Showing results by publisher "Spoken Realms" in Hard Science Fiction

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.

The world has been in anarchy for 200 years, and society is disintegrating. There is, however, a small oasis with a government that is doing well, hidden from the rest of the world. The AL, or Anarchy League, whose purpose is to destroy all government, stumbles upon this settlement.

Alan Green, space-wrecked on a populated but backward planet, has survived for two years as a slave with no hope of rescue. Then, one day, news of spacemen landing in a remote city gives him his only chance of ever returning home. All he has to do is escape slavery, travel thousands of miles, free the spacers from prison before they are executed, and get aboard their spaceship.

An errant encounter with a passing star has flung Earth away from its old Solar System into the dark and cold of deep space. With the entire atmosphere frozen as chemical snow dozens of feet deep, one last family struggles to survive. But what are they to think when they see figures moving in the city ruins? Are Earth's dead coming back to life?

A space portal to remote colonies held by Earth is captured by a hostile species, which wants to place a toll on it. While authorities on Earth and considering whether to wage war, they manage to capture an alien spaceship, and hand it over to a group of scientists for military research. Will the scientists succeed in discovering any secrets that will give humanity the upper hand in the impending conflict?

A strange electrical power transports Mike Kenscott from the Earth he knows to the strange land of Narabedla in another man’s body. Now as Adric of the Crimson Tower, Kenscott must solve the mystery of Narabedla’s Dreamers or perish in a foreign world.

If a society was created entirely by criminals with no memory of their former world, what would they come up with? It couldn't be crazier than Omega, where the religion is the worship of evil, humans are hunted for fun, status is attained one corpse at a time, and life expectancy is three years...if you're lucky. Omega - a fun place to live, if the plants, animals, weather, or your neighbors don't kill you first.

The Western Conference discovers the Reds have stolen their alien-source data on a colonizable planet...and so must rush their plans for an expedition. When their spaceship crashes on Topaz, Travis Fox and his party of modern Apache Indians, reverted to their tribal ancestral memories, find they have already been beaten there. And they must deal with more than Reds - for the Reds have brought along reverted members of Ghenghis Khan's Mongol Horde!

Across half a galaxy, the Terran Empire maintains its sovereignty with the consent of the governed. It is a peaceful reign, held by compact and not by conquest. Again and again, when rebellion threatens the Terran Peace, the natives of the rebellious world have turned against their own people and sided with the men of Terra - not from fear, but from a sense of dedication. There has never been open war. The battle for these worlds is fought in the minds of a few men who stand between worlds; bound to one world by interest, loyalties, and allegiance; bound to the other by love.

There were ten humanoid robots somewhere in the United States, each one carrying a fragment of a TC bomb. TC! The race for sheer horror in bomb-ery had ended there. TC! Total Conversion! The sun was no longer a synonym one could use. Total conversion made the sun a penny candle.

The Invisible Man was the fourth sci-fi novel written by Wells in the 1890s. The main character, Griffin, is one of the intimidating villains in all popular literature. The archetypal "mad scientist," Griffin devotes himself to an obsessive study of optics and realizes his ambition to render livings things permanently invisible. After making a cat invisible, he successfully applies the procedure to himself. After causing chaos in London, he travels to the village of Iping in Sussex and takes up residence in a local hotel.

Canna III is a water planet with a single large island. The island is bordered by a high cliff. Civilians irrigating the land has caused issues where soil and bedrock meet. The land has been turned into a saltwater swamp, turned upside down. The swamp is sliding into the ocean, taking inhabitable land with it. Compounding the problem is a fuel leak from underground tanks threatening to detonate. Two Colonial Survey troubleshooters have been called to the planet to try and rectify the situation.

After a century-long cold war between Us and Them, an agent arrives and informs authorities that robots identical to humans have been developed by Them. Ten are already in America and when they get together, their combined components will trigger a nuclear-level explosion capable of destroying a major American city. The head of U.S. robotics is tasked with finding and destroying them before they can succeed.

Valgolia, a planet in the Epsilon Eridani star system, conquered Earth generations ago, but their conquest was incomplete. While Valgolians made possible greater prosperity, universal health, and interstellar trade for all Earthlings, the factional frictions of Earth - race against race, religion against religion, culture against culture - continue to bedevil the Valgolian's vision of a peaceable world for all mankind.

When Red, a young boy living on a vast country estate owned by his father, a world-renowned industrialist, finds and captures two small and strange-looking animals, he hides them away in an old bird cage in the loft of his father's barn. He has dreams of making big bucks in a circus sideshow featuring the two unusual creatures.

It is summer, in the probably distant future, and Artie Lindstrom - the wizard behind a remotely-triggered jar lid opener that became the weapon that defeated the Martian invasion, a water desalinization machine that inadvertently produced gin, and a death ray gun that obliterated Venus during the Three-Day War - has sketched out plans for an anti-gravity machine not much bigger than a mini-fridge.

How many dimensions are there? In The Other Now, Murray Leinster takes us to a place where more than one Now may exist. At least that is what Jimmy and Jane believe. Haynes, Jimmy's lawyer friend, believes Jimmy suffers from post-traumatic shock after a tragic auto accident. That is, before a revelation.

In "The Parasite," Arthur C Clarke explores the dark and unsettling world of "mental illness" through the eyes of Roy Connolly. But Roy knows he isn't crazy, he has been possessed by Omega, a creature of the very distant future where humanity exists primarily as intellect with severely emaciated bodies. And what fun is that? The solution is to travel back in time to a more physical era

The Portable Star takes us to an uninhabitable planet. Uninhabitable that is by life as we know it, but in science fiction life exists in many forms. The planet Sigmaringen IV appears to be inhabited by entities that although invisible can influence the mind. A thought control. Our space travelers, two couples, go through some very strange personality changes controlled by "them". As the story unfolds, it becomes apparent that the invisible entities are trying to communicate with the humans, causing them to act out of character and experience intense emotions.

Sheckley's satirical humor shines through as Edward Moran Archer previews the different levels of hell, from the mundane to the outrageous. Each punishment is tailored to fit the individual's sins, and Archer quickly realizes the gravity of his choices. As he reflects on his life and the impact of his actions, Archer must come to terms with his own beliefs and face the consequences of his decisions. As time passes, he is forced to confront the reality of his existence and the choices that led him to this moment.