Showing results for "The Shadow" in Hard Science Fiction

Severian is a torturer, born to the guild and with an exceptionally promising career ahead of him...until he falls in love with one of his victims, a beautiful young noblewoman. Her excruciations are delayed for some months and, out of love, Severian helps her commit suicide and escape her fate. For a torturer, there is no more unforgivable act. In punishment he is exiled from the guild and his home city to the distant metropolis of Thrax with little more than Terminus Est, a fabled sword, to his name. 

The witnesses are legion, scattered across the world and dotted through history, people who looked up and saw something impossible lighting up the night sky. What those objects were, where they came from, and who - or what - might be inside them is the subject of fierce debate and equally fierce mockery, so that most who glimpsed them came to wish they hadn't. Most, but not everyone.

Commander Alyssa Reeve and her crew embark on humanity’s second lunar mission, a routine voyage that quickly descends into a nightmare beyond comprehension. Strange signals pulse from the Moon’s far side, instruments fail, and the boundaries between reality and hallucination begin to fracture. As isolation, sleep deprivation, and cosmic anomalies escalate, the crew confronts a terrifying truth: the Moon may be alive—and watching.

Shadow of the Scorpion is a standalone prequel to Neal Asher’s explosive Agent Cormac series. Some secrets are too hard to bear . . . Following the human vs prador war, Ian Cormac signs up with Earth Central Security. He’s sent out to restore order on worlds devastated by alien bombardment...

In a world half of light, half of darkness, where science and magic strive for dominance, there dwells a magical being who is friendly with neither side. Jack, of the realm of shadows, is a thief who is unjustly punished. So he embarks on a vendetta.

Penumbra, a haphazard city of outcasts, rebels, and malcontents, has floated around a dead planet in a backwater system for longer than living memory can recall. Its towers abandoned starships melded to an ancient, mysterious core, Penumbra is the last remnant of chaotic individualism in a galaxy where conformity to the will of the all-powerful Galactic Council is paramount.

Rory travels to the Moon, encountering her grandfather's footprints from fifty years ago. She returns to her parent's home, eager to forget about the last few weeks, but the Shadow persists. Silas and Cody are covertly led to the Planetae laboratory but quickly realize there's more to the tokens than their initial assumptions. Waylen struggles to maintain peace as the walls between organizations crumble. When one of his closest allies betrays them, Waylen's trust is shattered.

The science fiction epic of our time has arrived.Three years ago, an object one hundred miles across was spotted on a trajectory for Earth's sun. Now, its journey is almost over. As it approaches, two competing manned vehicles race through almost half a million kilometers of space to reach it...

When it first appeared, the astronomers named the asteroid Keanu. A Near Earth Object, from a distant constellation, it was headed directly toward our sun. But when we went to meet it, it turned out to be far more than a huge rock hurtling through space... The two teams of astronauts sent to...

Mankind’s first contact with extraterrestrial life led to an incredible revelation. Their last may lead them to extinction. Twenty years have passed since the mysterious Near-Earth Object nicknamed Keanu appeared in the night sky and transported an assortment of humans from all over Earth into...

ANYONE CAN GO THERE... COMING BACK IS ANOTHER STORY. The first in a four-audiobook series, Otherland: City of Golden Shadow is a complex suspense novel of the near future, where virtual reality has expanded to encompass all aspects of society -- and national, physical, and mental boundaries are...

Cobb wanted a simple life. He wanted excellent steaks, great coffee, friends, and a quiet place to restore his favorite ship. Working for a recovery operation turned out to be the best place to find parts cheap. She had other plans for him. He wanted the staff of the deep space salvage ship, Oxcart, to treat him just like another member of the crew. Not the man he really was. Light years from Earth, he thought his secrets, his past, wouldn't matter. Especially not to her.

Armand Ptolemy was just an ordinary man, until he unlocked the secrets of an ancient Egyptian AI. Now, he's racing against time and sinister forces to save not just his inheritance, but the future of humanity. When Armand discovers that his brothers have cheated him out of his inheritance, he is plunged into a secret world of synchronicity engines, karma cryptocurrencies, ancient "living information" and modern artificial intelligences.

Die Dunkelheit kehrt zurück – stärker, bedrohlicher und unaufhaltsam. Eine uralte Macht, die das Licht des Universums verschlingt, erhebt sich erneut aus den Tiefen des Kosmos. Commander Mike und Commander Nic, die Helden der Allianz, stehen vor ihrer bisher größten Herausforderung. Gemeinsam mit einer vereinten Flotte aus Myan, der verborgenen Zivilisation der Erde und alten Feinden wie den Rhazorianern, begeben sie sich auf eine gefährliche Reise, um das Universum vor der drohenden Finsternis zu retten.

Patriotic young Emma Dodgson struggled to make it into the United States Marines, but now she’s there, she’s going to make sure it counts. Convinced that the United States is on the road to victory in the Great War, Dodgson’s world is turned upside down when on her first mission, she learns the USA has surrendered to the enemy. From the ashes of defeat, a new leader rises. Jenna Plural is determined to unite the free forces from across the solar system. Hope is restored to Dodgson, and she devotes herself to Jenna’s cause.

Valentinian won a treasure map in a crooked card game. Its call brings him back to the planet Kryuome. There, he and the crew must outsmart the locals, the mutants, as well as the Widow aboard her new warship, in order to uncover a secret two thousand years in the making. Or die trying.

Kryuome: the desert world on Valentinian's treasure map. A place where he hopes to find friends and surprises if his crew can survive the dangerous aliens of Wildspace, while the Widow tracks him and his crew mate. The next exciting installment of the Shadow of the Dominion series!

The Widow never rests. She takes the ship Dominion-427 across the galaxy to chase down her ex-husband and his friends. Athanasia and Glaxu duel on far-flung planets, and double-cross one another again and again, until someone dies. And Valentinian keeps running. Dominion-427 - the fourth novel in the Shadow of the Dominion series - puts friends in danger while continuing to explore this fascinating new galaxy of characters!

Valentinian and his friends never imagined being trapped underground with their worst enemies - the Widow and her crew. Above-ground, an entire tribe of sex-crazed cannibal mutants rampages, coming for their souls. Enemies must make deals with each other, planning for the inevitable double and triple-crosses, as well as ferreting out the secrets of the long-forgotten vessel known as Princess Rualoh. Princess Rualoh - the sixth novel in the Shadow of the Dominion series - forges new deals and trickery between enemies as well as friends.