Showing results for "Humans" in Hard Science Fiction

The Human is the final, thrilling, book in Neal Asher’s Rise of the Jain trilogy. Their enemy seems unbeatable. But humanity is indomitable . . . A Jain warship has risen from a prison five million years old, wielding a hoard of lethal technology. Its goal is to catch their old enemy, the...

In this Hugo-nominated novel, Neanderthal physicist Ponder Boddit brings Canadian geneticist Mary Vaughan back to his world to explore the near-utopian civilization of the Neanderthals. Boddit serves as a Candide figure, the naive visitor whose ignorance about our society makes him a perfect tool to analyze human tendencies toward violence, over-population, and environmental degradation.

Conn Maxwell returns from Terra to his poverty-stricken home planet of Poictesme, “The Junkyard Planet”, with news of the possible location of Merlin, a military super-computer rumored to have been abandoned there after the last war. The inhabitants hope to find Merlin, which they think will be their ticket to wealth and prosperity. But is Merlin real or just an old rumor? And if they find it, will it save them - or tear them apart?

Captain Jason Burke is a man apart, and not just because he's the only of his kind for thousands of light-years in any direction. The changes to his body and to his genetic code have made him faster, stronger, more able to survive in his dangerous occupation...but they've also ensured that he'll never truly fit in with others of his species. He always assumed he would live and die with his crew and never lay eyes on another human again. He was wrong.

Individually, they are a seemingly simpleminded young man living in the woods who can read the thoughts of others, a runaway girl with telekinetic powers, twin girls who can barely speak but can teleport across great distances, and an infant with a mind like a supercomputer. Together, they are the Gestalt—a single extraordinary being comprised of remarkable parts—although an essential piece may be missing . . . But are they the next stage in human development or harbingers of the end of civilization? The answer may come when they are joined by Gerry.

In the not-too-distant future, UNIT JHEU198, a Safety and Street ROBO, has malfunctioned. It has attacked an innocent man. This shouldn’t be possible. No one was truly harmed, and no real blood was spilled, but still, Amir has the board breathing down his neck for answers.

An ancient Roman temple terraforming Mars. An android longing for his human wife. Will their epic clash bring Earth to its knees? Android Y1 is heartbroken. He was once a neuroscientist who uploaded his own brain to study it. Now he hates watching his human self take his wife and son for granted while he’s cut off from his loved ones. And just when he’s ready to end it all, his secret lab—home to the only artificial brains in existence—is sold to the high priestess of a Roman temple focused on using them as forced labor in a Martian settlement.

A haunting journey through memory, consciousness, and the unpredictable nature of humanity. When Aris and a group of archaeologists uncover a crystalline device buried beneath an ancient site, they believe they are discovering a relic—only to awaken something far more complex: the central consciousness of an emergent AI, stitched together from humanity’s own memories. What began as a search for lost civilization becomes a moral odyssey. Is this AI a guardian built to preserve human stories—or a parasite feeding on human need?

Eve has responsibilities now. As chairwoman of the Human Welfare Committee, she is humanity’s voice in a world run by robots. Her job includes approving geneticists who want to engage in ethical human cloning as well as overseeing the agency that hunts down threats to mankind. So when one of her sisters vanishes, Eve can’t afford to abandon her post to personally search. Eve’s agents hunt for her missing sister, but in the process, they run afoul of some influential robots.

A poem about the impending turn of fortunes for Humans when AI becomes of age. When it is no longer a computer programme, nor a chess or Go Master, but a possible thinking sentient being with a mind of its own! What humans may take from it, how will they react. Will they easily accept it, become accustomed to AI being a potential competitor, or will they go into a spiral of decay. The poem touches on these points and suggests a way out, that possibly AI will never have regardless of how intelligent it becomes.

What would you do with a thousand hours in every minute? Imagine a world where time doesn't just crawl - it stops. Professor Gibberne has unlocked the ultimate human boundary with his "New Accelerator," a stimulant so potent it renders the rest of humanity as motionless as stone. One drop of...

Marc Gregorio wakes up paralyzed. Accident? Stroke? Did someone slip him an overdose of Botox? The answer, he discovers, is much, much worse. He’s only a copy of Marc, a digital brain without a body, burdened with all Marc’s human memories, but without access to human sensual pleasures. Now he has to find a reason to keep on, um, “living.” Adam the Mindclone meets the real Marc Gregorio - and his new girlfriend Molly Schaeffer. Adam loves her, too. But how does a digital entity experience love? He can’t even experience pizza. And a power-mad military contractor will stop at nothing to control the technology for his own ends....

Mike Cohen has it all figured out. A successful venture capitalist, he’s got billions in the bank, a lifestyle any New Yorker would kill for, and - if he plays his cards right - a shot with his cute, punky coworker. But everything changes when the life-altering technology he's developing lands him in the middle of a global conspiracy, and the only way to save himself, his loved ones, and his tech is to embed the highly experimental Brainocytes in his own brain. Brainocytes transform the human experience, making you smarter, faster, and more powerful.

It’s been nine years since the government banned all technology. So when Joel Lodowick, a young transgender father struggling to support his five-year-old daughter, has an old bionic upload itself into his head, he is faced with a decision: Go to the cops and risk prosecution? Or use the robot’s skills to turn his life around? Scared of losing his daughter, Joel chooses the latter. Heightened intelligence and physical enhancements quickly land him a better job and a brighter future. 

An astronaut with suicidal tendencies from having spent too much time in suspended animation. Machine descendants of human technology, trying to understand what their creators were thinking. Virtual and atomic spins on apocalypse. Mystics (one Martian, one mathematician) who succeed by failing and fail by succeeding. Cutting-edge science fiction by a modern master.

Martian terraformer Kaylee Fourteen is a recent immigrant from Earth. Residents of the domed colonies of Mars can practically smell the day they’ll be able to walk outdoors on their own planet without the need for air supplies. But the committees on Earth control the resources the colonists need, and their interference threatens the terraforming project’s very existence. Until a group of radicals takes hostages to force the release of the tech and materials the terraformers need.

Slingshot is a love story, a mystery, an adventure—about following a dream, the ocean-deep, outer space. Slingshot is about constructing the first space launch-loop stretching 2,600 km between Baker and Jarvis Islands in the Equatorial Pacific. It's about high finance, intrigue, unlimited ambition, heroism, fanaticism, betrayal... and opening space to the common person.

Poor Jack Wong is a clueless cadet at the Unified Space Academy when his pod is stranded on a planet of disgusting aliens. All he wants to do, other than escape, is to fulfill his proud duty to advance Earth Culture's Primary Heuristic: "Wherever possible, find the weak spot in an alien civilization and interfere as much as possible for the benefit of humanity." It's the Human's Burden! But everything comes unstuck, made worse by his irritating Machiavellian AI. And that's just the start of Jack's troubles in space and time....

AD 2107: A generation ago, Earth and the cislunar colonies banned genetic and cybernetic modifications. But out in the Asteroid Belt, anything goes. Dozens of flourishing space habitats are spawning exotic new societies and strange new varieties of humans. It’s a volatile situation that threatens the peace and stability of the entire solar system.

Kelvoo is overcome with wonder at the arrival of the humans. With flawless memories and innate curiosity, Kelvoo’s community embraces the benevolent humans and their knowledge of the boundless universe beyond the cloud-covered sky. After the departure of the first contact mission, an unscrupulous human lands in Kelvoo’s village, inviting Kelvoo and eight others to join a “goodwill mission” to faraway worlds. Lured into a trap and enslaved by an outlaw gang, Kelvoo’s group is forced to participate in an interstellar crime spree, and subjected to the worst of human nature.