Space Science Exploration

Mickey7 is an Expendable: a disposable employee on a human expedition sent to colonise the ice world Niflheim. Whenever there's a mission that's too dangerous - even suicidal - the crew turns to Mickey. After one iteration dies, a new body is regenerated with most of his memories intact. Mickey signed on to escape from both bad debts and boredom on Midgard. After six deaths, Mickey7 understands the terms of his deal...and why it was the only colonial position unfilled when he took it.

After discovering the origins of the bugs, Dax comes up with a plan on how to wipe them out in mass. To do this, they must go to the one planet in the galaxy that is known to be home to the insectoid-consuming fungus, Earth. The space sector Earth called home was once believed to be quarantined because of the species that lived there. On their way to pay a visit to one of Dax's colleagues he, Mark, and Kane will find out the hard way humanity wasn't what the rest of the galaxy was trying to avoid.

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.

Astronaut Frank Borman is alone and stranded on the surface of the moon. His radio is dead. He can't remember how he got there. It's early 1969 — Armstrong and Aldrin's lunar landing is still months away. The last thing Borman can remember is standing in the desert and hurriedly pulling on a spacesuit. After that… everything is a blank. At best, his portable life support system has a half an hour of air left. He'd scream in frustration, but nobody will hear and he'll only burn through his air supply more quickly. Whoever conspired to leave him here, it can't have been NASA — he knows ...

Slade’s adventures continue as the Jatarian fleet threatens the Federation. Will Slade’s exploration ship get caught in the crossfire? Will the Jatarian war fleet make it to Falton Two? When the Explorer returns to Falton Two, Slade finds new adventures on a new ship. What sort of trouble will Slade and Bryce find now? Slade discovers how powerful his gift truly is. Will this revelation catapult him into a role he has run from since he was a child? Slade poses even more of a threat to the Emperor now. How will the Emperor react? A big wedding takes center stage, and an assassination ...

Get ready to experience two more origin stories in the Backyard Starship universe.

The Oracle has Seen the end of Civilization, and the end of the Haosa, too. Reactions to this are—mixed. On the one hand, foresight is a notoriously erratic Gift. On the other, can Civilization—or the Haosa—afford to assume that the prophecy is an error? And if the Oracle has Seen truly—is it possible to alter the future?

Aliens? Someone get her out of here! The strange storms that have been raging all over the world have only intensified in the past months. Some say the end of the world is coming, but Mikaela doesn’t believe in such nonsense. Although she’d like nothing more than to curl up in front of the TV when it rains, she has her small dog to take care of. Taking Tremor out for a walk, a lightning suddenly strikes her. She wakes up in a completely different world with hulky, purple alien barbarians. When one of them tries to grab poor Tremor, she fights back. Hell no, they’re not taking her dog!...

When Ben Murdock receives a text message offering a fully operational starship for sale, he’s certain it has to be a joke. Already trapped in the worst day of his life and desperate for a way out, he decides to play along. Except there is no joke. The starship is real. And Ben’s life is going to change in ways he never dreamed possible. All he has to do is sign the contract. Joined by his streetwise best friend and a bizarre tenant with an unseverable lease, he’ll soon discover that the universe is more volatile, treacherous, and awesome than he ever imagined.

Mostly, he's accomplished this antisocial feat by exterminating them because they posed a threat to galactic peace or common decency. As with any action, there can be an equal and opposite reaction. Now, a fundamental force of existence named Xyándor is after Jon. You see, Xyándor's sole purpose is to spawn chaos. So he's dead set on killing Jon because our hero snuffs out chaos on a routine basis. Most likely, this Xyándor character must've had a really troubled childhood, right?

Life in the wasteland is a constant struggle. No one knows it better than Taimin. Crippled, and with only his indomitable aunt to protect him, Taimin must learn to survive in a world scorched by two suns and frequented by raiders. But when Taimin discovers his homestead ransacked and his aunt killed, he sets off with one mission: to seek revenge against those who stole everything. With nowhere to call home, his hunt soon takes a turn when he meets a mystic, Selena, who convinces him to join her search for the fabled white city.

It is the eve of Earth’s environmental collapse. A single ship carries humanity’s last hope: eighty elite graduates of a competitive program, who will give birth to a generation of children in deep space. But halfway to a distant but livable planet, a lethal bomb kills three of the crew and knocks The Phoenix off course. Asuka, the only surviving witness, is an immediate suspect.

When Manchester Yards donates a new training vessel to the Merchant Officer Academy at Port Newmar, Alys Giggone recalls the Chernyakova. She wants Ishmael Wang and his crew to take a crew of cadets into the Deep Dark. They have to sort out the crews of two ships, figure out what lessons they need to teach, and who will get those lessons. Once they agree, the trouble starts.

A reprieve... That’s all the victory over the bug-like Seekers has given Tom Bradstreet and his crew of Marines and Space Force troops on Mars. Because the failure of his pawns among the Seekers has only made the creature known as the Monitor even more determined to destroy the Visitor and its crew of ancient alien Blessed, sleeping in stasis for tens of thousands of years. They created the Seekers as their children, their heirs, and manufactured the Monitors to watch over them.

Comet Anduru skimmed the clouds of Saturn. Rather than being drawn into the gas giant, it skipped back out into space. With the comet heading for Jupiter, speculation is mounting it’s an alien spacecraft making its way to Earth. Lieutenant Colonel Nolan Landis and Dr. Kath McKenzie are caught between an angry public and an anxious President as they grapple with the scientific, social, and political implications of first contact.

Humanity has reached the stars, joining the vast galactic community of alien species. But beyond the fringes of explored space lurk the Reapers, a race of sentient starships bent on "harvesting" the galaxy's organic species for their own dark purpose. The Illusive Man, leader of the pro-human black ops group Cerberus, is one of the few who know the truth about the Reapers.

Damien Montgomery is as much a nobody as a Mage of the star-spanning Protectorate of Mars can be. Trained as a Jump Mage, one of the elite who teleport ships across interstellar space, he lacks the connections to find a ship that will take him. Until pirates and politics strand Captain David White of the jump freighter Blue Jayin his home system. The two men's matching needs birth a choice and a partnership that will take them from high-end orbitals to prisons to alien graveyards in forgotten star systems.

After a brazen rescue mission to the Citadel, the crew of the Trash Squid have rescued Captain Axel Finn. During their escape, a dying Admiral Jessup tells Axel he must lead the resistance, and that he must start it where his father made his last stand, on the mining world of Furia. On the planet Runi, Sergeant Jax Brito returns to her family farm to find her father on his deathbed. After dealing with the thugs that put him there, her trip is cut short when a Clipper arrives with a message—the Citadel has been attacked and forces are gathering to take it back.

In the grand tradition of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, Stanislaw Lem's The Invincible tells the story of a space cruiser sent to an obscure planet to determine the fate of a sister spaceship whose communication with Earth has abruptly ceased. Landing on the planet Regis III, navigator Rohan and his crew discover a form of life that has apparently evolved from autonomous, self-replicating machines—perhaps the survivors of a “robot war.” Rohan and his men are forced to confront the classic quandary: what course of action can humanity take once it has reached the limits of its knowledge?

This is a striking addition to the body of Culture lore, and adds definition and scale to the previous works by using the Earth of 1977 as contrast. The stories in the collection range from science fiction to horror, dark-coated fantasy to morality tale. All bear the indefinable stamp of Iain Banks's staggering talent.