Space Opera First Contact

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...

COMPLETE THE SERIES with three more never-before-published books! The Lost Galaxy series follows the adventures of a lone lawman, his aging and possibly insane spaceship, and a trio of mercenaries, new recruits, and hardened criminals who are all swept together behind an alien invasion that could wipe out humanity. Lost Galaxy (Books 4-6) is old-fashioned space opera at its best, perfect for fans of action-packed drama and fun! Note: The Lost Galaxy series is an homage to thrilling pulp sci-fi of yesteryear. If you're interested in hard science fiction look elsewhere. But if you're looking ...

It's not every day that your roommate accidentally teleports you across time and space, but Jennifer MacDonald is not having an ordinary day. A chance encounter with a custom-built computer and an ancient pyramid sends Jennifer to a faraway land with six warring civilizations and an ancient prophecy that has a visitor from the stars at its heart. All she has to do is unseal one measly, missing god.

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.

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.

“There’s a lot of things they didn’t tell me when I signed on with this outfit.” At least that’s what Sam Washington discovered after he got hired as Spaceport Manager on Space Station Zion. For one thing, everyone hated his predecessor, so now they hate Sam. Still, once he took the job, Sam considered it his duty to get the place back in shape. But angry admirals and profit-crazed tycoons keep crawling into his job description. Too bad no one is on his side – even when the fate of the entire station is on the line! Can Sam fix this mess, or is it time to start updating his resume?

Changes are happened to Earth. They can't be stopped, and the results will be fatal. An ancient alien fleet is heading towards the Sol System, and with it, the fate of the known galaxy hangs in the balance. The stakes are higher than ever before for our heroes and all of humanity. All the challenges and battles that have been fought until now for Earth mean nothing. This is the battle that will determine the fate of not only humanity, but the galaxy.

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.

For more than a century, Winged Hussars has been the richest of Earth's mercenary companies, as well as the only one to specialize in space warfare. Led by Alexis Cromwell, they have carved out a reputation in the galaxy for being dependable, unflappable, and lethally efficient. Until people began shooting at them everywhere they went.

On a little-known planet, Archmage Varic Vallenar casts a grand spell to empower himself with the magical abilities of his alternate selves. The ritual works too well, granting Varic not only the magic but also the memories from six lives. Including their gruesome deaths. Now, Varic has power greater than any wizard in galactic history, but he knows that won’t be enough. The enemies he faced in those alternate lives were apocalyptic in scale. Terrors of technology and magic. Nothing that he, or anyone, can defeat.

Light is almost everywhere, but what is it, really? How does it work? What does it experience as it zips along at the universe's ultimate speed limit? Light features heavily in this, the 8th book in the Voided Man series. Alan Franklin, who was once known as Maestro, narrates the volume. In Book 8 we learn... Of Alan's early years in the City... Of what's been happening with Andromeda and others back on the Potato... More about what the society made up of quadrillions of humans in the distant future is like... What happened when Banner Dawson found Pioneer 10 past the orbit of Pluto... All ...

"Resistance is futile." The greatest threat the Federation has ever faced is the half organic, half mechanical Borg. Now more dangerous than ever, the Borg threatens the Federation's past, present, and future. Read by Gates McFadden, "Beverly Crusher" on Star Trek, The Next Generation!

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?

The Alliance has arrived. There is uncertainty about the arrival of a substantial alien presence on Earth and its impact on humanity, and its way of life. At the same time, there is fear the Coalition may return. That fear becomes a harsh reality of inter-galactic war when the Coalition returns, in strength. Earth is now on the frontlines of the War of Succession. Joe Hunt and his team now have internal and external threats to Earth. The only option is to travel to the Alliance to learn more about the war and what may be in store for Earth. MORE BOOKS BY DONALD B MCFARLANE The Earth Saga ...

For almost a hundred years, Hadrian Marlowe has served the empire in its war against the Cielcin, a vicious alien race bent on humanity's destruction. Rumors of a new king among the Cielcin have reached the imperial throne. This one is not like the others. It does not raid borderworld territories, preferring precise, strategic attacks on the humans' empire.

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....

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. ...

After a fateful expedition to Antarctica, Alexander Hawkes finds himself catapulted across the stars into a galaxy in chaos. The Emperor is assassinated. The Eternum Empire, already fading, has collapsed. But he has a starship now. And friends. Alongside a crew of unlikely allies—Ban Tarro, an honorable Barundi soldier; Diliseth, a genetically-engineered Nacendo handmaiden; and Four, a sentient AI—Alexander witnesses the brutal aftermath of imperial collapse on the planet Twilight. Driven by an innate sense of justice, Alexander proposes a radical solution.

The galaxy is burning. With the Cielcin united under one banner, the Sollan Empire stands alone after the betrayal of the Commonwealth. The Prophet-King of the Cielcin has sent its armies to burn the worlds of men, and worse, there are rumors … whispers that Hadrian Marlowe is dead, killed in the fighting. But it is not so. Hadrian survived with the help of the witch, Valka, and together they escaped the net of the enemy having learned a terrible truth: the gods that the Cielcin worship are real and will not rest until the universe is dark and cold.

One hundred years before Ender's Game, the aliens arrived on Earth with fire and death. Earth Afire by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston is the story of the First Formic War. Victor Delgado beat the alien ship to Earth, but just barely. Not soon enough to convince skeptical governments that there was a threat. They didn't believe that until space stations and ships and colonies went up in sudden flame. And when that happened, only Mazer Rackham and the Mobile Operations Police could move fast enough to meet the threat.