Space Science

The newly renamed Vance Turbo has sabotaged his own career at Space Fleet Academy due to a desire to atone for a training accident. Unfortunately, his actions result in him getting press-ganged into an expendable crew of misfits recruited by a legendary starship captain. Their mission? To recover a collection of lost sun-destroying missiles that could restart a galactic war. Unfortunately, Vance is smart enough to know something is wrong with this picture. After all, no sane person would recruit this crew to save the universe.

Covert agent Sigmund Ausfaller is Earth's secret weapon, humanity's best defense against all conspiracies, real and imaginary, and all foes both human and alien. Who better than a brilliant paranoid to expose the devious plots of others?

But Sigmund may finally have met his match in Nessus, representative of the secretive Puppeteers, the elder race who wield vastly superior technologies.

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.

This collection includes 'Chosen of Khorne' by Anthony Reynolds, 'Throne of Lies' by Aaron-Dembski Bowden, 'Perfection' by Nick Kyme, 'Ahriman: The First Prince' by John French, 'Repairer of Ruin' by Josh Reynolds, and 'The Embrace of Pain' by Ian St Martin.

New York Times best-selling author Eric Flint’s 1632 presented listeners with a fascinating alternate history of the Thirty Years’ War, through the eyes of a West Virginia community tossed back in time to 17th-century Germany. Here, Flint teams up with acclaimed science fiction author David Weber to continue his epic tale. In 1633, the West Virginians attempt to use their modern-day knowledge to build a resistance against the forces of France, Spain, and England.

After being court-martialed by the Space Legion for ordering the strafing of a treaty-signing ceremony, multimillionaire Willard Phule receives his punishment: He must command the misfit Omega Company on Haskin's Planet, a mining settlement on the edge of settled space. At his duty station, he leverages his personal money and a knack for managing people to get the company to come together as a unit.

Over the years, humans have grown used to their position within the empire, serving as soldiers and spacers for alien masters as well as building a place in the universe for themselves. But now, in the aftermath of a violent interstellar war that shattered the power of the Alphans, humanity has rediscovered its pride.

The hunt for the Higgs particle has involved the biggest, most expensive experiment ever. So exactly what is this particle? Why does it matter so much? What does it tell us about the universe? Was finding it really worth all the effort? The short answer is yes. The Higgs field is proposed as the way in which particles gain mass - a fundamental property of matter. It's the strongest indicator yet that the Standard Model of physics really does reflect the basic building blocks of our universe. Little wonder the hunt and discovery of this new particle produced such intense media interest.

This is the way the world ends—not with a whimper, but a bang. It was the only thing running through Cedrick Jonkheer's mind when the alien pylons made landfall. The Intergalactic Imperium used their right of Eminent Domain to appropriate the planet to build a goddamned highway… and all Jonx got was a sarcastic AI and some superpowers. The end of times came, and mankind was not prepared. He watched his world burn, then hid himself away at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Have you ever had a bad day? Sergeant Paul Mitchell had. It was the kind of bad day where nothing went right, everything that could go wrong went wrong, and everyone died. He knew that was always a possibility in the marines, but it really sucked when it happened to you: it wasn't your fault, and you still took the fall for everything. With his career dead and buried, he's forced to make it as a freelancer; a jack of all trades but a master of none. Just when he thought life couldn't get any worse a couple of stupid kids proved him wrong...again.

Like his fellow lunarnauts - otherwise known as Moonies - living on Moon Base Alpha, twelve-year-old Dashiell Gibson is famous the world over for being one of the first humans to live on the moon. And he's bored out of his mind. Kids aren't allowed on the lunar surface, meaning they're trapped inside the tiny moon base with next to nothing to occupy their time - and the only other kid Dash's age spends all his time hooked into virtual reality games.

The best-selling, epic space adventure, Freedom's Fire: the complete series of six audiobooks, in one bundle.

New planets are fair game to asset strippers and interplanetary opportunists – and a commercial mission to a distant star system discovers a moon that is pitch black, but alive with radio activity. Its high-gravity, high-pressure, zero-oxygen environment is anathema to human life, but ripe for exploitation. They named it Shroud. Under no circumstances should a human end up on Shroud’s inhospitable surface. Except a catastrophic accident sees Juna Ceelander and Mai Ste Etienne doing just that.

Here is the novel that will be forever considered a triumph of the imagination. Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, who would become the mysterious man known as Maud'dib. He would avenge the traitorous plot against his noble family and would bring to fruition humankind's most ancient and unattainable dream.

Merritt Alder is done with Earth. The planet is polluted and overpopulated, and its people are hungry. Earth's first colony, Galena, is a pioneer world 10,000 light years away. It has clean air, unpolluted water, and continents of arable land. Anyone can start a new life…if they can get there. For Merritt, the journey is only the beginning. Obstacles arise every step of the way, forcing compromise and sacrifice. And not everyone on his ship is pure of heart. The bonds he forges on the journey will be the key to surviving on another world—a world anyone has yet to fully explore.

Donovan is a world of remarkable wealth that comes at a high price. When Supervisor Kalico Aguila's ship arrives, she discovers a failing colony, its government overthrown, the few remaining colonists gone wild. Donovan could make her career - or kill her. Planetside, Talina Perez is one of three rulers of the Port Authority colony - the only law in the one remaining town. With the Corporate ship demanding answers about the things she's done, Perez could lose everything, including her life. For Dan Wirth, Donovan is a last chance. A psychopath with a death sentence looming over his head, he will make a desperate play for power. No matter who he has to corrupt, murder, or destroy. Captain Max Taggart is the Corporation's enforcer. But is it too late to seize control of Donovan?

Kylie Rhoads is a junker. She makes her living traveling the stars, salvaging abandoned ships left over from pirate attacks on the edge of the Gedri system. Some of the hulls are legal for the taking, most aren't. When a salvage job goes bad, Kylie finds herself on the wrong end of a gun. The hand holding that gun? The SA Space Force, just the people Kylie wants to avoid. To avoid prison, Kylie makes a deal to go deep into the Gedri System and rescue a simple girl. But out on the fringe, nothing is as it seems.

When the Terran Union has a mission that must not fail, it calls upon the Strike Marines. They are trained to improvise, adapt, overcome and win every fight. Terran Strike Marines: Publisher's Pack is an action-packed military science-fiction adventure set in the best-selling Ember War universe. This pack includes The Dotari Salvation and The Rage of Winter.

Sylvestri Yarrow is on a streak of bad luck with no end of sight. She's been doing her best to keep the family cargo business going after her mom's death, but between mounting debt and increasing attacks by the Nihil on unsuspecting ships, Syl is in danger of losing all she has left of her mother. She heads to the galactic capital of Coruscant for help, but gets sidetracked when she's drawn into a squabble between two of the Republic's most powerful families over a patch of space on the frontier.

In this anthology, you'll find 17 tales of conflict and heroism, exploration and discovery, endurance and triumph. Flee the apocalypse of modern-day Earth, fly a fighter in the cold emptiness of deep space, and find new life on the distant shores of an alien world. You might even discover something about yourself as each author opens a window on the soul of mankind.