Fantasy First Contact

On Mars, a scientist experiments with a new engine that will one day become the drive that fuels humanity's journey into the stars. On an asteroid station, a group of prisoners are oblivious to the catastrophe that awaits them. On a future Earth beset by overpopulation, pollution, and poverty, a crime boss desperately seeks to find a way off planet. On an alien world, a human family struggles to establish a colony and make a new home. All these stories and more are featured in this unmissable collection of short fiction set in the hardscrabble world of The Expanse.

A human diplomat creates an interstellar incident when he kills an alien diplomat in a most unusual way. To avoid war, Earth's government must find an equally unusual object: A type of sheep ("The Android's Dream"), used in the alien race's coronation ceremony. To find the sheep, the government turns to Harry Creek, ex-cop, war hero and hacker extraordinaire.

Nathan Myers and the crew of the Legacy have fought several of the predatory races wreaking havoc on our galaxy. Over the years their enemies have given them many names. Most are born out of spite and fear, but some are out of respect. Now that Nathan and his strike team find themselves battling the invasive Bio-machines of Andromeda, the enemies of all biological life have labeled Nathan and his crew with a new moniker. They call them the Apex Warriors.

When Russ Wesley finds an unusual artifact in his grandfather’s collection of rare antiquities, the last thing he expects is for it to draw the attention of a ferocious alien from a distant planet. Equally surprising is the adventurous team of intergalactic exterminators dispatched to deal with the alien threat. They’re a little wild, and a little reckless. Worse yet, they’re so impressed with Russ’s marksmanship that they insist he join their squad . . . whether he wants to or not.

In the wake of defeating Gornath of the Ontishog, above the streets of Manhattan, and saving Earth from a devastating plague, Wic and Phantom Team believe their work is done. But Major Insarka Kindesh has other plans for the heroes and invites them back to Karkin Four. Phantom Team cross through New York’s origin ring to find the Blood Guard orchestrating covert operations against an Androchidan Empire in the throes of war. But galactic battle is not this trip’s focus.

In John Scalzi's re-imagining of H. Beam Piper's 1962 sci-fi classic Little Fuzzy, written with the full cooperation of the Piper Estate, Jack Holloway works alone for reasons he doesnt care to talk about. Hundreds of miles from ZaraCorps headquarters on planet, 178 light-years from the corporations headquarters on Earth, Jack is content as an independent contractor, prospecting and surveying at his own pace. As for his past, thats not up for discussion.

The Interbeing League had been formed to make contact with new intelligent races in the galaxy and offer them membership. But when the League encountered the Hokas, furry creatures strongly resembling the teddy bears of Earth, the league's agent, Alexander Jones, could have been excused for wishing he had a simpler assignment than making sense out of the Hokas - such as singlehandedly stopping an interstellar war.

At the turn of the 22nd century, scientists make a breakthrough in human spaceflight. Through a revolutionary method known as somaforming, astronauts can survive in hostile environments off Earth using synthetic biological supplementations. With the fragility of the body no longer a limiting factor, human beings are at last able to journey to neighboring exoplanets long known to harbor life. A team of these explorers, Ariadne O’Neill and her three crewmates, are hard at work in a planetary system 15 light-years from Sol, on a mission to ecologically survey four habitable worlds.

Morgan Mars is doing everything he can to protect humanity from alien invasion. But even his new organization, The First Line of Defence, isn’t enough to save what’s already lost. Sectors are collapsing like dominoes as the aftermath of the 20th Cycle invasion leaves everyone trapped in the falling Sectors. No one knows what to do. No one, that is, except Nicholas Thistlebush. He has a plan to save Sector 6. The only question is, what will it cost him?

Micah, Jess, and the ever-loyal Golden Retriever, Grover, seek refuge in the snowy seclusion of a New Hampshire farm, along with their new Kynolari friends. As winter's grip tightens, so does the Draun's hold on Earth. The signal sent by the Visionary has awakened the Draun DNA inside two hundred and fifty million humans, the number increasing every day. Nowhere is safe, and humanity is on the brink of unimaginable chaos. Forced to flee after a devastating attack on the farm, the heroes are scattered, pursuing desperate gambits across the globe.

What would you do if you found a spaceship? Would you call the government, would you pretend you never saw it, or would you keep it a secret? What would you do with it? Use it to gallivant around the galaxy, conquer Earth, get filthy rich, or try to improve life on Earth? Listen along and find out how Marc works to convert Earth into a spacefaring world capable of defending itself and of being united as it meets the other civilizations in the galaxy.

Dan Delgado is a private investigator. When it comes to finding cheating spouses, corporate thieves, or runaway teenagers, he’s unenthusiastic, and unmatched. As a former San Francisco detective, he misses more meaningful work, but he hasn’t had the heart for it since his wife’s death five years prior. That is, until a phone call from a distraught mother, an illegal immigrant who can’t go to the police, puts him on the hunt for a missing little girl. By the time he reaches the mother’s small home, she’s missing, too. The circumstances are strange....

It begins with Peter, a devoted man of faith, as he is called to the mission of a lifetime, one that takes him galaxies away from his wife, Bea. Peter becomes immersed in the mysteries of an astonishing new environment, overseen by an enigmatic corporation known only as USIC.

Someone born to maintain, fix, and correct any and every issue that could go wrong in the Habitat that he lives in to make sure he and his fellow humans can remain on display and entertain their owners as any good human pet would. Or at least, that's what he was born to be. Now, after getting a second chance along with a superpower that lets him alter anything and everything in regard to his own body, he's trying to fix his life. To live his life for himself with the goal of actually enjoying it, all while being thrust ever deeper into a situation he didn't expect.

The first book in C.J.Cherryh's eponymous series, Foreigner begins an epic tale of the survivors of a lost spacecraft who crash-land on a planet inhabited by a hostile, sentient alien race. From its beginnings as a human-alien story of first contact, the Foreigner series has become a true science fiction odyssey, following a civilization from the age of steam through early space flight to confrontations with other alien species in distant sectors of space. It is the masterwork of a truly remarkable author.

It is the year 12,020 GE and Emperor Cleon I sits uneasily on the Imperial throne of Trantor. Here in the great multidomed capital of the Galactic Empire, 40 billion people have created a civilization of unimaginable technological and cultural complexity. Yet Cleon knows there are those who would see him fall - those whom he would destroy if only he could read the future.

When Nathan stops a brutal attack on an unsuspecting victim, he gets more than he bargained for and sets into motion events that will change his life forever. They told him he should’ve run away, and maybe they were right. Nathan is about to embark on an adventure of a lifetime. Aliens are real. He has something they need, and they’re not the only ones hunting for it.

I might be the only unmated female in my tribe, but it doesn't mean I've given my heart. I'm waiting. I want resonance, and I won't settle for anything less. But when an alien ship lands and a handsome stranger steps out, I know he's the one. His name's Mardok, and he's fascinatingly different - and distractingly appealing. But Mardok can't stay on the ice planet, and he says he can take me with him.

Ethan Bryant was supposed to fall asleep on a ship leaving Earth and wake up 50 years later with his family on the planet Minea. Instead, after the ship's caretaker - the lone human in charge of monitoring the ship's vital systems - suddenly died, the ship's computer locked Ethan out of his stasis chamber and gave him the job. That was five years ago. Five years of checking to make sure everything ran smoothly on a ship Ethan knows almost nothing about.

Earth is conquered. The Shongairi have arrived in force, and humanity’s cities lie in radioactive ruins. In mere minutes, over half the human race has died. Master Sergeant Stephen Buchevsky, who thought he was being rotated home from his latest tour in Afghanistan, finds himself instead prowling the back country of the Balkans, dodging alien patrols and trying to organize the scattered survivors without getting killed.