Space Opera Science Fiction Comedy

While Kelly struggles to come up with a research project to apply for sabbatical, the role-playing craze reaches Union Station, and the Open University offers a for-credit LARP. Dorothy finally finishes her wedding dress with a technical flourish, and Jeeves plots to recoup his costs.

A new species has jumped into the Sol system for a quick look, leading the Stryx to assign humans to the greeting mission. Dorothy and Kevin leave on a trading mission in his new ship, bringing the dog, and Samuel and Vivian start at the Open University.

Kelly heads to Earth for the first-ever Conference of EarthCent Ambassadors, but while the cat's away, the mice will play.

The story picks up less than a year after the events of High Priest on Union Station, with Kelly coming to the conclusion that EarthCent needs an intelligence service. Of course, EarthCent has no institutional knowledge of what spies do or how they work, so the new agency gets off to a slow start. Then Kelly and the Union Station crew come up with a brilliant idea.

Alfredo García Torrecilla era un hombre gris condenado a una vida gris, un profesor de Historia deprimido y deprimente cuya existencia entera no había sido más que un continuo ir de fracaso en fracaso. Todo cambió el día en que descubrió que un mundo secreto se escondía entre las líneas de la realidad, un mundo repleto de portentos y locura, de casas encantadas, de tecnología extraña, de dragones parlantes y de magia... Todo cambió el día en que descubrió que Elvis Presley seguía vivo.

On the other side of the galaxy, the Cayl Empire has decided to wind down operations and the Stryx are planning to pick up the pieces. Kelly is tapped to host an open house event on Union Station to tempt the aliens into joining up, but does anybody other than the Stryx actually want the merger to take place?

Floating in a sentient space balloon with his pants around his ankles, Geddy watched a competing salvage trawler swallow his one-of-a-kind ship. Could it get any worse? Most definitely. The For Sale Make Offer's fateful trip to Kigantu ended with a daring escape, but Geddy's checkered past as a partly reformed henchman came back to haunt him. Now, the Penetrator is gone, and he doesn't know where. The newly expanded crew of the Fizmo welcomes him as their new captain, but it'll take more than a can-do attitude and witty repartee to be a working ship.

You think you’re struggling to find your place in the universe? Consider poor old Colin Douglass, a terminally ill insurance agent who awakens from centuries in cryogenic freeze to find Earth is a devastated wasteland. Now, he’s being pursued by a homicidal interstellar tourist board, and calculating insurance dividends is as outdated as making stone axes. Sci-fi-hating technophobe Colin seeks a cure for his illness in this strange new galaxy where toilets talk back, and door handles are a long-forgotten relic.

Steven Erikson has taken his lifelong passion for Star Trek and transformed it into a smart, inventive, and hugely entertaining spoof on the whole overblown mankind-exploring-space-for-the-good-of-all-species-but-trashing-stuff-with-a-lot-of-high-tech-gadgets-along-the-way adventure. The result is a novel that deftly parodies the genre while also paying fond homage to it.

Evangelist Brock T. Hanson believes Colin Douglass to be the prophet he’s been waiting for his whole life, the man who will lead the faithful back to Earth and trigger the most momentous event since Creation itself. But there’s a problem. Actually, there are several. First, Colin Douglass himself doesn’t believe a word of it and is the kind of chap who’d rather stay at home with a nice cup of tea than cross the galaxy on some foolish, idealistic crusade.

Tragedy leads to triumph, as Katherine is suddenly hurled into a decades-long struggle for survival... and vengeance! Born into a family of War Masters, she is genetically destined to become a War Master. But she must first earn the title. Decades into her century-long training, Katherine's training facility is attacked by clandestine forces, and she is hurled into the blackness of space to fend for herself. Her destiny becomes entwined with that of the galaxy, as she must find a way to assume her destiny, and help save trillions of innocent people in the process!

Professor James Lowry didn’t believe in spirits, or witches, or demons. Not until a gentle spring evening when his hat disappeared, and suddenly he couldn’t remember the last four hours of his life. Now, the quiet university town of Atworthy is changing - slightly at first, then faster and more frighteningly each time he tries to remember.

When Darren’s charge-cart gets knocked off the Earth-to-Mars highway and lost in space forever, he thinks his day can’t get any worse. When Kelly sees Darren accidentally short-circuit a talking lamppost, and its camera captures her face as it expires, she thinks her day can’t get any worse. When Pamasonic Teffal, a sentient breadmaker, is sent on a top-secret mission into the depths of the Internet and betrayed by her boss, a power-crazed smartphone, she knows this is only the beginning of a day that isn’t going to get any better. Join Darren, Kelly, and Pam in an anarchic comic adventure.

Two years after the events of Alien Night on Union Station, Kelly faces new challenges as the EarthCent Ambassador. The growing acceptance of humans by their alien neighbors plus a measure of her own personal fame (or infamy) is resulting in too much work for an embassy with only two full-time staffers. Friends and family must wonder if the stress is finally getting to Kelly when she starts acting even more peculiar than usual.

More than 50 years after publishing his first story, Hugo Award-winning author Asimov remains one of the great names in science fiction. Almost single-handedly he transformed the field from the romantic and Gothic legacy of Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs into the rational, clear-minded genre that exists today. This selection of some of Asimov's most enduring and unforgettable stories is read by the author himself. These vintage tales encompass the full range of Asimov's versatility, while displaying his puckish sense of humor.

The Stryx offer EarthCent help in reaching out to the wide-spread human communities, but as usual, it comes with a catch or two. Kelly see an opportunity to increase her book hoard, just as publishing on Union Station begins to take off and Donna's daughters enter a friendly competition. But who will publish the most expensive book of all?

The first carnival to take place on Union Station since humanity joined the galactic community is coming, and the ambassadors of the different species are all entered in the election to become Carnival King or Queen. It's not a job that Kelly wants, and, fortunately for her, the humans get a late start at electioneering.

Young Kit Kellan has led a rough-and-tumble life - knocking around the Vega System in his youth as a tiger hunter, a brawler, and a bouncer in a bar. But his real fight is just beginning. Summarily expelled from the prestigious Terra University, he is taken into custody by an agent of the System Bureau of Investigation (SBI). Kit's crime: thinking too much and thinking too well. He’s not in custody for long, however. Snatched from captivity by the People’s Revolutionary Society, Kit sets out an epic adventure that will take him to the farthest reaches of the universe.

Jake Corby saved the world. Now, he's being asked to save the universe! Corby is recovering from his last mission, enjoying life with his new family, when he’s sucked into a parallel universe with nothing but his clothes, his dog, and his eighty-three-year-old grandmother-in-law. On this version of Earth, the dinosaurs didn’t go extinct and the world is ruled by a spacefaring civilization of dinobirds. If Jake wants to return home, he’ll need to not only survive but locate the rulers of Earth so they can send him back. Worse, Corby learns that a universe collision is imminent. Unless ...

Bill Stiltson arrives back at his bar after his last adventure, ready to make beer and live a normal life on the moon in the year 2538. Alas, he returns to find his lawn furniture on fire, the work of Jethro Duff, leader of the Moon Nationalist movement called the Lunatics. Bill soon learns that Jethro was following an online conspiracy theory accusing Bill of ruining the moon's economy, destroying lunar culture, and even eating people. Bill sends his intern Jimmy to investigate this conspiracy theory and bring back evidence for a lawsuit, but when Jimmy becomes apprentice to the ringleader...