Hard Science Fiction Space

The Dusahn Empire has been contained for the moment. But there is much work to be done in order to keep them from reasserting their dominance over the Pentaurus sector. As much as Captain Scott wants to see the Empire destroyed, he may have no choice but to find a way to coexist with them.

The company that Arya Vaii and Gunnar Schmidt founded to commercially develop Arya's time-stopping discovery is making money hand over fist. Currently, their profits come from their use of the phenomenal physical properties of a time-stopped segment of space-time to build rockets. But now, they’re building their space tower. Taking off at a 30-degree angle from Eastern Virginia, it’s 200 kilometers long and 100 kilometers high.

Star humans were engineered to exist within the mantle of a star, mere tools of their Earth-evolved makers in a war against the Xeelee, owners of the universe. Stephen Baxter's third novel in his magnificent Xeelee Sequence is an exotic and endearing story of an abandoned people. Abandoned to their fate, their history lost along with contact with their makers, Star people survive in an environment that is possibly the strangest in science fiction.

The colony ship Intrepid is falling into a star. The ship's AI has lost control of the engines and core systems. Battling a saboteur who strives to isolate him, his last act is to wake Colonel Tanis Richards from stasis. Tanis finds herself alone on a dying ship, unable to contact the AI. She must discover what has happened and save the Intrepid from burning up in the star's angry red light. Even if she is successful, the journey to the colony world of New Eden is just beginning.

In the conclusion of the Poseidon's Children saga, the Akinya family receives an invitation from across the stars - and a last opportunity to redeem their name.... "Send Ndege". The cryptic message originated 70 light-years away from the planet Crucible, where Ndege Akinya lives under permanent house arrest for her role in the catastrophe that killed 417,000 people. Could it be from her mother, Chiku, who vanished during a space expedition decades earlier?

Alpha Station, orbiting the world of the atevi, has taken aboard 5,000 human refugees from a destroyed station in a distant sector of space. With supplies and housing stretched to the breaking point, it is clear that the refugees must be relocated down to the planet, and soon. But not to the atevi mainland, rather to the territory reserved for humans: the island of Mospheira. Tabini-aiji, the powerful political head of the atevi, tasks his brilliant human diplomat, Bren Cameron, to negotiate with the Mospheiran government.

Breq is a soldier who used to be a warship. Once a weapon of conquest controlling thousands of minds, now she has only a single body and serves the emperor. With a new ship and a troublesome crew, Breq is ordered to go to the only place in the galaxy she would agree to go: to Athoek Station to protect the family of a lieutenant she once knew—a lieutenant she murdered in cold blood.

Ursula has lived twice the normal human lifespan, courtesy of the latest technology. But now she’s struggling to find excitement and purpose, so signs up to the Polity’s military. She excels in weapons development, and progresses rapidly up the ranks. But after botching a powerful new ammunition test, she’s dismissed from service. Hunting for a simpler, more meaningful existence, the ex-soldier heads for the stars. And after founding a colony on the hostile planet of Threpsis, Ursula finally feels alive.

Years have passed since Earth encountered its first known interstellar object: Oumuamua. Now an even larger one has been discovered, following the exact same trajectory as its predecessor. Scientists around the world theorize that this can no longer be passed off as mere coincidence - the new contact must be an artificial construct of some kind.

The enigmatic Greys have returned, bearing a host of stunning revelations regarding their role in Earth’s history, the Pelarans, and humanity’s place in the cosmos. Griffin, openly declaring his allegiance to both Terran Fleet Command and the world he has helped to build, agrees to accompany the Grey ship Ethereal on a high-risk recruiting operation spanning thousands of light years. Their mission: enlist the help of enough Guardian spacecraft to put an end to the out-of-control, tyrannical AI before its forces can reach Earth.

For many, the dying part is hard. For some, the living part is harder. At 16 years of age, Mathius’ life is focused on scrounging bits of food in the midst of a five-way civil war on the planet Novalis III. Two government factions and three rebel factions are all hell-bent on killing one another, and the civilian population is caught in the middle. If Mathius doesn’t find food, he and his father, mother, and sister will go hungry for the day, a not-so-unusual occurrence.

A man battles for his life, two AIs vie for supremacy and a civilization hangs in the balance.... Several forces now pursue rogue artificial intelligence Penny Royal, hungry for revenge or redemption. And the Brockle is the most dangerous of all. This criminal swarm-robot AI has escaped confinement and is upgrading itself, becoming ever more powerful in anticipation of a showdown. Events also escalate aboard the war factory.

In the best-selling novels Venus and Jupiter, Ben Bova dramatized the latest discoveries about our own solar system in an epic tale of near-future exploration and development. Now Bova turns his attention to one of our system's greatest mysteries, Saturn.

The legendary battle-carrier UFS Phoenix is on the run in Outer Neutral Space. Lieutenant Commander Erik Debogande and Major Trace Thakur are determined to use neutral territory to broker a peace between humanity's warring factions, away from Fleet's strong arm. But as machinations in Fleet Command send a legendary warrior from Trace's past on a sworn path to kill her, there arises in the territory of an insectoid foe an ancient enemy from the nightmares of Spiral history, bent on Phoenix's destruction….

Armed with new tech that could revolutionize space combat, Captain Husher must now try to convince the Interstellar Union to implement it in time to defend against the godlike Progenitors.

When a new alien ally shows up in the galaxy, it’s a mixed blessing. Their military might could prove a boon to the war effort, but what secrets lurk in their past, and how might they shape galactic society for centuries to come?

It's been a year of upheaval since Bren Cameron's return from space - a year since he and the aiji-dowager, one of his most powerful atevi allies, returned home from their two-year interstellar mission to find the government overthrown and their world in chaos. Now, at last, things on the atevi world seem to be on the right track, and Bren hopes that life may soon become much more tranquil. But something is coming, quietly, stealthily - just the first ominous twinkle of a new star in the heavens....

A hidden corner of space is swarming with lethal alien technology, a danger to all sentient life. It's guarded by Orlandine, who must keep it contained at any cost - as it has the power to destroy entire civilizations. She schemes from her state-of-the-art weapons station, with only an alien intelligence to share her vigil. But she doesn't share everything with Dragon....

Humanity had appeared to fend off the Sh'daar assault once and for all, though they never learned why the alien empire was driven to halt Earth's advancement toward technological Singularity. But in this war of worlds, victory is always elusive. And now a new battle begins. After 20 years of peace, not one but two fragile truces are unraveling. Alexander Koenig, the former Navy commander whose heroics forced the Sh'daar into submission, has won a second term as President of the United States of North America. But pursuing his mandate - sovereignty from the centuries-old Earth Confederation - becomes a risky proposition....

Three hundred million years ago, the galactic community was taken by surprise. A catastrophic war with a hostile entity threatened to destroy all life until the fight was postponed by a calamitous event known as the Great Conflation. With the majority of pre-Conflation empires in ruins and the Ascended Biologicals wiped out, the hastily formed Wanderer Enclave tasked its fleet with unearthing answers and continuing the fight. One lone ship has found something: an innocuous world it had marked for routine decontamination that may hold vital answers.

Bren Cameron, acting as the representative of the atevi's political leader, Tabini-aiji, as well as translator between humans and atevi, has undertaken a mission to the human enclave of Mospheira. Both his presence on the island and his absence from the continent have stirred old enemies to realize new opportunities. Old hatreds. Old grudges. Old ambitions. The situation has strengthened the determination of power-seekers on both sides of the strait. Bren knows most of them very well, but not all of them well enough.