Apocalyptic Science Fiction

A rogue Russian nuke sails toward the harbors of Los Angeles in the hull of a ramshackle sailboat. Without destroying a single building, the bomb shatters the latticework of the American dream, toppling one piece of the economy after another. A group of Special Forces veterans and their prepper friends scramble for survival in a worldwide catastrophe so psychologically disruptive they are left questioning everything they ever believed to be true.

Captain Jacob Thomas, USMC, is a divorced combat veteran just trying to get his life back on track. Returning to the marine corps after a failed attempt at reconciliation with his estranged wife, Jake volunteers for a DARPA experiment that catapults him into a future where humanity has been stripped of 200 years of technological advancements and more than half its population. With the help of a faceless benefactor named Alice, he escapes the confines of an abandoned lab facility.

Seventeen-year-old Zach was visiting his uncle in a small Montana town when a mysterious illness ripped through the world. Most died, but those who survived the Infection became mindless killers, spreading the disease with a single scratch. Now, a year later, civilization lies in ruins, and Zach is the town's sole survivor. Desperately lonely, he longs to return to his family in Seattle, but his fears hold him captive.

Ransom and Britt attempt to settle into a new life, but a dreadful threat is constantly hanging over their heads. The settlers in Tucson know their time is limited. An invasion is underway. Peggy is adamant they can destroy the Glass, but it will take a trip to another time and place to ensure it remains off. Cedric, under a cloud of doubt, must decide where his true allegiance leans. There is hope—a military base with something that could change the tides of their future. No one seems to have remembered the base exists, but they search for their salvation.

In the aftermath of a global catastrophe that has killed billions, old enemies become allies in order to survive. When Ryan Connors and his former recon team, the Nameless, form an alliance with the Yakuza, they learn of a new plot that could lead to countless more deaths. Armed with this knowledge, and driven by revenge, Ryan and his team launch a desperate bid to stop OPIS from executing their plans to destroy the world.

Four months ago, fire-breathing dragons invaded Earth from an alternate dimension, wreaking havoc on modern civilization. Bailey Monzac has been training to kill them ever since discovering she was impervious to their flames, but when some of the beasts begin targeting children, she can't hold back any longer and must hunt them down. Her ally, Aidan, would help, except the shape-shifter has his own troubles. His clan is battling for territory against the pure dragons and his father - their leader - is dying.

The Zombie Survival Guide is your key to survival against the hordes of undead who may be stalking you right now. Exhaustively comprehensive, this book covers everything you need to know, including how to understand zombie physiology and behavior, the most effective defense tactics and weaponry, ways to outfit your home for a long siege, and how to survive and adapt in any territory or terrain.

The Moon will soon return. Whether this heralds the destruction of humankind or something worse will depend on two women. Essun has inherited the power of Alabaster Tenring. With it, she hopes to find her daughter Nassun and forge a world in which every orogene child can grow up safe. For Nassun, her mother's mastery of the Obelisk Gate comes too late. She has seen the evil of the world, and accepted what her mother will not admit: That sometimes what is corrupt cannot be cleansed, only destroyed.

Hig survived the flu that killed everyone he knows. His wife is gone, his friends are dead, he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, his only neighbor a gun-toting misanthrope. In his 1956 Cessna, Hig flies the perimeter of the airfield or sneaks off to the mountains to fish and to pretend that things are the way they used to be. But when a random transmission somehow beams through his radio, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life exists beyond the airport.

Shannon Moss is part of a clandestine division within the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. In western Pennsylvania, 1997, she is assigned to solve the murder of a Navy SEAL's family - and to locate his vanished teenage daughter. Though she can't share the information with conventional law enforcement, Moss discovers that the missing SEAL was an astronaut aboard the spaceship USS Libra - a ship assumed lost to the currents of Deep Time. Moss knows firsthand the mental trauma of time travel and believes the SEAL's experience with the future has triggered this violence.

Hugh Howey is known for crafting riveting and immersive tales of boundless imagination. Now comes Machine Learning, an impressive collection of Howey's science fiction and fantasy short fiction, including three stories set in the world of Wool, two never-before-published tales written exclusively for this volume, and 15 additional stories collected here for the first time. These stories explore everything from artificial intelligence to parallel universes to video games, and each story is accompanied by an author's note.

In the near future, at a moment no one will notice, all the dazzling technology that runs our world will unite and turn against us. Taking on the persona of a shy human boy, a childlike but massively powerful artificial intelligence known as Archos comes online and assumes control over the global network of machines that regulate everything from transportation to utilities, defense and communication.

The world has ended. Along with other scattered survivors, astronaut Cynthia Han and the remainder of ISS Expedition 81 have finally learned what happened to the people they’d left behind, and it’s worse than any of them could have imagined. But even if life as Cynthia knew it is over, her struggles most certainly are not. Joshua Lamb, granted strange and inhuman abilities even as civilization died around him, directs his zealots to scoop up every pocket of survivors, to offer them the simplest choice: Join or die.

For dinosaurs, it was a big rock. For humans: Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). When the Earth is hit by the greatest CME in recorded history (several times larger than the Carrington Event of 1859), the combined societies of the planet's most developed nations struggle to adapt to a life thrust back into the Dark Ages. In the United States, the military scrambles to speed the nation's recovery on multiple fronts including putting down riots, establishing relief camps, delivering medical aid, and bringing communication and travel back on line. Just as a real foothold is established in retaking the skies (utilizing existing commercial aircraft supplemented by military resources and ground control systems), a mysterious virus takes hold of the population, spreading globally over the very flight routes that the survivors fought so hard to rebuild.

This is the story of Michael Talbot, his family, and his friends: a band of ordinary people trying to get by in extraordinary times. When disaster strikes, Mike, a self-proclaimed survivalist, does his best to ensure the safety and security of those he cares for. Book One of the Zombie Fallout Trilogy follows our lead character at his self-deprecating, sarcastic best. What he encounters along the way leads him down a long dark road, always skirting the edge of insanity.

As Michael Talbot and crew hit the last stretch before the US border, they are struck by the most devastating losses thus far on their journey. After trekking some of the harshest environment on the continent, surviving the shipwreck of their floating home, an escape from a brutal military that still pursues them, and attacks from every ilk of undead monster, the finish line is finally just up ahead. Making better time on the road than they ever have, the crew are menaced by the most ironic of enemies, led by an evil presence that has yet to reveal its motives.

Matt's in the prime of his life. So when his doctor tells him he only has months to live, he figures it's just really bad luck. But it's about to get a whole lot worse. When Matt's Earthly form finally expires, a truck-avatar system gives him the opportunity to become a hero on the paradise world of Gaia, a supposedly verdant, rich land teeming with plants and potential. What he finds instead is a place completely bereft of life. A literal dead planet. Thanks a lot, truck.

Together with Yorkshire terrier Ben-Ben and former archenemy Patches the cat, Riley struggles to keep the zombies at bay while helping her favorite human, Jessie, as they travel cross-country, dodging pepper paint balls and taser blasts from the evil, misogynistic Icely and his band of thugs. Now this motley mishmash of mammals are running for their lives.

When Agent Joshua Stone is called to a high-level meeting at the Department of Homeland Security, he learns about a new global order which will be transitioning into power. Stone is read in on the plan for a single planetary government and a world-wide cashless-currency, which will step in to fill the void left by the failing monetary system. To win wide acceptance by the nations of the world, the old system must first be allowed to fail, bringing about a state of global chaos never before seen by mankind.

Three years have passed since the Jamaicans caused the apocalypse, and things in post-Armageddon Chicago have settled into a new kind of normal. Unfortunately, that "normal" includes collapsing skyscrapers, bands of bloodthirsty maniacs, and a dwindling cache of survival supplies. After watching his family, friends, and most of the non-sadistic elements of society crumble around him, Patrick decides it's time to cross one last item off his bucket list. He's going to Disney World.