Space Science

Autistic scientist Yasira Shien has developed a radical new energy drive that could change the future of humanity. But when she activates it, reality warps, destroying the space station and everyone aboard. The AI gods who rule the galaxy declare her work heretical, and Yasira is abducted by their agents. Instead of simply executing her, they offer mercy - if she'll help them hunt down a bigger target: her own mysterious, vanished mentor. With her homeworld's fate in the balance, Yasira must choose who to trust: the gods and their ruthless post-human angels, or a rebel scientist....

When a minor trade partner sends the Castle Federation a desperate call for aid, they have few resources to spare from their all-consuming war against the Terran Commonwealth. Unwilling to be seen failing their allies but able to spare only a tiny force, Castle sends a hero to command the task group: Captain Kyle Roberts, the Stellar Fox. Beyond the Rimward frontier of the Federation and its allies, little is as it seems. The pirates are being armed by an outside force, and the politics of these worlds is made deadlier by their poverty.

The 200 years' (and counting) peace was a time of tranquility that hasn't been seen since...well, ever. Mankind in the Galactic Age had finally conquered war, so what was left for the military to do but drink and barbecue? That's the kind of military that Sergeant R. Wilson Rogers lived in before he left the fleet to become a smuggler. But it turns out that smuggling is hard. Like getting-arrested-for-dealing-with-pirates-and-forced-back-into-service kind of hard.

For millennia, the Shaa have subjugated the universe, forcing the myriad sentient races to bow to their joyless tyranny. But the Shaa will soon be no more. The Dread Empire is in its rapidly fading twilight, and with its impending fall comes the promise of a new galactic order...and bloody chaos. A young Terran naval officer marked by his lowly birth, Lt. Gareth Martinez is the first to recognize the insidious plot of the Naxid - the powerful, warlike insectoid society that was enslaved before all others - to replace the masters’ despotic rule with their own.

The Blood Angels Chapter of Space Marines is under threat. Having obliterated all human life in the Red Scar region of space, the largest tendril of Hivefleet Leviathan ever seen in the Imperium has converged and is making relentlessly for Baal. To face this awesome foe, Commander Dante has called upon the Successor Chapters of the ancient Ninth Legion. The Sons of Sanguinius gather in numbers not seen since the dark days of the Horus Heresy.

Scientists have just announced an historic discovery on a par with the splitting of the atom: The Higgs boson, the key to understanding why mass exists has been found. In The Particle at the End of the Universe, Caltech physicist and acclaimed writer Sean Carroll takes readers behind the scenes of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN to meet the scientists and explain this landmark event.

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 petty criminal Cal Carver is locked in a cell with a deranged, semi-naked cannibal, he suspects his life has hit its lowest point. He is mistaken. Abducted by aliens and whisked across the galaxy, Cal is thrown into a team of misfits and criminals and sent on a top secret mission for the president of Space. And that's when everything starts to go very, very wrong....

The three va Sithai brothers - that's us - cruise the universe looking for abandoned ships, treasure, and other pirate ships to rob. Right now, we're on the hunt for the Buoyant Star, an abandoned cruiser rumored to have a massive treasure inside. The ship's been found at the edge of an ice field at the far reaches of space. That treasure? About to be all ours. But the ship's not all that abandoned. The Star is crewed by a few lonely, attractive human females who are thoroughly grateful at being rescued. Actually, wait. They're not grateful at all.

Somewhere on the outer rim of the universe, a mass of decaying world-ships known as the Legion is traveling in the seams between the stars. For generations, a war for control of the Legion has been waged, with no clear resolution. As worlds continue to die, a desperate plan is put into motion. Zan wakes with no memory, prisoner of a people who say they are her family.

Colin MacIntyre's life as a NASA astronaut might not have been exciting, but at least it was orderly. Unfortunately, he's been tapped for greater things, and he isn't too sure he likes it. First he was kidnapped by an ancient, self-aware starship masquerading as Earth's moon. Then he was drafted as its captain to suppress a 5,000-year-old mutiny. And then he had to mobilize the planet against the attack of an eons-old ancient menace dedicated to the eradication of all intelligent life in the galaxy! It's hard to blame him for feeling a little stressed....

The dwarfish, fetally damaged yet brilliant Miles Vorkosigan has more than his share of troubles. Having recently escaped an assassination plot whose tool was a brainwashed clone of himself, Miles has set the clone, Mark, free for a new chance at life. But when he decides to let his clone brother assume his secret identity and lead the Dendarii Free Mercenary on an unauthorized mission to liberate other clones from the outlaw planet of Jackson's Whole, things get really messy.

Few perspectives epitomize the sheer drama and sacrifice of combat more perfectly than those of the fighter pilots of World War II. As romanticized as any soldier in history, the World War II fighter pilot was viewed as larger than life: a dashing soul waging war amongst the clouds. In the 65-plus years since the Allied victory, stories of these pilots' heroics have never been in short supply. But what about their adversaries - the highly skilled German aviators who pushed the Allies to the very brink of defeat?

Mal wins an old map in a card game. Ancient and written in impenetrable symbols, the former owner insists it's worthless. Yet River Tam can read it, and says it leads to one of the Arks - legendary ships that brought humans from Earth-that-was to the 'Verse. The salvage potential alone is staggering. But the closer they get to the ancient ship, the more agitated River becomes.

Restoring the empire that had been destroyed 45 years earlier, Emperor Colin finds problems in the genocidal Achuutani and in his children, Sean and Harriet, who have been marooned on a hostile planet.

With impressive examples von Däniken illustrates some of the numerous cities that were dug underground as safe harbors from the destructive boulders. Miles and miles of underground passageways have been discovered around the world as they made space for villages and entire cities. To end the book, von Däniken presents his newest discoveries of an event: In 2017, the author was informed that strange mummified creatures were found near the Peruvian village of Nazca. One of the mummies, apparently several thousand years ago, had been implanted with a metal plate under the skin.

Neapolis: a desert city on planet Bethel where all manner of entertainment is found: High-stakes gambling, luxurious hotels, exclusive clubs, and any form of diversion imaginable may be had for a price. It’s the eve of the annual carnival: three days of decadent revelry, and Serenity arrives to take a security job, guarding a costly shipment. But the shipment is stolen, and the wealthy owner kidnaps Zoë and Book, holding them to ransom for the lost shipment’s value. If Mal can’t find the enormous sum of 500 platinum by the next evening, both of them will be killed.

Prince Roger MacClintock, Tertiary Heir to the Throne of Man, was a spoiled rotten, arrogant, whiny, thoroughly useless young pain in the butt. But that was before an assassination attempt marooned the Royal Brat and his bodyguards on the planet Marduk, and before they had to march half way around the entire planet, through 120-degree heat and five-hour rainstorms in jungles full of damnbeasts, capetoads, killerpillars, and atul-grak, not to mention hostile peoples, to make their way back to port.

For eons, Earth has been under observation by the Firstborn, beings almost as old as the universe itself. The Firstborn are unknown to humankind - until they act. In an instant, Earth is carved up and reassembled like a huge jigsaw puzzle. Suddenly the planet and every living thing on it no longer exist in a single timeline.

It has been 40 years since the publication of this classic science-fiction novel that changed the way we look at the stars and ourselves. From the savannas of Africa at the dawn of mankind to the rings of Saturn as man adventures to the outer rim of our solar system, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a journey unlike any other.