Hard Science Fiction Space Opera

This prequel to the Trade Pact Universe series begins in a time before the Clan had learned how to manipulate the M'hir to travel between worlds. Aliens have begun to explore the world of Cersi, upsetting the delicate balance between the Clan and the two other powerful races who coexist by set rules. And one young woman is on the verge of finding the forbidden secret of the M'hir - a discovery that could prove the salvation or ruin of her entire species.

A hundred years in the future, a war wages between the Five Dragons - five families that control the moon's leading industrial companies. Each clan does everything in their power to claw their way to the top of the food chain - marriages of convenience, corporate espionage, kidnapping, and mass assassinations. Through ingenious political manipulation and sheer force of will, Lucas Corta rises from the ashes of corporate defeat and seizes control of the moon. The only person who can stop him is a brilliant lunar lawyer: his sister, Ariel.

Time is of the essence. The race to the end is on.

The colony ship Ragtime docks in the Lagos system, having traveled light-years to bring one thousand sleeping souls to a new home among the stars. But when first mate Michelle Campion rouses, she discovers some of the sleepers will never wake. Answering Campion’s distress call, investigator Rasheed Fin is tasked with finding out who is responsible for these deaths.

The Transpop Rebellion ended 10 years ago with now-Secretary General Nicholas Seafort as a hero. With that political capital, Seafort stepped into place as one of the most powerful men in the world. But political clout isn't all it seems to be. While Seafort tries to stay true to his moral code, he's being pulled in every direction. His former colleagues in the navy demand more ships, while the enviro lobbyists plead with him to repair the planet's broken ecosystem. Patriarch's Hope returns the focus to the Seafort Saga's charismatic and troubled title character.

When 17-year-old Toby McGonigal finds himself lost in space, separated from his family, he expects his next drift into cold sleep to be his last. After all, the planet he' s orbiting is frozen and sunless, and the cities are dead. But when Toby wakes again, he' s surprised to discover a thriving planet, a strange and prosperous galaxy, and something stranger still - that he' s been asleep for 14,000 years. Welcome to the Lockstep Empire, where civilization is kept alive by careful hibernation. Here cold sleeps can last decades and waking moments mere weeks.

The best of the year's science fiction and fantasy stories as selected by the multiple award-winning editor Jonathan Strahan. Distant worlds, time travel, epic adventure, unseen wonders, and much more! The best, most original and brightest science fiction and fantasy stories from around the globe from the past 12 months are brought together in one collection by multiple award winning editor Jonathan Strahan.

John Bandicut and his companions are summoned to a star-cloud called Starmaker, known to humans as the Orion Nebula, to discover what force threatens newborn stars - and possibly every world within a thousand light-years. Their journey takes them not just into the perils of a stellar nursery, but into confrontation with the Mindaru, a billion-year-old AI and adversary of life as they know it. The task is daunting. But with the aid of Deep and Dark, sentient clouds who are perhaps the strangest beings they have met yet in their exceedingly strange journey, there may be hope.

Poised to reconquer humanity's home, Captain Absen and Conquest are confronted with a new enemy that upsets the balance of power and changes everything EarthFleet expected. Their struggle to free Earth becomes instead a desperate battle for sheer survival as they contemplate the unthinkable: total annihilation.

Millennia of conflict between humans and mechs have driven the human race to near-extinction. Now, as the fierce AI mechs begin their final assault on mankind, it soon becomes apparent that three men – three generations in a family of voyagers – are their targets. Toby Bishop, his father, Killeen Bishop, and his grandfather, Nigel Walmsley, each carry a piece of the lethal secret that can destroy their enemies. But hunted through space and time by relentless assassins, they have no idea that they possess the only weapon that can save humanity.

Few writers have successful blended hard science and speculation with fully realized characters as Gregory Benford has in his critically acclaimed novels. Now he draws us into a vortex of mystery and danger at the heart of the galaxy in his dazzling epic drama, Furious Gulf.

Commanders from six Star Trek crews are faced with the ultimate gamble, as they hurl themselves through a Gateway without any knowledge of what lay beyond. Each faces a personally unique challenge, struggling to find a way back to the ships and homes they left behind. Waiting behind at least one of the Gateways are the ageless Iconians, the primordial architects of the mysterious portals causing chaos throughout the Milky Way galaxy.

Earth’s first colony ship finally reaches the target world. The excitement of planetfall is indescribable, but quickly transforms into sick disappointment when they find the atmosphere is a roiling mass of hydrochloric acid, carbon dioxide, and other deadly poisons. They fly onward, seeking better planets. They find them, but none are ideal. The search goes on for a century, then longer still. As they move farther from Earth, aliens discover the intruding ship, and they begin to investigate humanity. They find our species unacceptable.

The first manned mission to Mars is a reality, and it is a complete disaster. The plan was to land on the surface, wave at the cameras and leave behind a legacy for the ages. But the Billionaire and his hand-picked crew soon finds themselves stuck on the Red Planet, unable to return to Earth. Stranded on the surface, sabotage and murder quickly becomes the name of the game.

After the cradle was lost, humankind expanded across the Orion Arm of the Milky Way. Centuries of conflict followed, but peace returned under the rule of the Commonwealth. Now, the enormous world settling starships of the past have been recommissioned, and the Astraeus has set sail to find new worlds at the centre of the galaxy. Not long into the journey, Lizabeth Denning witnesses a horrific murder and sees the wrong man framed. And to make matters worse, the ship begins to experience violent tremors. In a race against time, the passengers must find the killer and repair the ship before ...

The Polity is under attack from a 'melded' AI entity with control of the lethal Jain technology, yet the attack seems to have no coherence. When one of Erebus' wormships kills millions on the world of Klurhammon, a high-tech agricultural world of no real tactical significance, agent Ian Cormac is sent to investigate, though he is secretly struggling to control a new ability no human being should possess...and beginning to question the motives of his AI masters.

"Pellucidar" is a fantasy novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, part of his series about the fictional "hollow earth" land of Pellucidar. David Innes and his captive, a member of the reptilian Mahar master race of the interior world of Pellucidar, return from the surface world in the Iron Mole invented by his friend and companion in adventure Abner Perry. Emerging in Pellucidar at an unknown location, David frees his captive.

The generation ship Peerless is in search of advanced technology capable of sparing their home planet from imminent destruction. In theory, the ship is traveling fast enough that it can traverse the cosmos for generations and still return home only a few years after they departed. But a critical fuel shortage threatens to cut their urgent voyage short, even as a population explosion stretches the ship’s life-support capacity to its limits.

During a classified mission to the ISS, astronaut Jack Kildare picks up an eerie signal. An alien spaceship is orbiting distant, icy Europa. It looks derelict...but is it? As fear sweeps across Earth, NASA spearheads a frenzied effort to build a ship capable of traveling to Jupiter to confront the alien menace. Technology intertwines with espionage and sabotage in a race against the clock. Fighting for his rightful place in the mission, Jack finds himself submerged in a world of secrets, international power games, and cold-blooded murder.

Watch out - the Earth just fell into a dark sun's orbit! Or maybe you'd rather visit a theme park called Hell? These are just two of the strange and unnerving tales you'll find in this collection of great science fiction and fantasy stories.