Showing results for "j" in Hard Science Fiction

First contact isn’t a welcome. It’s a verdict. An alien ship—five kilometers of impossible design—halts at the edge of our system. For two centuries, it has listened to our every broadcast. Now, judgment has come. Three human factions launch rival missions: one disciplined and ruthless, one fierce and independent, one reckless and unbound. Seventeen men and women will cross the airlock and face what waits inside.

When scientist Lisa Duncan and Special Forces officer Mike Turcotte uncovered the stunning truth about Area 51--a "training area" on Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada--they opened up a Pandora's box kept hidden from the American public for 50 years.

Special Forces officer Mike Turcotte has paid his dues in battle and in blood. Now assigned to Area 51, he fights the toughest enemy of his career: the alien race who arrived on Earth millennia ago and have returned to claim the planet. Mike has dodged bullets and faced weapons of mass destruction to give humanity another day of reprieve. But when his lover, scientist Lisa Duncan, falls into evil hands, Mike must decide which prize means the most to him - the woman he loves or the legendary Grail.

The entire human population is attacked by a very suspicious virus. SIMPOC's programmer doesn't come in to work, that day, the next, or ever. The commander of the space station Oasis, Joan Herl, is forced to abandon the station because of dwindling resources. When they land on earth, they are attacked by another thinking computer who would do anything to protect itself and to continue thinking.

In an age when technology vanquished natural death, Ryan and his sardonic AI implant are recruited at the last minute to board the first colony ship to Tau Ceti. As the lowest-ranked crewmember, he expects to cryogenically freeze right away, but the captain has other plans. Ryan begins a training program for rare individuals who heal much faster than normal, a program that teaches him to survive every possible scenario that Murphy’s Law can deliver.

Something strange is happening on Mars. And it’s his job to find out. In the near future, a new space race begins. Private industry is now pushing the limits of human exploration and colonization. NASA has changed its mandate into a regulatory agency that oversees all US-based interests involved in interplanetary expansion. Stilicho Jones always has his hands full working as a corporate fixer for eccentric trillionaire Errol Flux and his numerous cutting edge space projects.

Robot Robbie is just one of 100 new robots. Running revolutionary new software, these robots are truly unique. His only desire is to serve Lucy Walker. Brian Webster, his developer, also installs "The Governor" overseeing software that adds an additional safety layer, but this denies the robots free will. Hoping to develop the robots further, Brian inadvertently opens a channel where the robots can communicate and share their experiences.

Timothy Koops is an ordinary man with a dead-end job whose home life is a struggle. He takes part in an experimental procedure to enhance his memories, making them more positive and making him more successful in life. As Timothy discovers, the procedure also alters the past, subtly at first, then with greater impact. The changes begin to affect not only Timothy but also the world around him. Enjoying unimagined wealth and power, Timothy embraces his glamourous new life. But the project’s lead scientist, Dr. Zakery Fasten, is concerned about unexpected consequences.

For many, the dying part is hard. For some, the living part is harder. At 16 years of age, Mathius’ life is focused on scrounging bits of food in the midst of a five-way civil war on the planet Novalis III. Two government factions and three rebel factions are all hell-bent on killing one another, and the civilian population is caught in the middle. If Mathius doesn’t find food, he and his father, mother, and sister will go hungry for the day, a not-so-unusual occurrence.

Nikaela Vreekande joins Kristdokar's clandestine operation to identify those responsible for the tragedy on Novalis III and the incident on Reisenar. Lieutenant Colonel Katrine Primatov meets with Thordahl and Brynjar on Norandyne to establish covert lines of communication between the Kelk Supremacy and the Commonwealth. John Mathius travels to Trafalgar to attend O-School. All seems well, but there are those in the Commonwealth and the Supremacy who would prefer that John and Nikaela fail, or barring that, they would see them dead.

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.

Sixty-eight years pass. On September 15th, 2015, an incident involving the Roswell wreckage escalates into a massive nuclear exchange between Russia and the United States, leaving five billion dead. Another eighty-three years have passed. It's 2098, and project T.I.T.O.R. is a reality. Hop machines are created by top quantum physicists Ephraim Caine, Jeff Waldron, and Rose Rios. These complex crafts are designed to do one thing: penetrate the time barrier. Time is short.

The diplomatic mission has arrived at Viktorkinde. Palmutter is getting more unstable and unreliable each day. On Sarkovie, Anders Eindride learns that the people responsible for the tragedy on Novalis III are planning something big, a real game changer. He's unable to warn his Commonwealth contacts before being put on a ship back to Viktorkinde, where the factions among the Kelk are splintering.

After John and Nikaela are rescued from the rogue warship Sycorax, Katrine Primatov has only a lone hunter-killer to back her in the remote Sarkovie system, and she is faced with a Kelk force of overwhelming firepower superiority. The Kelk decide to take John and Nikaela back to Viktorkinde, whether Katrine likes it or not, and everyone is pretending they're not prisoners. But the Kelk are quietly at war among themselves, fighting their own battle against superstition and irrationality. John and Katrine begin to learn the roots of the Kelk hatred of the Blacksword.

It is 2068 and humans are attempting to colonize Mars. Patricia Vicarro, director of a Mars colonization project, has selected HWR-001-046-QF Andrea to send to Mars in the first of a three-stage project to build a colony. Everything must be perfect. Andrea spent nearly three years in isolation, preparing for astronaut Adam Copelane's arrival. He will be the first human on Mars and will join Andrea in building the colony pods for the third phase. Now, with everything ready for Adam, she watches the Martian sky eagerly.

Calvin Jones is back again in this long-overdue sequel to Zero Calvin. Once again he has been revived by the gang at Bobcorp3, and once again he must continue to adapt to his strange new life in the future. Unfortunately, nothing is ever so straightforward in Calvin's life and he soon finds himself involved in a complicated love square with Tarpa and two newly-revived cryogenic patients. To add to the complications, these two patients are part of a new program by Bobcorp3 to use a section of the brain to directly interface with the Ariel system.

Kasih is a robotic child drawn into a project to discover her secrets, and into a war that threatens all humanity, including her own. The murder of her family by Union troops in Bandung leaves the rebels’ robotics experts, Losana Maraiwai and Wei Dingxiang, with nobody to explain Kasih’s design but Kasih herself. She is not what anyone expected. In Darwin, Dingxiang suspects a magic trick may explain away her human-like artificial intelligence. In Beijing, Union politician Gabriel da Costa fears an extinction-level technology. Both sides of the war see a weapon that might win it.

Imagine a future where the fate of humanity is ruled by the vile and unforgiving government. Executions of the poor become daily occurrences in order to make more room for the wealthy and the children of a new generation. A questionable agenda has been given to a dark, unforeseeable future, and the hope of the people rests in the unsure success of a starship named the Horizon. The search for humanity's new home has begun.

Allen's new dream job may end up becoming his worst nightmare. His new employer: a mysterious government agency tasked with protecting the world from out-of-control artificial intelligence and other technological threats. His first assignment: hunting down and disabling an abomination of science, technology, and the paranormal known as The Necromaton.

Years of research… decades of study… and it’s all led up to this. The greatest moment of researcher Roland Ohtani's professional career is at hand... but even with the eyes of the world upon him and the backing of the world’s most powerful billionaire, he never could have predicted the horrific truth that lies at the heart of everything.