Space Adventure Fantasy

In the stunning continuation of the epic adventure begun in Hyperion, Simmons returns us to a far future resplendent with drama and invention. Onthe world of Hyperion, the mysterious Time Tombs are opening. And the secrets they contain mean that nothing - nothing anywhere in the universe - will ever be the same.

On Mars, Var Delex fights for the survival of Antares Base, while the Argus Space Station hurls towards the red planet. And she knows whomever, or whatever, trashed Earth is still aboard. Var must save the base, while also dealing with the first signs of rebellion. And aboard Argus Station, Alan Saul’s mind has expanded into the local computer network. In the process, he uncovers the ghastly experiments of the Humanoid Unit Development.

United Nations Special Operations Command sent an elite expeditionary force of soldiers and pilots out on a simple recon mission, and somehow along the way they sparked an alien civil war. Now the not-at-all-merry band of pirates is in desperate trouble, again. Their stolen alien starship is falling apart, thousands of light years from home. The ancient alien AI they nicknamed Skippy is apparently dead, and even if they can by some miracle revive him, he might never be the same.

The remnants of the Expeditionary Force stranded on the alien-controlled planet "Paradise" get a chance to prove themselves, in a simple off-world training mission with a ship full of teenage alien cadets. When the mission goes horribly wrong and the survival of everyone on Paradise is at risk, the Merry Band of Pirates may have to come to the rescue. Unless they get killed first....

Noah, an orphan from Earth's last days who, as a child, was smuggled to safety across the stars, is now nearly a man and a leader to the young enclave of Earthborn who reside on Sora. When the tranquility of their settlement is shattered by a shocking assassination attempt, Noah turns to his combative younger brother, Erik, Lucas and Asha's only child by blood, for aid.

When bounty hunter Duke LaGrange and his oft-inebriated Japanese-Irish ninja companion, Ishiro’shea, entered their favorite watering hole, Cyborg Joe’s Grill N’ Go & The Why Not Saloon, they had no idea that they would soon be gobbled up by an unhinged astral anomaly and deposited on an uncharted primitive world. Few things are worse than undeveloped planets, especially those that haven’t even made it to the soufflé stage. To top it off, this particular planet comes with its own insane ruler and an Orb That Controls Everything and Must Be Respected.

The fourth book in the NYT best-selling Expanse series, Cibola Burn sees the crew of the Rocinante on a new frontier, as the rush to colonize the new planets threatens to outrun law and order and give way to war and chaos. Enter a new frontier. "An empty apartment, a missing family, that's creepy. But this is like finding a military base with no one on it. Fighters and tanks idling on the runway with no drivers. This is bad juju. Something wrong happened here. What you should do is tell everyone to leave".

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.

Two centuries ago, the First Expansionary Fleet set off to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, hoping to explore, colonize, and conquer new worlds in the name of humanity. But when the fleet was violently and unexpectedly thrown off course, the colonists found themselves trapped in an unexplored region of the galaxy—and caught right in the middle of a bloody interstellar war. Now, after generations of relentless fighting, a tentative truce has finally ushered in an era of growth and prosperity.

The planet Korwar was a glittering jewel of a world, inhabited by the galaxy's wealthiest, visited by the upper classes of other worlds in search of diversion. The jewel had a flaw: the Dipple, its name coming from a contraction of "displaced person", where the misfits, the hopeless, the penniless eke out a wretched existence on the dole. Two young men hoped to escape from the Dipple.

Randall Munroe's past won't stay dead. Born Tyler Callas, the pampered heir of a Corporate Council scion, he fled that life and adapted the new identity of Randall Munroe so he could join the Commonwealth Space Fleet Marine Corps' elite Force Recon unit in the war against the alien Tahni Imperium. But when he returned from the war, his old life found him. His mother, Corporate Council Executive Patrice Damiani, tracked him down and tried to return him to her web of control, even if she had to have his personality altered by drugs and psychological brainwashing to do it.

As the Project enters its final phase, air force majors Carson and Ourecky are dispatched on an urgent mission to intercept and investigate a massive orbiting object suspected of harboring nuclear weapons. Emotionally exhausted, with his marriage teetering on the brink, Ourecky reluctantly accepts the assignment; in return for his sacrifice, he is promised an opportunity to go to MIT to pursue the PhD he has long desired.

During a routine survey mission on an uncolonized planet, Kira finds an alien relic. At first she's delighted, but elation turns to terror when the ancient dust around her begins to move. As war erupts among the stars, Kira is launched into a galaxy-spanning odyssey of discovery and transformation. First contact isn't at all what she imagined, and events push her to the very limits of what it means to be human. While Kira faces her own horrors, Earth and its colonies stand upon the brink of annihilation. Now, Kira might be humanity's greatest and final hope....

When the UN invaded the Freehold of Grainne, the intent was simple: Force a noncompliant star nation back into the collective. What the politicians hadn't accounted for was that the Freehold had spent 200 years as the haven for every independent, rebellious, self-reliant adventurer in human space. Its military are scattered remnants, its bases smoking ruins, its cities occupied. But Grainne and its space habitats have resources beyond measure.

The Pandominion: a political and trading alliance of a million worlds–except that they’re really just the one world, Earth, in many different realities. And when an AI threat arises that could destroy everything the Pandominion has built, they'll eradicate it by whatever means necessary, no matter the cost to human life.

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.

After saving the world many times, the Merry Band of Pirates have accepted the inevitable: Earth is doomed. All they can do is try to bring a few thousand people to safety, before vicious aliens arrive to destroy humanity's home world. No. There is one other thing they can do: hit the enemy so hard that the aliens will regret they ever heard of humans.

Dr. Neil Anson Clemons was born at the very moment that men first landed on the moon and always strived to become an astronaut and reach the stars. Neil devoted his life to staying physically fit as any astronaut should be through martial arts and mentally fit by studying and becoming one of the world's foremost experts in quantum physics and gravitational theory. Now he and his team have achieved a breakthrough, both in building a warp drive, and finding a new energy source powerful enough to make the drive more than an interesting theoretical concept.

Disaster. There was no other word to describe how Operation Olympic had changed in a flash from a triumph to the worst failure the Merry Band of Pirates had ever experienced. A failure that meant the fight was over. Unless the Pirates could perform a miracle, without Skippy.

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....