First Contact Fiction

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.

Hadrian Marlowe is lost. For half a century, he has searched the farther suns for the lost planet of Vorgossos, hoping to find a way to contact the elusive alien Cielcin. He has not succeeded, and for years has wandered among the barbarian Normans as captain of a band of mercenaries. Determined to make peace and bring an end to nearly 400 years of war, Hadrian must venture beyond the security of the Sollan Empire and among the Extrasolarians who dwell between the stars.

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.

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.

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.

Colton Beck has six months to live. He works for the Angor near Los Angeles, aware that any day could be his last. The Angor arrived 20 years ago, resolved to help mankind survive, but not everyone believes their motives are honorable. When the Angor offer humanity a colony world, Colton is determined to see another planet before his final breath. He’s been diagnosed with Xeno, a rare disorder that surfaced with the Angor’s arrival, but he won’t let this stop him.

At the end of 2385, in a significant shift of its goals from military back to exploratory, Starfleet sent Captain Benjamin Sisko and the crew of the USS Robinson on an extended mission into the Gamma Quadrant. Tasked with a yearlong assignment to travel unknown regions, they set out to fulfill the heart of Starfleet's charter: to explore strange new worlds and to seek out new life and new civilizations.

Gage Gage Grey is happily buried in his lab when folks in Alienn, Arkansas, suddenly start falling—literally—asleep and can’t be woken up. The big brain of the Grey clan better solve this problem in a hurry, because the seven-year Earth Colony inspection is looming. If everyone is asleep when the inspection team arrives, that might be the end of the Big Bang Truck Stop, abovestairs and below.

Liam loves his life as a linguist and trader on the Rownt homeworld, but he has ignored his heart and sexual needs for years. After escaping the horrors of war, he wants a boring life. He won't risk letting anyone come too close because he won't risk letting anyone see his deeply submissive nature. For him, submission comes with pain. Life burned that lesson into his soul from a young age. This fear keeps him from noticing that the Rownt trader Ondry cares for him. Ondry may not understand humans, but he recognizes a wounded soul.

A meteor makes landfall in South Africa, carrying a strange substance that alters plants, soil—and humans. Yet something much more dangerous is on a collision course with Earth—something that will change the future forever. In a Hail Mary attempt to save the planet from certain doom, the government sends a ship and its crew directly into the path of the oncoming threat. The crew’s daring plan might be the only way to save humanity.

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.

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?

An alien spacecraft four times the size of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier enters the solar system. Tensions run hot within the UN, but the alien vessel doesn't approach Earth. Instead, it sits off at L4, over a hundred million miles from Earth, baffling scientists around the world. Chris "Crash" Williams leads an international crew to investigate the appearance of this ghost ship, but he quickly learns that the spacecraft isn't as dead as it seems.

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.

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.

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.

What can anyone say about meeting a sibling you've forgotten that you even have? What do you say when they come to you for help? I didn't have any idea, that's for sure. Bau's arrival so soon after my recent victory in securing a long term stay on Earth, was nothing if not disruptive. Or so I thought at the time, but I had no idea how right I really was, 'disruptive' did not begin to cover it. Chaotic? Mad? Dangerous? All seemed better words. Bau's plea for help was not for her, but for 'her humans'. The surviving remnants of the people who once lived in Chicago, a forgotten people who ...

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.

Aliens? No thanks. Josh has no interest in the Zatans – or their planet. He doesn't get the hype and just wants to return to Earth ASAP. If not for his sickly mother, he wouldn't even be here. He just wants the prize money that comes with the trip, not the cultural exchange. But when he meets one of the hulky aliens, he experiences an attraction he can't deny. Which is all the more confusing because they're both men and he definitely isn't gay... or so he'd thought. Already given up all hope... Drak, the first and oldest prince of Zata, has no illusions about finding his mate anymore. He ...

Something always goes sideways, but this is bigger than expected. Maybe it's not an entirely bad thing, though, as mana-infected animals spreading over the world would definitely make everyone more open to the idea of the apocalypse. The question is what was Silas supposed to do about it, though. He still couldn't tell anyone who wasn't inducted about the system. It was time to get creative. If that wasn't enough, though, he still had the wild hunt hanging over his head. Seven days to go, and then he'd be thrown into whatever twisted event the system had cooked up for him.