Space Exploration Fiction

On humanity's first extra-solar mission, the exploration vessel Magellan, or, as she prefers, "Maggie", discovers an alien artifact. Deciding that finding advanced alien life is too important to ignore, Captain Allison Ridgeway chooses to return to Earth while ordering her crew to reverse engineer technology far beyond anything back home. Meanwhile, at mission control, the governments struggle to maintain the existence of aliens a secret while also combating bureaucracy, the military industrial complex, and everyone else who wants a piece of what could skyrocket humanity into a new technological age.

Half-Navajo geologist Jamie Waterman has been selected for the ground team of the first manned expedition to our mysterious neighbor planet. Joining an international team of astronauts and scientists, he endures the rigors of training, the dangers of traveling an incredible distance in space, the challenges of an alien landscape, and the personal and political conflicts that arise when the team must face the most shocking discovery of all.

Calista is happy with her life of scientific research. She doesn't need love, she has her books, her friends, and her work. Things are fine until her ship is attacked by space pirates and crash lands on a desert planet with heat so intense she and her friends can't survive without help. Ladon is a Zmaj warrior resigned to a life alone, who only desires to protect his treasures. His hopes for a mate faded long ago, yet when he meets Calista something stirs. It takes only one look to know that she belongs to him.

In 2118 the first daring mission to another star, Tau Ceti - 12 light-years away - is launched. Tom Hites and Harry Cosgrove command the starship Endeavour on an epic journey to solve the Fermi paradox. From the first nearly disastrous steps on a distant world, their quest takes them further than they ever imagined.

Captain Nathan Scott must decide whether to stand and fight to the end, or live to fight another day - even if it means the end of his world.

Running. Putting distance between himself and the relentless Night Brigade has been Nomad’s strategy for years. Staying one or two steps ahead of his pursuers by skipping through the Cosmere from one world to the next. But now, his powers too depleted to escape, Nomad finds himself trapped on Canticle, a planet that will kill anyone who doesn’t keep moving. Fleeing the fires of a sunrise that melts the very stones, he is instantly caught up in the struggle between a heartless tyrant and the brave rebels who defy him.

Adrian Tchaikovksy's critically acclaimed stand-alone novel Children of Time is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet. Who will inherit this new Earth? The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden.

Some scary-looking aliens have just boarded Fortuna Tau, our little asteroid mining station. Kordolians, by the looks of things. What the hell do they want with this floating rust bucket? What are they even doing here? Come to think of it, I've never seen a Kordolian up close before. They're huge and intimidating, with strange silver skin and pointed ears. They have freaky nano-armor, and they're packing a serious arsenal. We humans stand no chance against them.

Caleb Mitchell gave up everything to protect his home. Shunned by friends and family for abandoning the pacifist beliefs of their religion, abandoned by the love of his life, he left his home world of Canaan to go to the Commonwealth Military Academy on Earth and train to fight in the looming war against the implacable alien threat of the Tahni Imperium. When a training mission with a crew of cadets winds up caught in the middle of one of the worst battles of the war, Cal and his fellow students are officially declared dead.

As a war journalist, Jonah Wall saw enough of humanity’s horrors to last a lifetime. He wrecked his marriage, alienated his two sons, and escaped by working on an oil rig in Alaska, as far from civilization as possible. But when he finds a spacecraft that was buried for millennia under the tundra, he is suddenly and reluctantly thrust into an unbelievable adventure. As the ship is being unveiled to the world, it mysteriously comes to life, taking Jonah, his estranged son, and a disparate group on a terrifying journey.

A new ally providing aid... An old ally joining the fight... Their resources growing with each passing day... Their homeworld finally on the road to recovery... Things finally seem to be coming together for Captain Scott and the Alliance as he takes his forces on the offensive. However, the Jung may in turn give him more trouble than he bargained for.

When Kell and his team return to Earth many years after their departure, they find that their world has changed almost beyond recognition. Not only has a second wave of greenhouse flooding caused sea levels to rise, but society has been changed by the consequences of the climate shift. Few people want to face Jordan Kell's news. He must convince Earth's new rulers that the human race is in danger of extinction unless it acts to forestall the death wave coming from the galaxy's heart.

Keeping up-to-date with the most buzzworthy and cutting-edge science fiction requires sifting through countless magazines, e-zines, websites, blogs, original anthologies, single-author collections, and more - a task accomplishable by only the most determined and voracious readers. For everyone else, Night Shade Books is proud to introduce the latest volume of The Best Science Fiction of the Year, collecting the finest that the genre has to offer, from the biggest names in the field to the most exciting new writers.

When a mysterious alien probe materializes from Jump Space and remotely reprograms The Bay's star drive, Sam and his crew begin an involuntary voyage that takes them three thousand light years out of known space, across the galactic rift to the Sagittarius Spiral Arm, and into the heart of an ancient, previously unknown civilization - the first encountered by Humans and the other five races of the Cottohazz-Stellar Commonwealth - in over a century. The genetically altered immortals known as the Guardians soon turn murderously violent.

How do you stage a mutiny when you're only awake one day in a million? How do you conspire when your tiny handful of potential allies changes with each job shift? How do you engage an enemy that never sleeps, that sees through your eyes and hears through your ears, and relentlessly, honestly, only wants what's best for you? Trapped aboard the starship Eriophora, Sunday Ahzmundin is about to discover the components of any successful revolution: conspiracy, code - and unavoidable casualties.

Two hundred thousand feet up, things go horribly wrong. An experimental low-orbit spaceplane breaks up on reentry, falling to earth over a trail hundreds of miles long. And in its wake is the beginning of the most important mission in the history of spaceflight.

After 25 years serving as the human Monitor of the Interstellar Ark, Hermes, Orion is scheduled to be placed back into hibernation with the other crewmembers. Knowing he'll die there and be replaced before the ship's voyage is over, he decides that he won’t — can’t — accept that fate. Whatever it takes, Orion will escape Hermes and see what's beyond, even if it means defying the regulations of his only friend — the ship-wide artificial intelligence known as Dan.

Misanthropic psychologist Dr. Grace Park is placed on the Deucalion, a survey ship headed to an icy planet in an unexplored galaxy. Her purpose is to observe the thirteen human crew members aboard the ship - all specialists in their own fields - as they assess the colonization potential of the planet, Eos. But frictions develop as Park befriends the androids of the ship, preferring their company over the baffling complexity of humans, while the rest of the crew treats them with suspicion and even outright hostility.

In the year 2115, when the Earth is no longer inhabitable, the remainder of humanity lives in Babel, a giant space station. Two pilots, Quentin and Kai, must find the planet Paradise, where only the most promising citizens are allowed to live. On their journey, Quentin and Kai encounter Quentin’s estranged father, who left Babel for Paradise when Quentin was a child, and they discover just how different Paradise is from what they imagined—and how they must change it for the better.

New York Times best-selling author Kylie Scott presents two stand-alone novellas in this must-listen collection. Colonist's Wife: She'll run to the far corners of space to avoid her violent history, hide her true identity, and pass herself off as a mail-order bride. But no one can escape their past forever. And as for her new husband...well, he's nothing like she expected.