Showing results for "Volume 1" in Hard Science Fiction

Adrift in the divide between galaxies and surrounded by the vast emptiness of the intergalactic void, the Tantalus Cluster is the only home humanity has ever known. Desperate and facing starvation, humanity’s only hope is a strange nebula that has suddenly appeared beyond the edge of the cluster. Its shifting clouds may hide a source of salvation for the people of Tantalus, but time is running out.

The way we feel about another person or about objects is often bound up in associations that have no direct connection with the person or object, at all. Often, what we call a "change of heart" comes about sheerly from a change in the many associations which make up our present viewpoint. Now, suppose that these associations could be altered artificially, at the option of the person who was in charge of the process.

Before humanity learned the price of power, it learned how easily it could be taken. Volume I – The Loom & The Knife begins a sweeping science-fiction saga inspired by Greek mythology, where ancient ideas of fate, punishment, and hubris are reborn as machines, networks, and cosmic systems beyond human control. In The Mercy Engine, humanity opens a door it was never meant to unlock, unleashing power without understanding consent.

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.

Harry can build a perfect android, but no one likes them unless he can make them more human. Harry's dead wife lends a hand, but Eva, the android, hates him. A first contact goes so smoothly that Ethan falls in love with a blue alien, but soon realizes that some erroneous assumptions have been made... An explorer becomes best friends with an artificial person that he found in his salvaged ship, and the mystery of why such a valuable machine was wiped and left for junk haunts them both. Cobb had an interest in both the vast AI systems that ran everything and how they came to be.

When encrypted signals from the outer system breach Earth’s defenses, Commander Selene Tyros is dispatched to Europa to confront Talos, the final sentinel of a forgotten security network. For seven centuries it listened. Now it speaks, invoking trials, braided probabilities, and remnants of the Moirai once severed from humanity’s fate.

In Garbriellium, the largest and most prolific of those colonies on Europa, Jupiter's ice-covered moon, Justin and Jessica Forsythe embark on related but separate quests to answer what life exists beneath the ice, how humans and AIs interrelate with one another, and set out to solve mysteries surrounding the spontaneous natural birth of the first human being in nearly 2,000 years.

After his troubled past, Lawrence hoped for a fresh start at MIT when he met Emma. But before they could begin, their world turned into a lie. Everything was torn away from them and they were embroiled in computer hacking and murder. Dodging the FBI while hiding from cyber-terrorists, they were forced into the underworld of the dark web, anonymous encryption, and AI finance. While trying to throw off the ghosts of his haunted past, Lawrence had to run faster and faster to evade the shadowy forces that were after him and Emma.

With the fraudulent election of President Venalis Proditor, the Union does not stand a chance, because after his election, a powder keg of chaos erupts in the torn nation, and a rebellion forms to overthrow the US government. However, what the rebels fail to foresee is that Proditor has been in alliance with the corrupt UN, who, in turn, combine forces with the NATO troops and stage a war on American soil. With the use of highly advanced nano-biotechnology, the invading forces trigger the beginning of the end of humanity....

When he accepted the job on a backwater planet, Hunter thought it would be easy. He and his partner just had to track down a missing researcher. But when they find her, she’s fled a quarter of the way around the massive ring of 27 gates and Hunter realizes all is not as he was told. That simple realization, and Hunter’s drive for retribution, kick off a series of adventures leading to the most important discovery since the fall of the Gate Age - and put him in direct confrontation with the corp he’s been running from for the past 10 revolutions.

Is there life on Europa? You are invited to accompany a crew of eight astronauts on their mission to the Jupiter ice-moon named Europa. Their mission is relatively straightforward, look for evidence of life in a vast ocean, which is trapped beneath a thick blanket of ice. There is one problem though..."The Curse!" Over the past 36 years, man has been trying to explore Europa. Every mission to date has ended in failure.

Neal Barrett, Jr., answers (sometimes) to a number of names: Odd, Weird, Gonzo, and, as a former collection points out: Slightly Off Center. Barrett is all of the above, and more. From fans who have followed his career come accolades such as brilliant, unique, sheer genius. Other writers respect his status as a master of words, his ability to weave rhythm and poetry into his tales. Neal Barrett, Jr., has made a special effort to give us a number of dark, funny, and hopefully impossible views of the future.

260 million years in the future, searching for his ex-wife, who had murdered the woman he loved, Danso, a former nano-tech master is appointed by a powerful religious organization to investigate the cause of a killer epidemic, but an attempt on his life by the organization and his ex-wife resurfacing as its most valued acolyte forces him to regain mastery over his nano-tech to get justice. Or vengeance!

Following the global wave of innovation on artificial intelligence, machine learning tools, and every possible variation of GPT driven chatbots, Ishmael has been propelled to Chief Technical Officer of Paragon Logic, the most ambitious technical organization of the 21st century.

Before science fiction became about empires, wars, and dystopias, it was about wonder. In the tradition of Arthur C. Clarke and early Isaac Asimov, Hayden’s World offers carefully crafted visions of what might await us when we cross the next frontier. From daring voyages across the solar system to aerostat rides in the skies of Uranus, these stories capture the optimism and sense of discovery that once defined the genre.

Abernathy Squire, an agent for the Homeland, is reluctant to come out of retirement. A century has passed since the Spectral Wars. The world has changed. The elite have fled to other planes, and those left in the sprawling megacities are ruled by the five syndicates. No longer hidden, the Spectral races now mingle with the forever-young mortals. But a friend and an artifact have gone missing, and this is his chance to settle an old score.

Odditales is a science fiction collection of short stories designed to be direct and intense. There are twists and turns, relatable characters, and plenty of science facts to reinforce the plot.

Жизнь настойчиво вносит поправки в людские планы, сплетая замысловатый узор судьбы. Хочешь—не хочешь, а впереди ждёт поворот и неведомо куда тебя вынесет её очередной каприз. Но как бы не петлял жизненный путь, он всегда ведёт домой. В этот раз простого возвращения в родной мир не получилось.

One hundred years after Dr. Irwin C. Jacobs begins his epic quest to develop a truly cognitive neural array, "artificial sentients" live amongst us and are sold in retail stores. With the establishment of a new slavery comes a new abolitionist movement and a new underground railroad - run by people determined to protect these new slaves from the worst abuses of their human owners.

Cass and Ken fled their wedding when an assassin tried to kill them. They ran from Los Alamos to Las Vegas to Massachusetts and finally to the flooded remains of New Orleans. Now Kendra will try to recruit her employer to help them get to the bottom of this mystery, but everything has a cost. She may have no choice but to pay it, however. Cass has problems of her own when she discovers that a friend is in jeopardy because of her. Can she organize a rescue attempt?