Hard Space Opera

Venera Fanning was last seen falling into nothingness at the end of Sun of Suns. Now, in Queen of Candesce, Venera finds herself plunging through the air among the artificial worlds of Virga, far from home and her husband, who may or may not be alive. Landing in the ancient nation of Spyre, Venera encounters new enemies and new friends (or at least convenient allies). She must quickly learn who she can trust, and who she can manipulate in order to survive.

Major Richards needs to get out of the Sol System. Demoted by the military and hung out to dry, the media labels her the Butcher of Toro. Despite her soiled record, Tanis still one of the best military counterinsurgency officers in the Terran Space Force. They need her to find the terrorists responsible for trying to destroy the GSS Intrepid, a massive interstellar colony ship in the final phases of construction at the Mars Outer Shipyards.

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.

Devastated early in the war, the United Systems Alliance has retaken several key systems lost to the Galactic Union. But getting even isn’t good enough for General Hella. Determined to end the costly war and destroy the Union, Hella launches a daring offensive against the planet Kuut, a key military base deep in Union space. At the tip of the spear, Lieutenant Mark Rizer and the Marines of Orcus Company find themselves in the mud and blood of a planetary ground invasion.

Merritt Alder is done with Earth. The planet is polluted and overpopulated, and its people are hungry. Earth's first colony, Galena, is a pioneer world 10,000 light years away. It has clean air, unpolluted water, and continents of arable land. Anyone can start a new life…if they can get there. For Merritt, the journey is only the beginning. Obstacles arise every step of the way, forcing compromise and sacrifice. And not everyone on his ship is pure of heart. The bonds he forges on the journey will be the key to surviving on another world—a world anyone has yet to fully explore.

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.

The Morthans were physically and mentally superior. Descended from humans, they were now, literally, “more-than" human … and considered the human race to be little better than animals. They would stop at nothing to conquer the remaining human-controlled worlds. Docked for repairs after a harrowing battle with a Morthan ship, Jonathan Korie and his crew discover they have a Morthan imp aboard—a Morthan weapon so quick they have no chance of catching it, so clever they have no hope of outsmarting it and so deadly they have no choice but to try.

A planet in the endless emptiness of space, far from the warmth of any sun. And yet there are people who populate its vast caverns, living, working and loving. Since time immemorial, they have been on course for Andromeda, the neighboring galaxy of the Milky Way. This is the prophecy of the ancients, the one goal that unites them all, their cult. But then the unthinkable happens: the journey stops because the planet enters the orbit of a mysterious object that can't be seen in any telescope.

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.

On a far-future Earth, a linked system of artificial intelligences called the cybercosm runs the planet and the universe far more efficiently than any flesh and blood ruler ever could, in essence rendering the human race obsolete. On the Earth's moon, genetically engineered Lunarians carrying the DNA of Dagney Beynac - a descendant of the legendary Anton Guthrie, founder of the powerful and visionary Fireball Enterprises - struggle to preserve their lives, their freedom, and their satellite's resources in the face of threats posed by encroaching humans and controlling machines.

Chris Holt, working in his office at the Space Resources Corporation, discovers that one of the asteroids he is surveying for mining is actually not an asteroid at all but a derelict spaceship. The word gets out and soon the world's powers are competing to explore and claim for themselves the secrets that it holds. What they don't know is that across the galaxy, a war has been underway for millennia. A war between alien civilizations that have very different ideas about what should be done about emerging spacefaring civilizations like our own.

The Lazarus Protocol, the corporate plan to reengineer the Earth’s atmosphere, has failed. The mysterious Cassandra and her Neo zealots have weaponized the weather, Anthony Taulke is in jail, Ming Qinlao is on the run, and Colonel Graves is left to clean up the mess. Meanwhile, we the people pay the price - in blood and treasure. But the machinery of the corporation is not dead yet. As Anthony hatches a new scheme to undo the damage caused by the Lazarus Protocol, he makes new alliances and stabs old friends in the back.

Mahina's terraformers built a high-tech urban paradise. Then Earth flooded the colony with desperate refugees, cop Sass Collier among them. The settlers who arrived with Sass died decades ago. Outside the citadel, their descendants die weak and young. Sass fought a rebellion against the city once. She won concessions to give the settlers a chance at health. She paid with 20 years in prison. Now she’s out, a reformed character. She assembles an oddball crew doing odd jobs. She intends to mind her own business. But her fellow settlers are still failing.

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 year is AD 2790. With space elevators and giant orbital fleets hovering over Earth, open war looks inevitable, and people are anxious to get away. The lines are drawn, with the Confederacy in the East and the First World Alliance in the West. In hopes of finding a refuge from the looming war, the Alliance is sending Captain Alexander de Leon to explore an Earth-type planet, code-named Wonderland, but at the last minute before launch, a Confederate fleet leaves orbit on a trajectory that threatens both the mission and Alliance sovereignty.

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.

Follow the continuing adventure of the Lyssa and the Sykes family while the Psion AIs set their sights on Vesta.

How do you end a war you want no part of? Cass and Ken just want to get back to their plans for exploration. That doesn't seem to be in the cards, though, so now it's time to think outside the box. If the leaders of Artemis won't listen, maybe it's time for new leaders. New tools, new crews, new challenges, but the same Cass and Ken: they're not going to let anything stop them!

Ein spannender Near-Future-Space-Thriller von Hard-SF-Autor Phillip P. Peterson. Ein Flug zum Mond – dank milliardenschwerer Investitionen der Firma FrontierTech ist das nun auch für Privatpersonen machbar. Die Lehrerin Luna Patel ist eine der ersten begeisterten Mond-Touristinnen. Das Ziel ihrer Landefähre ist eine kleine Station im Tal Taurus-Litrow. Doch als es zu einer Triebwerk-Fehlfunktion mit anschließender Bruchlandung kommt, verwandelt sich der Traum in einen Alptraum.

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.