Hard Space Opera

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 Our outdated navy investigates, both curious and fearful.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.

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.

Neal Asher has firmly established himself as one of the leading British writers of science fiction. Most of his stories are set in a galactic future-scape called The Polity, and with The Gabble - and Other Stories, a collection of marvellously inventive and action-packed short stories, he takes us further into the manifold diversities of that amazing universe.

The generation ship Peerless is in search of advanced technology capable of sparing their home planet from imminent destruction. In theory, the ship is traveling fast enough that it can traverse the cosmos for generations and still return home only a few years after they departed. But a critical fuel shortage threatens to cut their urgent voyage short, even as a population explosion stretches the ship’s life-support capacity to its limits.

Planet Moscow is vaporized by an unnatural star explosion, prompting those who escaped to counterattack the likely culprit - planet New Dresden of the neighboring system. But New Dresden wasn't to blame, and as worlds go to war, an unseen enemy labors to destroy the universe itself.

Where does one put a messianic cult of practicing cannibals? That becomes the question when Ashanti appears in Donovan's skies. She was designed for no more than four years in space. It's taken 10. The crew has sealed the transportees onto a single deck - and over the years, the few survivors down there have become monsters. Lead by the messiah, Batuhan, they call themselves the Unreconciled. With the discovery of a wasting disease among the Unreconciled, it's up to Kalico, Dya Simonov, and Mark Talbot to try and deal with the epidemic.

There is an unseen power in the universe - a terrible force that was dominating the galaxy tens of thousands of years before the warlike Sh'daar were even aware of the existence of Sol and its planets. As humankind approaches the Singularity, when transcendence will be achieved through technology, contact will be made. In the wake of the near destruction of the solar system, the political powers on Earth seek a separate peace with an inscrutable alien life form that no one has ever seen.

Chiku Akinya, great granddaughter of the legendary space explorer Eunice and heir to the family empire, is just one among millions on a long one way journey towards a planet they hope to call their new home. For Chiku, the journey is a personal one, undertaken to ensure that the Akinya family achieves its destiny among the stars. The passengers travel in huge self-contained artificial worlds - holoships - putting their faith in a physics they barely understand.

They banned him from space. But someone has offered him a way back. Can he afford the price? Famed engineer and test pilot Jericho Fox has been grounded for reasons he'd rather put behind him. But a political leader from a rival party offers to send him back to space. Fox finds himself stuck between working for the enemy and doing what he loves again. Meanwhile, high above Earth on Astraea Station, decorated astrophysicist Dr. Evelyn Park is on the verge of a scientific breakthrough that could make history.

After being lost in space for 11 years, Gabe finally makes his triumphant return to reunite with Alex and Chase and retrieve a possibly alien artifact - which may lead them to solve the greatest archaeological mystery of their careers, in the eighth installment of the Alex Benedict series.

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.

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.

The newly liberated humans of the Fleet of Worlds and Sigmund Ausfaller, who had been transported by the Puppeteers from Earth to the Fleet, must contend not only with the sly Puppeteers but also the threat of the Pak, a very smart and utterly ruthless species who are fleeing the exploding galactic core in an armada of ships at near light speed. The Pak are headed towards the Fleet of Worlds, having destroyed entire planets in their wake.

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.

Captain William Sparhawk flies Earth's single starship on a voyage of exploration. His crew of veteran spacers begins the mission with high hopes and the best of intentions, but the universe has other plans. Instead of space merchants and potential allies, they discover Earth's impending doom. Sparhawk must decide whether to hunt down enemy scouts to keep Earth's new starship a secret or to head home to warn Star Guard of the danger. Either way, he's ignited an interstellar war.

The Technician, the Theocracy has been dead for 20 years, and the Polity rules on Masada - but it is an order that the rebels of the Tidy Squad cannot accept, and the iconic Jeremiah Tombs is top of their hit list. Tombs, meanwhile, has escaped his sanatorium. His insanity must be cured, because the near-mythical hooder, called 'the Technician', that attacked him all those years ago did something to his mind even the AIs fail to understand.

Center of Gravity is the second book in the explosive Star Carrier series by Ian Douglas - and a breathtaking new high in military SF, the strongest of the science fiction subgenres. Battlestar Galactica fans will adore this saga of ultimate war in deep space, as humankind risks its very future, battling a vast alien evil empire in order to achieve transcendence and become a major power in the universe.

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....

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.

Having successfully repelled the Resistance incursion into the Sol system, Terran Fleet Command must now deal with the far-flung worlds of the Sajeth Collective, which sponsored the attack. Task forces are dispatched to Damara and Lesheera to begin the first human blockades of entire planets. With the only ships fast enough to quickly bring the fight to the enemy's doorstep, TFC must do so alone, leaving only minimal forces behind to safeguard the Earth.