Apocalyptic Science Fiction

Burning Hollow, Tennessee has always been a town divided. For a century, the powerful Bickmore and Banks families fought for control, creating generational wounds that never healed. When an EMP attack plunges America into chaos, that bitter feud ignites in unfathomable ways.

For 25 years, civilization has survived in meager enclaves, guarded against a plague of the dead. Temple wanders this blighted landscape, keeping to herself and keeping her demons inside her heart. She can’t remember a time before the zombies, but she does remember an old man who took her in and the younger brother she cared for until the tragedy that set her off on her personal journey toward redemption.

In the middle of the holidays, a biological attack wreaks havoc on the U.S. The virus is quick. Deadly. Unstoppable. The country is left in tatters. For Isaac Race, it’s especially bitter. After the death of his parents and sister, he was just getting his life back on track - the weaponized virus changes all that. Battered by the fresh deaths of his foster parents, but hardened by the year he’s endured, he emerges from the temporary safety of his home to seek out other survivors during the worst winter in years.

Caleb Webb is the dictionary definition of disadvantaged, and surviving on his own is nothing new. When the apocalypse hits, his rugged skill set for staying alive on the mean streets of Los Angeles comes in handy. Unfortunately, he's on a collision course with the worst criminal cartel in the city, unless someone intervenes.

After escaping the grasp of a deranged compound leader, Kade, Jesse, and the group of beautiful women continue their fight for survival. Kade had been shot in the battle against Knox and has a long road to recovery with the help of the newly rescued women. They will encounter catastrophic storms, wrestle with themselves, and what they’ve done, as well as what’s been done to them.

In the heart of the South Pacific lies Point Nemo, the most desolate and remote place on Earth. At its core is a dead zone, devoid of life, where government agencies crash their obsolete satellites and space stations, confident they won't harm a soul. When the International Space Station suffers a catastrophic failure and plummets through the atmosphere, it's here that Mission Specialist Julie Rohr, an astrobiologist studying living space dust called xylem, finds herself marooned. Julie's only hope for rescue lies in the hands of her estranged father, Dr. Finn Maddern, a renowned mycologist.

Shining Smith and her crew have obtained the weapons they need to rescue one of their own from the grips of their mortal enemy, Clarisse Warhammer. But to mount an assault on her fortified bunker, they have to cobble together an army of fighters. That could be the biggest battle of them all. Shining will need to step back into the biker world she left behind to broker an uneasy peace, then lead rival factions into a certain death trap.

For many billions of years, humans - having conquered the curse of aging - spread throughout the entire Milky Way. They are able to live all their dreams, but to their great disappointment, no other intelligent species has ever been encountered. Now, humanity itself is on the brink of extinction because the universe is dying a protracted yet inevitable death.

It is the 147th century. In the radically advanced post-human worlds of the Amaranthine Firmament, there is a contender to the Immortal throne: Aaron the Long-Life, the Pretender, a man who is not quite a man. In the barbarous hominid kingdoms of the Prism Investiture, where life is short, cheap, and dangerous, an invention is born that will become the Firmament's most closely kept secret.

Seventeen-year-old coder Jinx Marshall grew up spending weekends drilling with her paranoid dad for a doomsday she's sure will never come. She's an expert on self-heating meal rations, Krav Maga and extracting water from a barrel cactus. Now that her parents are divorced, she's ready to relax. Her big plans include making it to level 99 in her favorite MMORPG and spending the weekend with her new hunky stepbrother, Toby.

After a lifetime of hunting down criminals, Ryan just wants to live out his days in peace and in the shadows of Tokyo to grieve the loss of his wife and son. But his old team - the Nameless, experts in extraction and recon - comes with an urgent request for help. The young daughter of one of his closest friends, a girl he once treated as his own, has been kidnapped.

Country music icon Shane Black is this year’s headliner for the New Year’s Eve bash in Times Square, but when violent riots break out, he’ll need more than a six string to escape New York City. After decades of abuse as the world’s reserve currency, the US dollar’s day of reckoning is at hand. Without a functioning monetary system to purchase basic goods, society rapidly descends into abject chaos. Protests, looting, and bloodletting take the place of civility in a country which becomes thoroughly unhinged.

When our protagonist, Andrei, discovers that his girlfriend has cheated on him, he finds himself with an unexpected choice to make: a quick death or a new life in another world he knows absolutely nothing about. Andrei chooses life and sets off alongside his pet, a ginger cat with a limp, for a primeval world fraught with danger. The trouble is...who is whose pet becomes entirely unclear; the man's consciousness is split between both creatures, and the little cat gets a far greater share of intelligence and wit than his hulking master.

Dan has accidentally "Noclipped" into the Backrooms—a bizarro, extra-dimensional Alice-in-Wonderland world, overrun with horrific nightmare creatures known as the Dwellers. No one ever gets out. Hell, forget about leaving, if Dan wants to survive the week, he's going to need to harness the strange game-like magic of the Backrooms, make some very sketchy allies, and carve out a little safe haven to call his own.

Ethan is a ranger, sworn to protect his walled settlement from the dangers of his ravaged wasteland planet. One night, a mysterious light thunders overhead and Ethan investigates, discovering a crashed spacecraft and two soldiers from a moon base he didn’t even know existed. Captain Salus and Commander Kurren have risked everything to find a Planetsider to help save their people. Ethan needs them to answer questions that have haunted him all his life – what happened to his world and why?

Clover Martinez has always been a survivor, which is the only reason she isn't among the dead when aliens invade and destroy Earth as she knows it. When she hears an inexplicable radio message, she's shocked to learn there are other survivors - and that they're all at the former Area 51. When she arrives, she's greeted by a band of misfits who call themselves the Last Teenagers on Earth. Only they aren't the ragtag group of heroes Clover was expecting.

Isolated at her family's wildlife refuge in northern Georgia, Raven longs to escape. Instead, she spends her days shoveling manure for bears, wolves, and a tiger. That is, until her father contracts the Hydra virus—a mysterious, lethal disease spreading across the country like wildfire. Desperate to help him, Raven journeys into town to get medicine, only to discover the outside world is swiftly collapsing into chaos. There are no more police, no more laws, and no hospitals. No one is coming to help.

Survivors of an apocalypse take refuge in a mountain fortress and face enemies both living and undead in the first three books of this horror series.

The best of the year's science fiction and fantasy stories as selected by the multiple award-winning editor Jonathan Strahan. Distant worlds, time travel, epic adventure, unseen wonders, and much more! The best, most original and brightest science fiction and fantasy stories from around the globe from the past 12 months are brought together in one collection by multiple award winning editor Jonathan Strahan.

High above a jungle-planet float the last refuges of humanity—plant-made civilizations held together by tradition, technology, and arcane science. In these living cities, architects are revered above anyone else. If not for their ability to psychically manipulate the architecture, the cities would plunge into the devastating earthrage storms below. Charismatic, powerful, mystical, Iravan is one such architect. In his city, his word is nearly law. His abilities are his identity, but to Ahilya, his wife, they are a way for survival to be reliant on the privileged few.