Space Science

One hundred years before Ender's Game, the aliens arrived on Earth with fire and death. Earth Afire by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston is the story of the First Formic War. Victor Delgado beat the alien ship to Earth, but just barely. Not soon enough to convince skeptical governments that there was a threat. They didn't believe that until space stations and ships and colonies went up in sudden flame. And when that happened, only Mazer Rackham and the Mobile Operations Police could move fast enough to meet the threat.

Ex-Army paratrooper Griffin “Fin” Brooks thought he left danger behind when his battlefield injuries forced him to pursue a new career in marine biology. But one fateful night off the coast of South Africa, a ship nearly crashes into him and his loyal golden retriever, Jacques. Not just any ship. A starship. Though its alien pilot is dead, the rare extraterrestrial animal inside is not. Fin learns the creature is being smuggled across the galaxy when a pair of interstellar visitors respond to the crash. But those same investigators accuse Fin and his dog of crimes he didn’t even know existed.

Calista is happy with her life of scientific research. She doesn't need love, she has her books, her friends, and her work. Things are fine until her ship is attacked by space pirates and crash lands on a desert planet with heat so intense she and her friends can't survive without help. Ladon is a Zmaj warrior resigned to a life alone, who only desires to protect his treasures. His hopes for a mate faded long ago, yet when he meets Calista something stirs. It takes only one look to know that she belongs to him.

When the Ornu came, they took Earth in a single night. Humanity never stood a chance. Now, they force us to crew their ships and fight their wars for them. They hold Earth hostage, and if we refuse to do their bidding, they’ll lay waste to our precious blue marble. Slaughtering the billions who live there. But when Captain Bill Henderson is sent to claim a small moon for his masters, he finds something they never accounted for. An ancient warship – a behemoth abandoned for millennia by a species that reached its peak at the dawn of the universe.

Out of the blue, a young Space Fleet officer's dream becomes reality: He's made captain of a starship. Just in time for the return of humanity's most terrible enemy, after 50 years of peace. To survive against this enemy, Captain Tad Thatcher will have to do more than learn how to become an effective commander, or how to wrangle his wayward crew. He will need to reinvent space combat. From scratch.

Mark and his brother Tyler survived the slums with a gun in their hand and a blade in their sleeve. While it won't get them hired at a corporation, the Troopers are always looking for trained killers. The EMF offers education, medical care, food, and real pay. They have a chance at a new life, one where they don't have to worry about a rival gang killing them in the street. With a 35-year EMF contract, the Victor brothers might have a new life, but it comes at a hefty cost. Peace doesn't last, and the EMF doesn't care how many troopers die as long as they complete their mission.

The Warmaster’s horde advances through the fire and ash of Terra's dying breaths, forcing the loyalists back to the Delphic Battlement—the very walls of the Sanctum Imperialis. Angron, Primarch of the World Eaters and Herald of Horus, has achieved immortality through annihilation—now he leads the armies of the damned in a wrathful tide, destroying all before them as the warp begins its poisonous corruption of Terra's very soil.

After years of waiting in the shadows, Darth Sidious is taking the first step in his master plan to bring the Republic to its knees. Key to his scheme are the Neimoidians of the Trade Federation. Then one of his Neimoidian contacts disappears, and Sidious does not need his Force-honed instincts to suspect betrayal. He orders his apprentice, Darth Maul, to hunt the traitor down.

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.

The Traitor Host of Horus Lupercal tightens its iron grip on the Palace of Terra, and one by one the walls and bastions begin to crumple and collapse. Rogal Dorn, Praetorian of Terra, redoubles his efforts to keep the relentless enemy at bay, but his forces are vastly outnumbered and hopelessly outgunned. Dorn simply cannot defend everything. Any chance of survival now requires sacrifice, but what battles dare he lose so that others can be won? Is there one tactical stroke, one crucial combat, that could turn the tide forever and win the war outright?

Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr was a Confederation Marine's marine. She'd survived more deadly encounters---and kept more of her officers and enlistees alive---than anyone in the Corps, and she was determined to keep that record intact. But since her last mission, she'd been sidelined into endless briefings and debriefings with no end in sight. So, of course, she'd jumped at the chance to go to Crucible---the Marine Corps training planet---as a temporary aide to Major Svensson.

Only as interstellar mercenaries can humans go to the stars; the aliens who already dominate the galaxy allow no other recourse. But when Swordsman Third Class Kana Karr and his comrades-in-arms are betrayed and abandoned on a hostile world by their alien masters, the warriors from Earth begin a desperate but glorious march across a planet whose every sword is against them. Their actions may doom humanity's future...or lead the way to an empire of their own!

The dying Empire's most cunning and ruthless warlord - Grand Admiral Thrawn - has taken command of the remnants of the Imperial fleet and launched a massive campaign aimed at the New Republic's destruction. With the aid of unimaginable weapons long hidden away on a backwater planet, Thrawn plans to turn the tide of battle, overwhelm the New Republic, and impose his iron rule. Meanwhile, Han and Lando Calrissian race against time to find proof of treason inside the highest Republican Council.

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.

A great darkness has befallen the galaxy, and the armies of Chaos are rampant. To survive, humanity must retaliate and take back what they have lost. By the will of the reborn primarch, Roboute Guilliman, is the Indomitus Crusade launched - a military undertaking that eclipses all others in known history. From the Throneworld of Terra does the Avenging Son hurl his fleets, their mission the very salvation of mankind.

A Princess of Mars was the first book by Edgar Rice Burroughs to feature the character John Carter. It led to an 11-book series featuring his adventures and became the basis for the 2012 movie. Carter is a war-weary former military captain during the Civil War who is inexplicably transported to Mars. He quickly (and reluctantly) becomes embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions among the inhabitants of the planet.

In the stunning continuation of the epic adventure begun in Hyperion, Simmons returns us to a far future resplendent with drama and invention. Onthe world of Hyperion, the mysterious Time Tombs are opening. And the secrets they contain mean that nothing - nothing anywhere in the universe - will ever be the same.

Kay’s life is pretty boring. She goes to school, spends quiet evenings at home with her foster mom, and has the occasional brush with mischief thanks to her best and only friend Will. But everything is about to change. One night, Kay tags along on another one of Will’s adventures, and they both end up recruited by a talking fox to become Netherjacks, protectors of all the worlds. Once they arrive at the training academy, though, Will is paired with a legendary Netherwing mount and quickly rises in the trainee ranks, leaving Kay behind with barely a glance.

Twenty years have passed since Darth Bane, reigning Dark Lord of the Sith, demolished the ancient order devoted to the dark side and reinvented it as a circle of two: one Master to wield the power and pass on the wisdom, and one apprentice to learn, challenge, and ultimately usurp the Dark Lord in a duel to the death. But Bane’s acolyte, Zannah, has yet to engage her Master in mortal combat and prove herself a worthy successor. Determined that the Sith dream of galactic domination will not die with him, Bane vows to learn the secret of a forgotten Dark Lord that will assure the Sith’s immortality - and his own.

Until the End of Time is Brian Greene's breathtaking new exploration of the cosmos and our quest to find meaning in the face of this vast expanse. Greene takes us on a journey from the big bang to the end of time, exploring how lasting structures formed, how life and mind emerged, and how we grapple with our existence through narrative, myth, religion, creative expression, science, the quest for truth, and a deep longing for the eternal.