(Both probably found) Help identifying two sci-fi books

Misiowiec

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I read a lot of sci-fi about 15 years ago, and would love to re-read two books that have stuck in my mind. Would really appreciate if someone could help me identify the titles / authors.

1. This was actually a series of books (maybe 2-3) about human space exploration. Some explorers find shipyards full off long abandoned alien ships, and use them to go exploring and scavenging for valuables. They can't figure out how to pilot the ships; instead they simply activate them and are taken to various places. In some of these places they find more technology etc which they take back with them and sell for profit. It's a risky business and many explorers loose their lives as the ships take them close to suns, black holes etc due to the shift of celestial bodies since the ships were programmed. I remember the ships had some kind of display showing the spectrum; certain colors gave an indication of how long the trip would be, and what direction the ships would go in.

2. This was a short story about the destructions of earths biosphere by radioactivity. A man I awoken in an underground hospital run by medical robots, and he finds out he is the last human. The robots tried to revive a number of people like him, but they didn't make it through the process - mainly because of the shock to seeing robots all around them (which suggests they went into stasis before the creation of robots? can't remember). The man has difficulty coming to terms with this, missing human contact, and gets robots to search parts of the Erath for further life, but finding nothing. He then tasks them with self-development, and eventually the robots manage to seed grass which covers the planet, but the biodiversity never returns. While the robots work the man goes into stasis for extended periods of time; at one point he comes out noticing the sun is redder, a result of the extremely long periods (billions of years) he spends in stasis. Meanwhile the robots continue their task to develop themselves, ultimately shedding their bodies to become energy beings. However they keep the old robot bodies in order not to upset the man when they are in contact. Ultimately he wakes up from stasis noticing they are coloring his skin green, and they take him to another planet (where the "people" have green skin) so that he can have contact with those like him again, then continuing their exploration and self development.

Sorry about the rather poor descriptions, but this was 15 years ago. Many thanks for any replies, I remember these stories being great and would love to read them again.
 
Indeed, there are several others to the series, the latest of which I was not even aware of:

Heechee series:

1. Gateway (1977)
2. Beyond the Blue Event Horizon (1980)
3. Heechee Rendezvous (1984)
4. The Annals of the Heechee (1987)
5. The Gateway Trip (story collection; 1990)
6. The Boy Who Would Live Forever (2004)
 
I think the second one may be The Jameson Satellite by Neil R Jones.

From the 'Tales of Future Past' website:

One of the first cyborgs, at least in literature, was the eponymous Professor Jameson of the pulp series of the same name by Neil R. Jones, starting with "The Jameson Satellite" (Amazing Stories July 1931). Jameson was a scientist who, upon his death in 1958, instructed his nephew to place his body in an experimental rocket and blast it into orbit around the Earth. Apparently Jameson's nephew didn't have anything better to do, so he complied. Fast forward about forty million years and Jameson finds his brain, without so much as a by your leave, encased in a robot body by a load of aliens called the Zoromes, who have done a similar thing to themselves and are now off to explore the Universe.
 
No, it wouldn't be Jones' Prof. Jameson stories (which began with "The Jameson Satellite")... at least, it doesn't fit the description at all. In those, Jameson's body is transferred to a Zorome's robotic body (this was an organic race who transferred their brains into metal carapaces for immortality, to explore the universe); at first he cannot accept not being "human" any longer, and attempts to destroy himself, but is finally persuaded of the wonders of such neverending exploration, and they take off together to travel the cosmos.

They're not well-written stories (Asimov calls attention to that when he makes his comments on the first story -- included in his Before the Golden Age, where I first encountered it), but they can be a great deal of fun. They were written in the 1930s-1950s and, altogether, the stories fill up five slender volumes put out by Ace some years ago, plus a number of other stories not included (there were 16 in the books; there are 14 other stories in the series):

1. The Planet of the Double Sun (1967)
2. The Sunless World (1967)
3. Space War (1967)
4. Twin Worlds (1967)
5. Doomsday on Ajiat (1967)

Neil R. Jones - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Incidentally, Jones is sometimes credited with being the first to create a "future history" sf series.
 
The trouble is, I know I've read the second one (and the description is correct in all salient points) so I should…
But no. No clues emerge, not even other stories in the same collection.
 
The second story the OP is looking for is James White’s fondly and frequently remembered (but apparently also easily forgotten title-wise) “Second Ending” (1961).

The Ace double sums it up nicely: “The last man in a universe of robots…

Five miles beneath the surface, Ross was awakened from the deep sleep of suspended animation to find himself in an empty world. There was no noise, no people, and no motion save for the steady activity of the hospital robots.

What had happened to life? Was Ross the last human being in exisitence? Could he find another?

He didn’t know the answers but he did know that soon he had to find some other living creatures. Even if he had to create them syntheticllay, assisted by the robots who would obey his every dersire.

With the deep sleep at his command he could experiment with life itself as no other scientist had ever done – and he had all eternity to do it in!’”

There is a shortened version that has been anthologized.


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