Epic Space Opera

Stranded and drifting, Captain Xander Hawk and the battered Starblade face an impossible mission deep in enemy territory. With a failing ship held together by sheer determination, Hawk must rally his crew to strike a daring blow against the Kethorin Empire’s deadliest weapon yet: a planet-busting terror capable of wiping civilizations from existence.

There are some days when you should just stay in bed. Jon Hunter begins to realize this, as the consequences of saying yes, when he should have said no, begin to add up. The trouble with making tech advances, is someone will always come up with a counter eventually. And when this occurs on one of those days you should have stayed in bed, the cosmos tends to demonstrate just how many ways things can actually go wrong. But time is ticking away. The door to Jon's home, and all the answers he so desperately wants, is soon to open.

The Door is only open for five days, and it should be long enough for what he needs. What he doesn't need is his whole concept of home to be challenged. Not when there is so much else to do. The answers he's long wanted are now within his grasp. But does he really want to know the truth? Can he handle the truth? And what else is there he doesn't know about?

Top Gun heads to outer space in this throwback to the classic science fiction of Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein. Strapped in to artificial wings spanning 25 feet across, your arms push a tenth of your body weight with each pump as you propel yourself at frightening speeds through the air. Inside a pressurized dome on the Moon, subject to one-sixth Earth's gravity, there are swarms of chiseled, fearless, superbly trained flyers all around you, jostling for air space like peregrine falcons racing for the prize.

The Rawtenuga and Trixone wars are over, and Bud and his people have been relieved of the task of liberating the remaining Rawtenuga held planets. Jon and Jane have known about the Sanctuary system's planetary alignment for some time. All they know is it points to the Outback system, where the Door to Gaia used to be. Bud knows Ganesha wants him to do something, but doesn't know what or where.

National best-selling author and winner of three Hugo Awards, C.J. Cherryh returns to the universe of her acclaimed Foreigner trilogy - with an epic tale of the survivors of a lost spacecraft stranded on a planet inhabited by a hostile, sentient race. The beginning of a second trilogy, Precursor follows a single human delegate living among aliens, who are just gaining access to space.

Diplomacy is the bane of Bud's life these days.

As riots rage across the Human Federation space, what he'd been told on Sanctuary accelerates. Everyone wants his help.

The consequences of losing your temper for a moment grow with your power.

But is this a good thing or bad? Only time will tell, but suddenly everything seems to be happening at once.

Jon Hunter has made it home. But a lot of things have happened to him over the last year. Some of them made no sense at all to those with him, but they accepted the really weird as if it was part of him. Jon himself didn't understand a lot of it, but accepted he wasn't allowed to know yet. But what really happened, and why? For 600 odd years, Hunter's have traveled space. Where did it all start? What were the events which shaped the galaxy Jon Hunter finds himself in? And what of the previous Jon Hunter's, mentioned in prophecy?

Rest and relaxation. That's all Jonx wanted after escaping from not one but two star systems on the brink of being taken over by an overpowered, psychopathic cyborg. Unfortunately, his friend, Zozka, had other plans. "Let's join a Sept," she said. "It's just one small tournament." "It'll be good for the both of us." How could he say no to someone who'd watched his back time and again as they slogged through one battlefield or riftworld after another?

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.

There's no such thing as a dull life for Jon Hunter. He's come to grips with being an Admiral. But why does someone want to keep him from becoming a Duke so badly, that collateral damage doesn't matter? The Midgard war is over, the British coup behind him, but war comes in many forms. Life isn't the same when you fly a desk, unless the desk comes under direct attack.

In this sequel to Mechanical Failure, Captain Rogers, despite his best attempts to do otherwise, has become the acting admiral of the 331st Meridan fleet. His first task: worrying. A lot. The rival Thelicosan fleet, under the influence of bad intelligence, a forbidden romance, and a communication officer with an eardrum injury, is about to break a 200-year-old nonaggression pact. They have offered a vague, easily misinterpreted message: "We're invading." Rogers isn't sure, but he thinks that's probably bad.

The 200 years' (and counting) peace was a time of tranquility that hasn't been seen since...well, ever. Mankind in the Galactic Age had finally conquered war, so what was left for the military to do but drink and barbecue? That's the kind of military that Sergeant R. Wilson Rogers lived in before he left the fleet to become a smuggler. But it turns out that smuggling is hard. Like getting-arrested-for-dealing-with-pirates-and-forced-back-into-service kind of hard.

An Ensign in the navy is a Pilot Officer in fighters, and both are entry level officer ranks, and rarely ever paid any attention to. A squadron of Ensigns is a contradiction in terms, especially to the new influx of experienced pilots from new Imperium members. But the team are too busy with Eagle Wing to notice the changes happening around them. Magic in combat changes the dynamic. But every time one side gains an advantage, the other will adapt somehow. As the first of the new Excalibur squadrons ready for combat, Bud and his squadron must lead. But who is the real enemy?

A complicated war is about to get a lot more complicated. And Bud's brought it on himself. There's no end in sight to either the Rawtenuga or Trixone wars. And the search for the dinosaur home world is proving just how big the galaxy is, especially where it's not properly mapped. The enemy keep popping up in too many places, and as fast as the sensor network expands, they seem to have expanded faster.

In Conquest Born is the monumental science fiction epic that received unprecedented acclaim - and launched C.S. Friedman's phenomenal career. A sweeping story of two interstellar civilizations locked in endless war, it was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award.

Never underestimate the capacity of a plant to learn something new from a dinosaur. Bud is getting a crash course in how to fight a war all on his own. At the same time, the needs of his homeworld and the Imperium distract him from the goal of finding where the Rawtenuga entered the core galaxy from. Being Thorn's heir has both positive and negative aspects to it, and as the war with the Rawtenuga keeps getting bigger, so do the demands from the civilian side of his life.

There's no such thing as a nice clean war. If fighting a war which might never end wasn't enough, now the Imperium has a new enemy. But now promoted to be a genuine squadron leader, Bud finds himself leading more than his squadron. Just how complicated can war get? Is the enemy of your enemy really your enemy? Or can their enemy become your friend while you're still at war with each other? Even in the middle of a brand new war, Bud finds people who think they know better about what he should be doing.

Bud is now the captain of a small capital ship, and so tactics must change. And once again, Navy Mage Squadron One leads the way. But the more the Imperium ups their game, the faster the Trixone adapt. And in the middle of things changing around Bud, the new prototype dreadnought is stolen. While seemingly unimportant to the war, Navy Mage One and Eagle Wing will find out just how wrong that perception is. Just when is a mysterious invitation a good thing or a bad thing, and will they be able to tell the difference in time?

The Oracle has Seen the end of Civilization, and the end of the Haosa, too. Reactions to this are—mixed. On the one hand, foresight is a notoriously erratic Gift. On the other, can Civilization—or the Haosa—afford to assume that the prophecy is an error? And if the Oracle has Seen truly—is it possible to alter the future?