Science Fiction Exploration

Look outward beyond the stars with six stories from bestselling visionary authors. An AI awakens to its purpose. A researcher seeds a thousand new worlds for one more chance at love. A murder rocks the crew of an interstellar ship. With a sweeping sense of wonder, these stories explore the galaxy . . . and the horizons of humanity’s potential.

Sally Jansen was NASA's leading astronaut, until a mission to Mars ended in disaster. Haunted by her failure, she lives in quiet anonymity, convinced her days in space are over. She's wrong. A large alien object has entered the solar system on a straight course toward Earth. It has made no attempt to communicate and is ignoring all incoming transmissions. Out of time and out of options, NASA turns to Jansen. For all the dangers of the mission, it's the shot at redemption she always longed for.

La boîte de Pandore est désormais ouverte... à l'arrivée du vaisseau Seconde Chance, le mystérieux champ de force du système solaire de Dyson a disparu. Les extraterrestres qui y étaient emprisonnés ont immédiatement attaqué l'expédition humaine, qui a dû s'enfuir en abandonnant deux membres de son équipage. Ceux-ci ont été capturés, et leur mémoire pillée. Le secret des trous de ver et du voyage interstellaire est désormais connu des Dysoniens. Pour se défendre, l'humanité se lance dans la construction d'une flotte de vaisseaux de guerre.

Centuries before the events of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, in the era of the glorious High Republic, the Jedi are the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy! Jedi Knight prodigy Vernestra Rwoh and her Padawan Imri Cantaros find themselves - and their friends - in over their heads when they come face to face with the nefarious Nihil!

Top Gun heads to outer space in this throwback to the classic science fiction of Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein. Strapped in to artificial wings spanning 25 feet across, your arms push a tenth of your body weight with each pump as you propel yourself at frightening speeds through the air. Inside a pressurized dome on the Moon, subject to one-sixth Earth's gravity, there are swarms of chiseled, fearless, superbly trained flyers all around you, jostling for air space like peregrine falcons racing for the prize.

Too many years of hunting psychotic vampires night after night have left Rachel with a need for change. So when the opportunity to travel across the galaxy aboard a Lasaran warship to a utopian planet arises, the powerful Immortal Guardian jumps at the chance. Rachel eagerly looks forward to making a fresh start . . . until an enemy attacks and she ends up alone in an escape pod so far from alliance-occupied space that no one can hear her communications. No one except a renegade cyborg who shouldn't exist.

Null Stellarium is more than a shipyard. It's a proving ground steeped with science and engineering designed to push warships faster than ever before, and armed to confront the growing menace of a universe where everything is influenced by a hidden evil. As Van and his crew grow into their new roles, Perry unlocks a memory that reaches into the very beginning of the Tudor family's service nearly a century earlier. But sometimes, the truth is hidden for a reason, and Van must decide—How much does he really want to know? And how far can he take his ship, knowing there's a price on his head?

Three years ago, Damien Montgomery was on the run from everyone. That is long past now, as the Mage-King of Mars has plucked him from obscurity to take advantage of his rare and powerful magical gifts. The Mage-King has plans for his newest pupil, but Damien is young and inexperienced. To season the young Mage, he is assigned to one of the warrior-judges that rove the Protectorate's stars, the Hands of the King, as an aide and apprentice.

Nothing brings change like war. A surge of new tech. New weapons. New tactics. To lead a crew to victory, a captain must understand change. He must understand command and that it is a test. A test most men fail. He must be brilliant. Resourceful. Every second. Of every day. And at night during scarce moments of rest, he must sleep the sleep of the righteous. The time has come for Commander Tad Thatcher to look in the mirror. The time has come to ask himself...am I that kind of man?

Vernestra Rwoh is a new Jedi Knight at age 16, but her first real assignment feels an awful lot like babysitting. She's been charged with supervising 12-year old aspiring inventor Avon Starros on a cruiser headed to the dedication of a wondrous new space station called Starlight Beacon. But soon into their journey, bombs go off aboard the cruiser. While the adult Jedi try to save the ship, Vernestra, Avon, Avon's droid, J-6, a Jedi Padawan, and an ambassador's son make it to an escape shuttle, but communications are out and supplies are low.

Breq is a soldier who used to be a warship. Once a weapon of conquest controlling thousands of minds, now she has only a single body and serves the emperor. With a new ship and a troublesome crew, Breq is ordered to go to the only place in the galaxy she would agree to go: to Athoek Station to protect the family of a lieutenant she once knew—a lieutenant she murdered in cold blood.

With interstellar victory behind him, his greatest enemies vanquished, and two galaxies now at peace, Charlie and his friends had settled into a happy life of contented normalcy on the beaches of Earth. Even his dragon companion had made new friends and found a fulfilling life. And with Leila's first child on the way, Charlie really thought the universe was smiling on him at long last.

The planet Vok is holding its first free elections after years of oppressive military rule. Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise have been dispatched by Starfleet to serve as impartial observers, but remaining neutral proves a challenge, as Kirk confronts a tangled web of scandal, conspiracy, and assassination plots - with the stability of an entire sector at stake. To make matters worse, Dr. Leonard McCoy has vanished while on a mission of mercy to Braco, a nearby planet only a system away.

Van and his crew have killed an empire. The problem is the empire doesn’t know it’s dead. Moving among the stars, the Peacemakers are faced with their greatest challenge—removing an evil so vast, it has a presence in every known star system. To that end, they’ll need to move quickly. To do so, they must be mobile, and that means big changes in their tactics. . . and their crew. With the help of a shadowy figure known as the Body Thief, Van will continue his policy of justice and freedom for all citizens, even if they began life on a computer chip.

It's 2052 and the first known wormhole appears in lunar orbit. Earth sends a ship to investigate and the future of space travel changes forever. The Solar System develops in many ways over the centuries, but one thing remains constant; the wormholes continue to appear. Join many of today's most exciting indie science fiction authors as they chart a shared universe and future-history, each telling us stories of: Explorations: Through the Wormhole.

We were outnumbered, outfought. Mankind was about to fall to the alien Flock. Our only chance was a desperate gamble, transforming Tier One SpecOps agents into deadly super soldiers. In the end, we won the war, but we lost the peace. The Flock surrendered and spent the next two hundred years making reparations, indentured to humanity, doing everything humans did not want to do. And the evolved super soldiers were consigned to an endless sleep. Ready if ever needed, but in time they became myths. Abandoned and forgotten.

With Veteran pay comes veteran problems. And the Guild, more often than not, is the issue. He’s become an effective enforcer of the law, but unfortunately, crime is growing a lot more complicated. Someone is slaving artificial beings to ships, running contraband across the stars in a fatal practice that marries murder, theft, and kidnapping. Even as Mark’s crew grows, he discovers these crimes aren’t just horrific—they’re common. And he means to stop it.

Le vaisseau Explorateur 1 fait route vers Saturne. À son bord, deux astronautes et le plus puissant ordinateur jamais conçu. Cinq ans plus tôt, un étrange monolithe noir a été découvert sur la Lune. La première preuve d'une existence extraterrestre. Et bien longtemps avant, à l'aube de l'humanité, un objet similaire s'était posé sur Terre et avait parlé aux premiers hommes. On détecte un nouveau signe de cette présence aux abords de Saturne. Que sont ces mystérieuses sentinelles ? Quel message doivent-elles délivrer ?

When your luck just plain sucks in not one galaxy, but two, most people would throw in the towel. But not Charlie. In fact, it almost seemed like he was a glutton for that sort of misery.

Roy Court and his crew are taking the trip of a lifetime—several lifetimes in fact—duplicated and dispatched across the galaxies searching for Earthlike planets. Many possibilities for the future. Yet for Roy, no matter how many of him there are, there’s still just one painful, unchangeable past. In what world can a broken relationship be reborn? The universe is so vast, there’s always room for hope.