Hard Space Opera

Hannah Sawyer is the spiritual descendant of Stephanie Kinsella. She has many special and unique abilities, but courage maybe isn't among them. Alas, she is caught up in a monstrous war, a war that requires the best efforts of everyone. When you think you have lost something, you find it the last place you look!

Senior co-administrator of the Norcoast Salmon Research Facility, Dr. Mackenzie Connor was a biologist who studied the spawning habits of salmon. Then, last season, just as she and Dr. Emily Mamani were starting their research, they were interrupted by the arrival of Brymm, the first Dhryn to set foot on Earth. And suddenly everything changed for Mac, Emily, Brymn, the human race, and all the member races of the Interspecies Union. Base was attacked, Em was kidnapped by the mysterious Ro, and Mac and brymn had to flee for their lives to the Dhryn home world.

Welcome to future-shock. Hold on tight and buckle yourselves in, because the future is on a relentless onslaught, for better or worse. This is a collection of the short speculative fiction of Gabriel Walker Land. Most stories are flash fiction, meaning less than 1000 words. Each contains a story of mystery, action, romance, and suspense.

There is no turning back from war now. The Fringe Liberation Campaign has sparked protests and rebellions across the Collective. Can the fringe unite into a single front before the Collective Unified Forces send everything they’ve got to destroy the Campaign and kill every last torrent?

In the Year 2889 by Jules Verne is a diary of the observations of Fritz Napoleon Smith, the editor of an influential futuristic newspaper. It is an action-packed tale of technological advances and science fiction scenarios. Some of the predictions were remarkably accurate.

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.

Follow the continuing adventure of the Lyssa and the Sykes family while the Psion AIs set their sights on Vesta.

Star humans were engineered to exist within the mantle of a star, mere tools of their Earth-evolved makers in a war against the Xeelee, owners of the universe. Stephen Baxter's third novel in his magnificent Xeelee Sequence is an exotic and endearing story of an abandoned people. Abandoned to their fate, their history lost along with contact with their makers, Star people survive in an environment that is possibly the strangest in science fiction.

Onboard an ancient starship, Killeen and the Bishop tribe escape the mech-ruled world of Snowglade. Seeking refuge on a faraway planet, they discover vast wonders: an organic life-form as large as a world, a planet-coring cosmic string, a community of humans ruled by a brutal tyrant, and ultimately an alien race more awesome than any they have encountered. As they battle for survival against these myriad dangers, Killeen and his crew will gain an unforeseen ally - one that may determine humanity’s true destiny.

New Alliances After some terrible secrets come to light, humans must rethink their relationship with the Akkato. Nothing less than the continued existence of mankind is at stake. Will Dominic Porter and his comrades decide to forge new alliances, even if it means going against their conscience? NOMADS This is what humans are called by the many races of the Milky Way. As survivors and refugees, they try to assert themselves among the cultures of the galaxy, which is called ASGAROON by its inhabitants. Some of them have managed to make a name for themselves in the feudal society of ASGAROON. ...

Konran Andacellos has all but given up on his dream to be a starfighter. After botching an airshow maneuver and being reduced to a captaincy on a rock hauler, the ambitious 22-year-old never expected an ambush to sweep in and blow his convoy to dust. With the lives of his crew on the line, Konran leaps into a pitiful one-man defense craft and obliterates the enemy against impossible odds.

Cindy Rhodes is a young woman with little understanding of the world, the universe -- certainly not the war she is caught up in. As she learns, stupidity is incurable but ignorance can be treated with education. A little education or a great deal of education depending on where you start at the beginning of your journey. Sometimes the road be flinty and the way be long.

For Ky, it’s not just about liberating the star systems subjugated by Turek and defending the rest of the galaxy’s freedom. There’s also a score to be settled and payback to be meted out for the obliteration of the Vatta Transport dynasty...and the slaughter of Ky’s family. But the enemy have their own escalation efforts under way - including the placement of covert agents among the allies with whom Ky and the surviving Vattas are collaborating in the war effort.

Eagle and Kat are two of the worst sort of economic exploiters: pioneers. Like pioneers they are a young married couple, but the frontier they are settling is the "Final Frontier." Space is a frontier different than any that came before. It is less forgiving, the cavalry will have a longer way to come. At least their neighbors will be rocket scientists! Well maybe "rocket" is the wrong word...

Sometimes the few must stand against the many. From the dark, cold void came an unknown force. Their target: a remote planet, the home of a group of people distancing themselves from mankind and pursuing a path of piety and peace. If they have any chance at survival, a disparate group of pilots must come together to fight back any way they can. But the best these aces can do might not be good enough.

Five months there. Five months back. And seven months waiting for the planets to align. In a tiny ship never meant for deep space. Denali is one hell of a trip. But the leading mind in nanite medicine is stranded there. Captain Sass Collier wants him back, to cure failure to thrive syndrome in her own colony. Each of the crew has a motive to embrace the risk. The lucky ones wish for adventure. Adventure is assured. But Denali holds another prize beyond their wildest dreams. Can Sass hold her fractious crew together, get the goods, and meet her launch window home?

A strange alien calling himself the Prophet has appeared in orbit above Earth, and the planet's most powerful weapons have proven useless against his ship's defenses. To make matters worse, the Prophet tells mankind that Earth will soon be invaded and destroyed if the Earth's nations don't learn how to live in peace and start building to meet the coming enemy. Failure to change humanity's warlike ways will lead to its destruction.

Gita Chithra, the captain of the intergalactic ship The Tempest, is used to leading her crew on simple retrieval and assistance missions. But when she receives a frantic distress call from Ri, the AI she trained from inception—making her like a daughter to Gita—she knows she’s in for something much more dangerous. Ri is trapped in the depths of Loki’s Ring, an artificial alien-made solar system, and says everyone in the vicinity has been infected and killed by a mysterious contagion. Gita and her team investigate, only to discover horrors at every turn.

Someone just killed Tanis Richards and replaced her with an Infiltrator Chameleon. While finally getting some much-needed shore leave on Mars, Tanis gets a message from Harm Ellis with instructions to go to Ceres and hunt for a missing operative...except she never makes it. At least, that's what she'd like her would-be killers to think. With Darla's help, Tanis goes deep undercover, tracking the Infiltrator Chameleon from world to world, only to discover that it intends to kill a head of state in her name.

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.