Hard Science Fiction Space

Sable Keech is a walking dead man. Was he resurrected because he was infected by the Spatterjay virus, or it took place late in a tank of seawater? Taylor Bloc wants to know the truth. He also wants more – adulation, power, control – and will go to any lengths to achieve them. An ancient hive mind has sent an agent to this uncertain world. Does it merely want to obtain the poison 'sprine' that is crucial to immortality? Erlin, still faced with the ennui of immortality, is interrupted by an angry whelkus titanicus, and begins a strange journey.

Tanis Richards, commander of the TSS Kirby Jones and her crew are at the tail end of a long patrol on the fringes of the Terran Hegemony when they come across a freighter suspected of smuggling goods out of InnerSol. The Norse Wind looks like just another dumpy cargo ship hauling goods across the Sol System, but someone up the chain thinks the vessel is worth looking into. Tanis and her boarding team gear up for another routine inspection that turns into anything but as the two crews struggle for supremacy out in the cold dark between worlds.

Critically acclaimed author Alastair Reynolds holds a well-deserved place “among the leaders of the hard-science space opera renaissance." ( Publishers Weekly). In Blue Remembered Earth, Geoffrey Akinya wants nothing more than to study the elephants of the Amboseli basin. But when his space-explorer grandmother dies, secrets come to light and Geoffrey is dispatched to the Moon to protect the family name - and prevent an impending catastrophe.

Max Tyco is just beginning to understand what it means to be a Rowki Guardian. There are plenty of bruises and bumps along the way. But if he's going to face the threats at his door he'll have to learn some new skills. Sardonium is the metal of the Rowki Guardians. Imbued into their weapon of choice, it grants its wielder a power that can tip the odds in their favor. But all great power comes with a cost. The first portal has been discovered. The other two are being searched for. Treasure seekers, merchants and bounty hunters swarm to Ivandor.

Many unanswered questions remain about the terrible Eugenics Wars that raged on Earth during the 1990s, an apocalyptic conflict that brought civilization to the brink of a new dark age. Centuries later, as Capt. James T. Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise are forced to defend a colony of genetically enhanced humans against Klingon aggression and sabotage, Kirk must probe deeper into the past - and into the glory days of one of the greatest adversaries he has ever faced.

When a brilliant scientist gets a letter from herself about faster-than-light travel, she doesn't know what to believe. The equations work, but her paper is discredited - and soon the criticism is more than scientific. Exiled by the establishment, she gets an offer to build her starship from an unlikely source. But in the heights of Venus and on a planet of another star, a secret is already being uncovered that will shake humanity to its foundations.

For the past five years, Ruma Nuway has been plotting, planning to leave Doonya, the human planet. Now's her chance. With the Misguided mercenary by her side, she stands guard over the bound Zrivisi crew and the alien ship at her complete disposal. The hard part is done. All she needs now are the launch codes from the Zrivisi captain before the bomb goes off. When the captain refuses, sending her Misguided companion past the edge, Ruma faces impossible choices.

Provenance: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience! A power-driven young woman has just one chance to secure the status she craves and regain priceless lost artifacts prized by her people. She must free their thief from a prison planet from which no one has ever returned. Ingray and her charge will return to her home world to find their planet in political turmoil, at the heart of an escalating interstellar conflict. Together, they must make a new plan to salvage Ingray's future, her family, and her world.

Nick Morrison always wanted to be an astronaut. When a start-up company recruits him to build a lunar launch system at the moon’s south pole, Nick gladly leaves behind his troubled life on Earth—but Nick doesn’t know that the company is in financial and legal trouble. Deprived of support from Earth, the team on the moon must figure out how to survive on their own. Worse yet, there’s another base at the lunar south pole, run by a ruthless contractor who has big plans for the moon...and for Earth.

When Simon and Katherine Hawke stumble upon an alien shuttle that has landed on earth, it’ll not only change the course of their lives, but of the entire world. Taking the shuttle into orbit, they discover a much larger ship left adrift with no one on board. Commandeering it, they confirm that we’re not alone in the universe and must prepare the human race for what is about to come. Recruiting from all over the world, they begin to expand their fleet and build a federation to give humans a foothold in the galaxy.

Kylara had to leave a bright future as a military cadet and was thrown into the brutal world of off-world trading. This subsequent career in the family business was tough: marked by war, mutiny, and attempted assassination. But then her home was attacked and her parents killed - their trading empire left in ruins. Now she must save what is left of the family and the business, with few friends and too few assets.

Humanity has taken to the stars, using faster-than-light travel to reach distant planets and new worlds. But in the far reaches of the galaxy, John Grant will discover a planet of humans who believe he has travelled not only through space to find them, but time. On Apis, the mysterious Fermi appear to have vanished, taking with them knowledge of the universe that humanity desires. But Marcus Owen, the robot AI now plagued with sentience, knows that the Fermi would not easily abandon the native life of Apis.

When Unit Four - a biological soft robot built and stored high above the Jovian atmosphere - is activated for the first time, it’s in crisis mode. Aliens are attacking the Helium-3 mine it was created to oversee, and now its sole purpose is to defend Earth’s largest energy resource from the invaders in ship-to-ship combat. But something’s wrong. Unit Four doesn’t feel quite right. There are files in its databanks it can’t account for, unusual chemical combinations roaring through its pipes, and the primers it possesses on the aliens are suspiciously sparse.

Kylara had to leave a bright future as a military cadet and was thrown into the brutal world of off-world trading. This subsequent career in the family business was tough: marked by war, mutiny, and attempted assassination. But then her home was attacked and her parents killed - their trading empire left in ruins. Now she must save what is left of the family and the business, with few friends and too few assets. She must make full use of her hard-won experience to not just survive, but to restore the shattered fortunes of the Vatta family and their allies.

Tanis Richards has had enough with people manipulating her; unfortunately, the only way out is to go through. Her mission takes her to Earth to abduct a high-ranking Scattered Disk officer on the orders of the Jovian Oligarch. Meanwhile, Harm must do the unthinkable to escape his captor and come to Tanis' aid. Tanis doesn't know it yet, but if she doesn't succeed, her failure will spark the third Solar War....

Navy Corpsman Elliot Carlyle joined up to save lives and see the universe. Now he and Bravo Company's Black Wizards of the interstellar Fleet Marine Force are en route to Bloodworld - a hellish, volatile rock colonized by the fanatical Salvationists who desired an inhospitable world where they could suffer for humanity's sins. Their penance could prove fatal - for the Qesh, a strange alien race detected but still mysterious for six decades, have made violent first contact. Suddenly countless lives depend upon Bravo Company - perhaps even the fate of homeworld Earth itself.

GSI (Gettnor Space Industries) is beginning to investigate our solar system and mine the asteroids. Aircraft and automobile companies are beginning to switch over to thrusters from their more traditional products. New uses for thrusters are popping up in the healthcare and sports industries. However, at Epsilon Eridani, a race of aliens has so overpopulated their own solar system that they must move many tens of billions of their people to another system before overcrowding destroys them.

The Eternity War series is an explosive tale of elite marines, deep-space exploration and warring galactic empires. The soldiers of the Simulant Operations Programme are mankind's elite warriors. Veterans of 1000 battles across 100 worlds, they undertake suicidal missions to protect humanity from the insidious Krell Empire and the mysterious machine race known as the Shard. Lieutenant Keira Jenkins is an experienced simulant operative and leader of the Jackals, a team of raw recruits keen to taste battle.

Fifty years after Steve Stuart and his friends captured an alien starship, the Solar Union is a thriving interstellar power while Earth is increasingly backward and falling into barbarism. For two youngsters from Earth, the Solar Union offers the only chance they will ever have to make something of their lives.

In Neal Asher's Hilldiggers, during a war between two planets in the same solar system - each occupied by adapted humans - what is thought to be a cosmic superstring is discovered. After being cut, this object collapses into four cylindrical pieces, each about the size of a tube train. Each is densely packed with either alien technology or some kind of life. They are placed for safety in three ozark cylinders of a massively secure space station.