First Contact Fiction

You can't mistake just anyone for a Phule. When the planet Zenobia is invaded, Captain Willard Phule is made their military advisor. The first priority for Phule's Company: staying out from underfoot of the peaceful, dinosaurlike Zenobians.... But, unbeknownst to the Zenobians, they're getting two Phules for the price of one. A robot double of Phule appears out of nowhere. And only the real Phule knows who the real Phule is....

In 2063, Earth's overheated climate and war-ravaged cities are near breaking point. A new habitable planet is discovered within reach, but the first two missions have failed to return. This is the story of the third mission to Eden. What really awaits the crew of four as they make the long journey to this supposedly uninhabited virgin planet, and what is the link to the secret 900-year-old sect known as Alicians back on Earth? While Blake leads the Eden mission, a young researcher named Micah discovers a terrible truth that threatens the very existence of humanity.

The Principal Investigator of the Chaalt people has covertly enlisted the aid of Nathan Myers and the crew of the Legacy. They desperately need help gaining access to their secret Prule research station. The facility has gone dark, and the automated defenses activated. Even the Chaalt's own advanced warships were not able to breach the shield dome and disable the cutting edge weaponry that protects the base. Nathan and his crew are in a race against time, because they believe a Prule Hivemind they once captured, now controls the facility.

The official novelization of the summer blockbuster The Predator, Shane Black's new movie with a screenplay by Shane Black and Fred Dekker.

Robert A. Heinlein wrote The Number of the Beast, which was published in 1980. In the book Zeb, Deety, Hilda, and Jake are ambushed by the alien "Black Hats" and barely escape with their lives on a specially configured vehicle (the Gay Deceiver) which can travel along various planes of existence, allowing them to visit parallel universes. However, unknown to most fans, Heinlein had already written a "parallel" novel about the four characters and parallel universes in 1977.

Nathan Myers and the crew of the Legacy find themselves at war with the predatory races and murderous corruption prevalent throughout the galaxy. The shadowy criminal figures who stand to lose the most from Nathan's victories has put a billion-credit bounty on his head. To make matters worse, the Scrun and Murlaks have assassination squads actively pursuing Nathan and his crew. In order to survive, Nathan must find allies willing to stand with him. Finding an ally without ulterior motives is easier said than done.

It's not every day that your roommate accidentally teleports you across time and space, but Jennifer MacDonald is not having an ordinary day. A chance encounter with a custom-built computer and an ancient pyramid sends Jennifer to a faraway land with six warring civilizations and an ancient prophecy that has a visitor from the stars at its heart. All she has to do is unseal one measly, missing god.

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.

First contact with a mysterious race of aliens reveals an unusual request; a family's pet dog comes to grips with the newly bestowed gift of human-like intelligence; a poet, in danger and alone on a distant world, makes unlikely allies; hundreds of years in the future, a famous hermit lives in the sea above the now-underwater Harvard University; former friends navigate unsteady peace between human refugees and the technologically superior race that saved them; in a future where human life can be infinitely extended through cybertronic rebirth, one woman declines immortality.

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.

For two years in deep space, the freighter Demeter and a small crew have collected botanical life from other planets. It's a lesson in patience and hell. Mechanics Ensign Raina is ready to jump ship, if only because her abusive ex is also aboard, as well as her overbearing boss. It's only after a foreign biological creature sneaks aboard and wreaks havoc on the ship and crew that Raina must find her grit - and maybe create a gadget or two - to survive...that is, if the crew members don't lose their sanity and turn on each other in the process.

Keeping up-to-date with the most buzzworthy and cutting-edge science fiction requires sifting through countless magazines, e-zines, websites, blogs, original anthologies, single-author collections, and more - a task accomplishable by only the most determined and voracious readers. For everyone else, Night Shade Books is proud to introduce the latest volume of The Best Science Fiction of the Year, collecting the finest that the genre has to offer, from the biggest names in the field to the most exciting new writers.

When I wake up on the ice planet, I'm scared of everything: This place is cold, silent, and the locals look more like blue devils than aliens. To make matters worse, one of the strangers decides I'm going to be his girlfriend and kidnaps me away from my sister. I'm completely and utterly alone. What's a girl to do? Well, this girl escapes. Just when I have no hope left, a new hero appears. Sure, he's blue, horned, and has a tail. He's also fierce, protective, makes me purr...and thinks I'm perfect. But is what we have real or just a mating instinct?

Stranger in a Strange Land is the epic saga of an earthling, Valentine Michael Smith, born and educated on Mars, who arrives on our planet with “psi” powers—telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, telekinesis, teleportation, pyrolysis, and the ability to take control of the minds of others—and complete innocence regarding the mores of man. After his tutelage under a surrogate father figure, Valentine begins his transformation into a kind of messiah.

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.

After a fateful expedition to Antarctica, Alexander Hawkes finds himself catapulted across the stars into a galaxy in chaos. The Emperor is assassinated. The Eternum Empire, already fading, has collapsed. But he has a starship now. And friends. Alongside a crew of unlikely allies—Ban Tarro, an honorable Barundi soldier; Diliseth, a genetically-engineered Nacendo handmaiden; and Four, a sentient AI—Alexander witnesses the brutal aftermath of imperial collapse on the planet Twilight. Driven by an innate sense of justice, Alexander proposes a radical solution.

The orbital debris salvage ship THX-1138 and its Commander Lieutenant Joachim Lee and his young crew are tasked to de-orbit an abandoned space station from the early 21st century. Something very unusual was going on with the derelict Long March of the People-7. They discover that the station has had a visitor from somewhere in the Deep Dark. Was this event the real First Contact? Earthrise 2115: First Contact is a novella that tells the tale of an event that took place approximately 50 years before the adventures of the crew of the starship Richard P. Feynman and is part of the Earthrise ...

When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver for food-delivery apps. That is, until Jamie makes a delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, who works at what he calls “an animal rights organization”. Tom’s team needs a last-minute grunt to handle things on their next field visit. Jamie, eager to do anything, immediately signs on. What Tom doesn't tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at at least. In an alternate dimension, dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm and human-free world.

Deep in Antarctica, two researchers find an enigmatic black sphere suspended in the heart of a huge crater. Neither man is ever seen again. Decades later, reality fractures. A Manhattan skyscraper vanishes into thin air. An airplane crashes in the Sahara Desert—its existence defying logic. Across the globe, breathtaking technology and mysterious artifacts appear, all leading to one chilling truth: a parallel Earth is breaching the boundary between realities.

A Dying Earth. A New World. A Fight for Survival. Earth is collapsing—its air poisoned, its lands scorched, its oceans rising. With extinction looming, humanity’s last hope lies light-years away on an uncharted alien planet. Thousands of desperate colonists take the leap into the unknown, risking everything for a second chance. But survival won’t come easy. Captain Brian “Finn” Finnegan leads the expedition, only to find a world as ruthless as the one they left behind. Savage predators, treacherous terrain, and a planet that seems determined to expel its new inhabitants. But ...