Showing results for "The Rain" in Science Fiction

Bloomsbury presents Lives of Bitter Rain by Adrian Tchaikovsky, read by David Thorpe. SHORTLISTED FOR THE HUGO AWARD FOR BEST SERIES 2025 City-by-city, kingdom-by-kingdom, the Palleseen have sworn to bring ‘Perfection’ and ‘Correctness’ to an imperfect world. But before these ruthless...

The closest Alex Harley has ever been to a zombie is on his game console. Trapped in a dead end job and spending his weekends gaming, Alex is coasting through life at his own pace. But one fateful weekend, he agrees to go hiking with his pal Mike. Mike's girlfriend, Elena, is bringing her friend Lucy along and that is good enough reason for Alex to endure grueling hikes along a mountain range in Wales.

With only three days left until the predicted apocalypse, the small town of Franklin Springs, Georgia, has become a wasteland of abandoned cars, abandoned homes, abandoned businesses, and abandoned people. People like Rainbow Williams. Rain isn’t afraid of dying. In fact, she’s looking forward to it. If she can just outrun her pain until April 23, she’ll never have to feel it at all.

The dark forces of the Neo Hegemony strike, sweeping across the worlds of the Arcadian sector and crushing all in their path. One system stands against the onslaught, the Kingdom of New Avalon. But the men and women of their expeditionary forces are trapped behind enemy lines on a besieged planet. Their only hope? A last-ditch rescue mission led by Captain Hal Cutter and his battleship, Achilles. Beset on all sides by lethal enemy warships, he must lead a rag-tag fleet of naval and civilian vessels across Hegemony held space to save the beleaguered Kingdom soldiers.

In the far reaches of Imperial space, a ferocious warp storm approaches an Administratum world, cutting off the entire planet from the rest of the Imperium. As their towering grey spires are punished by endless rain, countless administrators, tithe-masters, and book-keepers are forced to evacuate. Among them is Greta, a lowly data-drone with a terrible secret, wanted for questioning by the sadistic Imperial interrogator Stefan Crucius. As disaster strikes and the pair are left stranded in the depths of the drowning city, captor and captive must cooperate.

The rain began nineteen years ago, and it never stopped: more than a foot of rain per day until almost the whole of North America was underwater. Those who survived the first year were forced to take drastic measures, and those who held to the veneer of civilization were few and very far between. Seventeen-year-old Tanner grew up after the rain began. She and her adoptive caretaker, Russell, have long sought a fabled Colorado refuge, a dream that has kept them going through years of brutal trials as they try to stay one step ahead of the “face eaters”.

Very soon, when the government is bankrupt and battling civil unrest...a ruthless, global conspiracy will rise from the shadows to seize control of everything. But that’s only the start. They’ll soon unleash a mysterious red rain, grounding all travelers, knocking out communications, and taking down the grid with a massive EMP.

Three hundred years from now, Earth has been rendered uninhabitable due to the technological catastrophe known as the Nanocaust. Archaeologist Verity Auger specializes in the exploration of its surviving landscape. Now, her expertise is required for a far greater purpose. Something astonishing has been discovered at the far end of a wormhole: mid-twentieth-century Earth, preserved like a fly in amber.

Aythryn City—truly a mess of neon and trash all supporting the psychopaths that live here. Desire is the name of the game in such a bright place, as anyone on the streets can verify. Whether it be the gangs roaming the streets, the corpo rats in their tall towers, or the people just trying to get by; everyone wants something. Then enter me: a poor thief turned investigator just to make enough for end’s meet. Or at least, that’s how it was supposed to go down. Now though? Now I’m caught in several storms between stealing from one of the Big 7 to a weird interface telling me what to do.

The year is 1993. East and West grapple in an apocalyptic war to the death—but is the tide about to turn? The United States and its NATO allies prepare a desperate Hail Mary: a knockout blow to end the war in a matter of months. At the same time, the Soviets ratchet up the war of attrition, a...

A golden-backed mission, a glittering foundation, a public spectacle that promised to carry a chosen few beyond a dying Earth. What the cameras didn’t show was the cost: an engineered myth, a falsified dataset, a sealed lab log—and something crystalline waiting in the dust of another world. Maya Sarkar buried her child and buried her faith in institutions. Captain Isabel “Iz” Moretti gave her life to command, then came home to a child who should have stayed an absence. A young microbiologist named Yuki learns her single exposure was a planetary vector.

On the last day of normality in Mackinaw, Illinois, Oliver McCallister thinks his worst problem is figuring out how to come clean to his wife about the secret he’s been keeping from her. Zoe McCallister thinks her worst problem is squeezing in an errand at the courthouse before another long day of nursing classes—and worrying about whatever Oliver is hiding from her.

The rain in Aloisville is never-ending, and no one can remember when it started. There's not much they can remember. With every drop that hits their skin, a bit of memory is washed away. Stay too long in the wet, and you'll lose everything you used to be. By the time Laverne begins keeping a journal, the small town she calls home has been irreparably changed. Every drop of water is dangerous, from leaky faucets to the near-constant rainfall, and a careless trip outside can mean a life down the drain.

A missionary begs to be moved from disease-ridden Bangkok. A musician plays a private show for ghosts. A student abandoned by his lover bleeds to death in the street. A plastic surgeon designs a girl a new face. A woman decides whether to cook a final meal for a dying murderer. Lurching through decades, from Bangkok's rich past to its imagined, uploaded future, witness the city as it changes from a booming capitalist hub to a city engulfed by water, through human tales seeping into one another, held together by delicate threads.  

Alex Harley wasn't cut out to be a survivor in a zombie apocalypse. And now he may have made a fatal mistake. Going ashore to find news of his brother and parents, Alex is attacked by feral survivors. When he gets back to the harbor, he finds his boat . . . and Lucy . . . gone. Stranded on the mainland, alone and vulnerable, he seeks shelter from the shambling zombies and the roaming army patrols. He meets a group of survivors who seem to be on a mission. They have found a way to get a message to the survivors in the camps. 

Alex and a ragtag group of soldiers set down on an isolated island and begin to build a base. A lack of resources means that everyone is going to have to risk their life to gather the essentials needed for survival. Raiding parties are sent on missions deep into the heart of zombie territory. Some will return, while others will be lost forever to the hoards of undead that roam the mainland.

I swore I'd never step foot in this town again, but thirteen foster homes and a looming apocalypse later, here I am. Not because I'm having some emotional end-of-the-world crisis—like literally everybody else on this planet—but because the key to my survival is buried somewhere in these woods. I just have to find it before April 23.

In a desperate bid to save Lucy, Alex goes in search of the secret government facility on Apocalypse Island. If the scientists there created the virus, then surely they have a cure. Alex will go to any lengths to get it, even if it means risking his life in a building full of monsters.

Operation: Wildfire. Deliver a batch of vaccine to two army camps. For Alex and his friends, the task sounds simple. But in a zombie apocalypse, even the simplest tasks are dangerous.

SHORT STORY: A very short story about the cost of cutting down a tree. I Came Home From Saving the Rainforest is one of six short solarpunk stories in the Halfway to Better collection. If you enjoyed the optimistic climate solutions in Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future or the cozy cooperative future in Becky Chambers' Monk and Robot series, you will enjoy Halfway to Better.