How can you stop a conspiracy of telepaths? The alien Lyhhrt are powerful enough to read the human mind; if they find you know too much, they can erase your memory, or simply stop your heart. The normally peaceful Lyhhrt society has been splintered by technological change, the bitter legacy of their exploitation by the Zamos crime family. Now a few renegade Lyhhrt, driven mad by isolation from their group mind, seem to be planning terrible crimes--or are they again being used as deadly tools in someone else's scheme?

When the illicit corporation created by Zamos collapsed, it disrupted the lives of heroes as well as villains. With gambling dens shut down, gladiator Ned Gaddes has nowhere to fight. Beautiful Lorrice had hoped to sell her ESP talents to Zamos, but was forced to sell her body instead. And on the planet Khagodis, scholarly Hasso will be forced to leave his archives and unravel the shadowy web that has entangled their fate with the Lyhhrt's.

The struggle that ensues provides the ultimate test of their resources - Ned's savvy toughness, Lorrice's psychic insight, and the fact that even a gentle Khagodi like Hasso could go head-to-head with a dinosaur. Like the best science fiction, Mindworlds is simultaneously exciting and thought provoking. Gotlieb offers a satisfyingly complex look at the ambiguous consequences of toppling even the most evil of empires, and the sacrifices that ordinary people must make to prevent the vacuum ofpower from being filled by equally corrupt forces.

Ursula K. Le Guin found Gotlieb's earlier novel Flesh and Gold "dazzling," lit up by "sex, violence, intricate plotting, light-speed pacing, an amazing variety of aliens, touches of Philip K. Dick's sardonic humor and Cordwainer Smith's obstinate idealism." Its sequel, Violent Stars, was described in Maclean's as "above all a poet's novel.... Gotlieb's language lifts her book from exotic thriller to literary achievement." Mindworlds offers a resounding climax to the story that began in thesecelebrated novels.

Phyllis Gotlieb was born in Toronto, Canada where she still currently resides. She is married to Calvin Gotlieb, now ­professor emeritus of Computer ­Science at the University of Toronto and has three grown children, and four grandchildren. She has published five volumes of ­poetry, nine novels (eight of them ­science fiction), as well as two story collections, and has co-edited an anthology of Canadian science fiction. Versions of her works have appeared in nine languages worldwide.

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"Phyllis Gotlieb is the grand dame of Canadian SF, a poet with a cosmic perspective who elevates space opera to high art."--Robert J. Sawyer

"Phyllis Gotlieb is one of the true founding mothers, not just of Canadian speculative fiction, but of a humane and social SF which changed the face of the genre world-wide. Those who are familiar only with Gotleib's award-winning poetry have no idea how seriously weird--how wonderfully weird--she is in her speculative fiction. A new novel from Phyllis Gotlieb is a major event."-Jane Dorsey