Hard Space Opera

Major Richards needs to get out of the Sol System. Demoted by the military and hung out to dry, the media labels her the Butcher of Toro. Despite her soiled record, Tanis still one of the best military counterinsurgency officers in the Terran Space Force. They need her to find the terrorists responsible for trying to destroy the GSS Intrepid, a massive interstellar colony ship in the final phases of construction at the Mars Outer Shipyards.

Covert agent Sigmund Ausfaller is Earth's secret weapon, humanity's best defense against all conspiracies, real and imaginary, and all foes both human and alien. Who better than a brilliant paranoid to expose the devious plots of others?

But Sigmund may finally have met his match in Nessus, representative of the secretive Puppeteers, the elder race who wield vastly superior technologies.

In the early 22nd century, humanity has spread through the solar system - and their electromagnetic signals have traveled hundreds of light years. An alien race called the Oghaldzon has decided that mankind is dangerously insane...and must be forcibly taken under control. The invasion fleet's technology is decades ahead of Earth's best. They have more ships than the human fleets combined, and a seemingly-inexhaustible number of ground troops. And they're not afraid to kill billions of people.

For decades, the spacefaring species of known space have battled over the largest artifact - and grandest prize - in the galaxy: the all-but-limitless resources and technology of the Ringworld. Now, without warning, the Ringworld has vanished, leaving behind three rival war fleets. If the fallen civilization of the Ringworld can no longer be despoiled of its secrets, the puppeteers will be forced to surrender theirs - everyone knows that they are cowards. But the crises converging upon the trillion puppeteers of the Fleet of Worlds go far beyond even the onrushing armadas.

The Theocracy has been dead for 20 years, and the Polity rules on Masada - but it is an order that the rebels of the Tidy Squad cannot accept, and the iconic Jeremiah Tombs is top of their hitlist. Tombs, meanwhile, has escaped his sanatorium. His insanity must be cured, because the near-mythical hooder, called "the Technician", that attacked him all those years ago, did something to his mind even the AIs fail to understand. Tombs might possess information about the suicide of an entire alien race.

Bob Johansson didn't believe in an afterlife, so waking up after being killed in a car accident was a shock. To add to the surprise, he is now a sentient computer and the controlling intelligence for a Von Neumann probe. Bob and his copies have been spreading out from Earth for 40 years now, looking for habitable planets. But that's the only part of the plan that's still in one piece.

Generations ago, nine ships headed into the unknown to explore a distant star called LQ Pyx. Eons later, the convoy has returned to LQ Pyx to begin work on the Web, the alien megastructure that covers the star. Is it a Dyson Sphere, designed to power a civilization as everyone believes - or something far more sinister? Meanwhile, Planet United's littlest convoy, long thought to be lost, reemerges in a different sector of deep space. What they discover holds the answers to unlocking the Web's greater purpose.

Earth becomes the target of an imminent cosmic threat Dr. Phil Bright is used to studying weather patterns, not wormholes. But when one of these mysterious tunnels in the space-time continuum appears and threatens Earth’s solar system, he’s pulled into a world far beyond anything anyone ever imagined. Enter a human professor from an unknown galactic kingdom who comes to offer salvation—but at a price—accept King Manay XII as Earth’s undisputed monarch. As Phil grapples with the fate of humanity, government skeptics, and the truth about the alien kingdom’s power, he’s faced ...

Since fleeing the supernova chain reaction at the galactic core, the cowardly Puppeteers of the Fleet of Worlds have - just barely - survived one crisis after another: the rebellion of their human slaves, the relentless questing of the species of Known Space, the spectacular rise of the starfishlike Gw'oth, the onslaught of the genocidal Pak. Now fresh disaster looms, as though past crises have returned and converged. Who can possibly save the Fleet this time?

Tangel leads the I2 to Star City, while Joe follows after the Perilous Dream, desperate to bring his daughters home. Elsewhere Praetor Kirkland prepares for attack, suspecting that the Widows are coming for him. To top it off, the denizens of Star City make an impossible demand. When personal need runs up against the Alliance's goals, Tangel is forced to reevaluate what her role is and what she's willing to sacrifice to save her people.

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.

Tanis and Sera have taken the I2 to Khardine, the new capital of the Transcend, and must now travel to the Inner Stars and meet with Scipian Empress, Diana - who they hope will be an ally to the Transcend. With the Trisilieds Kingdom, the Hegemony of Worlds, and the Nietzschean Empire all aligned with the Orion Guard - not to mention a civil war brewing in the Transcend - they will need all the help they can get to secure the Inner Stars. But Empress Diana has her own plans for the Inner Stars, and while they may dovetail with the Transcend's for now, they may not always do so....

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.

The starship Hope died saving five hundred million people. But did they stop the aliens? Or will the aliens attack the next star system? And, without a fleet, or even a ship, how will Cody Ford and his crew stop them? Flight Of The Wasp in the second in the heart-pounding alien invasion series, Cody’s War. Follow their journey today!

Technology accelerates human evolution ... Yet extinction draws near ... After manifold technology accelerates evolution, humanity has colonised the stars. Lifespans stretch to hundreds of years. Worlds bloom with strange new life. Bryn, an Invigilator with a dark past, is tasked with keeping watch over the utopia. Summoned to stop a galaxy-devouring threat, he must discern friend from foe on the most distant human colony in existence: Wilderness Five. "Intelligent, fascinating and imaginative science fiction!” – Therese Schwartz, Amazon 5-star review, 2025 From Cambridge planetary ...

When Carson Flint traded his Commonwealth military badge for the quiet life, he thought he'd left his battles behind. Two years of running a saloon called the Bulwark, a volatile hub for refugees, smugglers, and the occasional war-weary soldier, was the peace he'd been looking for. He's never had it easier, or been so bored. But when a fugitive Commonwealth operative arrives with dangerous secrets and a war criminal on his tail, Carson's sanctuary quickly becomes a target.

Magic flows through the Milky Way. All are scanned before birth. When a starship mechanic casts spells, he becomes the galaxy's most wanted outlaw. Mack Rivera fixes starships for a living. He loves coastal drives, carne asada-flavored ramen, his high school sweetheart, and his scholarship at Terran Galactic New Cal. When his life is threatened, dormant magic surges to the surface, and the spells he casts save his life. The problem is, the prenatal scan missed his magical aptitude, and every spell-slinger is registered by the Bureau of Enchanted Action and Management before they're even ...

The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender. Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it....

In the conclusion of the Poseidon's Children saga, the Akinya family receives an invitation from across the stars - and a last opportunity to redeem their name.... "Send Ndege". The cryptic message originated 70 light-years away from the planet Crucible, where Ndege Akinya lives under permanent house arrest for her role in the catastrophe that killed 417,000 people. Could it be from her mother, Chiku, who vanished during a space expedition decades earlier?

In this present-day science fiction novel, Earth confronts an alien invasion. But not from a marauding army. It’s just one guy who got a bad tip. Jacob is a Prospector. He makes a living by discovering lost civilizations on long dead-worlds and selling off their cultural relics. And now he’s chasing a hot lead about a world where the population has only recently perished due to climate change. The artifacts would be worth a fortune. But when he reaches the planet called Earth, it isn’t dead at all. And the people there don’t appreciate him saying so. But they do like his spaceship. ...