Space First Contact

Ten thousand city-state habitats orbit the planet Yellowstone, forming a near-perfect democratic human paradise. But even utopia needs a police force. For the citizens of the Glitter Band that organization is Panoply, and the prefects are its operatives. Prefect Tom Dreyfus has a new emergency on his hands. Across the habitats and their hundred million citizens, people are dying suddenly and randomly, victims of a bizarre and unprecedented malfunction of their neural implants.

Anywhere is better than at home… unless it’s an alien planet! Running from her abusive boyfriend, Lila doesn’t care about the interdimensional storm raging outside, the dragons that have been sighted on Earth, or the fact that people have gone missing in the storms. She grabs her dog, runs outside… and gets struck by a lightning that transports her to a world with giant, purple alien barbarians! Should she have stayed at home after all? When the aliens start courting her, she gets even more concerned. Men are all violent brutes. Except maybe these brutish alien barbarians are ...

It’s been eight years since an alien invasion drove a small surviving group of settlers to seek refuge in an underground shelter. Cut off from the rest of humanity, the ragtag band has maintained a narrowly functioning colony due to communal effort and salvage runs. Alex Archer has her own duties as a dog handler. While this off-world colony may be harsh, Ash, Alex’s black shepherd raised to sense threats, makes living in it a little nicer.

Her life had gone from amazing to a total wreck. Her best friend had died in a plane accident and she had broken up with the man she had thought was ‘the one’. But she should have known things could always get worse. One night, while she was out buying food, two men approached her and before she knew it, they had rendered her unconscious. By the time she woke up, she was on board of an alien ship, into the unknown. Enslaved and sold out as livestock, she was then taken to a planet inhabited by dragons, real breathing fire dragons. What else could go wrong?

Thousands of crew are reported dead, including the ship’s captain. Reluctantly, the young XO, Galvin Quintos, will be taking command of the fleet's crippled dreadnaught, the USS Hamilton, while doing his best to bring fleet survivors back to Earth. To make matters worse, there’s a murderer running loose on board the ship, critically low fuel levels, and the Grish are back, in fast pursuit and ready to finish what they’d started. Only by sheer luck - and a good measure of cagey smarts - will Quintos be able to rise to the challenge.

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. ...

Winner of the Literary Titan Gold Book Award and the PenCraft Seasonal Book Award for Best Book Spring 2025 One daring mission could be her salvation—or her end. In a galaxy where stability is a luxury few can afford, young Sev dreams of a home she can call her own. Roaming the cosmos with her distant father, they drift from one perilous job to the next, barely scraping by in a universe full of danger and adventure. But when their last big job on a treacherous planet doesn't go as planned, their lives are forever altered. Join Sev on a thrilling journey through danger and discovery as she...

Thousands of years ago, Earth's terraforming program took to the stars. On the world they called Nod, scientists discovered alien life - but it was their mission to overwrite it with the memory of Earth. Then humanity's great empire fell, and the program's decisions were lost to time. Aeons later, humanity and its new spider allies detected fragmentary radio signals between the stars. They dispatched an exploration vessel, hoping to find cousins from old Earth. But those ancient terraformers woke something on Nod better left undisturbed. And it's been waiting for them.

An interstellar colony ship on Earth prepares for take-off. Before reaching their first stop—Proxima b Centauri—they are awoken from their cryo pods early, only to learn there's been an alien invasion on Earth. But it's too late. Can the crew find a safe refuge from the invaders and track down colonists from other ships?

Nine hundred light-years from home, Major Andrew Grayson and the crew of NACS Washington are marooned in a sunless system with limited water, reactor fuel, and food. The last hope for survival is to go where nothing human has gone before. After embarking on a scouting mission to the only moon with surface signs of life, Andrew and his Special Tactics Team make two startling discoveries. One is a dream: a form of protein and plant life that could save the starving humans in the rogue system. The second is a nightmare: this harvested rock is infested with Lankies.

I was just an ordinary computer repair guy… until I toppled an intergalactic space cartel. After their crazy space adventure, Alex and his friends don’t get much time to rest. An urgent message from the Draco System reaches them: their new friend Voss needs help. Once again, Alex, Lucy, and Joey embark into space. What starts as a simple search-and-rescue mission turns into an even bigger adventure than their first. The friends soon find themselves entangled in an intergalactic conflict between a powerful space cartel and the galactic authorities. The humorless Commander Sarrik gives ...

On Mars, a scientist experiments with a new engine that will one day become the drive that fuels humanity's journey into the stars. On an asteroid station, a group of prisoners are oblivious to the catastrophe that awaits them. On a future Earth beset by overpopulation, pollution, and poverty, a crime boss desperately seeks to find a way off planet. On an alien world, a human family struggles to establish a colony and make a new home. All these stories and more are featured in this unmissable collection of short fiction set in the hardscrabble world of The Expanse.

Commander Dalton Reeves is a maverick officer with exceptional genetic strength and a dark family history—a history that will come back to haunt him. Punished for exceeding orders one time too many, he’s packed off to the "The Abyss"—the most dangerous space station in the galaxy. But a posting that should have led to five years in obscurity will propel Reeves into the center of an interstellar war against a long-forgotten alien adversary with a bitter grudge.

A Fire Upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale. Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function.

It’s been four years since Earth threw its full military prowess against the Lanky incursion. Humanity has been yanked back from the abyss of extinction. The solar system is at peace. For now. The future for Major Andrew Grayson of the Commonwealth Defense Corps and his wife, Halley? Flying desk duty on the front. No more nightmares of monstrous things. No more traumas to the mind and body. But when an offer comes down from above, Andrew has to make a choice: continue pushing papers into retirement, or jump right back into the fight? What’s a podhead to do?

Hudson Powell and Tory Bellona are the galaxy’s top Star Scavengers. Travelling to distant planets, they hunt for valuable artefacts inside the wrecks of giant alien starships that mysteriously lie crashed and broken on every portal world.

When a wormhole opened up next to Jupiter, Earth wasn't prepared for what emerged from it. Now, humanity teeters on the brink of annihilation, but the United States is constructing a new Warship that might finally turn the tide against the Void. Trent and Daisy will take to the skies, while his brother, Dax, remains to defend the land. Together, they represent humanity's last hope against extinction, as Trent races to complete the Warship in time. The countdown to the next invasion has begun, yet they quickly discover a new threat already exists on the ground that may be more horrifying ...

An explorer tug captain, Alex Racine detects a damaged alien craft drifting into the system. Recognizing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make first contact, Alex pulls off a daring maneuver to latch on to the derelict. Alex discovers the ship was attacked by an unknown craft, the first of its kind ever encountered. The mysterious silver ship's attack was both instant and deadly.

HUMANITY THOUGHT THEY COULD RUN. THEY WERE WRONG. In the 23rd century, a series of unprovoked attacks from an unseen alien power render Earth uninhabitable. A fraction of humanity make a desperate escape in an enormous ship known as the Gaea Ark. They rush across the stars on a treacherous journey to a new home on humanity's farthest colony. It's the ultimate First Contact gone wrong ... and it's not over yet. As enemies—alien and otherwise—attack the ship, divisions within threaten to tear it apart. Welcome aboard the Ark, where there are as many secrets as there are survivors. It's ...

A massive Hawaiian spaceship. A vanished crewmember. A first contact gone wrong. Aliens don’t exist–until they do. With their ship crippled and no way home, the crew faces an impossible choice: die alone in the void or submit to another imperialist empire. Their only hope? The AI’s in storage–but will they save the ship or seize power for themselves? If you crave high-stakes adventure, mind-bending physics, bizarre aliens, and even stranger humans, this is the book you’ve been waiting for.