Hard Contact

During a classified mission to the ISS, astronaut Jack Kildare picks up an eerie signal. An alien spaceship is orbiting distant, icy Europa. It looks derelict...but is it? As fear sweeps across Earth, NASA spearheads a frenzied effort to build a ship capable of traveling to Jupiter to confront the alien menace. Technology intertwines with espionage and sabotage in a race against the clock. Fighting for his rightful place in the mission, Jack finds himself submerged in a world of secrets, international power games, and cold-blooded murder.

They banned him from space. But someone has offered him a way back. Can he afford the price? Famed engineer and test pilot Jericho Fox has been grounded for reasons he'd rather put behind him. But a political leader from a rival party offers to send him back to space. Fox finds himself stuck between working for the enemy and doing what he loves again. Meanwhile, high above Earth on Astraea Station, decorated astrophysicist Dr. Evelyn Park is on the verge of a scientific breakthrough that could make history.

Paolo Bacigalupi's debut collection demonstrates the power and reach of the science-fiction short story. Social criticism, political parable, and environmental advocacy lie at the center of Paolo's work. Each of the stories herein is at once a warning and a celebration of the tragic comedy of the human experience.

From the rich imagination of science-fiction great Alan Dean Foster comes the story of Midworld, a Humanx Commonwealth planet that's equally fragile and hostile. Covered by a lush rainforest, Midworld is home to a primitive society that lives in harmony with the natural world. But the arrival of an exploitative human company, whose workers know nothing of Midworld's delicate ecosystem, sparks a conflict. Should Midworld's villagers aid the humans or stand against them?

Particle physics was always an unlikely path to the stars, but with the discovery that space could be compressed, the entire galaxy had come within reach. The technology was astonishing, yet nothing compared to what humans encountered 4,000 light-years from home. Now, with an invitation from a mysterious gatekeeper, the people of Earth must decide if they're ready to participate in the galactic conversation.

Anomaly examines the prospect of an alien intelligence discovering life on Earth. The technological gulf between humanity and the alien species is measured in terms of millions of years. The only way to communicate is using science, but not everyone is so patient. Humanity's first contact with an alien intelligence is far more radical than anyone has ever dared imagine. With a technological gap of millions of years, mankind is barely able to recognize the arrival of an alien space craft outside the gates of the United Nations in New York.

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.

Kelvoo is overcome with wonder at the arrival of the humans. With flawless memories and innate curiosity, Kelvoo’s community embraces the benevolent humans and their knowledge of the boundless universe beyond the cloud-covered sky. After the departure of the first contact mission, an unscrupulous human lands in Kelvoo’s village, inviting Kelvoo and eight others to join a “goodwill mission” to faraway worlds. Lured into a trap and enslaved by an outlaw gang, Kelvoo’s group is forced to participate in an interstellar crime spree, and subjected to the worst of human nature.

When a disabled spaceship enters Earth's atmosphere, seven members of the advanced Tosok race are welcomed by the world. Then a popular scientist is murdered, and all evidence points to one of the Tosoks. Now, an alien is tried in a court of law -and there may be far more at stake than accounting for one human life.

At the start of the 22nd century, the starship Acheron is in orbit around WISE 5571, only, unbeknownst to the crew, the ship has been overrun by telepathic extraterrestrials. How do you fight an enemy that distorts everything you see? What do you do when you can't trust your own senses, let alone anyone around you?

Jack Four - one of 20 human clones - has been created to be sold. His purchasers are the alien prador, and they only want him for their experimentation program. But there is something different about Jack. No clone should possess the knowledge that’s been loaded into his mind. And no normal citizen of humanity’s Polity worlds would have this information. The prador’s king has been mutated by the Spatterjay virus into a creature even more monstrous than the prador themselves.

When a human team is sent to scout a few hundred light-years in front of the death wave, it encounters a civilization far in advance of our own, a civilization of machine intelligences.These sentient, intelligent machines have existed for eons and have survived earlier "death waves" - gamma-ray bursts from the core of the galaxy. They are totally self-sufficient, completely certain that the death wave cannot harm them, and utterly uninterested in helping to save other civilizations.

Marc and Emma are on the graveyard shift onboard the Sycorax, an interstellar spacecraft bound for New Haven, a colony world fifty light years from Earth. For the crew of the Sycorax, interstellar flight is boring—that is, until they run into a tempest. Before long, they find themselves on a crippled spacecraft falling toward a black hole, but that's the least of their problems...

An alien being has escaped to Earth. The portal is occupied by American troops, and the only humans who have ever set foot on the alien planet are in CIA custody. To make matters worse, a hostile force is now threatening both Xibalbá and Earth. Can Tyler and Adriana save their new friends on the other side of the portal—and save their home planet from invasion at the same time?

The UN warship Magellan is twelve light-years from Earth, exploring a cold eye, a tidally locked super-Earth called Bee. At least two advanced intelligent species evolved on the planet, but the crew's attempts at radio communication result in garbled replies. No one is waiting for them in orbit. The crew has to figure out why. Any misunderstandings could lead to war.

Kate Braddock, a sexually ambiguous ex-Spacer, isolates herself on Luna. After detecting a faster-than-light ship en route to Earth several years ago, she now conducts geophysical surveys for a mineral resources consortium. One day, she and a young intern, Mary Atteberry, discover an anomaly in the dust near the Mare Marginis that is clearly unnatural, and clearly alien.

The crew of Moonbase Columbus makes an amazing discovery on the far side of the Moon - a massive alien structure is erecting itself, built up atom by atom by living machines, microscopically small, intelligent, and unstoppable, consuming everything they touch. The mysterious structure begins to expand and take shape, and its creators begin to multiply. Is this the first strike in an alien invasion from the stars? Or has human nanotechnology experimentation gone awry, triggering an unexpected infestation?

Two years have passed since comet Anduru skimmed the clouds of Saturn on its way to Earth. Kath and Nolan are looking for answers, trying to find ways to protect Earth from the possibility of an invasive alien species overrunning the planet.

In a universe where the laws of physics and the speed of light are completely alien to our own, the travelers on the ship Peerless have completed a generations-long struggle to develop advanced technology in a desperate attempt to save their home world. But as tensions mount over the risks of turning the ship around and starting the long voyage home, a new complication arises: The prospect of constructing a messaging system that will give the Peerless news of its own future.

This prequel to the Trade Pact Universe series begins in a time before the Clan had learned how to manipulate the M'hir to travel between worlds. Aliens have begun to explore the world of Cersi, upsetting the delicate balance between the Clan and the two other powerful races who coexist by set rules. And one young woman is on the verge of finding the forbidden secret of the M'hir - a discovery that could prove the salvation or ruin of her entire species.