Showing titles in Hard Science Fiction

A ship in the hands of their enemy...A liberation gone wrong...A chance to double their ranks...A bold and daring plan...Their support from the Pentaurus cluster dwindling fast, the Alliance faces new and unpleasant realities in the Sol sector. But, as they soon discover, untoward changes have the potential to bring unexpected opportunities. The trick is in how you use them.

Mahina's terraformers built a high-tech urban paradise. Then Earth flooded the colony with desperate refugees, cop Sass Collier among them. The settlers who arrived with Sass died decades ago. Outside the citadel, their descendants die weak and young. Sass fought a rebellion against the city once. She won concessions to give the settlers a chance at health. She paid with 20 years in prison. Now she’s out, a reformed character. She assembles an oddball crew doing odd jobs. She intends to mind her own business. But her fellow settlers are still failing.

Captain Nathan Scott must decide whether to stand and fight to the end, or live to fight another day - even if it means the end of his world.

Between 2017 and 2021, the US military admitted to having undeniable evidence that UFOs (now UAVs or UAPs) are here and defy the laws of physics. When Jason Ramsey, a popular science-fiction writer, becomes obsessed with the subject, he undertakes a relentless quest to uncover what is really going on. After recruiting Tessa Barrett, an extraordinarily talented mercenary, Jason devises a risky, desperate plan to get to the bottom of it all. But the truth is far more shocking, convoluted, and dangerous than anyone could have guessed, and he has no idea who he can trust.

New planets are fair game to asset strippers and interplanetary opportunists – and a commercial mission to a distant star system discovers a moon that is pitch black, but alive with radio activity. Its high-gravity, high-pressure, zero-oxygen environment is anathema to human life, but ripe for exploitation. They named it Shroud. Under no circumstances should a human end up on Shroud’s inhospitable surface. Except a catastrophic accident sees Juna Ceelander and Mai Ste Etienne doing just that.

The Dusahn Empire has been contained for the moment. But there is much work to be done in order to keep them from reasserting their dominance over the Pentaurus sector. As much as Captain Scott wants to see the Empire destroyed, he may have no choice but to find a way to coexist with them.

In the guise of political revolutionary Thomas Paine, bioengineer Peter Bernhardt brought down the corrupt and powerful Phoenix Club - and then turned revolution into evolution by becoming the first artificial human intelligence: Major Tom. In the two years since Major Tom revealed his digital existence and spread his freedom manifesto, he has been revered as a god and vilified as a demon. The United States and Europe have splintered into ideologically independent regions. Russia and China prepare to expand their empires.

In the year 2043, humans and AI coexist in a precarious balance of power enforced by a rigid caste reputation system designed to ensure that only those AI who are trustworthy and contribute to human society increase in power.

When a hideous accident kills the senior officers of the UNS Hibernia, it leaves a terrified young officer to save 300 colonists and crew aboard a damaged ship on a 17-month gauntlet to reach the colony of Hope Nation. With no chance of rescue or reinforcement, Nicholas Seafort must overcome despair, exhaustion, and guilt. He must conquer malfunctions, mutiny, and an alien horror beyond human understanding. And he must save lives, and take them - in the name of duty.

There is a fine line between right and wrong, good and evil. For years Jason Burke has straddled that line as best he can, always convinced that despite the violence carried out by him and his team they were firmly on the right side of that line. But as he reflects on his time with Omega Force, he begins to have his doubts. When strange happenings from the mysterious Avarian Empire cross the expanse and Jason and Omega Force are pulled into the conflict, they must pick sides between two superpowers

When a huge alien spacecraft crashes on the island of Cuba, the world scrambles to investigate. Secretive organizations have waited for generations for this opportunity, and they do not hesitate to send in recovery teams. Cooperation between nations breaks down as every government wants the newly discovered technology for themselves. Naturally, the Cubans have beaten everyone else, and the island is beginning to change. Aircraft flying reconnaissance are swatted from the skies.

Professor James Lowry didn’t believe in spirits, or witches, or demons. Not until a gentle spring evening when his hat disappeared, and suddenly he couldn’t remember the last four hours of his life. Now, the quiet university town of Atworthy is changing - slightly at first, then faster and more frighteningly each time he tries to remember.

The Galactic Star Alliance has been alive and well for millions of Earth years. Hundreds of thousands of worlds and trillions of beings move across the many home worlds of the Alliance. This revelation invites many questions: How is faster-than-light speed travel possible, and could cohesive, interstellar civilizations exist without it? Is it conceivable to govern a coalition not of different countries but of different species?

A captain coming into his own. A handful of refugees stranded on board. A possible traitor in their midst. A voyage into the territory of the very enemy that pursues them. Sometimes legends become realities in unexpected ways. It seems that fate has the crew of the Aurora firmly in its clutches.

Half a million years in the future, on a dead, war-ravaged world at the centre of the galaxy, there is a mile-high statue of Michael Poole. Poole, born on Earth in the fourth millennium, was one of mankind's most influential heroes. He was not a warrior, not an emperor. He was an engineer, a builder of wormhole transit systems. But Poole's work would ultimately lead to a vast and destructive conflict, a million-year war between humanity and the enigmatic, powerful aliens known as the Xeelee. The Xeelee won.

The aliens are here. And they want to help. The extraordinary new project from one of the country's most acclaimed and consistently brilliant SF novelists of the last 30 years. The Jackaroo have given humanity 15 worlds and the means to reach them. They're a chance to start over, but they're also littered with ruins and artifacts left by the Jackaroos' previous clients.

Captain Keyes is loved by the public but hated by Command. He captains the UHS Providence, an aging supercarrier and the last human ship not dependent on dark tech - technology humanity has used to rule over the galaxy since barely defeating the Ixa in the First Galactic War.

Here are tales of star-faring adventure, peril, and drama. Here are journeys into the mind-bending landscapes of virtual worlds and alternate realities. Here you'll also find stories of humanity's astounding future on Earth, on Mars, and in the solar system beyond - stories that always get the science right. And Bova's gathering of deeply realized, totally human characters are the heroic, brave, tricky, sometimes dastardly engineers, astronauts, corporate magnates, politicians, and scientists who will make these futures possible.

Now, as Turek readies an all-out attack on the Nexus system - a key conquest that could seal the rest of the galaxy's doom - Ky must rally to the challenge, draw upon every last reserve of her strategic skills, and reach deep if she is to tear from the ashes of tragedy her most decisive victory.

Lee's parents and their business partner, Gordon, found a class A habitable planet. They thought their quest as explorers was over and they'd live a life of ease. But before they could return and register their claim, Lee's parents died doing a survey of the surface. That left Lee two-thirds owner of the claim and their partner Gordon obligated by his word with her parents to raise Lee. She had grown up aboard the ship with her uncle Gordon and he was the only family she'd ever known. Him adopting her was an obvious arrangement to them.