Fantasy First Contact Science Fiction

The job is supposed to be easy. All I have to do is deliver a spaceship of living cargo to the vile Uldani and they'll release my brother. If I fail, they'll take it out on him. Except the cargo is something I've never seen before - human females. The one called Frankie is beautiful and soft, and I've already spilled blood for her. Now how am I going to save my brother? Because this human female is mine.

Late in the 21st century, Earth receives what looks like an urgent plea for help from planet Proxima Centauri b in the closest star system to the Sun. Astrophysicists suspect a massive solar flare is about to destroy this heretofore-unknown civilization. Earth's space programs are unequipped to help, but an unscrupulous Russian billionaire launches a secret and highly-specialized spaceship to Proxima b, over four light-years away.

With The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Six, award-winning editor Neil Clarke provides a year-in-review and 33 of the best stories published by both new and established authors in 2020.

In the future: A united Earth, to deal with the problem of population control, divides its population into classes of citizen and non-gratis. To be born a non-gratis means a life of little freedoms and the constant possibility of being assigned to work on a colony. Lacking citizenship, every aspect of their life is controlled from where they live down to marriage and childbearing regulations. The only possible escape from life as a non-gratis is to qualify for one of the limited slots available for entrance into the military.

Comet Anduru skimmed the clouds of Saturn. Rather than being drawn into the gas giant, it skipped back out into space. With the comet heading for Jupiter, speculation is mounting it’s an alien spacecraft making its way to Earth. Lieutenant Colonel Nolan Landis and Dr. Kath McKenzie are caught between an angry public and an anxious President as they grapple with the scientific, social, and political implications of first contact.

On humanity's first extra-solar mission, the exploration vessel Magellan, or, as she prefers, "Maggie", discovers an alien artifact. Deciding that finding advanced alien life is too important to ignore, Captain Allison Ridgeway chooses to return to Earth while ordering her crew to reverse engineer technology far beyond anything back home. Meanwhile, at mission control, the governments struggle to maintain the existence of aliens a secret while also combating bureaucracy, the military industrial complex, and everyone else who wants a piece of what could skyrocket humanity into a new technological age.

They are not human. They are not natural. They are not friendly. At a research station in Antarctica, five of the world's top scientists have been brought together to solve one of the greatest mysteries in human history. Their subject, however, is anything but human. Deep beneath the ice, the submerged ruins of a lost civilization hold the key to the strange mutations that each scientist has encountered across the globe. When a series of sound waves trigger the ancient organisms, a new kind of evolution begins. A long-extinct life form is reborn.

Nothing quite prepared telepath Larry Greenberg for mind-to-mind contact with an alien. In the interest of science, Larry tapped the mind of Kzanol - and that was his first mistake. Kzanol was a thrint from a distant galaxy. He had been trapped on Earth in a time-stasis field for two billion years. Now he was on the loose, and Larry knew everything he was thinking. Thrints lived to plunder and enslave lesser planets - and what the planet Kzanol had in mind was Earth!

Collected in one volume is all three books in C. J. Cherryh's epic The Faded Sun trilogy: Kesrith, Shon'jir, and Kutath.

These aliens seem nice enough, but she needs to figure out how to communicate with them and get back to Earth. Her alien captor finds everything about his new pet adorable, from her tiny toes to her blunted claws to her shiny mane. He will do everything in his power to make sure that his cute little pet remains healthy and happy. But what happens when this giant tentacled alien finds out his lovely pet is a sentient person who wants more from him than pets and treats?

At a time when Humans were just starting to venture forth into the Galactic Union as mercenaries, Martin Quincy survived long enough to do something no one else had - he retired. There was only one problem: He got bored. After battling aliens for many years - killing aliens and getting paid - retirement didn’t suit him, and he decided to strap on the combat armor and go back to the stars. Along with his old friend Kal, Martin joined Cartwright’s Cavaliers, humanity’s best merc company. Life was exciting! But he got bored. Again.

On the planet of Per Ardua, alien artifacts were discovered - hatches that allowed humans to step across light-years of space as if they were stepping into another room. But this newfound freedom has consequences. As humanity discovers the real nature of the universe, a terrifying truth comes to light: We all have countless pasts converging in this present - and our future is terrifyingly finite. There are minds in the universe that are billions of years old, and now we are vulnerable to their plans for us.

Former Marine and lonely single dad Will Hawthorne just wants to clear his head with a weekend in the woods with his live-action-role-playing group. But a careless misstep sends him tumbling through a cave into an alien world. There he finds a dying civilization of bizarre human-animal hybrids, filled with effete males and frustrated females who are soon pursuing him for their own ends. For Will has stumbled into this world's most powerful legend - a legend of the one who will come to reverse its decline - the legend of the Makalang.

When Streaker - the first starship designed and crewed by dolphins - discovers a derelict ancient armada with evidence of the first sentient species ever, she sets off a war between dozens of galactic races eager to use the information for their own advancement.

The Majority always gets what it wants. Thomas Hill just wishes it didn't want him. There's no way to escape a galactic mob of mind readers, no way for him to blend in with his foster family and other average Americans. Because Thomas invented a way to save his own life. His custom medicine halts the progress of his degenerative neuromuscular disease. Newscasters proclaim him the next Einstein, but mere humans have no idea his bioengineered processing capacity rivals that of a supercomputer. They just think he's smart. However, there are other bioengineered supergeniuses in the Majority.

Frustrated by restrictive rules, maverick warship commander, Dalton Reeves, has crossed the line one time too many. Disciplined for violating orders, Reeves is packed off to “The Abyss”–a dangerous and isolated space city named Concord Station, and officially the worst assignment in the galaxy.

High above the windswept plains of Kazakhstan, three astronauts on board a Russian Soyuz capsule begin their reentry. A strange shimmer in the atmosphere, a blinding flash of light, and the capsule vanishes in a blink as though it never existed. Daniel Rice is a government science investigator. Marie Kendrick is a NASA operations analyst. Together, they must track down the cause of the most bizarre event in the history of human spaceflight. They draw on scientific strengths as they plunge into the strange world of quantum physics.

Amelia Charron is a neuroscientist researching brain disorders. She routinely uses astonishing mind-linking technology that allows her to enter the dream world of patients. Each night, Amelia acts as a guide through the bizarre wonderland of the mind-an assisted lucid dream. It's a technique that reroutes neural pathways to heal the brain, but it's not without psychological dangers for both the patient and the guide. Orlando Kwon will do anything to keep the frightening voices at bay. Alien voices, he's sure, but he has no idea what they are saying.

On New Year's eve 2022, unknown flying objects appear over Europe and ignite an inferno of violence among themselves. Debris from one of the spacecraft falls on Athens, turning the city center into a smoking crater. The destroyed remnant of the former metropolis is declared a restricted zone by NATO forces and sealed off. Amid the few survivors struggling for food, medicine, and clean water, Nikos takes care of his girlfriend, Maria, only to soon find out that to avert a creeping death, there is only one way out of the hell of Athens—the wreckage of the alien ship.

Kathryn Janeway reveals her career in Starfleet, from her first command to her epic journey through the Delta Quadrant leading to her rise to the top as vice-admiral in Starfleet Command. Discover the story of the woman who travelled further than any human ever had before, stranded decades from home, encountering new worlds and species.