Humorous Science Fiction Adventures

The newly renamed Vance Turbo has sabotaged his own career at Space Fleet Academy due to a desire to atone for a training accident. Unfortunately, his actions result in him getting press-ganged into an expendable crew of misfits recruited by a legendary starship captain. Their mission? To recover a collection of lost sun-destroying missiles that could restart a galactic war. Unfortunately, Vance is smart enough to know something is wrong with this picture. After all, no sane person would recruit this crew to save the universe.

Absalom Scryne, the greatest wizard of his generation, has been murdered. There's no other explanation for why his consciousness now resides in his well-worn but perfectly pointed hat. Well, he isn't going to take that lying down . . . or hanging from a branch, as the case may be.

No one is shocked by the six-eyed alien strolling around the Universal back lot. The tourists just think he's part of the show. It doesn't take long for Buddy to land a role on a popular TV show, playing (of course) an alien. He becomes an overnight heartthrob and is suddenly faced with legions of adoring fans, rides in glamorous limos, and appearances at "all-the-shrimp-you-can-eat" red carpet parties. But can Buddy maintain his secret identity while in the spotlight?

Watch out - the Earth just fell into a dark sun's orbit! Or maybe you'd rather visit a theme park called Hell? These are just two of the strange and unnerving tales you'll find in this collection of great science fiction and fantasy stories.

Jonathan Strahan, the award-winning and much lauded editor of many of genre's best known anthologies, is back with his 11th volume in this fascinating series, featuring the best science fiction and fantasy. With established names and new talent, this diverse and ground-breaking collection will take the listener to the outer reaches of space and the inner realms of humanity with stories of fantastical worlds and worlds that may still come to pass.

Clunk, a clapped-out robot, is convinced he's about to be junked. Instead, his penny-pinching boss is sending him off to be refurbished. Being old and wise, Clunk knows there's a catch, but at first it doesn't seem too bad. He just has to help a freelancer pick up some cargo. Unfortunately, Hal Spacejock - the freelancer - is obstinate, over-confident, and woefully under-skilled, and he's never going to let a lowly robot fly his precious ship. Is there any chance this pair of misfits can lift off, collect the cargo and deliver it in one piece?

Incredible Science Fiction: Amazing Tales from the 50's and Beyond, Volume Two collates a collection of some of the very best science-fiction stories published in the '50s together. All these stories (with the exception of The Anatomy of Fear) are now in the public domain and were original published in various science-fiction magazines that were very popular in the 1950s. This is a lovingly curated collection of some of the very best stories published during this time. This collection includes a further story from the Hugo Award-nominated Rog Phillips.

With the sale of our first magical knife, our weapons manufacturing business was off to a strong start. Cash was flowing and spirits were high. We tried to push ourselves, to advance our technology a bit and come up with something new and exciting. But a problem began to rear its ugly head. It seemed that Mandi was a bit obsessive, and something weird was forming between her and Bobbi Jo. With this many women around, jealousy was bound to rear its ugly head. I just didn't expect it to happen so suddenly.

They’ve taken everything from him. Now Jerry and Chewy are headed to Niagara Falls to take out the wasteland’s greatest villain once and for all. But The Librarian isn’t the only one looking for revenge. Several other post-apocalyptic nomadic warriors have experienced Invcitus’ horrors firsthand and are in town to find vengeance. The Bookkeepers have lived under the tyrant’s iron fist for far too long. They’re well informed, organized, and ready to strike.

Chris thought he had it all. But then his dreams of space travel ended in the worst way possible, and he was reincarnated as the goblin king of Rava. Now he leads a loyal-but-pathetic gang of blue-furred boneheads. And with his smarts, a tech tree gifted by the enigmatic System, and his army of extremely eager if accident-prone followers, he's managed to drag them all out of the muck and into an industrial age of combustion machines.

Transported from Earth to another world by a temperamental goddess, misanthrope Seiji was suddenly a dark lord of incredible power. Not that he wanted that exactly. He just hated everything and everyone and wanted to be left alone. So as a big baddie, he's tried to hold back on the pure-evil schtick and make life a little better for his people—without being a total wuss, of course. But sometimes baddies gotta be bad. And now Seiji has found himself caught in a military, political, and possibly genocidal conflict with goblins.

After the fall of the zombies, the balance of power between the monsters of the Far Lands of Minecraft is disrupted. The skeleton warlord Rakar grows stronger, and his skeleton army is leaving a terrible path of destruction in their wake. Watcher and his friends, determined to stop the violence, realize the warlord's power lives in the magical Fossil Bow of Destruction. The mysterious weapon is locked away in the skeletons' subterranean kingdom, but unless the bow is stolen, all of the Far Lands could be destroyed forever!

High Protector Vance Turbo managed to save the entire galaxy and retrieve his wayward child, Astrid. As such, he's been looking for a safe job to raise his daughter and find some peace. Unfortunately, that turns out to have been a terrible idea because while Vance believes the universe doesn't need him, the universe disagrees. Sent on a crazy mission to assassinate a Sorkanan warlord and recover a long-lost space pirate treasure, Vance discovers that humanity is on the chopping block for its many sins.

Long before he was a knight in the apocalypse, Tommy was preparing for the end of the world. His friends grew concerned for his well-being and planned to intervene. It wasn’t so much that he was preparing, it was what he was preparing for.

In a not-so-distant future, a deadly pandemic has forced the world into social isolation. Confined to their homes, millions now survive off drone-delivered food packages and online-only interactions. It’s an especially lonely life for John Chambers, a drone shipment coordinator for the monolithic Chum Corporation. Trapped in his dead-end job, John has started spending much more of his time grinding in virtual reality role-playing games.

Jake tries hard, but spying is a tough job. When a botched pickup and a drunken indiscretion drop him in jail, he's sent to serve his sentence in the Milita. His new commander wants Jake's next tour to be out an airlock without a suit. At least his fellow conscript is friendly, and has a sexy single sister! But an accidental shooting and a boarding by his old friend Nadine complicate his life. Now the girls don't trust him, Mr. Dashi won't answer his calls, and there are armed ships chasing him through the rings. Is he in trouble? Or was this Dashi's plan all along?

So some god smoked a million godly cigarettes and exhaled that all over the Earth, causing the entire planet to erupt into chaos, death, explosions, implosions, and general apocalyptic events. The air is foul. Probably poisonous. Despite this, life inexplicably continues for one slacker and his cat. As far as Isaac knows, and depending on what side of the AI sentience debate you're on, he's the only human left on the planet. He would resign to his fate-playing the latest Fallout or replaying Portal 2 on the PS6 until the electricity fails and he begins to rot more than just his brain.

Bob Spinowitz was an average guy—until aliens abducted him and gave him the head of a duck. Then they asked “DuckBob” to save the universe, since their modifications meant he could. Talk about a backhanded compliment! Amazingly, though, DuckBob did it. And thus became Guardian of the Matrix, which protects the cosmos from further invasion—as long as he’s plugged in. Literally. But alien techie pal Ned just made the Matrix User Interface wireless. Suddenly, DuckBob is free again—the whole universe is at his alien-altered, webbed feet!

After a hit man blasts telepathic psychiatrist David Lumen’s mind into the body of a pampered kitty on its way home to the moon, David’s desperate plan to make himself whole again is hampered by his new feline life. The only person close enough to communicate with is struggling avant-garde artist, Pippin Applegate.

Howdy, friend. I'm Rusty, and so is my big-rig's engine. When the old girl finally gave up the ghost in the middle of nowhere, I wasn't expecting to get a tow from an alien mothership. But the next thing I knew, me and my buddy Mike were halfway across the galaxy in an oversized hubcap full of the weirdest space creatures you ever did see. Turns out aliens are mighty friendly folks, but they can't fix their tech to save their lives.