Space Opera First Contact

A secret backdoor meeting between Ambassador Ode Abumwe and the Conclave’s Hafte Sorvalh turns out to be less than secret, as both of their ships are attacked. It’s a surprise to both teams - but it’s the identity of the attacker that is the real surprise, and suggests a threat to both humanity and The Conclave. "A Problem of Proportion" is a tale from John Scalzi's The Human Division, a series of self-contained but interrelated short stories set in the Old Man's War universe.

Captain Sophia Coloma of the Clarke has a simple task: Ferry around representatives from Earth in an aging spaceship that the Colonial Union hopes to sell to them. But nothing is as simple as it seems, and Coloma discovers the ship she’s showing off holds suprises of its own...and it’s not the only one with secrets. "Tales from the Clarke" is a tale from John Scalzi's The Human Division, a series of self-contained but interrelated short stories set in the Old Man's War universe.

Born into oppression, Siena is an ordinary young woman, until an act of defiance leaves her scarred and marked as a rebel. She's sold to Ero, a fallen Krey with a desperate plan to redeem his once-powerful family. He intends to enhance slaves by altering their genetic code, increasing their value through an illegal experiment. Reklin, a bone-armored soldier, hunts them both. His orders come from a mysterious source, but his loyalty to the Empire has no limits.

On her maiden voyage, HMS Warspite discovered Vesy, a world populated by primitive aliens, aliens whose culture had already been twisted and warped by human refugees from the First Interstellar War. Now Captain John Naiser and his crew spearhead a diplomat mission to the alien homeworld, hoping to ease them into the galactic mainstream.

Their historic five-year mission is over. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and all the crew have scattered to other jobs or other lives. Now, they are back together again on a fabulously refitted USS Enterprise as an incredibly destructive power threatens earth and the human race.

Working on opposite sides of the galaxy - one in deep space, the other undercover on an occupied planet - and haunted by personal ghosts, Captain Gareth Martinez and Lieutenant Lady Caroline Sula fight to save the Empire from the vicious alien Naxid. In a desperate, audacious bid to stop the Naxid fleet, Martinez makes a move that could win the war…and lose his career. Meanwhile, Sula’s guerilla tactics may not be enough to stop the Naxid - until she tries one deadly final gambit.

The year is 1961. The Cold War is in full swing and the space race is on. Russia aims to send humanity to space. But what if space comes to humanity instead? Yuri Gagarin’s epic flight into space is disrupted when an alien Mothership jumps into orbit, causing a cosmic car crash that defies all odds. Everything changes. The US and USSR must quickly put aside their differences. In exchange for the Earth’s help in the rebuilding of their Mothership, the mysterious aliens, the Vulbathi, offer promises of technology beyond humanity's wildest dreams.

Alien Parley is the fourth book in the Thunderstrike series, which chronicles the continuing adventures of a ragtag group of aliens on the run in a dangerous universe. If you like aliens of all shapes and sizes, playful banter and dark humor, plus endless space battles, you'll love it! -- Note: This 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 for action-packed adventures on strange worlds with even stranger aliens, this series is for you.

Journey through the stars with the "Firestorm" series, where each book is a gateway to extraordinary adventures and cosmic conundrums. Follow the Decosta family, seasoned warriors of interstellar conflict, as they navigate through a tapestry of alien landscapes and enigmatic space phenomena. Firestorm: Attack is the second book in this series that is perfect for those who crave high-stakes battles, unexplored worlds, and encounters with bizarre lifeforms!

Earth is a distant memory. Habitable extrasolar planets are still out of reach. For generations, humanity has been clinging to survival by establishing colonies within enormous vacuum-breathing space beasts and mining their resources to the point of depletion. Rash, dreamy, and unconventional, Seske Kaleigh should be preparing for her future role as clan leader, but her people have just culled their latest beast, and she’s eager to find the cause of the violent tremors plaguing their new home.

With the human-Shiravan treaty on the line, Kitty Hawke must violently end a mutiny aboard one of her ships. Afterwards, she leaves Shiravi, bound for Earth after being away for two years. Marsha Kane replaces Kitty as the head of the human fleet in Shiravan space, but she has her own plans on how to end the war with the Garmon, formerly called the Korvil. Meanwhile, the humans and Shiravan take the fight to the Garmon, destroying their ships and decimating their worlds, and it seems as if the war is nearing its end.

Zilfaquir is having a bad day. Shin-Sho Corporation dispatched his emergency engineering team (EET) to the remote ice planet, Xiao 2, to investigate a communications blackout. The Xiao 2 facility, composed of three subsurface ocean stations, awaits his team below hundreds of meters of ice and kilometers underwater. Upon arrival, he discovers the Xiao 2 facility has experienced an epidemic, leaving most of the station’s personnel either dead or dying. Or transforming. Worse, the stations are in danger of imploding due to sabotage.

After initial contact with an alien entity leaves Kaylan unconscious, she wakes up to discover that she's now in command of the Athena mission stranded in a star system far from Earth. The ship's computer is malfunctioning, and former hacker and astronaut trainee Zack Quick is the only one who can fix it. If he can't figure out what's wrong, they have no hope of getting back home. In order to survive, the crew of the Athena must explore an alien star system to find the species that summoned them.

The Conclave is a confederation of 400 alien races - many of whom would like to see the Colonial Union - and the humans inside of it - blasted to extinction. To avoid a conflict that neither side can afford, Conclave leader General Tarsem Gau appoints Hafte Sorvalh to resolve an emerging diplomatic crisis with the humans, before the only acceptable solution is war. "The Back Channel" is a tale from John Scalzi's The Human Division, a series of self-contained but interrelated short stories set in the Old Man's War universe.

Exhausted from a two-year rescue mission to a distant sector of space, and with resources strained by four thousand extra mouths to feed, the crew of the starship Phoenix yearns for the luxuries of home. But when the ship makes the final jump into atevi space, they learn the worst: supplies to their home station have been cut off; civil war has broken out on the atevi mainland; the powerful Western Association has been overthrown; and Tabini-aiji is missing and may be dead.

Adversity shows who you really are. For Max Tyco, nothing has been the same since he was taken from Earth and introduced to the Rowki. Chosen for his depth of potential, a new twist has changed everything. Max's weapon—the sardonium he can control with his mind—has turned a shade of red designated for only the fiercest of warriors. Unsure how to control this newfound power driven from a place of rage, Max must seek the only living warrior to experience this before.

Great North Road is a standalone science fiction adventure from Peter F. Hamilton, the author of The Night's Dawn trilogy. When attending a Newcastle murder scene, Detective Sidney Hurst finds a dead North family clone. Yet none has been reported missing. And in 2122, 20 years ago, a North clone billionaire was horrifically murdered in the same manner on the tropical planet of St Libra. So if the murderer is still at large, was Angela Tramelo wrongly convicted?

For generations, the human race has feared an encounter with an alien race so advanced their technology might as well be magic. And yet, no such alien race has been encountered. Until now. During the Virus War, human explorers discovered proof of alien technology that was beyond human understanding, technology so strange it was impossible even to guess at its function. Now, in the aftermath of the war, HMS Endeavour embarks on a mission to the core of the alien civilization. And discovers a mystery older than the human race itself.

Morgan Casimir, commander of the A!Tol Imperial cruiser Defiant, has seen the works of the Precursor aliens known as the Alava. She has seen their accidents threaten worlds and consume entire star fleets. Charged by her empress to prevent a conspiracy of profiteers from finding and using a lost fleet of Alava warships, she knows unimaginable catastrophe looms if she fails. With her lover, xenoarcheologist Dr. Rin Dunst, at her side, she is sent to a hot zone on the edge of war to once again achieve the impossible.

Star humans were engineered to exist within the mantle of a star, mere tools of their Earth-evolved makers in a war against the Xeelee, owners of the universe. Stephen Baxter's third novel in his magnificent Xeelee Sequence is an exotic and endearing story of an abandoned people. Abandoned to their fate, their history lost along with contact with their makers, Star people survive in an environment that is possibly the strangest in science fiction.