Showing results for "of science" in Hard Science Fiction

For many billions of years, humans - having conquered the curse of aging - spread throughout the entire Milky Way. They are able to live all their dreams, but to their great disappointment, no other intelligent species has ever been encountered. Now, humanity itself is on the brink of extinction because the universe is dying a protracted yet inevitable death.

A mysterious object threatens to destroy our solar system. The survival of humankind is at risk, but nobody takes the warning of young astrophysicist Maribel Pedreira seriously. At the same time, an exiled crew of outcasts mines for rare minerals on a lone asteroid. When other scientists finally acknowledge Pedreira's alarming discovery, it becomes clear that these outcasts are the only ones who may be able to save our world, knowing that the Hole hurtles inexorably toward the sun.

Long before movies like Minority Report and The Matrix, the world's writers have been recording the future as it might exist - and as it turns out, they were right. This bizarre anthology collects the most stunning predictions and imagined inventions here for the first time. Visions of Tomorrow includes "The Land Iron Clads" by H. G. Wells, who described a military tank in 1903 - long before it was ever a possibility; "The Yesterday House" by Fritz Leiber, who wrote about cloned humans; and more.

The hammer’s cocked and there’s tension on the trigger… when the hammer falls, will its spark ignite a brilliant future for humanity… or set off World War III? Tensions between the new Earth Space Agency and the Global Space Agency are ready to snap. The world’s superpowers are on military alert, and a new, global world war seems impossible to avoid. Above the clouds, StarQuest, Extreme Habitats, Inc and Kruger International hurry to build their space station.

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 resort that sells time. A journalist chasing ghosts. A secret that should have stayed buried. In 2954, the Blue Ring Nebula Resort on Ascension Island promises the impossible: One week of life experienced in just five minutes of real time. To the world, it’s a miracle of science. To investigative reporter Jessie Angier, it’s the last place her mother was seen alive. Disguised as a honeymooner, Jessie joins four other guests in a luxury retreat built inside a ring where time runs faster. But paradise falters. The clocks twitch.

It has been nearly 100 years since the Apollo moon landings, when Jack and Vladimir, two astronauts on a mission to Venus, discover a mysterious void related to indigenous life on the planet. Subsequently more voids are detected on Earth, Mars, Titan, and, quite ominously, inside a planetoid emerging from the Kuiper belt. Jack is sent to investigate the voids in the Solar System and intercept the planetoid - which, as becomes increasingly clear, is inhabited by alien life forms.

Im Jahr 2031 landet in Alaska ein außerirdisches Raumschiff, doch es verschwindet, bevor ein Erstkontakt stattfinden kann. Zurück bleibt nur eine fremdartige Pflanze, die starke halluzinogene Eigenschaften aufweist: Luma. Aus ihr wird eine Droge hergestellt, die sich binnen weniger Jahre wie ein Lauffeuer über die Erde verbreitet und bald von jedem dritten Menschen konsumiert wird.

There is a huge, bold black streak in the sky. Branches appear out of nowhere over North America, Southern Europe, and Central Africa. People who live beneath The Rift can see it. But scientists worldwide are distressed - their equipment cannot pick up any type of signal from it. The rift appears to consist of nothing. Literally. Nothing. Nada. Niente. Most people are curious but not overly concerned. The phenomenon seems to pose no danger. It is just there. Then something jolts the most hardened naysayers, and surpasses the worst nightmares of the world's greatest scientists.

In the 1980s, physicists at a lab in the Soviet Union find traces of strange data in the cosmic background radiation. Because powerful forces in the military believe these findings can be turned into a weapon for use in the cold war, the information gleaned by the physicists is kept under strictest secrecy. The scientists are limited to primitive 1980s technology, but what they find has roots in much, much older times. They finally try an experiment that they hope will win the world over for communism.

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.

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.

Hundreds of years in the future, on a stagnating and almost empty Earth, a space shuttle pilot from the early days of the 21st century is awoken from the cryogenic sleep he entered after a devastating accident. As he comes to terms with this new world, he begins to realise that their history...

For decades, the spacefaring species of known space have battled over the largest artifact - and grandest prize - in the galaxy: the all-but-limitless resources and technology of the Ringworld. Now, without warning, the Ringworld has vanished, leaving behind three rival war fleets. If the fallen civilization of the Ringworld can no longer be despoiled of its secrets, the puppeteers will be forced to surrender theirs - everyone knows that they are cowards. But the crises converging upon the trillion puppeteers of the Fleet of Worlds go far beyond even the onrushing armadas.

Titan is practically a planet in its own right, with a diameter similar to that of Mercury, methane rainstorms, organic soot, and ethane seas. The views from Titan’s Mayda outpost are spectacular, but all is not well at the moon’s remote science base. On the shore of a methane sea beneath glowering skies, atmospherics researcher Abigail Marco finds herself in the middle of murder, piracy, and colleagues who seem to be seeing sea monsters and dead people from the past.

Keeping up-to-date with the most buzzworthy and cutting-edge science fiction requires sifting through countless magazines, e-zines, websites, blogs, original anthologies, single-author collections, and more - a task accomplishable by only the most determined and voracious readers. For everyone else, Night Shade Books is proud to introduce the latest volume of The Best Science Fiction of the Year, collecting the finest that the genre has to offer, from the biggest names in the field to the most exciting new writers.

Trapped on an alternate Earth, the combined crews of a crashed Russian spaceship, a British expeditionary force and a group of strays from the future must work together to survive, escape and discover what led them to this point. All are from parallel universes where small changes in history led to different realities, and the tensions between the groups are rising.

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.

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.

Special Agent Waylen Brooks is charged with doing the impossible: preventing an alien incursion, without alerting the general population. Will his past finally catch up with him before he can succeed? Rory Swanson wants to forget the shadow following her, but every time she ignores it someone dies. Silas Gunn is the Key. With no other option, he must travel to Planet D to visit the field of shadows. Little does he know what he seeks is also seeking him. A lifetime of deception will need to be reckoned with in order to survive what's coming.