Space Opera First Contact

Accidentally getting tagged by a rogue element, he thwarted corporate espionage at Maverick Mecha Manufacturing. Lavella Hemoesta, the owner of Maverick, met with him to work out a deal so her company wouldn't be given bad press. That meeting changed the future for both Lavella and Zander.

The heart-stopping third episode in the Eden Paradox series. After 18 years, the quarantine that has protected humanity’s survivors on the planet Esperia is about to end. Mankind won't stand a chance without external help. Yet in the middle of a galactic war, who is concerned about one small planet when worlds fall every day?

Years after clean energy ended the world’s reliance on fossil fuels, a lull of peace encompasses all of humanity. Some think we should travel to the distant corners of the galaxy; others oppose the idea, thinking that the harnessed singularity reactors are unnatural. When a terrorist group attacks the Lunar colony, members of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force are divided as a result of the incursion. Years later, Lieutenant Commander Kyle Torres comes face to face with old friends, as he’s thrown into an assignment that could change everything.

Hudson Powell and Tory Bellona scour the galaxy for priceless alien artefacts found inside wrecked starships called Revocaters. Once the guardians of life in the universe, the Revocaters were destroyed by a super-powered AI, known as Goliath. Thwarted before it could finish its task, Goliath has now returned to fulfil its purpose, and wipe out all sentient life in the universe.

Captain Picard has never encountered an opponent more powerful than Q, a being from another continuum who is dangerous, obnoxious, mysterious, and seemingly all-powerful. But now, Trelane has tapped in to an awesome power source that makes him more powerful than the entire continuum. Q warns that Trelane has become unspeakably dangerous - this time the stakes are all of creation. Read by John de Lancie.

Less than three months have passed since Captain Charlotte Omandi and the crew of Earth’s first starship, the TSS Bladerunner, narrowly prevented an extinction-level event from wiping out humanity. Omandi knows Earth remains on borrowed time, until she meets with leaders of the Galactic Confederation to convince them that our planet no longer represents a threat. As she and her crew prepare to become the first humans to travel outside our solar system, a string of assassination attempts lead them to an unlikely mystery.

Outpost One: Resistance, the peacekeeping station in alliance space, is mired in political turmoil and dangerous conditions from the Colony, a race of giant devouring insectoids. Commander Jess Cinders and Admiral Lucia Bellardo fight the troubles besieging the outpost from multiple directions. Sand serpents, Usaanans, are suspected of undercutting outpost contracts, necessitating Major Sam Fleetfoot investigate the source of their production.

The Dusman offered to let humanity become their servitors, but the leaders of Earth’s Four Horsemen were unified in their decision: No, thanks. With the Dusman returning in strength, though, and steadily growing their influence and armed presence, humanity finds itself in a difficult place. The Guild War continues to rage, with planets becoming increasingly desperate for nonexistent help, while the Mercenary Guild continues to sit on its hands, despite Nigel Shirazi’s attempts to break the deadlock.

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.

It is the second stage of human colonization - the first age, humanity's initial attempt to people the stars, ended in disaster when it was discovered that Earth's original superluminal drive did permanent genetic damage to all who used it - mutating Earth's far-flung colonists in mind and body. Now, one of Earth's first colonies has given humanity back the stars, but at a high price - a monopoly over all human commerce. And when a satellite in earth's outer orbit is viciously attacked by corporate raiders, an unusual young woman flees to a ship bound for the Up-and-Out.

When a lab experiment results in a group of scientists gaining extremely long life, they realize that if they stay on Earth, they'll soon become lab specimens. To escape this, they decide to travel to the stars. Unfortunately, the stars are already occupied.

When Nathan stops a brutal attack on an unsuspecting victim, he gets more than he bargained for and sets into motion events that will change his life forever. They told him he should’ve run away, and maybe they were right. Nathan is about to embark on an adventure of a lifetime. Aliens are real. He has something they need, and they’re not the only ones hunting for it.

Fifteen outstanding authors. Fourteen extraordinary stories. One best-selling universe. It’s the 22nd century. The galaxy has opened up to humanity as a hyperactive beehive of stargates and new technologies, and we suddenly find ourselves in a vast playground of different races, environments, and cultures. Enter the Four Horsemen universe, where only a willingness to fight and die for money separates humans from the majority of the other races. Enter a galaxy not only of mercenaries, but also of aliens, hired assassins, and accountants. Accountants?

Halmey Dz and her partner, Connla Kurucz, are salvage operators, living just on the inside of the law...usually. Theirs is the perilous and marginal existence - with barely enough chance of striking it fantastically big - just once - to keep them coming back for more. They pilot their tiny ship into the scars left by unsuccessful White Transitions, searching for the relics of lost human and alien vessels. But when they make a shocking discovery about an alien species that has been long thought dead, it may tip the perilous peace mankind has found into full-out war.

In a new Cold War between Earth and the colonies on Mars, when devastating weapons go missing, there's only one team you can call - the Outriders. A crack force of highly specialized super-soldiers, their clone bodies are near-immortal. When a fully-autonomous vessel with orbital strike capabilities goes missing, it's up to the Outriders to track the un-trackable. But when the trail leads them to the influential Martian People's Collective Republic, the operation gets a lot more complicated.

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?

National best-selling author and winner of three Hugo Awards, C.J. Cherryh returns to the universe of her acclaimed Foreigner trilogy - with an epic tale of the survivors of a lost spacecraft stranded on a planet inhabited by a hostile, sentient race. The beginning of a second trilogy, Precursor follows a single human delegate living among aliens, who are just gaining access to space.

Star humans were engineered to exist within the mantle of a star, mere tools of their Earth-evolved makers in a war against the Xeelee, owners of the universe. Stephen Baxter's third novel in his magnificent Xeelee Sequence is an exotic and endearing story of an abandoned people. Abandoned to their fate, their history lost along with contact with their makers, Star people survive in an environment that is possibly the strangest in science fiction.

Gnat the Devourer is becoming a more prominent figure in grand space politics. Sure, he may not be totally independent yet, but he has enough leeway to be able to differentiate Earth's interests from those of its Geckho suzerains and act exclusively for the good of his own kind. Gnat must balance obligations to his almighty suzerains against a desire to advance humanity's position in space, and his home planet's search for ever more allies.

Time is running out for the people of New Pallas. Nobody knows that better than Alvera Renata, a tenacious captain determined to scout past the stars with nothing but a handpicked crew and a promise: to find a new home for humanity. But when a perilous journey across dark space leads to first contact with a galactic civilization on the brink of war, Alvera soon realises keeping her word might not be as easy as she thought.