Showing titles in Hard Science Fiction

In Battle Station, Kyle Riggs faces new challenges, new alien fleets, and learns the secrets behind the war he has been fighting for years. In the fifth book of the Star Force Series, the Eden system is in humanity's grasp, but can they keep it? Star Force is weak after a long war, and many yearn to go home. Knowing the machines will return with a new armada eventually, Riggs seeks a more permanent solution. Along the way, worlds are won and lost, millions perish, and great truths are revealed.

A newly repaired ship...A willing and eager crew...A host of new technologies...A long anticipated return home...The crew of the UES Aurora finally has the chance to fulfill their mission, but first they must complete a long and dangerous journey across a thousand light-years of unexplored space.

Earth is locked in a dangerous arms race with Rigel. McGill’s efforts at diplomacy are disastrous. Events spin out of control and interstellar warfare consumes the outer provinces of the Empire. Great fleets are gathered, and troops are hurried aboard transports. Legion Varus is launched toward a secret target world. McGill leads an early strike against Rigel’s defenses, but his efforts are foiled at every turn. Who could be behind these betrayals? Could his own government be plotting his demise?

The Dusahn Empire has been contained for the moment. But there is much work to be done in order to keep them from reasserting their dominance over the Pentaurus sector. As much as Captain Scott wants to see the Empire destroyed, he may have no choice but to find a way to coexist with them.

When a brilliant scientist gets a letter from herself about faster-than-light travel, she doesn't know what to believe. The equations work, but her paper is discredited - and soon the criticism is more than scientific. Exiled by the establishment, she gets an offer to build her starship from an unlikely source. But in the heights of Venus and on a planet of another star, a secret is already being uncovered that will shake humanity to its foundations.

The stunning conclusion to the trilogy that began with the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning Ancillary Justice. For just a moment, things seem to be under control for the soldier known as Breq. Then a search of Atheok Station's slums turns up someone who shouldn't exist - someone who might be an ancillary from a ship that's been hiding beyond the empire's reach for three thousand years.

With the invention of faster-than-light travel there is nowhere that humanity cannot go. New worlds are discovered, but with them come new dangers. At the heart of the discovery is the Fermi, mysterious beings that have survived on alien worlds for longer than humanity has existed. But now the Fermi are awakening, and they do not seem pleased to find humans in their midst. But for Lakshmi Nayak and the crew of the Fighting Chance, danger is a lot closer to home. Their search for answers will take them to places, and worlds, they never expected.

Separated from her ship, Major Trace Thakur is stranded on the reeh-occupied world of Rando. The native corbi have suffered beneath reeh tyranny for 800 years, and many have given up hope. But Trace needs the data stored in the reeh’s genetic technology and command center - the Rando Splicer - if she’s to learn how to save humanity from impending disaster, and is planning an assault against overwhelming odds. She’ll need help from the UFS Phoenix, though, which is caught in a ritual medieval battle to change the croma leadership.

Astronomers in England and America have made a terrifying discovery: an ominous black cloud the size of Jupiter is travelling straight towards our solar system. If their calculations are correct, the cloud’s path will bring it between the Earth and the Sun, blocking out the Sun’s rays and threatening unimaginable consequences for our planet.

James McGill is called upon for a sabotage mission, one that only a man of his unique talents can handle. Unfortunately, he performs too well, and our enemies from Rigel are enraged. They come for us, and war is declared. When this conflict between the great powers spreads, humanity finds itself swept up in the storm. Can McGill escape this disaster he’s created?

With The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 3, award-winning editor Neil Clarke provides a year-in-review and 27 of the best stories published by both new and established authors in 2017.

The Klikiss, a now-extinct alien civilization, left behind vast technological information that has been discovered by two xenoarchaeologists. One discovery, a device that converts gas planets into life-giving suns is quickly put to the test with unimaginable results. Arising out of the test is a new alien species that threatens every human. Mankind is left with the dim reality - either fight the new alien life form or face humiliation, death and extinction. This riveting adventure swings you from one wondrous realm to another as the Hidden Empire is sought after and exposed.

The planet is called Banshee. The air is unbreathable, the water poisonous. It is the home of the most implacable enemies that humanity, in all its interstellar expansion, has ever encountered. Felix is a scout in A-team Two. Highly competent, he is the sole survivor of mission after mission. Yet he is a man consumed by fear and hatred.

What happens when we reach out into the vastness of space? What hope for us amongst the stars? Multi-award winning editor Jonathan Strahan brings us 14 new tales of the future, from some of the finest science fiction writers in the field. The 14 startling stories in this anthology feature the work of Greg Egan, Aliette de Bodard, Ian McDonald, Karl Schroeder, Pat Cadigan, Karen Lord, Ellen Klages, Adam Roberts, Linda Nagata, Hannu Rajaniemi, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Ken MacLeod, Alastair Reynolds, and Peter Watts.

From the author of the Sunday Times best seller Cocaine Nights comes an unnerving tale of life in a modern tower block running out of control. Within the concealing walls of an elegant forty-storey tower block, the affluent tenants are hell-bent on an orgy of destruction. Cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on "enemy" floors and the once-luxurious amenities become an arena for riots and technological mayhem.

Caught up in an experiment gone wrong, Joseph Schwartz is transported forward in time from post-war Chicago to the heyday of the first Galactic Empire. Earth, he soon learns, is a backwater, despised by the other two hundred million planets of the Empire because its people dare to claim it as the original home of man. And Earth is poor, with great areas of radioactivity ruining much of its soil – so poor that everyone is sentenced to death at the age of sixty. And Joseph Schwartz is sixty-two.

A deadly cloud of spores has already infected and killed the inhabitants of two worlds. Now the plague is heading for Earth, threatening humans and aliens alike. Can either species be trusted to find the cure? Geneticist Marianne Jenner is immersed in the desperate race to save humanity, yet her family is tearing itself apart. Siblings Elizabeth and Ryan are strident isolationists who agree only that an alien conspiracy is in play. Marianne's youngest, Noah, is a loner addicted to a drug that constantly changes his identity.

March 15th, Earth Year 2290. The day the aliens returned. The memories are still fresh. Of colonies burning. Of millions dying in agony. Fifty years later, we’ve built up our strength. Using a wormhole, we colonized both sides of the galaxy. It was the worst mistake we could have made. Our enemy has returned and the wormhole has collapsed. Commander Thatcher finds himself on the wrong side of the divide. Separated from his pregnant wife by countless light years. He’s just been given command of a light armored cruiser. His first command.

On a cold spring night in 1952, a huge meteorite fell to earth and obliterated much of the East Coast of the US, including Washington, DC. The ensuing climate cataclysm will soon render the Earth inhospitable for humanity, as the last such meteorite did for the dinosaurs. This looming threat calls for a radically accelerated effort to colonize space and requires a much-larger share of humanity to take part in the process. Elma York’s drive to become the first lady astronaut is so strong that even the most dearly held conventions of society may not stand a chance against her.

The interstellar Consortium of Planets forsakes the irredeemably violent Earth, condemning the planet to economic and ecological chaos. Given one last chance to halt Earth's annihilation, women freedom fighters discover a way to rid Earth of men's brutality - but it may have come too late. In the stunning conclusion to the Native Trilogy, female linguists must once again come forward and fight for the future of humanity.