Showing titles in Hard Science Fiction

The P.U.V. James Keeling has two objectives: raid enemy supply lines, and capture live specimens of a flesh-eating, warmongering alien species. The first mission is suicidal. The second might be worse. But there’s a complication. The operation unfolds in the territory of a neutral power—one whose ships escort the enemy, and whose laws forbid Keeling’s crew from firing back. A single stray artillery shell could spark a second war, one the Planetary Union will not survive.

A classic thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Crichton, Sphere is a bravura demonstration of what he does better than anyone: riveting storytelling that combines frighteningly plausible, cutting-edge science and technology with pulse-pounding action and serious chills.

When the Colony on Hayden's world went black, a team was sent to investigate. It was supposed to be a training mission: skip in, find out the Casimir Transmitter had gone dead, report back and wait for resupply from the Fleet. By the time the only surviving member of the team made landfall, it was spectacularly clear that this wasn't a training mission.

Bloomsbury presents Cage of Souls, read by David Thorpe and written and introduced by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Humanity clings to life on a dying Earth in an epic, far-future science fiction novel from an award-winning author. The sun is bloated, diseased, dying perhaps. Beneath its baneful light...

Despite political foes, professional jealousies, and the scandal which drove her into exile, Capt. Honor Harrington has been offered a chance to reclaim her career as an officer of the Royal Manticoran Navy. But there's a catch. She must assume command of a "squadron" of jury-rigged armed merchantmen with crew drawn from the dregs of her service and somehow stop the pirates who have taken advantage of the Havenite War to plunder the Star Kingdom's commerce.

As Hari Seldon struggles to perfect his revolutionary theory of psychohistory and ensure a place for humanity among the stars, the once-mighty Galactic Empire totters on the brink of apocalyptic collapse. Caught in the maelstrom are Seldon and all he holds dear, pawns in the struggle for dominance. Whoever can control Seldon will control psychohistory—and with it the future of the galaxy. Among those seeking to turn psychohistory into the greatest weapon known to man are a populist political demagogue, the weak-willed Emperor Cleon I, and a ruthless militaristic general.

Upon the ancient drysine moon/city of Defiance, the UFS Phoenix is being rebuilt, but her crew cannot do so in peace. Parren factions jostle for control of not only Defiance, but of the drysine data-core that Phoenix won at such an awful price. But the parren do not lay sole claim to that ancient knowledge, and within the bowels of the machine-city, something long-dead is awakening. While aliens battle, Captain Debogande struggles to decide his next step. Human emissaries beckon him home, while a terrible new threat drives him toward the far edge of Spiral space.

Lord Maddox the New Man, leader of a gargantuan fleet, waits for the Torus to reopen a breach into our dimension. Then, he will invade, annihilate Star Watch’s pitiful force and grind weak humanity under his heel. Captain Maddox has vowed to stop his alternate self, and is planning a daring commando raid into the other dimension to destroy the Torus and thereby end the threat.

Get ready to be blown away by this searing standalone science fiction epic where corporate samurai fight beneath merciless stars, and death is always a mere breath away. Isako is a legendary swordswoman, but every legend has to come to an end. When her long-time client unexpectedly retires, she...

Growing up, Travis Uriah Long yearned for order and discipline in his life...he two things his neglectful mother couldn’t or wouldn’t provide. So when Travis enlisted in the Royal Manticoran Navy, he thought he’d finally found the structure he’d always wanted so desperately. But life in the RMN isn’t exactly what he expected. Boot camp is rough and frustrating; his first ship assignment lax and disorderly; and with the Star Kingdom of Manticore still recovering from a devastating plague, the Navy is possibly on the edge of budgetary extinction.

In the year 2031, a robot probe detects traces of biological activity on Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons. This sensational discovery shows that there is indeed evidence of extraterrestrial life. Fifteen years later, a hurriedly built spacecraft sets out on the long journey to the ringed planet and its moon. The international crew is not just facing a difficult twenty-seven months: if the spacecraft manages to make it to Enceladus without incident it must use a drillship to penetrate the kilometer-thick sheet of ice that entombs the moon.

March 15th, Earth Year 2290. The day the aliens returned. The memories are still fresh. Of colonies burning. Of millions dying in agony. Fifty years later, we’ve built up our strength. Using a wormhole, we colonized both sides of the galaxy. It was the worst mistake we could have made. Our enemy has returned and the wormhole has collapsed. Commander Thatcher finds himself on the wrong side of the divide. Separated from his pregnant wife by countless light years. He’s just been given command of a light armored cruiser. His first command.

Alice works at the Scottish embassy in Tallinn in Estonia as a member of the Cultural Section. When two men bring her the jeweled skull of a Scottish saint, her world gets turned on its head, and she becomes the latest recruit to Les Coureurs des Bois. On a Greek island, Benno is just one of hundreds of refuges dreaming of a new life in continental Europe. After hatching an audacious escape plan, he may just get his dream, but at the price of serving some powerful mysterious new masters.   

Leo Graf was just your average highly efficient engineer: mind your own business, fix what's wrong, and move on to the next job. But all that changed on his assignment to the Cay Habitat, where a group of humanoids had been secretly, commercially bioengineered for working in free fall. Could he just stand there and allow the exploitation of hundreds of helpless children merely to enhance the bottom line of a heartless mega-corporation?

An alien Entity had waited megaannum, millions of years, for sentience to emerge on a planet with an ecosystem vibrant enough to foster the evolution of complexity. Impervious to impatience, dispassionate, and deliberate, the Entity's patience was rewarded with a promising species—humans. When the time was right, the warning was given: "The tenure of sentience is ephemeral." The Entity had borne witness to the extinction of civilizations and their species, an outcome that must not be repeated. Not this time. Not with a species of such potential.

Faced with determining the fate of the galaxy, Golan Trevize hesitantly chose to hand over the rule of the galaxy to planet Gaia. Two mysteries now remain: who has erased the records of Earth – and why? Determined to ensure his choice was right, Golan sets off with Janov Pelorat and Bliss, to answer these questions once and for all. But nothing could prepare them for the secrets which await them on Earth. Secrets which predate history as they know it, and will change its significance forever.

The record-breaking debut novel that won every major science fiction award in 2014, Ancillary Justice is the story of a warship trapped in a human body and her search for revenge. Ann Leckie is the first author to win the Arthur C. Clarke, the Nebula and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in the same...

The stunning conclusion to the trilogy that began with the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning Ancillary Justice. For just a moment, things seem to be under control for the soldier known as Breq. Then a search of Atheok Station's slums turns up someone who shouldn't exist - someone who might be an ancillary from a ship that's been hiding beyond the empire's reach for three thousand years.

The UFS Phoenix is finally homeward bound. On the way is Tuki Station, in barabo space, hit just now by a force of sard ships, working in concert with a larger invasion from alo space. An alo and deepynine fleet has attacked, and humanity's forces are in turmoil despite all of Phoenix's efforts over the past three years to prepare them. Nia leads the assault, Styx's old AI queen nemesis from the Drysine/Deepynine War, the greatest armed conflict in Spiral history, 25,000 years ago. But what does Nia seek?

An artificial object made of compressed stardust is barreling toward Earth. Is it an invasion ship? A doomsday weapon? Perhaps it’s the final response of Squanto, the Warlord of Rigel who James McGill has repeatedly humiliated. Or could it be from the Mogwa, sent to avenge McGill’s assassination of Earth’s Imperial Governor? No one knows the truth of its origins, but the object is huge and unstoppable. Whoever hurled this rock at us isn’t answering our calls. Every weapon bounces off, and the people of Earth begin to go mad as they realize their destruction is only hours away.