First Contact Fiction

Years after clean energy ended the world’s reliance on fossil fuels, a lull of peace encompasses all of humanity. Some think we should travel to the distant corners of the galaxy; others oppose the idea, thinking that the harnessed singularity reactors are unnatural. When a terrorist group attacks the Lunar colony, members of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force are divided as a result of the incursion. Years later, Lieutenant Commander Kyle Torres comes face to face with old friends, as he’s thrown into an assignment that could change everything.

When Quinn Bennett’s exploration ship is attacked, the security chief finds herself abducted by alien slavers. Unable to save her crew, she is taken across the galaxy and sold to a desert scavenger on the lawless planet of Carthago. Driven by her guilt and failure, she’ll do anything to escape and save the other abductees from her ship. Chained and forced into servitude, she’s waiting for her chance to strike, when across a dusty trading post, she comes face-to-face with a big, cyborg gladiator.

In this Hugo-nominated novel, an alien walks into a museum and asks if he can see a paleontologist. But the arachnid ET hasn't come aboard a rowboat with the Pope and Stephen Hawking (although His Holiness does request an audience later). Landing at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, the spacefarer, Hollus, asks to compare notes on mass extinctions with resident dino-scientist Thomas Jericho.

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.

Anna Sinjari—refugee, survivor of genocide, disaffected office worker—has a close encounter that reveals universe-threatening stakes. While humanity reels from disaster, she must join a small team of civilians, soldiers, and scientists to investigate a mysterious broadcast and unknowable horror. If they can manage to face their own demons, they just might save the world.

Lucky and crew think the worst is behind them when a ship finally arrives to whisk them away from a doomed diplomatic mission. It doesn't take long to learn how wrong they are. Before they know it, a seemingly vanquished foe returns more powerful, and with more resources, than ever.

Rosewater is a town on the edge. A community formed around the edges of a mysterious alien biodome, its residents comprise the hopeful, the hungry, and the helpless—people eager for a glimpse inside the dome or a taste of its rumored healing powers. Kaaro is a government agent with a criminal past. He has seen inside the biodome, and doesn't care to again—but when something begins killing off others like himself, Kaaro must defy his masters to search for an answer, facing his dark history and coming to a realization about a horrifying future.

Kaelin knows an alien when she sees one. The trick, given her eyesight, is actually getting close enough to see them. She might as well wish upon a falling star! Against all odds, one just walked right up to her and introduced himself as Roger. He's on a mission from Molly, the friend she's traveled halfway across the country to see, with news of her alien ever after and a shopping list. When their hands touch, everything changes. Kaelin has a chance to become everything she ever wished she could be...but it will cost her everything she currently is.

Beks Bridgett’s mission in life is to try everything at least once. Some call her fearless. Others, reckless. While her bucket list includes things like skydiving and kissing random strangers, getting kidnapped by aliens and sold to an intergalactic fight club definitely isn’t. That is, until a fierce, intimidating, and hot alien warrior springs her from her caged prison.

Fans of John Carpenter's The Thing can rejoice - here is the original, previously-unpublished, longer version of John W. Campbell's classic story, Who Goes There?, filmed as The Thing and The Thing from Another World. Recently discovered at Harvard by scholar Alec Nevala-Lee, long buried in John W. Campbell's papers, here is the original version of Who Goes There? Included is a preface by Alec Nevala-Lee, an introduction by science fiction grandmaster Robert Silverberg, and the complete text of this newly discovered version of the classic novel.

Hygeia, an outer rim colony, is doomed as the moon on which it was built hurtles toward an inevitable collision with the dead planet Hephaestus. When a distress signal arrives from a Weyland-Yutani biowarfare outpost near the colony, a desperate plan is launched to evacuate the trapped scientists and colonists. Their destination: LV-846, a key United Americas colony where high-level talks are scheduled to address the galaxy-wide hostilities between the colonies.

Kidnapped from Earth with my beloved twin sister, Maggie, I'm thrust into the heart of a ruthless alien mining operation. I figure it's over. I'll die soon, and I'll never see my sister again. I'm tossed into a cell with a blue-skinned warrior named Firion. He shows me a symbol on his hand and tells me this means I'm his fated mate. I'm not sure about that, but he's kind and protective, and he tells me we're going to escape. As we work side by side in the mine, our bond deepens, igniting a spark of hope in my heart.

CDF Lieutenant Harry Wilson has been loaned out to a CDF platoon tasked with secretly removing an unauthorized colony of humans on an alien world. Colonial Ambassador Abumwe has been ordered to participate in final negotiations with an alien race the Union hopes to make allies. Wilson and Abumwe’s missions are fated to cross - and in doing so, place both missions at risk of failure.

We Only Need the Heads is a tale from John Scalzi's The Human Division.

Here, even the wind screams. Abandoned hulks of machinery rust in the colorless landscape. Dark, oily seas beat against a jagged black shore. And the remnants of a reentry space vehicle crash into the rough waves. In it sleeps Ripley, a woman who has battled the enemy twice. It killed her whole crew the first time. The second time, it slaughtered a spaceload of death-dealing Marines. Now on this prison planet that houses only a horde of defiant, captive men, she will have to fight the ultimate alien horror one more time.

An original full-length novel set in the Halo universe and based on the New York Times best-selling video game series! The new Halo novel from acclaimed writer Kelly Gay, author of the thrilling novella Halo: Smoke and Shadow.

Hank and his trusty Corpsman, "Doc," thought they knew what to expect when they were deployed to Iraq, but after getting trapped in an ancient Babylonian temple, things got weird. Following months of combat in a war that wouldn't end, Hank returns to California to face a different type of immigrant—the kind that comes from space.

Under 30,000 feet of water, the experimental exploration rig Leaguer has discovered an oil field larger than Saudi Arabia, with oil so sweet and pure, nations would go to war for the rights to it. But as the team starts drilling exploration well after exploration well in their race to claim the sweet crude, a deep rumbling beneath the ocean floor shakes them all to their core. Something has been living in the oil and it's about to give birth to the greatest threat humanity has ever seen.

Nathan Myers and the crew of the Legacy have been taking down some of the galaxy's worst criminals. The corrupt leaders that are hiding in the shadows have taken notice. They are combining forces and sharing technology, even resorting to acts of terrorism in hopes of putting a stop to Nathan's conquests. If the face of growing opposition, Nathan and his allies discover an even deadlier threat. The Prule that have been hiding in the galaxy for more than 200 years have suddenly come out of hiding.

Hunter Lyna Moore is untrusting by nature and takes all the necessary precautions, especially when it comes to men. So how is it possible she’s pregnant after one passionate encounter with the male who captured her heart the instant she arrived on Tarron? To make matters worse, Dathan has no idea he’s going to be a father and has been going out of his way to avoid her. Dathan Sorak knows it will take more than informing Lyna she is his destined mate for her to agree to a claiming. After months of planning, coaxing, and finally winning her trust, he makes his move only to have it ...

Ezra Barker is a traitor. When the Merg invaded Earth, he didn’t fight or even hide. He cooperated, helping them as they seized control of the planet and began their pillaging of its resources. While others toil away in mines and quarries, Ezra works an office job, helping his boss, The Senator, rule over the swath of territory given to her by the Merg. Sergeant Hayes is a brutal enforcer of the Merg’s rules. As an officer in the Health and Safety Department, he follows Merg orders, arresting, interrogating, and executing at their command.