Space Science

Multiverse travel is finally possible, but there’s just one catch: No one can visit a world where their counterpart is still alive. Enter Cara, whose parallel selves happen to be exceptionally good at dying—from disease, turf wars, or vendettas they couldn’t outrun. Cara’s life has been cut short on 372 worlds in total. On this dystopian Earth, however, Cara has survived. Identified as an outlier and therefore a perfect candidate for multiverse travel, Cara is plucked from the dirt of the wastelands.

Fleeing Earth after an alien invasion, the human race stands on the threshold of evolution. Their new home is Luna, a moon colony blessed with creature comforts, prolonged lifespans, digital memories, and instant sex changes. But the people of Luna are bored, restless, suicidal - and so is the computer that monitors their existence.

Tensions are running high when multibillionaire Lars Sjoburg is poisoned and demands to go home, and everyone is looking to Dash Gibson to solve the case in this third and final book in the New York Times best-selling Moon Base Alpha series.

Here, Simmons returns to this richly imagined world of technological achievement, excitement, wonder and fear. Endymion is a story about love and memory, triumph and terror - an instant candidate for the field's highest honors.

From launchpad explosions to a pernicious cricket infestation to the demanding management style of Musk himself, the rise of SpaceX was beset with challenges and far from inevitable. Find out how the startup beat the odds and flew high enough to outpace their rivals... and where they're going next.

The day that changed Melody's life was like any other over the previous two years. She'd found she had a gift for writing, and her career as an author had almost healed the pain of losing her job. When the Secret Service rang her bell, everything changed. Something was nearing Saturn…and it was slowing down. Had she been right about the object?

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.

After one great battle, the Architects disappeared. Yet humanity’s fragile peace is brief. For, 40 years later, the galaxy’s greatest alien enemy has returned. This time, the artefacts that preserved entire worlds from destruction are ineffective. And no planet is safe. The Human Colony worlds are in turmoil as they face extinction. Some believe alliances with other species can save them. Others insist humanity must fight alone. But no one has the firepower or technology to ensure victory, as the Architects loom ever closer.

Five years ago, the US Space Force became a reality. And while those writing the checks took things very seriously, the other military branches did not. As a result, Space Force was populated by undesirables. My name is Captain Ethan Stone, a decorated member of SEAL Team Six turned Space Force "recruit". Flash forward five years and between tenses. President West is in office. Power has shifted. And Space Force is defunded. With just a handful of us still living on base, we find ourselves being evicted. But before all of us can leave, aliens invade.

On Mars, a scientist experiments with a new engine that will one day become the drive that fuels humanity's journey into the stars. On an asteroid station, a group of prisoners are oblivious to the catastrophe that awaits them. On a future Earth beset by overpopulation, pollution, and poverty, a crime boss desperately seeks to find a way off planet. On an alien world, a human family struggles to establish a colony and make a new home. All these stories and more are featured in this unmissable collection of short fiction set in the hardscrabble world of The Expanse.

Held captive by Dark Horse Company, Captain Axel Finn is faced with a mission to humanity’s ancestral home after all contact with the planet is lost. Learning his mother might be hiding there, Axel agrees to help his adversaries, and deploy on Vengeance, the last Steward ship. But his decision might lead to his downfall if the Wrath have already arrived on Earth. On the treacherous Wooly planet of Dari, bounty hunter Rangnar Soki becomes the prey, finding himself the target in a deadly game of survival. His path to rejoin Axel’s crew hinges on passing a test of Dari’s most revered guardian.

Randall Munroe's past won't stay dead. Born Tyler Callas, the pampered heir of a Corporate Council scion, he fled that life and adapted the new identity of Randall Munroe so he could join the Commonwealth Space Fleet Marine Corps' elite Force Recon unit in the war against the alien Tahni Imperium. But when he returned from the war, his old life found him. His mother, Corporate Council Executive Patrice Damiani, tracked him down and tried to return him to her web of control, even if she had to have his personality altered by drugs and psychological brainwashing to do it.

As the combat escalates across the galaxy, the stage is set for an explosive endgame: Obi-Wan undertakes a perilous mission to destroy the dreaded Separatist military leader General Grievous. Palpatine, eager to secure even greater control, subtly influences public opinion to turn against the Jedi. And a conflicted Anakin, tormented by unspeakable visions, edges dangerously closer to the brink of a galaxy-shaping decision.

Darth Tyranus. Count of Serenno. Leader of the Separatists. A red saber, unsheathed in the dark. But who was he before he became the right hand of the Sith? As Dooku courts a new apprentice, the hidden truth of the Sith Lord’s past begins to come to light.

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.

Grand Admiral Thrawn faces the ultimate test of his loyalty to the Empire in this epic Star Wars novel from best-selling author Timothy Zahn.

Colonel Butler has paid his dues and just wants to enjoy his retirement on a remote planet. But the galaxy has had other plans. He has been roped into searching for a politician’s missing son and an industry magnate’s missing daughter. He has been kidnapped, violated numerous laws, and caused the destruction of colonial facilities. He’s famous—or infamous, depending on who you ask—praised and reviled in equal measure across the galaxy for his exploits.

Terminal Lance Lucky Lee Savage likes his life. Sure, doing PT hungover is a pain, but no one can dodge responsibility like he can - or sweet-talk the cooks into giving out double rations.

Mercury, a lifeless victim of the Sun’s expanding power. Venus, once thought to be lush and fertile, now known to be trapped within a toxic and boiling atmosphere. Mars, the red planet, doomed by the loss of its atmosphere. Jupiter, twice the size of all the other planets combined, but insubstantial. Saturn, a stunning celestial beauty, the jewel of our Solar System. Uranus, the sideways planet and the first ice giant. Neptune, dark, cold and whipped by supersonic winds. Pluto, the dwarf planet, a frozen rock.

The Martian meets Gravity when Army Pilot Vaughn Singleton, Earth’s last man, rushes to Area 51 in search of a spaceplane after he discovers the last woman is stranded on the International Space Station and barely alive - thus beginning a race against time. The event that wiped life from the planet started at the supercollider. It created a rift in space-time. The astronaut stranded aboard the space station, Commander Angela Brown, is a theoretical physicist who used to work at the collider.