Dystopian Science Fiction

When a listless office employee (the narrator) meets Tyler Durden, his life begins to take on a strange new dimension. Together they form Fight Club - a secretive underground group sponsoring bloody bare-knuckle boxing matches staged in seedy alleys, vacant warehouses, and dive-bar basements. Fight Club lets ordinary men vent their suppressed rage, and it quickly develops a fanatical following.

As the United States unravels, the town of Fall Creek, Michigan struggles to survive. Hannah and Liam have endured the brutal winter and ruthless adversaries, but the threat has never been greater. Enemies from within have wrested control of the town — including what little remains of the food. Isolated, overpowered, and on the verge of starvation, the townspeople are faced with a desperate choice.

When Theo meets Kylee at the beach, it is love at first sight...but everything is about to change. As they share their first kiss, the ground trembles beneath them and a gigantic tidal wave strikes the beachfront, demolishing everything in its path. Theo, Kylee, and their friends now battle to stay alive as they realize everything outside their island is gone. The small group now faces a growing evil which threatens to make survival impossible. On Atlantic Island, there are no games....

A collection of the year’s best science fiction and fantasy short fiction selected by New York Times bestselling author of the Silo series Hugh Howey and series editor John Joseph Adams. “These are dangerous stories. The kind that warp reality and threaten to change the world” warns guest...

Josiah Stonewell dug his hands into the filthiest parts of my soul and molded a perfect little Walker. I don't know the exact moment I fell in love with him, but I do know that if anyone found out about our lingering stares, it would end his political career. Josiah's unexpected engagement has me squinting down the barrel of heartbreak, and to make matters worse; I find myself traded to Cyler Black and his leadership council in a distant Providence. Soon, Cyler and his team of passionate leaders start to feel like family, and I'm promised freedoms I never imagined were possible.

Hannah Evans startles awake, covered in gore, in a place she doesn't know. Captured and restrained in the hands of strangers, she struggles frantically to remember who she is. And then she sees the needle she was injected with...and the bodies. Before long, she's thrust into a desperate struggle to survive. Navigating a crumbled landscape, fighting for her breath and her humanity, Hannah clings to the shallow hope that her family is still alive.

In Compound Eleven, the hierarchy of the floors is everything. My name is Eve Hamilton, and on my floor, we fight. Which at least is better than the bottom floor, where they toil away in misery. Only the top floor has any ease in this harsh world; they rule from their gilded offices. Because four generations ago, Earth was rendered uninhabitable—the sun too hot, the land too barren. Those who remained were forced underground. While not a perfect life down here, I’ve learned to survive as a fighter. Except my latest match is different.

In the Shadow of the Towers compiles nearly 20 works of speculative fiction responding to and inspired by the events of 9/11, from writers seeking to confront, rebuild, and carry on, even in the face of overwhelming emotion.

For dinosaurs, it was a big rock. For humans: Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). When the Earth is hit by the greatest CME in recorded history (several times larger than the Carrington Event of 1859), the combined societies of the planet's most developed nations struggle to adapt to a life thrust back into the Dark Ages. In the United States, the military scrambles to speed the nation's recovery on multiple fronts including putting down riots, establishing relief camps, delivering medical aid, and bringing communication and travel back on line. Just as a real foothold is established in retaking the skies (utilizing existing commercial aircraft supplemented by military resources and ground control systems), a mysterious virus takes hold of the population, spreading globally over the very flight routes that the survivors fought so hard to rebuild.

There is a huge, bold black streak in the sky. Branches appear out of nowhere over North America, Southern Europe, and Central Africa. People who live beneath The Rift can see it. But scientists worldwide are distressed - their equipment cannot pick up any type of signal from it. The rift appears to consist of nothing. Literally. Nothing. Nada. Niente. Most people are curious but not overly concerned. The phenomenon seems to pose no danger. It is just there. Then something jolts the most hardened naysayers, and surpasses the worst nightmares of the world's greatest scientists.

It is not impossible to rewrite history. In fact, when one computer runs the world, changing history happens faster. Those who were heroes have been labeled villains. The alien Melagorns and Dreth, once friends, are now competitors at best. The Regime works to instill loyalty to humanity. Loyalty to brotherhood. Loyalty to the state. Loyalty to the words preached every night. John Dunn fled into a radioactive wasteland, seeking death rather than work in the Regime. What he learns changes humanity forever.

Three years ago, a massive solar event shattered life on Earth. The EMP storms that followed wiped out every trace of modern technology, plunging humanity into chaos. Radiation, starvation, and violence claimed billions, and those who survived were left to rebuild—or simply endure. But survival was only the beginning. An unknown alien force has arrived, ruthless and relentless. They can’t be reasoned with. They can’t be understood. And no weapon we have seems to stop them. Entire continents are burning, and hope is fading fast.

They took everything away from him. To save the lives of his mother and sister, Vaughan traded his own to serve as a conscripted soldier. The year is 5034, and for the last five years the GUILD Republic has fought a grueling war of attrition with the aliens of the Thriaxian Kingdom. Forced to take on a new name and memories that are not his own, Vaughan is thrown headlong into the Terran war machine to become a Titan: an elite soldier tasked to pilot the GUILD’s most powerful weapon, a Xenomech.

Ten years ago, Calamity came. It was a burst in the sky that gave ordinary men and women extraordinary powers. The awed public started calling them Epics. But Epics are no friend of man. With incredible gifts came the desire to rule. And to rule man you must crush his will. Nobody fights the Epics...nobody but the Reckoners. A shadowy group of ordinary humans, they spend their lives studying Epics, finding their weaknesses, and then assassinating them. And David wants in. He wants Steelheart - the Epic who is said to be invincible. The Epic who killed David's father.

The Sea Wolf sets out to search for the Metal Islands. Leading the expedition is legendary Hell Diver Xavier Rodriguez. After enduring a decade on the poisoned surface, his survival skills will be put to the test on the dangerous open seas. But storms, sea monsters, and the cannibalistic Cazadores aren't the only threat to X and his small crew. Their mission will uncover hard truths about the history of the war that left humankind stranded in the air for centuries. The fate of those still living on the airships might very well rest on this perilous journey to find a new home.

Fighting her way through the dark underbelly of civilization, Juliet Bianchi has become a top-tier mercenary with a heart of gold and a killer smile. A shadowy, high-priced operative embedded with high-tech AI, she goes by the moniker "Lucky," and the life she once led as a metal scrapper seems eons behind her. Now, armed with her very own formidable monoblade and fresh ink warning all others not to mess with her lest they become very dead, she's taking a step away from business to handle something personal.

Sprawling megacities, rogue AIs, black market tech, modded mercenaries, and a pulse-pounding story filled with unexpected twists! A notorious data thief thinks his life of cybercrime is behind him. He couldn't be more wrong.

Keeping up-to-date with the most buzzworthy and cutting-edge science fiction requires sifting through countless magazines, e-zines, websites, blogs, original anthologies, single-author collections, and more - a task accomplishable by only the most determined and voracious readers. For everyone else, Night Shade Books is proud to introduce the latest volume of The Best Science Fiction of the Year, collecting the finest that the genre has to offer, from the biggest names in the field to the most exciting new writers.

Thousands of years in the future, Earth is a desolate ruin. The first human ship to return in millennia discovers an abandoned wasteland inhabited by only a few degenerate or mutated human outcasts. But among them is a boy of immense native intelligence and determination who grows up to become the force behind a plan to make Earth flower again.

Morgan Stockhour knows getting too close to the edge of Internment, the floating city in the clouds where she lives, can lead to madness. Even though her older brother, Lex, was a Jumper, Morgan vows never to end up like him. If she ever wonders about the ground, and why it is forbidden, she takes solace in her best friend, Pen, and in Basil, the boy she's engaged to marry. Then a murder, the first in a generation, rocks the city. With whispers swirling and fear on the wind, Morgan can no longer stop herself from investigating, especially once she meets Judas.