Winner of the 2012 Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis for best German science fiction novel, Lord of All Things is also a story about love against all odds.

They are just children when they meet for the first time: Charlotte, daughter of the French ambassador, and Hiroshi, a laundress’s son. One day, Hiroshi declares that he has an idea that will change the world. An unprecedented idea of how to sweep away all differences between rich and poor.

When Hiroshi runs into Charlotte several years later, he is trying to build a brighter future through robotics. Determined to win Charlotte’s love, he resurrects his childhood dream, convinced that he can eradicate world poverty by pushing the limits of technology beyond imagination. But as Hiroshi circles ever closer to realizing his vision, he discovers that his utopian dream may contain the seeds of a nightmare—one that could obliterate life as we know it.

Crisscrossing the globe from Tokyo to the hallowed halls of MIT to desolate Arctic islands and Buenos Aires and beyond—far beyond—Lord of All Things explores not only the dizzying potential of technology but also its formidable dangers.

Since the time of pre-history, carpetmakers tie intricate knots to form carpets for the court of the Emperor. These carpets are made from the hairs of wives and daughters; they are so detailed and fragile that each carpetmaker finishes only one single carpet in his entire lifetime.

This art descends from father to son, since the beginning of time itself.

But one day the empire of the God Emperor vanishes, and strangers begin to arrive from the stars to follow the trace of the hair carpets. What these strangers discover is beyond all belief, more than anything they could have ever imagined…

Brought to the attention of Tor Books by Orson Scott Card, this edition of The Carpet Makers contains a special introduction by Orson Scott Card.

Yesterday John Fontanelli was just a pizza delivery guy in New York City. One day later he’s the richest man in the world.

One trillion dollars – one million times one million – $1,000,000,000,000: more money than anyone could imagine.

For generations the Vacchis, an old Italian family of lawyers and asset managers, had supervised the fortune as it grew over five hundred years, until one particular date that the benefactor had stipulated in his will. The youngest male descendant would be fated to oversee the fortune for the good of humanity. John relishes his new life of luxury, rubbing elbows with royalty, buying up corporations, fielding a flood of beautiful women – until one day the phone rings, and a mysterious stranger tells the trillionaire that he knows what dirty secrets lie behind the fortune …