Space Universe

The planet Vok is holding its first free elections after years of oppressive military rule. Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise have been dispatched by Starfleet to serve as impartial observers, but remaining neutral proves a challenge, as Kirk confronts a tangled web of scandal, conspiracy, and assassination plots - with the stability of an entire sector at stake. To make matters worse, Dr. Leonard McCoy has vanished while on a mission of mercy to Braco, a nearby planet only a system away.

This Way to the Universe is a celebration of the astounding, ongoing scientific investigations that have revealed the nature of reality at its smallest, at its largest, and at the scale of our daily lives. The enigmas that Professor Michael Dine discusses are like landmarks on a fantastic journey to the edge of the universe. Asked where to find out about the big bang, dark matter, the Higgs boson particle - the long cutting edge of physics right now - Dine had no single book he could recommend. This is his accessible, authoritative, and up-to-date answer.

The Complex Logic Laws were the result of a war waged hundreds of years in the past, when two human powers threw massive AI navies at each other and nearly annihilated themselves. Being human, they blamed their tools for this near miss; they destroyed what was left of the sentient ships, and made it illegal to be, manufacture, or shelter an independent logic.

Brothers in arms...At long last, the Clans’ campaign for the Inner Sphere is about to come to a head. Alaric Wolf is preparing for his biggest moves yet...and is willing to enlist just about any force that can help him achieve his ultimate goal - the conquest of Terra. To do this, he sends one of his own on a very special mission. Marotta Kerensky is a Wolf warrior unlike any other - the perfect candidate for a mission unlike any other: Convince the legendary Wolf’s Dragoons to rejoin the Clan they originally came from.

More than 50 years ago, John Coltrane drew the 12 musical notes in a circle and connected them with straight lines, forming a five-pointed star. Inspired by Einstein, Coltrane had put physics and geometry at the core of his music. Physicist and jazz musician Stephon Alexander returns the favor, using jazz to answer physics' most vexing questions about the past and future of the universe.

In Calculating the Cosmos, Ian Stewart presents an exhilarating guide to the cosmos, from our solar system to the entire universe. He describes the architecture of space and time, dark matter and dark energy, how galaxies form, why stars implode, how everything began, and how it's all going to end. He considers parallel universes, the fine-tuning of the cosmos for life, what forms extraterrestrial life might take, and the likelihood of life on Earth being snuffed out by an asteroid.

In this thrilling history, David Baker captures the longest possible time span—from the Big Bang to the present day—in an astonishingly concise retelling. His impressive timeline includes the "rise of complexity" in the cosmos and the creation of the first atoms; the origin of all galaxies, stars, and our solar system; and the evolution of life on Earth, from tiny single-celled organisms to human beings.

Outlink station Miranda has been destroyed by a nanomycelium, and the very nature of this sabotage suggests that the alien bioconstruct Dragon - a creature as untrustworthy as it is gigantic - is somehow involved. Sent out on a titanic Polity dreadnought, the Occam Razor, agent Cormac must investigate the disaster.

When a suspect explodes mid-interrogation and his office is taken over by an intergalactic despot, undead detective Dan Deadman reckons he's finally hit rock bottom. Banished to a dangerous underground hostel network, Dan becomes embroiled in a mass-murder investigation that will take him from the bowels of Down Here to the depths of the ocean. As the clues run out and the case collapses around him, Dan discovers a sinister plot that could wipe out two whole civilizations, and plunge the planet of Parloo into an endless bloody war.

The sky is not the limit. From an alley in New York to an interstellar wormhole, the path to the future looks different for everyone. These cosmic short stories from some of today’s most influential Black authors reveal a universe of possibilities.

In his last book, Neil Shubin delved into the amazing connections between human anatomy—our hands, our jaws—and the structures in the fish that first took over land 375 million years ago. Now, with his trademark clarity and exuberance, he takes an even more expansive approach to the question of why we are the way we are.

Years ago, cosmologist Stephon Alexander received life-changing advice: to discover real physics, he needed to stop memorizing and start taking risks. In Fear of a Black Universe, Alexander shows that great physics requires us to think outside the mainstream - to improvise and rely on intuition. His approach leads him to three principles that shape all theories of the universe: the principle of invariance, the quantum principle, and the principle of emergence. Alexander uses them to explore some of physics' greatest mysteries.

The second novel of the Liaden Universe, Scout's Progress is the story of a young girl who has won a starship, but now must learn to fly if she is to escape her dastardly brother.

Aelliana Caylon has escaped her abusive family. She's found love in her starship co-pilot - a man who turns out to be the leader of Korval, the most powerful clan of the Liaden Universe. But destiny never intended an easy life for Aelliana. Insidious forces within the empire are determined that a new line of Korval heirs be destroyed and that Clan Korval itself be blasted to interplanetary dust. The fight for the future of the Liaden Universe is on, and one heroine is determined to protect her family and her soul mate.

When Charlie, a young boy, is suddenly terrorized by a creature beneath his bed, he turns to his parents for help. But his father no longer lives at home, and his mother believes his wild imagination has run away with him. He is on his own against this predator until help arrives from an unlikely place. With his life on the line, Charlie uncovers the truth about his parents, his new friends, and the beast that hunts him. But will this be enough to help him face his fear and survive the night?

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.

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.

How big is the universe? In the early twentieth century, scientists took sides. One held that the entire universe was contained in the Milky Way galaxy. Their champion was the strong-willed astronomer Harlow Shapley. Another camp believed that the universe was so vast that the Milky Way was just one galaxy among billions—the view that would prevail, proven by the equally headstrong Edwin Hubble.

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.

According to the prevailing scientific paradigm, the universe tends toward randomness; it functions according to laws without purpose, and life is an accident devoid of meaning. Thanks to a new understanding of evolution, as well as recent advances in our understanding of the phenomenon known as emergence, a new cosmic narrative is taking shape: Nature’s simplest “parts” come together to form ever-greater “wholes” in a process that has no end in sight. Bobby Azarian explains the science behind this new view of reality and explores what it means for all of us.