Showing titles in Hard Science Fiction

In an unprecedented first, Earth sends a message to Mogwa Prime. Unfortunately, the messenger is not met with enthusiasm. Misunderstandings soon threaten all of Humanity. Forced to prove Earth can serve the Empire better than any rival, McGill does his best. Eager to prove our worth to the Galactics, the frontier war between Rigel and Earth is expanded to Storm World. Circled by six moons, the planet is ravaged by wild storms and tides. Battles are fought in raging hurricanes, and death stalks the soldiers on both sides.

From the moment Sam Newman and fourteen others awaken inside metal coffins next to the burning wreckage of a spacecraft, they face a constant struggle to stay alive on a seemingly uninhabited planet light-years from home. Worse, the last any of them remember, they were back home on Earth—at a time when interstellar travel was little more than a distant pipe dream. Survival means finding out who-or what-brought them to this place. Yet what few answers they find amidst the steaming jungles and the ruins of that distant world defy all logic or sanity.

The definitive collection of short fiction by Isaac Asimov, supreme master of the science fiction genre continues with Volume Two of the Complete Stories. The Good Doctor was always ahead of his time and his work stands today as the clearest expression of our collective hopes and fears for the future. But the ever-expanding popularity of his stories with young and old fans alike is explained by their wit, zest and human interest.

This omnibus contains all four books of the Adrift on a Sea of Stars series. Together, they tell the epic saga of the crew of the Beagle, sent to explore our stellar neighborhood.

The four books are:

• Adrift on a Sea of Stars
• Earth Not Forgotten
• The Tarden Agenda
• Republic and Empire

The extermination of Earth is at hand. With his increasingly irrational leadership Basil Wenceslas, chairman of the Hansa, has driven humanity into a corner. His punitive treatment of the Hansa colonies and the Roamers, as well as his refusal to aid an embattled Theroc, have made enemies for the people of Earth.

Equipped with the entirety of human knowledge, a sentient ship is launched on a last-ditch journey to find a new home for civilization. Trillions of miles. Tens of thousands of years. In the space between, the AI has plenty of time to think about life, the vastness of the universe, everything it was meant to do, and—with a perspective created but not limited by humans—what it should do.

The machine races demand a turn at the job, but the organics refuse to allow it. For more than a century, the Galactics have battled for supreme power. War and instability reign in place of peace, with every species spread over a hundred billion stars suffering as the Empire decays. James McGill discovers a scheme is underway. A new power is rising, determined to snatch the Throne from all the rest. Will this unite the Galactic Empire, or destroy it utterly?

The first of the acclaimed Vatta's War books, the exciting military science fiction series that features a swashbuckling spaceship-captain heroine who mixes commerce with combat.

The greatest scientific challenge of our age wasn't to enable time travel, it was to prevent it. The laws of physics had turned out to be idiotic, erecting no barriers to hopping time. In fact, they make it hard to avoid. I'm in the business of preserving the timeline - making sure the world sticks to the sacred rule of One Second per Second, and that history unfolds according to plan. The problem is, there is no plan until I make it.

In the year 2255, of all the sentient beings in her universe, it was a woman named Salma, twenty years old, who was the first fully to see the object called Planet Nine. See with her own eyes, albeit moderated by her ship's instruments. If not to recognise what it was, not yet. Not that the object turned out to be a planet, or the 'ninth' of anything. Briefly thought to be a black hole, it suddenly changes, expands and sends a message. There is something waiting on its service. Something not quite human.

In The Time Meddler, the turbulent English coastline in 1066 is the scene of a troubled encounter between the Meddling Monk and the First Doctor, Steven and Vicki. In The Deadly Assassin, the Fourth Doctor returns to Gallifrey and is framed for presidential murder. In Shada, the Fourth Doctor and Romana visit their old friend, the retired Time Lord Professor Chronotis, at Cambridge University. In The Mark of the Rani, the TARDIS lands the Sixth Doctor and Peri in the Industrial Revolution.

In outer space you can never feel sure that your adversary is altogether human. The runcible buffers on Samarkand have been mysteriously sabotaged, killing many thousands and destroying a terraforming project. Agent Cormac must reach it by ship to begin an investigation. But Cormac has incurred the wrath of a vicious psychopath called Pelter, who is prepared to follow him across the galaxy with a terrifying android in tow.

Two irresistible forces are rushing together to crush the planet Grayson between them, and only one woman, uncertain of her capabilities, weary unto death, and marked for murder -stands between her adopted planet and its devastation.

One thousand years after Earth was destroyed in an unprovoked attack, humanity has emerged victorious from a series of terrible wars to assure its place in the galaxy. But during celebrations on humanity’s new Homeworld, the legendary Captain Pantillo of the battle carrier Phoenix is court-martialed then killed, and his deputy, Lieutenant Commander Erik Debogande, the heir to humanity’s most powerful industrial family, is framed with his murder.

Scouts have located a forward base of the freakish creatures, who plot to annihilate all meat-based lifeforms. Earth assembles a joint task force with legions of Rigellian bears, Mogwa battlecruisers, and Saurian troops. Together, they strike as one against Crystal World. After annoying every superior in his chain of command, James McGill is the first to be deployed on the unexplored planet. His mission: to establish a beachhead on this strange, hostile ground. Surrounded and cut off, his troops fight to the bitter end against creatures made of earth, stone, and jewels.

Revolution threatens a longstanding peace.... Thirty years after the Syndicate Corporation saved Earth from climate-change extinction, SynCorp’s Five Factions rule the solar system with an iron fist wrapped in a velvet glove. Food, entertainment, safety, security - SynCorp provides it all. In return, the Company requires complete loyalty and obedience to corporate law.

From the Audie-nominated narrator of The Martian. In eleven years time, a million members of an alien race will arrive at Earth. Years before they enter orbit, their approach will be announced by the flare of a thousand flames in the sky, their ships' huge engines burning hard to slow them from the vast speeds needed to cross interstellar space. These foreboding lights will shine in our night sky like new stars, getting ever brighter until they outshine even the sun, casting ominous shadows and banishing the night until they suddenly blink out.

Autistic scientist Yasira Shien has developed a radical new energy drive that could change the future of humanity. But when she activates it, reality warps, destroying the space station and everyone aboard. The AI gods who rule the galaxy declare her work heretical, and Yasira is abducted by their agents. Instead of simply executing her, they offer mercy - if she'll help them hunt down a bigger target: her own mysterious, vanished mentor. With her homeworld's fate in the balance, Yasira must choose who to trust: the gods and their ruthless post-human angels, or a rebel scientist....

With no surface water, Harat Zuwayyah barely supports any life at all. The scorching wind howls across the desert, driving the sand and threatening to bury the village. Professor Susan Taylor is excavating an Egyptian tomb dated to 4500 BCE. She uncovers the mummified remains of a wealthy family that died on the trade route, revealing insights into a lost culture, but it's the talisman watching over the grave that causes her heart to race.

Caesar, an undercover operative, enters Carmichael with the briefest of orders from his boss and a countdown on his phone. What will happen when the clock strikes zero? Deputy Amelia Miller is dispatched from a nearby city, and a series of events keeps her around much longer than she'd expected. In the middle of the night, something shifts, and the whole town disappears off the face of the Earth. Who caused the shift, and what lies beyond the veil of their settlement?