Short novels are movie-length narratives that may well be the perfect length for science fiction stories. This audio collection, nearly 16 hours long, presents the best-of-the-best science fiction novellas published in 2016 by current and emerging masters of this vibrant form of storytelling.

Even as a young girl, Jill was a favorite of the magical, mysterious Wildfolk, who appeared to her from their invisible realm. Little did she know her extraordinary friends represented but a glimpse of a forgotten past and a fateful future. Four hundred years - and many lifetimes ago - one selfish young lord caused the death of two innocent lovers. Then and there he vowed never to rest until he'd righted that wrong - and laid the foundation for the lives of Jill and all those whom she would hold dear.

Just because every job we pull goes supernova doesn't mean this one will. Captain Carl Ramsey and the crew of the Mobius are constantly on the run from one bad decision to the next. Every time it looks like they might score big, something goes wrong. But no one ever got ahead by quitting, and the only alternative is honest work. There are always more jobs to pull, more schemes to hatch, and more authorities to evade.

In the year 2010, an alien virus nearly wiped out the human race. A thousand years later, mankind has recovered and ventured into space. There has been no sign of the aliens since. Humanity remains confined to the Solar System. All that is about to change. Mazzy Webber is a lowly janitor on a third-rate cargo ship. Deeply in debt, when his captain decides to turn pirate, he leaps at the chance.

Too long to be a short story, too short to be a novel - welcome to the surprisingly potent world of the novelette. The award-winning magazine Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show has been an online haven for this powerful form of storytelling since 2005. Now its editors have selected their all-time favorite science fiction novelettes from the magazine's eight-year history and reprinted them together in one big book of listening pleasure.

Corruption. Greed. Lust. Sins undercover Galactic Vice Detective Etch Knowles faces every day. Politicians on the take. Underground gambling. Sex trafficking. Another day at the office for Galactic Vice Lieutenant Angie McDade. Shaking down hustlers. Offering "protection" to bar owners. Cheating at tile games. Galactic Vice Detective Kalaka doesn't exactly play by the rules. A cargo barge filled with corpses. A potential war between crime syndicates. Traitors within the Galactic Vice. These are the nightmares the three must face.

Here are tales of star-faring adventure, peril, and drama. Here are journeys into the mind-bending landscapes of virtual worlds and alternate realities. Here you'll also find stories of humanity's astounding future on Earth, on Mars, and in the solar system beyond - stories that always get the science right. And Bova's gathering of deeply realized, totally human characters are the heroic, brave, tricky, sometimes dastardly engineers, astronauts, corporate magnates, politicians, and scientists who will make these futures possible.

We have always fought. War is the furnace that forges new technologies and pushes humanity ever onward. We are the children of a battle that began with fists and sticks, and ended on the brink of atomic Armageddon. Beyond here lies another war, infinite in scope and scale. But who will fight the wars of tomorrow?

The Detective takes place from roughly March 2683 to March 2684. Where applicable, the chapters are named to map to the action in The All-Pro (book III in the Galactic Football League series). The story actually begins, however, on unknown dates during book II, The Starter.

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.

It took us 200 years to establish 15 colonies on the closest habitable planets to Earth. It took the Ghosts only 20 years to destroy them. Navy pilot Colm Mackenzie is no stranger to the Ghosts. He has witnessed firsthand the mayhem and tragedy they leave in their wake. No one knows where they came from or how they travel or what they want. They know only one thing for sure: Ghosts leave no survivors.

Having magical powers makes you less than human, a resource to be exploited. Half-unicorn Gary Cobalt is sick of slavery, captivity, and his horn being ground down to power faster-than-light travel. When he's finally free, all he wants is to run away in his ancestors' stone ship. Instead, Captain Jenny Perata steals the ship out from under him so she can make an urgent delivery. But Jenny held him captive for a decade, and then Gary murdered her best friend...who was also the wife of her copilot, Cowboy Jim. What could possibly go right?  

Steward is a clone, a beta. His memories are 15 years old, because his alpha never did have a brain-scan update. And in those 15 years, the entire world has changed. An alien race known as The Powers has established relations with humanity, and the Orbital Policorp that held his allegiance has collapsed.

The entire BZRK cell, including Noah and Sadie, have been left in pieces after the last round of battle with the Armstrong twins, conjoined brothers who plot to rob mankind of its free will. Vincent's mind is shattered, but his memories hold dangerous secrets and Lear, BZRK's mysterious leader, will stop at nothing to protect those secrets. Meanwhile, Bug Man has taken control of the President's brain, but playing with sanity is a dangerous game. The consequences can spiral way out of control, and the Armstrong twins are not people Bug Man can afford to disappoint.

DiGriz is caught during one of his crimes and recruited into the Special Corps. Boring, routine desk work during his probationary period results in his discovering that someone is building a battleship, thinly disguised as an industrial vessel. In the peaceful League no one has battleships anymore, so the builder of this one would be unstoppable. DiGriz' hunt for the guilty becomes a personal battle between himself and the beautiful but deadly Angelina, who his planning a coup on one of the feudal worlds.