Showing results for "The Science Book" in Hard Science Fiction

The Ultimate Science Fiction Mega Collection contains 16 of the greatest science fiction works ever written.

Charlie7 is the progenitor of a mechanical race he built from the ashes of a dead world—Earth. He is a robot of leisure and idle political meddling—a retirement well-earned. Or he was, until a human girl named Eve was dropped in his lap. Geneticists have restored Earth’s biome and begun repopulation. But primate cloning is in its infancy; human cloning is banned. Far from a failed genetics experiment, Eve is brilliant, curious, and heartbreakingly naïve about her species’ history. But Eve’s creator wants her back and has a gruesome fate planned for her.

The culminating volume in The Saga of Seven Suns weaves together the myriad story lines in a spectacular grand finale. Galactic empires clash, elemental beings devastate whole planetary systems, and the factions of humanity are pitted against one another. Heroes rise and enemies make their last stands in the climax of an epic tale eight years in the making. The Saga of Seven Suns is one of the most colorful and spectacular science-fiction epics of the past decade.

The shadows are rising. The alliance is breaking. High Queen Serita must rally her scattered forces as the Crown of Shadows spreads its grip across the stars. In a universe where hope itself is hunted, can the light endure? War spreads like fire across the stars. High Queen Serita Hernandez and her loyal allies are thrust into the deadliest battle yet, where shadows strike from every corner of the galaxy and enemies rise faster than friends can be found. Old loyalties fracture. New powers awaken. And every choice threatens to tip the balance between survival and ruin.

In the depths of an ancient Egyptian tomb, archaeologists make a baffling discovery: the mummified body of a man clad in a space suit. Halfway around the globe, exobiologist Dr. Katherine Shepard and intelligence officer Colonel Devon Peters are summoned to the site of a downed UFO. To their amazement, they find one of the occupants alive. Even more shocking, he appears to be human. As Shepard and Peters delve deeper into the enigma, they expose a chilling truth: aliens have inhabited Earth far longer than anyone could have imagined, and they are not alone.

The Sovereign Hierarchy of Leviathan leaves nothing to chance. Their strategists are the greatest in the galaxy, utilizing the tiniest details. Before unleashing the perfect invasion, they send Senior Dax to Earth. The cyber spy will assassinate the Lord High Admiral, throwing Star Watch into panic as one after another of their highest officials die hideous, unstoppable deaths.

Daniel Rice is a government science investigator whose specialty is solving seemingly intractable problems through scientific inquiry. But Daniel's intellectual strength is sorely tested by the bizarre realities he finds in the quantum world. Extra dimensions of space trap the unwary, probability replaces cause and effect, and time isn't what anyone imagined. The other side of the mirror is a place full of dangers, but it's also somewhere a dedicated scientist can uncover secrets that connect humans with something greater.

Nick Abrahams still holds the official world record for the number of space launches, but he’s bored stiff with his job hosting space tours. Only when his wife leaves him, however, does he try to change his life. He accepts a tempting offer from a Russian billionaire. In exchange for making a simple repair on Neptune’s moon Triton, he will return to Earth a multi-millionaire, enabling him to achieve his ‘impossible dream’ of buying his own California vineyard.

With The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Six, award-winning editor Neil Clarke provides a year-in-review and 33 of the best stories published by both new and established authors in 2020. 

In 2014, the ESA spacecraft Rosetta lands a small probe named Philae on 67P, a Jupiter-family comet. The lander goes radio-silent two years later. Suddenly, in 2026, scientists receive new transmissions from the comet. Motivated by findings that are initially sensational but soon turn frightening, NASA dispatches a crewed spacecraft to the comet. But as the ship approaches the mysterious celestial body, the connection to the astronauts soon breaks. Now it seems nothing can be done anymore to stop the looming dark danger that threatens Earth....

First contact with a mysterious race of aliens reveals an unusual request; a family's pet dog comes to grips with the newly bestowed gift of human-like intelligence; a poet, in danger and alone on a distant world, makes unlikely allies; hundreds of years in the future, a famous hermit lives in the sea above the now-underwater Harvard University; former friends navigate unsteady peace between human refugees and the technologically superior race that saved them; in a future where human life can be infinitely extended through cybertronic rebirth, one woman declines immortality. 

A colony survives among the icy rings of a planet, hiding from alien robots determined to destroy them … at a remote site on the edge of the Arctic Circle, a group of scientists, engineers, and physicians gather to gamble humanity’s future on one last-ditch experiment … a man who can’t feel pain has been bioengineered to be a killing machine, but he refuses to give in to his fate … a man is contacted by three future versions of himself, each trying to save their world from destruction. 

With The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 3, award-winning editor Neil Clarke provides a year-in-review and 27 of the best stories published by both new and established authors in 2017. 

The science vessel Hermes has been urgently recalled from its mission to survey the moons of Saturn, just as First Officer Miranda Lee receives bad news from home - her mother is dying so she must leave the ship and return to Earth - for good. Commander Scott McNabb is so distraught by her sudden decision to leave that he pays little or no attention to the parameters of the new mission being requested by the Council of Europa. Big mistake. Powerful forces on Earth are now moving to resume inter-AI communications, risking the development of an all-out war.

Cajeiri is the young son of the powerful leader of the Western Association-and he has become a target for forces bent on destroying his father's rule. For Cajeiri is the first ateva to understand the humans living among them-an understanding that threatens his own race.

Onboard an ancient starship, Killeen and the Bishop tribe escape the mech-ruled world of Snowglade. Seeking refuge on a faraway planet, they discover vast wonders: an organic life-form as large as a world, a planet-coring cosmic string, a community of humans ruled by a brutal tyrant, and ultimately an alien race more awesome than any they have encountered. As they battle for survival against these myriad dangers, Killeen and his crew will gain an unforeseen ally - one that may determine humanity’s true destiny.

When Lee Anderson and her parents discovered a new world teeming with life, it was the dream of every explorer: they were rich beyond their imaginations. But tragedy struck when a herd of creatures overran their camp and killed her parents. The only other adult in her life had been their partner Gordon, who adopted her as parent. Which didn't turn out to be easy, because he wasn't human. He was a large intelligent alien, and to Lee, he was Uncle Gordon, but neither his race - the Derf - nor humans were gracious about accepting their family relationship.

A spell at GCHQ sounded like a refreshing change for academic historian George. But his life is thrown upside down when he gets put in a team with a gifted physicist, Alex, and multi-talented prankster mathematician, Betty, who have covertly broken through the accepted rules of physics to produce an extraordinary novel technology.

By the time Phil Chase is elected president, the world's climate is far on its way to irreversible change. Food scarcity, housing shortages, diminishing medical care, and vanishing species are just some of the consequences. The erratic winter the Washington, D.C., area is experiencing is another grim reminder of a global weather pattern gone haywire: bone-chilling cold one day, balmy weather the next. BONUS AUDIO: Includes an exclusive introduction by author Kim Stanley Robinson.

Masterpieces of science fiction short stories written by Lamees Alhassar is a display of the most boundary-pushing, genre-blurring, and creative sophistication. By sending us to alternate universes and engaging with a wide spectrum of emotions from tenderness to fear, each of these stories challenge the way we see our place in the cosmos. Each story dazzles with ambition, striking style, and the promise of imagining the unimaginable.