Space Fantasy

Their spies were among us for years. They mapped our infrastructure, learned our weaknesses, until finally they flipped the switch and threw us back into the Dark Ages. Only OMBRA and its battalions around the world seem capable of defending Earth from the next wave of attack - terraforming. But at what price can we gain our freedom? The Crays are pushing the human race to the edge of extinction, and we will have to learn new ways of living to defeat this threat.

It's kill or be killed in the space penitentiary that houses the galaxy’s worst criminals, where convicts face off in gladiatorial combat while an underworld gambling empire reaps the profits of the illicit blood sport. But the newest contender in this savage arena, as demonic to behold as he is deadly to challenge, is fighting for more than just survival. His do-or-die mission, for the dark masters he serves, is to capture the ultimate weapon: an object that will enable the Sith to conquer the galaxy.

The galaxy is in flames. Chaos is in the ascendant across the stars. The Great Rift has split the holdings of the Imperium in twain, isolating entire sectors from the light of Holy Terra. But all hope is not lost. The Primarch Roboute Guilliman has returned from deathless sleep and appointed Commander Dante, lord of the Blood Angels, as Regent and Warden of the newly dubbed Imperium Nihilus. In the Baal system, the shattered holding of the Chapter is being rebuilt, and Dante plans the greatest campaign of his long life, to retake half an empire.

Gnat is on his voyage with the Shiamiru, all the while trying to find backup for humanity among the great spacefaring races. After all, based on what he's already seen, he knows not to count on the good sense of his own kind. Even facing an external threat, the people of our Earth cannot see past their internal squabbles and come together to fight as one. Gnat does not expect gratitude from his leaders for taking such matters into his own hands, but when have laws and rules ever stopped our intrepid hero before?

The fate of the Foundation rests on young Arcadia Darell, only 14 years old and burdened with a terrible secret. As its scientists gird for a final showdown with the Mule, the survivors of the First Foundation begin their desperate search. They too want the Second Foundation destroyed, before it destroys them.

Deception Well is a world on the edge, home to an isolated remnant surviving at the farthest reach of human expansion. All across the frontier, other worlds have succumbed to the relentless attacks of robotic alien warships, while hundreds of light years away, the core of human civilization - those star systems closest to Earth, known as the Hallowed Vasties - have all fallen to ruins. Powerful telescopes can see only dust and debris where once there were orbital mega-structures so huge they eclipsed the light of their parent stars

When Earth failed, it sent out arkships to establish new outposts. So the spaceship Enkidu and its captain, Heorest Holt, carried its precious human cargo to a potential new paradise. Generations later, this fragile colony has managed to survive on Imir, eking out a hardy existence. Yet life is tough, and much technological knowledge has been lost. Then strangers appear, on a world where everyone knows their neighbour.

As METAtropolis: Green Space moves into the 22nd Century, human social evolution is heading in new directions after the Green Crash and the subsequent Green Renaissance. Nearly everyone who cares to participate in the wired world has become part of the "Internet of things", a virtual environment mapped across all aspects of the natural experience. At the same time, the serious back-to-the-land types have embraced a full-on paleo lifestyle, including genetically engineering themselves and their offspring.

Once again, reluctant hero Commissar Cain is catapulted into glory in the fourth instalment of this tremendously popular series. Escaping from a disastrous space battle, the commissar and his malodorous sidekick Jurgen crash-land behind enemy lines. Even the sly Cain can't avoid a straight fight this time, as the only way out is to round up what few troops they can find and fight their way back to safety. Unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of barbaric alien orks stand in their way.

An unexpected offer threatens the bond between Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi as the two Jedi navigate a dangerous new planet and an uncertain future.

Captain Tuplo must finally make the decision that has been haunting him since he learned the truth about his origins only a week ago. The fact that billions of lives may hang in the balance isn't making it any easier. Will Connor be able to face the demons of his past?

Someone is stealing the children of the galaxy’s elite, and Kirth Gersen suspects that the kidnapper is Kokor Hekkus—second of the Demon Princes. Deciphering a complex pattern of clues and coincidences, Gersen tracks his quarry to a barbaric world, where Hekkus is protected by an invincible war machine. To confront Hekkus, Gersen must resort to a desperate plan.

The jungle planet of Haruun Kal, homeworld of the legendary Jedi Master Mace Windu, has become a battleground in the increasing hostilities between the Republic and the renegade Separatist movement. The Jedi Council has sent Depa Billaba - Mace’s former Padawan and fellow Council member - to Haruun Kal to train the local tribesmen as a guerrilla resistance force. But now the Separatists have pulled back, and Depa has not returned.

Jon Hunter has made it home. But a lot of things have happened to him over the last year. Some of them made no sense at all to those with him, but they accepted the really weird as if it was part of him. Jon himself didn't understand a lot of it, but accepted he wasn't allowed to know yet. But what really happened, and why? For 600 odd years, Hunter's have traveled space. Where did it all start? What were the events which shaped the galaxy Jon Hunter finds himself in? And what of the previous Jon Hunter's, mentioned in prophecy?

The Sith Empire is in flux. The Emperor is missing, presumed dead, and an ambitious Sith lord’s attempt to seize the throne has ended fatally. Still, Darth Karrid, commander of the fearsome Imperial battle cruiser Ascendant Spear, continues her relentless efforts to achieve total Sith domination of the galaxy. But Karrid’s ruthless determination is more than matched in the steely resolve of Theron Shan, whose unfinished business with the Empire could change the course of the war for good. Though the son of a Jedi master, Theron does not wield the Force - but like his renowned mother, the spirit of rebellion is in his blood.

On the planet Jijo, peace is upended when the starship Streaker arrives, bringing with it knowledge of a two-billion-year-old fleet and hordes of followers eager to exploit its power. Publishers Weekly hails Brin's "extraordinary capacity to handle a wide-ranging narrative and to create ... complex alien races."

An orphan, Blake Walker has never really known who he was, and his strange flashes of intuition have always set him apart from those who raised him and everyone else he has known. Acting on one of those flashes, he prevented a murder. But neither the assailant nor his intended victim were from the world Walker had always known - he had stumbled onto the greatest secret of the ages. Our Earth is only one of an infinite number of Earths, each with a slightly different history from the others, each separated from the others in a crosstime dimension.

Kelly Frank is EarthCent's top diplomat on Union Station, but her job description has always been a bit vague. The pay is horrible and she's in hock up to her ears for her furniture, which is likely to end up in a corridor because she's behind on rent for her room. Sometimes she has to wonder if the career she has put ahead of her personal life for 15 years is worth it.

For the first time in thousands of years, we have also discovered the Other. The alien. A being so unimaginably complex that it makes us all look like children. The PCS Blue Cherry Blossom, a long range interstellar freighter, is tasked with the ultimate voyage. What lies at the heart of the galaxy? Who and what is out there? Is it even possible to survive? Against a backdrop of relentless political and corporate maneuvering, a new crew sets out, prepared to risk their lives and their deaths to set forth into the void and look for answers.

The Interbeing League had been formed to make contact with new intelligent races in the galaxy and offer them membership. But when the League encountered the Hokas, furry creatures strongly resembling the teddy bears of Earth, the league's agent, Alexander Jones, could have been excused for wishing he had a simpler assignment than making sense out of the Hokas - such as singlehandedly stopping an interstellar war.