Fantasy First Contact

The gods have been angered. Hell will rain down. After Wic and the Phantom’s successful operation on Karkin Four, the team learns of the enemy’s plans for a swift retaliation: an all-out assault on New York City. Together, Wic must rally the team’s resources to plan an emergency counter-assault that will push the Phantoms to their limits. With help from unexpected places, mission success seems all but assured. But when a new terrifying technology emerges, Wic must face the most challenging choice of all: sacrifice his teammates for the fate of Earth.

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.

A Fire Upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale. Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function.

After years of searching, Nathan Briggs is finally on the verge of making an incredible discovery. Unfortunately, the aliens have other plans. 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.

Communist China, Japan, Nazi Germany, the United States: they began World War II as mortal enemies. But suddenly their only hope for survival - never mind victory - was to unite to stop a mighty foe: one whose frightening technology appeared invincible. Far worse beings than the Nazis were loose. From Warsaw to Moscow to China's enemy-occupied Forbidden City, the nations of the world had been forced into an uneasy alliance since humanity began its struggle against overwhelming odds.

Jack Kernigan is having a bad day...a bad year...a bad life. After being booted out of MIT, he’s back in his Ohio hometown, working for the family business, facing a life of mediocrity. Then one day, out on a delivery, his truck hits...something. Something big...something furry...something invisible. And, it turns out, something not of this Earth. Fate can play funny tricks. Which is why Jack suddenly finds himself the planet’s best hope to unravel a conspiracy of galactic proportions that could spell the end of the human race.

For small-time street hustler Cam Alvarez, the choice is simple. He has no family, no friends, no place in the world...nothing to lose. When his latest con results in the death of a cartel hitman, Cam opts to join the Marines and leave Earth to fight a vicious alien enemy.

When a lab experiment results in a group of scientists gaining extremely long life, they realize that if they stay on Earth, they'll soon become lab specimens. To escape this, they decide to travel to the stars. Unfortunately, the stars are already occupied.

Daniel Rice hasn't felt right since his return from a dystopian future. Curious dreams repeat with detailed precision. A voice—or something—seems to be calling him. His problem isn't medical, it's not even scientific, and it's driving his wife crazy. Nala is worried, and she's not the type to pace the halls while her overly analytic husband procrastinates. Earth's scientific power couple is soon halfway around the world to consult with alien android, Aastazin. Zin is no doctor, but he has friends in high places.

Before Hr'ent Golramm became a legendary Enforcer for the Peacemaker Guild, he was a mere candidate. Granted, he was a particularly unusual candidate - only six Oogar had ever successfully graduated from the Peacemaker Academy on Ocono, and Hr'ent would be the seventh. Every candidate must pass a commissioning mission in order to graduate, though, and Hr'ent's is unsolvable. The Pushtal of Vorrhurna were once one of the Mercenary Guild's 37 races.

It's the dawning of a new age for mankind when the Catteni descend to Earth and easily overcome the Earth's population. Thousands are herded onto slave ships headed for the intergalactic auction block. Kris Bjornsen is captured in Denver on her way to her college classes and wakes up on the primitive planet Barevi.

En route to far-off stars, Toby’s consciousness has a crucial mission: inhabit his clone long enough to repair a spaceship, then zip back to Earth. He’s done it a million times, more or less. OK, twelve times. It should only take a few hours. Until he wakes up in jail. And he’s not alone. His fellow prisoners: a cadre of alien soldiers. His prison: an ethereal boundary that will imprison their spirits until their bodies die. His jailers can’t even see him. But their pet cat (er, iguana cat?) can—and it’s got a serious case of the zoomies.

The human race has turned to dust. August Morrison faces it after rising from the depths of a dark matter research facility in Arizona. His co-workers. His daughter. All of them: dust. Friends and colleagues around the world don’t answer their phones. The city of Phoenix burns. He is alone. As a world without mankind starts to crumble, August fights not just for survival, but for his very sanity. On the other side of the country, Poe McDowell watches her parents crumble into dust just moments after being shoved inside a coffin-like device that spares her from the same fate.

It's 2526. It has been almost a year since humanity engaged in its destructive first contact with a theocratic military alliance of alien races known as the Covenant. Now, the hostilities have led to open war, and the United Nations Space Command understands virtually nothing about its new enemy. The UNSC’s only hope lies with the Spartans: enhanced super-soldiers trained from childhood via a clandestine black-ops project to be living weapons. But not everyone wants the Spartans to succeed.

Ami awakes from years in stasis to find she's at the edges of deep space—and the only surviving member of her crew. Utterly alone and unable to contact Earth, she sends out a distress beacon, not expecting a response. When she gets one from a being who calls himself Dorian, she's welcomed onto his ship as he offers his assistance in any way he can. But nothing on Dorian's ship is as it seems. And as Ami tries to navigate the maze of hallways and first contact with this alien being, a deep hum begins to resonate, haunting her, as if the ship itself is whispering to her.

An AI overseer and a human crew arrive on a distant planet to salvage an ancient UN starship. The overseer is unhappy. The crew, well, they're certainly no A-team. Not even a C-team on the best of days. And worse? Urmahon Beta, the planet, is at the ass-end of nowhere. Everybody expects this to be a long, ugly, and thankless job. Then it all goes disastrously wrong. What they thought was an uninhabited backwater turns out to be anything but empty.

As war breaks out among the colonies, a huge ship appears over the UPP mining planet Shānmén, releasing a horror that yields hideous transformations. Rescue is too far away, and the colonists’ only hope appears in the form of the vessel Righteous Fury. It carries the Jackals—an elite mix of former Colonial Marines and Royal Marines. Led by Zula Hendricks, the Jackals seek to rescue the few survivors from the depths of the planet, but have they arrived on time?

Silas is growing into the responsibilities weighing him down. Earth is struggling, but there is hope. The deals that Silas has made have brought resources and trainers to Earth. He's helped some leaders gain an understanding of what they will face. His team has continued to grow but now he finds himself facing the greatest challenge to any Forerunner, the Wild Hunt. He'll be hunted but also have to hunt other Forerunners while forging a shaky alliance with those he can't trust. Even more disturbing, it seems like there might be more than one system to choose from.

Alan Dean Foster is the acclaimed author of movie tie-ins for Star Wars, Alien and Transformers. He was awarded the IAMTW Grand Master Scribe Award in 2008. He is also a best-selling science fiction and fantasy author in his own right, including the popular Pip & Flinx novels and the Founding of the Commonwealth series.