Hard Space Opera

In an unprecedented first, Earth sends a message to Mogwa Prime. Unfortunately, the messenger is not met with enthusiasm. Misunderstandings soon threaten all of Humanity. Forced to prove Earth can serve the Empire better than any rival, McGill does his best. Eager to prove our worth to the Galactics, the frontier war between Rigel and Earth is expanded to Storm World. Circled by six moons, the planet is ravaged by wild storms and tides. Battles are fought in raging hurricanes, and death stalks the soldiers on both sides.

Breq is a soldier who used to be a warship. Once a weapon of conquest controlling thousands of minds, now she has only a single body and serves the emperor. With a new ship and a troublesome crew, Breq is ordered to go to the only place in the galaxy she would agree to go: to Athoek Station to protect the family of a lieutenant she once knew—a lieutenant she murdered in cold blood.

The Hundred Worlds have withstood invasion by the relentless Hok for decades. The human worlds are strong, but the Hok have the resources of a thousand planets behind them, and their fleets attack in endless waves. The long war has transformed the Hundred Worlds into heavily fortified star systems. Their economies are geared for military output, and they raise specialized soldiers to save our species. Assault Captain Derek Straker is one such man among many.

The Darshik war machine is flagging, but the war is far from over. Even as an exhausted Federation military tenses up for a counterattack after repelling the last Darshik invasion, reports are coming in of a new, more powerful class of ship that's striking deep into Terran space. Captain Jackson Wolfe has been given the fleet's newest, most advanced destroyer and tasked with eliminating this new threat before it can claim any more human lives. What he finds, however, is immeasurably more dangerous than just some new class of starship....

Consider Phlebas: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience! The first audiobook in Iain M. Banks's seminal science fiction series, The Culture. Consider Phlebas introduces listeners to a utopian conglomeration of human and alien races that explores the nature of war, morality, and the limitless bounds of mankind's imagination.

Long before Earth began conquering her neighboring stars, Legion Varus was deployed on Tau Ceti. Valuable and highly illegal treasures were stolen during the campaign, but McGill never gave it a second thought. The Tau haven’t forgotten him, however. For decades, they’ve hunted and plotted, and at last they’ve found the pirate who robbed them. Tau agents invade Earth seeking revenge and profit. Caught up in violence and intrigue, McGill is given the task of finding out where the loot has gone and who was responsible for the theft in the first place.

Commander Scott McNabb, of the science vessel Hermes, is three years into a five-year-long survey of the asteroid belt. It’s an excruciatingly dull mission, yet it keeps him far away from the agencies that are chasing him down. However, his fortunes change, along with the other four crew members, when they discover a derelict spaceship in orbit around a binary asteroid. Scott’s share of the salvage would be enough to clear his name and start a new life.

In the 31st century, humanity stands on the precipice of extinction. The human colonies throughout the galaxy have been decimated by the relentless assault of the Korilian Empire, leaving Earth as the final refuge. Humankind's last hope rests on the tactical prowess of Admiral Jon McCarthy and the foresight of the Nexus House, an ancient conclave of clairvoyants who have long guided humanity's path.

An artificial object made of compressed stardust is barreling toward Earth. Is it an invasion ship? A doomsday weapon? Perhaps it’s the final response of Squanto, the Warlord of Rigel who James McGill has repeatedly humiliated. Or could it be from the Mogwa, sent to avenge McGill’s assassination of Earth’s Imperial Governor? No one knows the truth of its origins, but the object is huge and unstoppable. Whoever hurled this rock at us isn’t answering our calls. Every weapon bounces off, and the people of Earth begin to go mad as they realize their destruction is only hours away.

One starship will either save Earth or destroy her. A century ago our star erupted, destroying Earth's wormhole network and closing off trade with her colonized planets. After being out of contact with the younger worlds for so many years, humanity is shocked when a huge ship appears at the edge of the solar system. Our outdated navy investigates, both curious and fearful. What they learn from the massive vessel shocks the planet.

Quinn Dexter is loose on Earth, destroying the giant arcologies one at a time. As Louise Kavanagh tries to track him down, she manages to acquire some strange and powerful allies whose goal doesn't quite match her own. The campaign to liberate Mortonridge from the possessed degenerates into a horrendous land battle, the kind that hasn't been seen by humankind for 600 years; then some of the protagonists escape in a very unexpected direction.

1967: Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during China's Cultural Revolution. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind. Four decades later, Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal of scientists after a spate of inexplicable suicides. Wang's investigation will lead him to a mysterious online game and immerse him in a virtual world ruled by the intractable and unpredictable interaction of its three suns.

Two worlds preparing their defenses.... A ship struggling to get back in the fight.... An enemy continuing its relentless attack.... A former enemy that could hold the answer.... With the fate of billions in his hands, Captain Scott is offered a way to save them all and end the bloodshed, but if it backfires, he could lose everything. Sometimes, there is no good choice.

A thousand worlds have opened, and the greatest land rush in human history has begun. As wave after wave of colonists leave, the power structures of the old solar system begin to buckle. Ships are disappearing without a trace. Private armies are being secretly formed. The sole remaining protomolecule sample is stolen. Terrorist attacks previously considered impossible bring the inner planets to their knees. The sins of the past are returning to exact a terrible price.

Finally in English! A different kind of SF story, with a very special heroine. Only ten years old, Tanit is a genius and the youngest astrobiologist in history. For that reason she has been authorized to journey to the newly founded colony of Thuis, fifty light-years from Earth. There she will finally join her mother, who left for the colony two years before. But Tanit has no idea of the terrible events looming in her future that will force her to fend for herself in a hostile universe. First book of the popular Spanish science fiction series "In strange orbits". This episode is included in...

Earth builds her first war fleet! The greatest warships ever constructed in known space rise up one by one, soon dominating our skies. They strike fear into the hearts of every citizen and rebel colonist alike. Captain William Sparhawk, the very man who convinced the secretive Council to build this terrifying fleet, now has doubts about the project. What is their exact mission? How could anyone have built these huge ships so quickly? And, most puzzling of all, what's happening out at the isolated laboratory complex on Phobos, Mars' lopsided moon?

When Boba Fett stumbles across evidence implicating Prince Xizor in the murder of Luke Skywalker's aunt and uncle, Fett makes himself an enemy even he fears: the unknown mastermind behind a monstrous deception, who will kill to hide his tracks. Fett also finds himself in possession of an amnesiac young woman named Neelah, who may be the key to the mystery--or a decoy leading Fett into a murderous ambush.

When a hideous accident kills the senior officers of the UNS Hibernia, it leaves a terrified young officer to save 300 colonists and crew aboard a damaged ship on a 17-month gauntlet to reach the colony of Hope Nation. With no chance of rescue or reinforcement, Nicholas Seafort must overcome despair, exhaustion, and guilt. He must conquer malfunctions, mutiny, and an alien horror beyond human understanding. And he must save lives, and take them - in the name of duty.

The Imperials have devised a cunning new method of destroying Rebel worlds. Captain Leo Blake is largely responsible for both our survival and our current predicament. He and his crew are infamous among the stars. As a result, when ships of an unknown configuration begin flowing out of swirling rifts above Earth, Blake is called upon again to deal with the problem. But the approaching fleet isn't what it seems. They're employing an entirely new way to exterminate Rebels.

As tension between Mars and Earth mounts, and terrorism plagues the Martian city of Londres Nova, 16-year-old David Draper is fighting his own lonely war. A gifted chemist vying for a place at the university, David leads a secret life as a manufacturer for a ruthless drug dealer. When his friend Leelee goes missing, leaving signs of the dealer's involvement, David takes it upon himself to save her. But first he must shake his aunt Bobbie Draper, an ex-Marine who has been set adrift in her own life after a mysterious series of events nobody is talking about.