Carly Quester was once a professional telelinker with a powerful and corrupt mediation firm. Now she lives as an outlaw among the underground in San Francisco, wanted by the authorities for dubious crimes against Data Control. But with a new assignment from a mysterious sengine—and the help of a standalone AI entity, Pr. Spinner—she seeks the fast-track back into public telespace and the Prime Time.Her assignment, however, comes with sticky strings attached. For it has made Carly the target of a ruthless mercenary ultra, the love obsession of the young shaman of a savage urban tribe—and a possible pawn of the Silicon Supremacists plotting no less than the annihilation of humankind.Cyberweb is the sequel to Lisa Mason's cyberpunk classic, Arachne."Powerful . . . Entertaining . . . Imaginative."—People Magazine"In humanity's daring to enter the cybernetic heaven (and hell) of telespace, Lisa Mason reveals the...

A New York Times Notable Book. A New York Public Library Recommended Book. The sequel to SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL (A Philip K. Dick Award Finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book).The year is 1895 and immigrants the world over are flocking to California on the transcontinental railroad and on transoceanic steamships. The Zoetrope demonstrates the persistence of vision, patent medicines addict children to morphine, and women are rallying for the vote. In San Francisco, saloons are the booming business, followed by brothels, and the Barbary Coast is a dangerous sink of iniquity. Atop Telegraph Hill bloody jousting tournaments are held and in Chinatown the tongs deal in opium, murder-for-hire, and slave girls.Zhu Wong, a prisoner in twenty-fifth century China, is given a choice--stand trial for murder or go on a risky time-travel project to the San Francisco of 1895 to rescue a slave girl and take her to safety. Charmed by the city’s opulent glamour, Zhu will discover the city’s darkest secrets. A fervent population control activist in a world of twelve billion people, she will become an indentured servant to the city’s most notorious madam. Fiercely disciplined, she will fall desperately in love with the troubled self-destructive heir to a fading fortune.And when the careful plans of the Gilded Age Project start unraveling, Zhu will discover that her choices not only affect the future but mean the difference between her own life or death.“A winning mixture of intelligence and passion.” The New York Times Book ReviewFrom the author of The Garden of Abracadabra and Summer of Love, A Time Travel (A Philip K. Dick Award Finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book).

A Philip K. Dick Award Finalist. A San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book of the Year.The year is 1967 and something new is sweeping across America: good vibes, bad vibes, psychedelic music, psychedelic drugs, anti-war protests, racial tension, free love, bikers, dropouts, flower children. An age of innocence, a time of danger. The Summer of Love.San Francisco is the Summer of Love, where runaway flower children flock to join the hip elite and squares cruise the streets to view the human zoo.Lost in these strange and wondrous days, teenager Susan Bell, alias Starbright, has run away from the straight suburbs of Cleveland to find her troubled best friend. Her path will cross with Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco, a strange and beautiful young man who has journeyed farther than she could ever imagine.With the help of Ruby A. Maverick, a feisty half-black, half-white hip merchant, Susan and Chi discover a love that spans five centuries. But can they save the world from demons threatening to destroy all space and time?A harrowing coming of age. A friendship ending in tragedy. A terrifying far future. A love spanning five centuries. And a gritty portrait of a unique time in history--the Summer of Love.From the author of The Garden of Abracadabra and The Gilded Age, A Time Travel (A New York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended Book).From Library JournalSent from the 25th century to track down an individual crucial to the preservation of the timestream, time-traveler Chiron Cat's Eye in Draco (the character's full name) plunges headlong into the myth and mania of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury scene of 1967-the legendary "summer of love." The author of Arachne (LJ 4/15/90) opens a window into the past in this masterful re-creation of time and place. Far future and recent past come together in a story that combines speculative science and historical accuracy. A priority purchase.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. From BooklistIn Mason's second novel, the media's recent love affair with the 1960s finally reaches its fictional apotheosis with an admiring backward look from 500 years hence. Chiron Cat's Eye in Draco is a twenty-fifth-century San Franciscan sent back to the 1967 Summer of Love to uncover the source of an anomalous information gap in his era's archives. Armed with high-tech sunscreen and other assorted protections against twentieth-century toxins, Chiron must locate and study a teenage runaway nicknamed Starbright, who may or may not be the axis for a series of inevitable historic events. Although trying to obey strict tenets of noninvolvement, Chiron slowly finds himself sympathizing with Starbright and the causes of her day, thereby risking not only his mission but the fate of his own time line. Mason faithfully re-creates the frenzied flavor of the 1960s Haight-Ashbury scene while skillfully delineating believable and engaging characters. A unique blend of nostalgia and wry speculative fiction. Carl Hays