Space Universe

Star Wars: Heir to the Empire: Behind the Scenes is a special recording that features new commentary by author Timothy Zahn and editor Betsy Mitchell, written for the 20th anniversary edition of Heir to the Empire, read by Zahn and Mitchell. Included here is audio from the that new unabridged recording to enhance their comments.

Titan Valentino has been offered a job they can’t refuse. Tai, a gender-neutral courtesan, receives a scandalous proposition: seduce an actor’s virgin fiancée. The money is enough to pay off Tai’s crushing medical debt, a tantalizing prospect. Too bad Aisha Malik isn’t the easy target they expect. A standoffish historian who hates to be touched, she’s laser-focused on her career, and completely unaware that her marriage has been arranged behind her back. This could be the one instance where Tai’s charm and charisma fail them. Then an accidental heist throws them together as partners in crime.

How would Saturn’s rings look from a spaceship sailing just above them? If you were falling into a black hole, what’s the last thing you’d see before your spaghettification? What would it be like to visit the faraway places we currently experience only through high-powered telescopes and robotic emissaries? Faster-than-light travel may never be invented, but we can still take the scenic route through the universe with renowned astronomer and science communicator Philip Plait.

Cosmogenesis is one of the greatest discoveries in human history, and yet most science books do not explore the effects it has had on our individual minds. In Cosmogenesis, Brian Thomas Swimme narrates the same cosmological events that we agree are fact but offers a feature unlike all other writings on this topic. He tells the story of the universe while simultaneously telling the story of the storyteller.

Lucien Ortane is a Paragon in the Etherian Empire. His job is to explore the universe and spread Etherian doctrines of peace, justice, and immortality to sentient beings everywhere. Like all Paragons and most citizens, Lucien believes that Etherus, the benevolent ruler of the empire, is exactly who he claims to be: the one true God and creator of the universe.

In an alien city torn apart by crooked cops and ruthless criminals, private detective Dan Deadman specializes in cases unusual and bizarre. Sure, he doesn't smell great, and he's technically been dead for quite some time, but if you've got a rampaging Hell-beast tearing up your street, or a portal to another dimension appearing in your bathroom, Dan's your man. After saving a mysterious young woman named Ollie from the clutches of something big, slimy, and unpleasant, Dan gets entangled in a missing child case.

Ragnarok. Armageddon. Doomsday. Since the dawn of time, man has wondered how the world would end. In The Last Three Minutes, Paul Davies reveals the latest theories. Voiced in clear language that makes the cutting-edge science of quarks, neutrinos, wormholes, and metaverses accessible to the layman, The Last Three Minutes treats listeners to a wide range of conjectures about the ultimate fate of the universe.

Fleeing the scene of his latest mission, Val Con yos'Phelium finds himself saving the life of ex-mercenary Miri Robertson, a young Tarren on the run from interplanetary assassins. Thrown together by circumstances, Val Con and Miri struggle to elude their enemies and stay alive without slaying each other - or surrendering to the unexpected passion that flares between them.

For more than a decade, the Republic of the Sphere’s army hid in silence behind the mysterious, impregnable Wall of Fortress Republic. But now the Wall has come down, and Paladin Max Ergen, commander of Operation Eruptio, has his sights set on an invaluable prize. His target: Dieron, a Draconis Combine military district capital, a former Republic world harboring secrets from past wars. His troops have spent years training in isolation behind the Wall, and they are hungry for battle, ready to remind the Inner Sphere that the wounded Republic is still a force to be reckoned with.

On the run from interplanetary assassins, covert operative Val Con yos'Phelium and former mercenary sergeant Miri Robertson end up stranded on a distant planet - with no rescue in sight. Until they figure out a way back to Liad, these two lost souls must find a way to trust each other - and let their true love heal the dark wounds of their past.

Harry Cliff - a University of Cambridge particle physicist and researcher on the Large Hadron Collider - sets out in pursuit of answers. He ventures to the largest underground research facility in the world, deep beneath Italy's Gran Sasso mountains, where scientists gaze into the heart of the Sun using the most elusive of particles, the ghostly neutrino. He visits CERN in Switzerland to explore the "Antimatter Factory," where the stuff of science fiction is manufactured daily (and we're close to knowing whether it falls up).

In this brilliant exploration of our cosmic environment, the renowned particle physicist and New York Times best-selling author of Warped Passages and Knocking on Heaven's Door uses her research into dark matter to illuminate the startling connections between the farthest reaches of space and life here on Earth.

Prepare to learn everything we still don’t know about our strange and mysterious Universe. Humanity's understanding of the physical world is full of gaps. Not tiny little gaps you can safely ignore - there are huge yawning voids in our basic notions of how the world works. PHD Comics creator Jorge Cham and particle physicist Daniel Whiteson have teamed up to explore everything we don't know about the Universe: The enormous holes in our knowledge of the cosmos. Armed with entertaining and lucid explanations of science, they give us the best answers currently available.

The Ragger and Sekar aliens have pushed humanity to the brink of annihilation. Two hopes for survival - genetic modifications to protect against the Sekar, and the death pulse generator - are years from completion. With no other choice, Fleet Admiral Stone is forced to make a deal with the devil in the form of a mutually beneficial exchange of technology with the back-stabbing Raggers. Naturally, the Raggers haven’t changed. However, the aliens are about to discover that when humanity is pushed into a corner, anything goes.

The universe has gone dark. Interstellar communications has been lost across the Inner Sphere, threatening the corporate giant ComStar - and maybe civilization itself. Risking everything on a last chance for survival, ComStar has kidnapped the engineering genius Tucker Harwell, hoping he can unravel the mystery of the blackout. But Tucker isn’t just working on why it happened...he’s also trying to figure out who’s behind it.

You're no idiot, of course. You know Heisenburg's uncertainty principle has nothing to do with where you put your car keys. But modern cosmology is relatively complicated. The mystery of the universe definitely isn't one we can flip to the end to see whodunit. That hasn't stopped physicists, astronomers, and philosophers from searching for clues! The topic is infinite (literally), but once you've listened to this audiobook, you'll have a solid idea of our place in the universe and even where the cosmos itself might be headed.

In the beginning was the Big Bang: an unimaginably hot fire almost fourteen billion years ago in which the first elements were forged. The physical theory of the hot nascent universe—the Big Bang—was one of the most consequential developments in twentieth-century science. And yet it leaves many questions unanswered: Why is the universe so big? Why is it so old? What is the origin of structure in the cosmos? In An Infinity of Worlds, physicist Will Kinney explains a more recent theory that may hold the answers to these questions and even explain the ultimate origins of the universe.

Warped Passages is an altogether exhilarating journey that tracks the arc of discovery from early 20th-century physics to the razor's edge of modern scientific theory. One of the world's leading theoretical physicists, Lisa Randall provides astonishing scientific possibilities that, until recently, were restricted to the realm of science fiction. Unraveling the twisted threads of the most current debates on relativity, quantum mechanics, and gravity, she explores some of the most fundamental questions posed by Nature.

Bethany Anne Nacht was changed on Earth almost 200 years in the past. The Kurtherians engage in the cosmic great game, where whole worlds are torn asunder in their efforts to prove their own supremacy. For hundreds of millennia, the Kurtherians at the top have reigned unfettered as they destroyed countless civilizations time and time again. Now, a new group is entering the game. Bethany Anne and her people are playing against extreme odds, but when has that ever stopped the Queen Bitch? It’s time to fight for the future of the universe.

A powerful new threat forces the Alliance to abandon Earth. They leave a small force behind, praying it will be enough to protect humanity from enslavement - or worse, extinction. Meanwhile, the fleet splits into separate missions, each of them vital in rebuilding Earth Alliance forces. A galaxy-shaking conflict is taking shape, with Earth in the eye of the storm. Everything depends on Chase, Chris, Sarah, Daniel, and the other heroes of the Earth Alliance fleet. The stakes have never been higher.