Hard Space Opera

The sky is not the limit. From an alley in New York to an interstellar wormhole, the path to the future looks different for everyone. These cosmic short stories from some of today’s most influential Black authors reveal a universe of possibilities.

The Progenitors are here, and Captain Husher knows the galaxy isn’t ready. He spent his entire military career preparing, but it wasn’t enough. As the Interstellar Union continues to flail and colony after colony is consumed, Husher must make some impossible choices. About what to save. And what to let fall to the onslaught. If he can’t find a way to oppose the Progenitors, they will sweep through the multiverse like fire through a parched forest. It all comes down to this.

Captain Jason Burke is a man apart, and not just because he's the only of his kind for thousands of light-years in any direction. The changes to his body and to his genetic code have made him faster, stronger, more able to survive in his dangerous occupation...but they've also ensured that he'll never truly fit in with others of his species. He always assumed he would live and die with his crew and never lay eyes on another human again. He was wrong.

When humanity reaches for the stars, our probes are destroyed. They crash into an incredibly advanced piece of technology: a massive force-field. Unknown beings have placed a barrier around our star and planets, enclosing us within. We’re locked inside a Great Sphere. Was this invisible obstacle built to imprison us - or to protect us? No one knows the truth, but it soon becomes clear the barrier has leaks. Aliens infiltrate and try to sabotage our efforts to escape our cage.

My name is Zane Zimmer. To most folks, I live a seemingly charmed life as a Regal lord and the heir apparent to the powerful, wealthy House Zimmer, and the gossipcasts breathlessly follow my every swaggering move across the Archipelago Galaxy. I’m also a powerful psion capable of telekinesis, telepathy, and telempathy, and my deadly skills and prowess with my stormsword have made me the golden boy of the Arrows, the Imperium’s elite fighting force. But even golden boys have bad days, and the truth is I have more hard problems than I can solve.

The savage ocean planet of Spatterjay draws visitors with very different agendas. Erlin is immortal and seeks a reason to keep living. Janer hosts a hive mind, which paid him to find this planet. And Keech is an agent of Earth who’s been dead for 700 years – but still hunts a notorious criminal. On Spatterjay’s vast waterscapes, only the Old Captains risk the native life forms and their voracious appetites. However, they are now barely human. And somewhere out there Keech’s target – the Skinner – runs wild.

There is a milestone in the evolution of every sentient race, a Tech Singularity Event, when the species achieves transcendence through its technological advances. Now the creatures known as humans are near this momentous turning point. But an armed threat is approaching from deepest space, determined to prevent humankind from crossing over that boundary - by total annihilation if necessary.

Once rebels find themselves facing off against the Earth Confederation, the United States of North America is now the dominant force in negotiations with the interstellar Sh'daar Collective. But just as the marines root out the last violent dissenters, an alien ship of unknown origin suddenly flees Earth's orbit. Is it mere coincidence...or a terrifying omen?

NASA finally made it. The very first human has just set foot on the surface of our neighbor planet. This is the start of a long research expedition that sent four scientists into space. But the four astronauts of the NASA crew are not the only ones with this destination. The privately financed "Mars for Everyone" initiative has also targeted the Red Planet. Twenty men and women have been selected to live there and establish the first extraterrestrial settlement.

It is the dawn of the 21st century, and America is in trouble. Public schools breed apathy and ignorance, and politics has become the art of the quick fix. There is one woman, though, who has both the vision and the money to leverage change. Mariesa Gorley van Huyten, heiress to one of the great American fortunes, is determined to bring America, and the rest of the world, back on track. She founds an educational subsidiary in hopes of raising a new, less cynical generation.

Fifty years ago, Mira, humanity's last hope to find new resources, exited the solar system bound for Proxima Centauri B. Seven years into her mission, all transmissions ceased without warning. Mira and her crew were presumed lost. Humanity, unified during her construction, splintered into insurgency and rebellion.

One starship will either save Earth or destroy her. A century ago our star erupted, destroying Earth's wormhole network and closing off trade with her colonized planets. After being out of contact with the younger worlds for so many years, humanity is shocked when a huge ship appears at the edge of the solar system. Our outdated navy investigates, both curious and fearful. What they learn from the massive vessel shocks the planet.

The UHS Providence is restored to her former glory, with a fully reconstituted Air Group ready for war. But the Ixan fleet has grown far larger than anyone anticipated, and the onslaught has begun. As system after system is consumed, the Ixan Prophecies' terrifying nature is revealed.

Gita Chithra, the captain of the intergalactic ship The Tempest, is used to leading her crew on simple retrieval and assistance missions. But when she receives a frantic distress call from Ri, the AI she trained from inception—making her like a daughter to Gita—she knows she’s in for something much more dangerous. Ri is trapped in the depths of Loki’s Ring, an artificial alien-made solar system, and says everyone in the vicinity has been infected and killed by a mysterious contagion. Gita and her team investigate, only to discover horrors at every turn.

First in a brand-new Foreigner trilogy by Hugo Award-winning author C. J. Cherryh. Tracker is the 16th installment of C. J. Cherryh's acclaimed Foreigner series.

The Forge of God described the destruction of Earth itself by self-replicating robots, Von Neumann machines designed to use the planet's mass to create more robotic creatures and spread throughout the Galaxy. Only a few humans have survived, aided by a mysterious alien race known only as “The Benefactors”, who arrived at Earth too late.

Habitats is the seventh in a series of near future sci-fi/thrillers, whose young heroine Ell Donsaii has a nerve mutation which has made her a genius as well as an athletic phenomenon. In Habitats, she is continuing to find uses for the quantum-entangled wormholes she discovered. These wormholes aren’t big enough to send people through, yet they are making huge changes in our world.

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....

The Ixa smashed the galaxy to bits before they were defeated. Captain Husher has sounded the alarm in the decades since: the Ixa’s creators will return to finish the job. But unlike Husher, the galactic government didn't battle the Ixa, and the politicians have convinced themselves that maintaining peace means limiting the ability to wage war.

There is a world that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism and global financial collapse. Such a world requires a firm hand and a guiding light. But does it need the Concern: an all-powerful organization with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive influence and numberless invisible operatives in possession of extraordinary powers?