Hard Science Fiction Space Opera

With cislunar operations in full swing, space entrepreneur Parks Vambolent retrieves a comet. The water and other resources are desperately needed for the large-scale habitats on the Moon, and in various orbits around the Earth. But when the comet is found to contain more than what was expected, the dynamics of power begin to shift, setting off events with long-term repercussions for space enterprise and the future course of humanity. Vambolent confronts death and learns that there is more to the universe than flesh and blood.

The ruin of cislunar space spurs one habitat to flee, carrying the most valuable resources humanity has ever created. The struggles to control space resources and a juggernaut of new technical advances accelerate geometrically. Mind-blowing advances build upon each other, demanding speed and intelligence. With entire planets in conflict, the long-term potential of civilization’s advance becomes clear. Those who prevail may achieve functional immortality and undreamed of power over reality.

It's the beginning of a new golden age of space exploration. Finally, humanity is taking the commercialization of space to the next level-mining asteroids. The new gold rush of the commercial space era has begun. Another commercial venture, an attempt to put a hotel on the Moon, is seeking the space tourism gold of the ultra wealthy. And it seems as if the dream of finally sending people to Mars is finally going to happen using a ship propelled by a powerful nuclear rocket. But space travel isn't cut and dry, and there is nothing routine about it.

Humanity's last encounter with aliens saw 16.2 billion people killed in a war with the Merkiaari that had spanned decades. Two hundred years later, the Alliance is cautiously exploring beyond its borders again, but the survey corp is considered a mere gesture by some. General Burgton of the 501st Infantry Regiment believes a lack of expansion is leading the Alliance into stagnation. So when one small ship discovers a new alien race, it should be an easy decision to make contact, but what if the aliens are like the Merkiaari?

Far into the reaches of space, Anson Guthrie and a band of colonists have forged a new existence on Amaterasu not as physical beings but as downloaded consciousness watched over by the benevolent Life Mother. Yet as idyllic as their lives may be, back home on Earth the situation is growing grim.

When the miners on Mars form a trade union and call a planet wide strike, the president of the Council of Economic Unions orders the federal forces on Mars to take a firm hand.

Stranded in a hellish alien desert, stripped of their strategic systems, quick reaction force and supporting arms, and carrying only a day's water ration, Marine Staff Sergeant Charlie Bass and his seven-man team faced a grim future 75 light-years from home.

Earth’s first colony ship finally reaches the target world. The excitement of planetfall is indescribable, but quickly transforms into sick disappointment when they find the atmosphere is a roiling mass of hydrochloric acid, carbon dioxide, and other deadly poisons. They fly onward, seeking better planets. They find them, but none are ideal. The search goes on for a century, then longer still. As they move farther from Earth, aliens discover the intruding ship, and they begin to investigate humanity. They find our species unacceptable.

Xeno City, a cross roads in a sprawling multi-species galaxy, is also a city brimming with greed, corruption and murder. Wading through this murky cesspool is J. Azize "Jazz" Singer. A private detective pursuing an honest, or not so honest, buck. When Jazz is told of the death of his childhood friend, Erta L’Hotzuma, a death the local law fails to investigate, he sets out to find out who is responsible and why. His investigation, however, soon meets strong and violent resistance and he begins to suspect he has stumbled onto something bigger than just the death of a friend.

Few writers have successful blended hard science and speculation with fully realized characters as Gregory Benford has in his critically acclaimed novels. Now he draws us into a vortex of mystery and danger at the heart of the galaxy in his dazzling epic drama, Furious Gulf.

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 a shipwrecked stranger washed up on the beach near research scientist Samantha Bryton's home, she was unaware that he was something more than human. He said his name was Turner Pascal - but Pascal was dead, killed in a car wreck. This man only held the remainder of Pascal's consciousness in a technologically enhanced humanoid body.

Corta Hélio, one of the five family corporations that rule the moon, has fallen. Its riches are divided up among its many enemies, its survivors scattered. Eighteen months have passed. The remaining Hélio children, Lucasinho and Luna, are under the protection of the powerful Asamoahs, while Robson, still reeling from witnessing his parents' violent deaths, is now a ward - virtually a hostage - of Mackenzie Metals. And the last appointed heir, Lucas, has vanished from the surface of the moon.

For Ky, it’s not just about liberating the star systems subjugated by Turek and defending the rest of the galaxy’s freedom. There’s also a score to be settled and payback to be meted out for the obliteration of the Vatta Transport dynasty...and the slaughter of Ky’s family. But the enemy have their own escalation efforts under way - including the placement of covert agents among the allies with whom Ky and the surviving Vattas are collaborating in the war effort.

The most wanted salvage marine in the universe thought he was done fighting. For Samuel Hyst the nightmare was over, left behind upon dead worlds and within the derelict ships drifting through space, he and his family having fled to the edges of the frontier to begin a new life of peace. In the aftermath of a violent raid by slave traders, the long-suffering marine discovers that a relic of the ancient machine civilization has been left at the doorstep of his pristine forest homestead. He feels the menace radiating from it, and knows that the various powers and factions that rule necrospace will soon come for all of them.

For First Trooper Erik and his comrades the eternal war against the Helos is the only life they know. Across a hundred worlds and against a dozen alien species they have fought and been victorious. Now Erik's past threatens to destroy everything he believes in. Leading his squad into a war-torn Hell, the living legend faces his greatest battle. Victory or extinction is the only outcome because Erik and his squad are Hard Corps.

Sol has fallen, but the fight continues to rage. Oberon stayed behind, nothing more than a ghost on a radar screen, watching as the Clicks increase their presence on planet Earth. What's going on with the humans left behind? No one knows. Humanity's fleet admiral has survived! And he's issuing orders. Oberon is sent on a mission where it must succeed or die trying. It isn't what any of the crew wants, but it is what they must do.

Ghost ship Impris, lost during the War of a Thousand Suns, is the stuff of legend. Her very name conjures the perils of interstellar travel. But no mere legend, she is real - glimpsed on occasion in the hyperdimensional Flux and then gone. Her passengers and crew live on in a strange limbo, their fate hopelessly caught up in quantum defects in space-time, interstellar piracy, and galactic coverup.

This boxed set contains 3 complete science-fiction novels. This is science-fiction at its best - future engineering, intrigue, first contact. It’s a space opera like none you’ve experienced before. The audiobooks will keep you listening late into the night, and you won't be able to stop....

This omnibus contains all four books of the Adrift on a Sea of Stars series. Together, they tell the epic saga of the crew of the Beagle, sent to explore our stellar neighborhood.

The four books are:

• Adrift on a Sea of Stars
• Earth Not Forgotten
• The Tarden Agenda
• Republic and Empire