Showing results by publisher "Wildside Press LLC" in Space Opera

In a galactic culture that extends from quasi-utopian worlds, like New Alexandria, to vermin-infested slums, like Old Earth, starship pilots have become the great romantic heroes of the day. When Star-Pilot Grainger is rescued from a shipwreck, he finds himself pressed into reluctant service to fly the Hooded Swan, the prototype of a new kind of interstellar ship. He's also picked up an alien parasite that's determined to share his brain....

Like the original Star Trek series, the Daedalus is on a multi-year mission to visit remote planets and check on previous colonization attempts. But the intricate plots and scientific detail go far beyond anything in Star Trek. Each planet visited has a unique ecosystem and evolutionary history which Stableford (a biologist himself) brings vividly to life. Alternate evolutionary paths provide fascinating turning-points for plots, and the problems encountered by the Daedalus's crew make exciting stories.

Salvatore commands the battleship Endymion. He's seen his share of battles and fought them bravely, too. So he doesn't hesitate when beautiful Princess Hatari pleads for his help. She wants to regain her throne, but it may be more than Salvatore can accomplish, for the deadly race known as the Balderdash has taken over the planet Melchior--and now, even his own men have turned against him!

Thousands of years from now, the human race has expanded throughout the galaxy, colonizing millions of worlds and creating myriads of bizarre new religious cults and sects. One of these worlds is Stohlson's Redemption, where the human settlers raise dinosaurs for their religious ceremonies. When the ten-year-old Kerryl Ryson creates an unseemly incident that upsets a visiting Important Person, his father is fed to a dinosaur - as an object lesson in politeness - and his remaining family are sold into slavery.

Poor Jack Wong is a clueless cadet at the Unified Space Academy when his pod is stranded on a planet of disgusting aliens. All he wants to do, other than escape, is to fulfill his proud duty to advance Earth Culture's Primary Heuristic: "Wherever possible, find the weak spot in an alien civilization and interfere as much as possible for the benefit of humanity." It's the Human's Burden! But everything comes unstuck, made worse by his irritating Machiavellian AI. And that's just the start of Jack's troubles in space and time....