Fantasy First Contact

In 2004, Doctor Damien Howard's 131st birthday celebration took an unexpected turn. His personal SETI project detected an extraterrestrial signal directed at Earth. Unfortunately, Dr. Howard's long-hoped-for communication contained a message of dire warning rather than greeting. In 1945, humanity had become a species of galactic interest and was given 100 years to address the issue.

Astronaut Lee Rifkin's life is about to change. NASA has done the math. The space object named Cassandra 22007 is not behaving as expected. He will lead a team on a cutting-edge ship to get a closer look. But another group wants to get there first. Who is this shadow organization that seems to be one step ahead of them? Agent Jenna Haynes works to put together the pieces that will pull the veil off those who seem to have known about Cassandra's arrival since long before NASA spotted it. What is their goal?

Moving on from the trauma of combat in Afghanistan, former Green Beret Captain Sam Dale has just begun to settle down in his hometown of Castle Rock, Colorado. Now the owner of several small businesses, he is unaware that his world is about to be turned upside down. The call comes in at 2:30 a.m. The skies outside have opened up, unleashing a torrential rainstorm. Sam’s small towing company is being tasked with the retrieval of some kind of crashed aircraft.

Joining the fight for the Galaxy isn't required. It's a choice. The United Galactic Government is mired in a decade-long war for control of a key planet. Weakened by overextension and political intrigue, they could lose everything. When a child of privilege gives up everything to enlist and fight for what is right, he learns what it means to become part of a team. He encounters refugees, aliens he never expected to empathize with, and the loss of comrades. In the end he must develop the courage to stand up, not only to aliens and governments, but his own family.

In the far future, the human race is divided into two groups striving for power. The Patternmaster rules over all, the leader of the telepathic Patternist race whose thoughts can destroy or heal at his whim. The only threat to his power are the Clayarks, mutant humans created by an alien pandemic, who now live either enslaved by the Patternists or in the wild. Coransee, son of the ruling Patternmaster, wants the throne and will stop at nothing to get it, even if it means venturing into the wild mutant-infested hills to destroy a young apprentice—his equal and his brother.

On a serene night in 1953, Sally Mason, a dedicated wife and mother of two, drives a twisting road on her way home from night school. Suddenly, a mysterious bluish-white light descends over the road. Terrified, Sally slams on the brakes. After a flash of bright light nearly blinds her, she passes out, awakening to the persistent knock of a police officer on her car window. When she sees the officer and remembers her frightening experience, she screams and faints, and is rushed to the hospital.

Damia had deflected a previous attack on the human worlds and sent the aliens into deep space. Hungry for more living space, they return with plans to dominate, armed with knowledge of the psychic defense they can expect from humanity.

100,000 years ago the object hit the lake at the deepest point, quickly sinking into its mile-deep Stygian darkness. The sheets of ice closed, time moved on and the land forgot. But over the centuries, legends grew of people vanishing, of strange, deformed animals and of an unexplained luminescence down in the lake depths. When Marcus Stenson won the lucrative contract to create a sturgeon fish farm on the site of disused paper mill on the shore of Lake Baikal, he thought he had won the lottery and refused to listen to the chilling folktales....

Only mutual communication can forge an alliance with the planet's sentient species and prove that mammals are more than tools. Forced to land on a planet they aren't prepared for, human colonists rely on their limited resources to survive. The planet provides a lush but inexplicable landscape—trees offer edible, addictive fruit one day and poison the next, while the ruins of an alien race are found entwined in the roots of a strange plant. Conflicts between generations arise as they struggle to understand one another and grapple with an unknowable alien intellect.

As World War III rages, the scientists in Antarctica are thankful for the isolation—until a group of Chinese scientists arrive at the American research base. In their truck is a dead body, the first murder in Antarctica. The potential for a geopolitical firestorm is great, and, with no clear jurisdiction, the Americans don’t know what to do. But they soon realize the Chinese scientists have brought far more with them than the body…

Captain Jim Garrett thought his navy career was over. But when aliens attacked, he took the helm of an experimental warship, leading her into battle for the first time. Now, he commands a ragged fleet of ships that survived the alien onslaught. Their crews are inexperienced and exhausted but there’s no time to rest. Garrett must shape them into a lethal fighting force. His deadliest enemies may come from within. A rival captain threatens mutiny, furious that Garrett is now his superior.

When a massive meteor lights up the sky over the remote island of Kerguelen, the world holds its breath. In Birchwood, Colorado, Dan McCarthy gets to work. Following his incredible experiences of the previous year, Dan knows this was no natural occurrence. The Messengers are back - to finish what they started - and they didn't come all this way for nothing....

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.

An explorer tug captain, Alex Racine detects a damaged alien craft drifting into the system. Recognizing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make first contact, Alex pulls off a daring maneuver to latch on to the derelict. Alex discovers the ship was attacked by an unknown craft, the first of its kind ever encountered. The mysterious silver ship's attack was both instant and deadly.

Alec works in the Detroit Overseer-factories, building a mysterious alien device. When three strangers appear, he's provided an opportunity to escape after years of servitude. Cole, a Freeborn loner, encounters Lina after her village is destroyed by the alien Occupation. Together, they make the arduous journey to a fabled safe-zone, trying to stay one step ahead of the enemy drones on their trail. Dex is a Hunter, working for the Occupation to track down escaped factory slaves, or Roamers, at all costs. But his latest hunt uncovers a massive secret.

Humanity lurches into an uncertain future, dismissive of warning signs. Only the most naïve believe humanity will step back from the brink. Yet in a place that doesn’t exist, a riddle, a puzzle, hope, fear, danger, salvation - all come together. Zach Marjek has faced death in the far corners of the Earth and survived where others have failed. Now, he's thrust into an unimaginable situation where mercenaries, an Inuit wanderer, a murderous Yupik, a young mother, a video game designer, a retired general, a president, a Chinese marine, and mathematics prodigies must come together.

Melanie Stryder refuses to fade away. The Earth has been invaded by a species that take over the minds of their human hosts while leaving their bodies intact, and most of humanity has succumbed. Wanderer, the invading "soul" who has been given Melanie's body, knew about the challenges of living inside a human: the overwhelming emotions, the too vivid memories. But there was one difficulty Wanderer didn't expect: the former tenant of her body refusing to relinquish possession of her mind. Melanie fills Wanderer's thoughts with visions of the man Melanie loves - Jared.

Van Lopez and his brother Andy have enough to do keeping their truck running and the local criminal gang happy to be concerned about nuclear tests. Van has dreams, or-he's not sure what to call them-that he cannot explain or forget, but when he sees mysterious lights in the sky, he struggles to make sense of what now feel like his earliest memories.

Over two hundred years after the first colonists landed on Pax, a new set of explorers arrives from Earth on what they claim is a temporary scientific mission. But the Earthlings misunderstand the nature of the Pax settlement and its real leader. Even as Stevland attempts to protect his human tools, a more insidious enemy than the Earthlings makes itself known. Stevland is not the apex species on Pax.

Gerald Livingston is an orbital garbage collector. For a hundred years, people have been abandoning things in space, and someone has to clean it up. But there’s something spinning a little bit higher than he expects, something that isn’t on the decades’ old orbital maps. An hour after he grabs it and brings it in, rumors fill Earth’s infomesh about an "alien artifact".