on organics.  The human shows them a battery and they are able to modify their bodies to have organic batteries and stay awake at night.
26017
Way back in high school I read a series about colonization of other planets. In the books, contact was lost with the rest of the civilization and over time people with mathematical ability were able to control the computers that were doing the terraforming...and later came to be seen as wizards.  I cannot for the life of me remember the author or title...can anyone help?
65464
I have been trying to recall the title of a book I read about 25 years ago (1987), I have tried to find it again a couple of times over the years without any luck.    The story takes place on earth, which has been invaded and conquered by aliens.  The humans have become servants or slaves.  One of the primary human characters is the human servant of an alien leader.  If I remember correctly, the aliens are much bigger than humans, I keep thinking of horses or elephants for some reason with regard to the aliens.  At the end, somehow the human slaves have forced the aliens to abandon their conquest of earth, but I don't remember exactly why.  I think it was something to do with simply refusing to be obedient, which the aliens could not comprehend, but I'm not sure about that.  I think the book ends with the alien leader (and the rest of the aliens) blasting off from earth in a rocket.  Does anyone recognize what book I'm referring to?  Thanks for any help!
27108
I'm looking for a series of books that deals with humans escaping Earth and having a mother ship full of humans who are being sent throughout the universe to different planets. The ship can transform the humans into whatever type of alien the planet holds. One set of sisters is transformed to cow-like aliens and sent to spy on that planet. All the while the group that's taken the mother ship full of human colonizers is trying to evade/escape the government people from Earth.    The 9 or 10 humans who steal the colonizing ship drop a couple of humans (transformed to whatever the indigenous species is) to the planet to spy...the end result is to try and overthrow the Earth government.  The humans that the colonizing ship transform to aliens cannot be turned back into humans ever again so when they take on the assignment to spy they do so knowing that they won't ever be able to be humans again.
23396
I read a futuristic sci-fi book in the 1980's (maybe the 70's), about an overweight orphan who lived in slums, known as "the rat" (not the stainless steel rat), who was conscripted into space military service (in chapter 1). He was trained and became a powerful warrior and teamed up with others, and towards the end may have overthrown the governing beings.
84281
This was a trilogy about a future earth where double clones were made to fight wars and they nearly destroyed the earth. They were good fighters because they were mentally linked. All were supposedly destroyed but a few were found by this reporter type.  I believe the USA version were called Jeeks.  In the second book a space ship containing a bunch of them returned.  In the final book one clone of a command 3 person clone fought them (the other 2 in the triad were killed and somehow this one did not go insane).  I have looked for this book for 30 years.
38458
I read part of the series in 2005, a young man was the protagonist, he was traveling to different worlds. I think he was telepathic and the most identifying thing I can remember was he had a flying snake or asp as a pet which possibly was his protector? He was in danger for some reason. Also there was a romantic interest female. The books were very distinct from one another. The second or third book he visited a planet that was extremely bio-diverse, where he was on top of all this vegetation and he realized how many layers of vegetation he would have to get to before he got to the ground and it was vast. I never finished it and it's been driving me nuts.