Space First Contact

The year is 2650. Seventy-five years ago, an alien fleet attacked Earth. Without warning. Without mercy. We were not prepared. Hundreds of millions perished. Dozens of cities burned. We nearly lost everything. Then the aliens abruptly left. We rebuilt. We armed ourselves. We swore: never again. But the aliens never came back. Until now. With overwhelming force the aliens have returned, striking deep into our territory, sending Earth into a panic.

In 2004, Doctor Damien Howard's 131st birthday celebration took an unexpected turn. His personal SETI project detected an extraterrestrial signal directed at Earth. Unfortunately, Dr. Howard's long-hoped-for communication contained a message of dire warning rather than greeting. In 1945, humanity had become a species of galactic interest and was given 100 years to address the issue.

They have absolute power; after all, they are the ones with the weapons. The only other armed agency, the Peacemaker Guild, is far smaller and unable to bend them to their will. But absolute power has the tendency to corrupt absolutely, and this is becoming increasingly apparent as the guild’s members pursue their hidden agendas.

Kate Richmond, former army ranger and ISS operative, has seen a lot in her life. Sabotage, espionage, cyber theft, and assassination missions have all played their parts in her journey to becoming a viper. Nothing surprises her much any more, not even a full scale incursion of an alien race by the Merkiaari!

The Omega War is in full swing. Earth has fallen to General Peepo’s army, and the surviving human mercenaries have taken refuge at the hidden Winged Hussars’ base in New Warsaw. As humanity begins to think about how to recover the planet, one thing is obvious - more powerful weapons of war will be needed in the effort. One of the keys to recapturing Earth will be the Raknar of Cartwright’s Cavaliers, but the power sources of many of the giant mecha have become unusable over the course of history.

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."

James Kirk's failure to obey the Prime Directive has reduced a planet to a post-nuclear horrorscape...or is a far more sinister force at work? Featuring a dramatic reading by James Doohan, and enhanced with sound effects and an original score!

Human descendants of the Earth colony ship Destiny face an incursion into their area of space by a powerful race. The Imperium Empire, which is ruled by the Krackus, is one wormhole away from the humans, and a rim mining planet, Kilmer, would be the alien race’s first contact. Fear rules the company leader. The Krackus represent danger. They sail powerful battleships. Moreover, the Naiad Council reels from the news that an alien race abuts their space. For centuries, humans in the Axis Crossing region thought they were alone.

Exhausted from a two-year rescue mission to a distant sector of space, and with resources strained by four thousand extra mouths to feed, the crew of the starship Phoenix yearns for the luxuries of home. But when the ship makes the final jump into atevi space, they learn the worst: supplies to their home station have been cut off; civil war has broken out on the atevi mainland; the powerful Western Association has been overthrown; and Tabini-aiji is missing and may be dead.

With the alien Dhryn cutting a pathway through the inhabited spaceways - bringing about the annihilation of many of the races who have the misfortune to lie along the star trail they are following - time is running out for all sentient life-forms. Can biologists Mackenzie Connor and Emily Mamami solve the riddle of the Dhryn before their part of the galaxy becomes as dead as the mysterious region known as the Chasm?

John Lee has come far from his time as a struggling survivor of the System Apocalypse. But now, his actions have gone too far, and he has drawn the ire of the Galactic Council. Not only he and his friends, but Earth itself, are faced with the displeasure of the Council. With the whole galaxy turned against them, John will have to scramble for allies and make Faustian deals to save Earth. But against the might of multiple empires, will it be enough?

The McCormacks have their floating city growing in the South Pacific, and their space station well underway. As they continue their quest to unite Earth and bring her into the modern age of space travel and repair her environment before it’s too late, they have to fight with the major powers that aren’t too sure they want to change the status quo. Now they have discovered an incoming asteroid the size of Ceres. What will it take to unite Earth to deal with this threat to its very existence? And what other threats may be lurking there?

The McCormacks have been trying to keep a low profile so they can complete their plan to bring Earth to the club of spacefaring civilizations without creating a world war over the technology. But it’s hard to keep a low profile while building a space station, what with lifting all the material they need, designing new shuttles, and harnessing asteroids. Without any other choice, they go public.

CDF Lieutenant Harry Wilson has one simple task: Watch an ambassador’s dog while the diplomat is conducting sensitive negotiations with an alien race. But you know dogs - always getting into something. And when this dog gets into something that could launch an alien civil war, Wilson has to find a way to solve the conflict, fast, or be the one in the Colonial Union’s doghouse. "The Dog King" is a tale from John Scalzi's The Human Division, a series of self-contained but interrelated short stories set in the Old Man's War universe.

Evie Shao and her sister, Kass, aren’t on speaking terms. Fifteen years ago on a family camping trip, their father and brother vanished. Their dad turned up days later, dehydrated and confused—and convinced he'd been abducted by aliens. Their brother, Jakob, remained missing. The women dealt with it very differently. Kass, suspecting her college-dropout twin simply ran off, became the rock of the family. Evie traded academics to pursue alien conspiracy theories, always looking for Jakob.

After the events at Camp David, the Terran Alliance faces a crossroads - act upon this tragedy and start a war, or refrain and change the course of history. The choice is not easy. The incident leaves a young captain, Lucy Grimes, in full control of the Alliance, thrust against her will into leadership of the most powerful organization known to man.

Decades after Bull took control of the long-abandoned facility on the moon of Tambu, it has become a refuge, a weapons manufacturing facility, and a holding point for The Company’s varied assets. It has remained one of The Company’s closest-held secrets.

United States Diplomat Danielle Lowen was there when one of her fellow diplomats committed an unthinkable act that had consequences for the entire planet. Now she’s trying to figure out how it happened before it can happen again. Putting the puzzle pieces together could solve the mystery - or it could threaten her own life. "The Gentle Art of Cracking Heads" is a tale from John Scalzi's The Human Division, a series of self-contained but interrelated short stories set in the Old Man's War universe.

In the conclusion of the Poseidon's Children saga, the Akinya family receives an invitation from across the stars - and a last opportunity to redeem their name.... "Send Ndege". The cryptic message originated 70 light-years away from the planet Crucible, where Ndege Akinya lives under permanent house arrest for her role in the catastrophe that killed 417,000 people. Could it be from her mother, Chiku, who vanished during a space expedition decades earlier?

Nicole Hammond was just trying to survive on the streets of Philadelphia. Then she and her partner, Bungie, were abducted by a race of mysterious mothlike aliens and taken to a strange ship called the Fyrantha. Now, she is a Sibyl, a special human that has the ability to communicate with the aliens and their ship, and no one is happy. Competing factions control different parts of the Fyrantha with the humans and other sentient aliens caught in the middle. But Nicole is done being bullied, and now, she has a plan to take control of the ship.