Hard Science Fiction Space

What was the light that mazed every mind's sky - and then was gone? Why has it brought a flying tepui mountaintop home from the stars, and sent investigators into the orbital habitats floating above Earth? How is it connected to a "living fossil" fungus of great entheogenic powers? Or to a dead madman? Or to the fate of a planet overpopulated, hypermediated, corporate dominated, and heat-gas insulated? Forces that are socially and politically polarized, both good and evil, selfless and selfish, must search for the answers to these questions.

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.

Barcus is a working stiff looking for a good paycheck. When the Ventura and its crew enter orbit for a scheduled planet survey, the ship activates an automated defense system protecting the planet. Although the Ventura is destroyed in the attack, Barcus alone survives the harrowing fall to the remote planet surface. He struggles to remain alive and sane and to discover why everyone he knew and loved on the Ventura was deliberately murdered.

The thing the machines consume is us. Ready to lease out your mind? Or pay for your next meal with involuntary ads? The Closet Full of Time collection contains five short stories that speak to that sinking feeling that we're serving the machines instead of the other way around. That our inventions are taking things we can’t afford to lose.

This genre-bending novel is set on Earth in the wake of a second civil war...not between two factions in one nation, but two factions in one solar system: Mars and Earth. In an attempt to repair increasing tensions, the colonies of Mars send a group of young people to live on Earth to help reconcile humanity. But the group finds itself with no real home, no friends, and fractured allegiances as they struggle to find a sense of community and identity, trapped between two worlds.

The truth of discovery is on mankind's horizon, a Red Horizon. For nearly four long years, the world's superpowers have mobilized their people and resources in preparation for the next discovery, Mars. The race against one another pales in comparison to the inherent dangers of travelling through the vastness of the cosmos, going where mankind has never gone before.

In a future where humanity has scattered itself across the stars and Earth itself is now a dimly remembered place of legend, two worlds of near-supernatural strangeness challenge two naive but courageous heroes.

Titan is practically a planet in its own right, with a diameter similar to that of Mercury, methane rainstorms, organic soot, and ethane seas. The views from Titan’s Mayda outpost are spectacular, but all is not well at the moon’s remote science base. On the shore of a methane sea beneath glowering skies, atmospherics researcher Abigail Marco finds herself in the middle of murder, piracy, and colleagues who seem to be seeing sea monsters and dead people from the past.

Civil war on the world of the atevi is over, but diplomatic disputes and political infighting continue unabated. Bren Cameron, brilliant human diplomat allied with the dominant Western Association, has just returned to the capital from his country home. But his sojourn was anything but restful, for Bren and his associates have had a small war of their own to contend with, ending with rebel leader, Machigi, joining the atevi congress representing the rebels as a member state.

The future doesn’t just happen.... Somebody has to build it. Martin L. Shoemaker, author of "Today I Am Paul", presents stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary work. Planning, exploring, constructing...living and growing and dying...across the Solar System.

Space inventor Parks Vambolent pursues a vision of using space resources to benefit humanity but is ill-prepared for the non-technical challenges. Friends and allies join along the way, as he builds toward his ultimate goals. Yet, from project to project, troubles follow. Meanwhile, a clever rival advances, and their competition raises the stakes. Powerful players become involved, accelerating progress while creating complexity. How can Vambolent and his people steer space resource technology to be profitable and beneficial to humanity?

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?

Lux keeps inventing things or adapting alien tech (ancient tech to the aliens) because the active alien civilizations they discover through portals and probes have gone through cycles of war, decline, and rebirth several times. Lux further develops the portals using discovered alien tech. Earth empties refugee camps the UN was running (1,200,000) and sends them with a military escort for their "safety." The military sends many ships for escort duty with orders to take over the colony and use the refugees as a labor force.

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.

As Captain Navarre, the science officer rescued his greatest enemy and destroyed her captors. Now, someone else wants to hire the ruthless pirate Navarre, and Javier must take Sykora with him to help. Their mission? To raid the most luxurious starship in space: Shangdu, The Pleasure Dome.

Javier sometimes enjoys being a pirate, but he never forgets they made him a slave. Trapped in a forgotten mine field left over from an ancient war, he must work with the people he hates to survive. Even if it means saving them as well. When they find an unbelievable treasure at the center of the mine field, all bets are off.

Javier is still a slave, still paying off a life debt to Zakhar Sokolov and his pirate crew. Then Wilhelmina returns, asking for his help. Now, Javier must rescue his worst enemy, the ship's Dragoon, Djamila Sykora. Will Javier's honor or his hatred rule, when he has the chance to get his revenge as well his freedom?

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.

Old Captain Orbus commandeered a ship to flee Spatterjay, desperate to escape the violent planet. Orbus’ alien enemy, the Prador Vrell, is also moving on. The Spatterjay virus mutated him into something even more dangerous. And he’s hunting the Prador King himself - who sought to kill him, to bury the secret of their similar transformations. Orbus and Vrell clash in the Graveyard, a lawless zone where the Prador have seized a key space station. Official action by humanity or Prador would end peace, as a centuries-long cold war simmers.

On the far side of known human space, the Marines are under siege, battling the relentless servant races of the Sh'daar aggressor. With a task force stripped to the bone and the Terran Confederation of States racked by dissent, rogue Admiral Alexander Koenig must make the momentous decision that will seal his fate and the fate of humankind.