First Contact Fiction

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.

With no surface water, Harat Zuwayyah barely supports any life at all. The scorching wind howls across the desert, driving the sand and threatening to bury the village. Professor Susan Taylor is excavating an Egyptian tomb dated to 4500 BCE. She uncovers the mummified remains of a wealthy family that died on the trade route, revealing insights into a lost culture, but it's the talisman watching over the grave that causes her heart to race.

A secret buried in the Antarctic. A puzzle unsolved for thousands of years. And a Brooklyn-born master gunnery sergeant who's royally pissed that he has to babysit the researchers sent to figure it all out. But when Patrick "Wic" Finnegan finally sees what the team has uncovered, he can't believe his eyes, nor is he prepared for the violence to come. Soon, the portal opens and unleashes a storm of unbridled fury upon humanity.

Daniel Clay fought across the galaxy as a corporate soldier. He left the violence behind for a life of science, raising a family far from the bloodshed of the Corporation. With his wife, Sarah, and son, Michael, he studied the alien Tyr for years, hidden among their complex societies. Their mission should have ended with the arrival of a replacement team. Instead, the Clays’ corporate overlords choose a death sentence: an invasion fleet to conquer the Tyr.

I'm not saying I've thoroughly enjoyed the three years I've spent in captivity on a pleasure planet, shaking my money-maker for intergalactic patrons… but, I mean, it hasn't been all bad. The jelly donuts were a perk. Granted, I didn't really know what I was signing up for when I agreed to be purchased by the sexy pink shark-man, but things seem to be looking up.

Born on a forsaken desert planet, Cole Shaw has two options - perish from starvation and disease, or enlist in the New World Republic’s armed forces. He chooses the military. For the first time, he thinks he has a shot at a better life. But survival is not guaranteed. Leading an elite team of mech operators, he is deployed to a frozen planet called Ferrous where dangerous relics of a past war lurk beneath the ice and savage creatures prowl the barren wastelands. Scientists on Ferrous are chasing rumors of godlike technologies buried in the ruins of a long-extinct civilization.

Set in 2082, Peter Watts' Blindsight is fast-moving, hard SF that pulls readers into a futuristic world where a mind-bending alien encounter is about to unfold. After the Firefall, all eyes are locked heavenward as a team of specialists aboard the self-piloted spaceship Theseus hurtles outbound to intercept an unknown intelligence.

There are a million ways to end up in the Alien Bride Lottery, but it takes only one. Every unmarried female human over the age of 21 gets entered once a year. You can also accept extra entries for legal infractions—instead of paying a parking fine, for example, you can request an extra entry. Lots of women do that. I mean, why not? The chances are astronomical that your name will get chosen to be one of the hundred or so women who get shipped off to space every year.

Thirteen hundred gates have opened to solar systems around the galaxy. But as humanity builds its interstellar empire in the alien ruins, the mysteries and threats grow deeper. In the dead systems where gates lead to stranger things than alien planets, Elvi Okoye begins a desperate search to discover the nature of a genocide that happened before the first human beings existed and to find weapons to fight a war against forces at the edge of the imaginable. But the price of that knowledge may be higher than she can pay.

The seventh novel in James S. A. Corey's New York Times best-selling Expanse series - now a major television series.

Hadrian Marlowe is trapped. For nearly a century, he has been a guest of the Emperor, forced into the role of advisor, a prisoner of his own legend. But the war is changing. Mankind is losing. The Cielcin are spilling into human space from the fringes, picking their targets with cunning precision. The Great Prince Syriani Dorayaica is uniting their clans, forging them into an army and threat the likes of which mankind has never seen.

For almost a hundred years, Hadrian Marlowe has served the empire in its war against the Cielcin, a vicious alien race bent on humanity's destruction. Rumors of a new king among the Cielcin have reached the imperial throne. This one is not like the others. It does not raid borderworld territories, preferring precise, strategic attacks on the humans' empire.

Wrench is a Fixer. Someone born to maintain, fix, and correct any and every issue that could go wrong in the habitat he lives in. Someone who makes sure he and his fellow humans can remain on display and entertain their owners as any good human pet would. At least, that’s what he was born to be. He’s taken a different route and joined a resistance faction to help free humanity to become more than just pets to an alien race.

The Laconian Empire has fallen, setting the 1,300 solar systems free from the rule of Winston Duarte. But the ancient enemy that killed the gate builders is awake, and the war against our universe has begun again.

Adam and Kimberly Hall are enjoying a quiet suburban life with their daughter, Crystal, and their dog, Bowser, when an emergency message flashes on their phones: meteor impact imminent, seek immediate shelter. Minutes later, the shock wave rages through South Austin like a hurricane, and they’re left to pick up the pieces. As dusk begins to fall and horrific creatures come crawling out of the impact craters, they realize they’re under attack—and the attackers are not from Earth.

Stories of Your Life and Others presents characters who must confront sudden change-the inevitable rise of automatons or the appearance of aliens-while striving to maintain some sense of normalcy. In the amazing and much-lauded title story (the basis for the 2016 movie Arrival), a grieving mother copes with divorce and the death of her daughter by drawing on her knowledge of alien languages and non-linear memory recollection.

Something went wrong in the Mars Felicity Station. A gate to another reality was opened, and a mysterious alien plague threatens humanity. When communications with the station are cut, the Perihelion crew is sent to find out what happened. Outmatched and unprepared, they’re forced to make war on this new enemy and rescue what remains of the survivors.

Vanessa doesn't have the luxury of building a happily ever after on a new planet like her fellow alien abduction survivors. She must get back to Earth. Her family needs her, and she can't afford to let them down again. So, she'll find a way to break Clecanian law and get home—even if she has to marry (and betray) a sexy space pirate to do it. Fejo can't believe his luck when Vanessa, a gorgeous human with a sharp tongue, chooses him as her husband. He doesn't know what he did to win her favor, but he's determined to do everything in his power to make her happy.

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.