Hard Contact

Dr. Eliza Raines has just made the discovery of a lifetime: Actual alien ruins on the surface of Mars. But during a massive dust storm, her expedition and mankind’s first colony on the Martian surface falls radio silent. It’s assumed to be a downed transmitter in the storm. The resupply vessel Murcielago, and its crew, are directed to assist with repairs. But neurotic ship’s engineer Leo Taggart can’t shake the idea something is terribly wrong. Gruff military policeman Kyle Locklear is confident in his team’s ability to handle whatever’s going on.

Sent to Earth to explore, survey, collect samples and report back to its makers, an alien probe arrives in the middle of a warzone. Witnessing both the best and worst of humanity, the AI probe faces situations that go far beyond the parameters of its programming and is forced to improvise, making decisions that have repercussions for the future of our entire world.

Mark Thomas is a sailor on a freighter ferrying people and lithium ore between the utopian colony world, Elysium, and Earth. The starship is sabotaged, the crew presumed lost. But there's one survivor. Alone, Mark finds safe harbor in the barely charted star system, Trappist-1. Marooned, he thought that his biggest challenge was how to call for help. When he discovers that something ancient and dangerous is also marooned in the archipelago of a star system, his plight goes from bad to worse.

For exobiologist Cassie Clearwater, the chance to explore the planet Obsidian is the opportunity of a lifetime. The austere black world has liquid water and a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere that might support life. She discovers a mysterious species of plant that emits copious quantities of complex chemicals. Her colleagues on the mission care only about the diamonds they've discovered, but Cassie wonders how these plants, and nothing else, thrive in such a dark and barren environment.

Der Widerstand stemmt sich verzweifelt gegen den Einfluss des Forums und der Implantatträger. Während die Menschheit immer mehr Zeit in der künstlich geschaffenen Metawelt verbringt, stößt Steve Työpaikkaa auf eine entsetzliche Wahrheit, die an den Fundamenten der Zukunft rüttelt. Derweil begibt sich seine Tochter June auf eine gefährliche Reise, nachdem der Widerstand auf die Quelle eines neuen Signals stößt. Sie muss zerstört werden, wenn der Widerstand überleben will - doch der Erfolg könnte einen Preis erfordern, den June nicht zahlen kann.

With the Death Wave no longer a threat to humanity, humans have spread out and colonized all the worlds of the solar system. The technology of the Predecessors has made Earth a paradise, at least on the surface. But a policy of exiling discontented young people to the outer planets and asteroid mines has led to a deep divide between the new worlds and the homeworld, and those tensions are about to explode into open war.

Earth has attained world peace at last. Overseen by the World Council, based in Jerusalem, the planet has truly become a global community, and humanity has reached an age of enlightenment. This is the time when the visitors arrive. Wielding near-miraculous technology, they arrive claiming to have seeded Earth with humans, and have returned to claim "their own." Their claims and their appearance seem prophesied by the Bible, and religion and politics clash as arguments break out about whether these visitors have the right to take people.

In Garbriellium, the largest and most prolific of those colonies on Europa, Jupiter's ice-covered moon, Justin and Jessica Forsythe embark on related but separate quests to answer what life exists beneath the ice, how humans and AIs interrelate with one another, and set out to solve mysteries surrounding the spontaneous natural birth of the first human being in nearly 2,000 years.

It's been two years since the invasion. Two years since the slicks came to our planet and herded humanity together like cattle, placing us under constant watch in the few cities that remain. The lucky ones are left to their own devices. The unlucky few are rounded up and carted off to labor camps to face an unknown fate. Former homicide detective Adrian Grace was cut off from his family, but has somehow managed to survive. When one of the slicks is murdered, they ask him to find the killer.

Lyta and Carl are astronomy grad students who hardly know each other and are trying to figure out their lives. Arbitrarily thrown together on a project, they make a surprising discovery: an unobtrusive light in the sky shows signs of being an alien spacecraft. As they study the object more closely, they start receiving a stream of information that creates an unexpected bond with it, each other, their government, and ultimately humanity as a whole. Their story mixes first-contact science fiction, romantic drama, and technological thriller, as they negotiate the difficult questions their discoveries raise, and the extreme reactions the answers cause in others.

The mysterious species called Flickers are thought to have a base in the outer solar system. A task force is sent to find out. Living in the Kuiper Zone, the Flicker want nothing more than to be left alone. But the solar system belongs to humans. Can the two coexist? Or will history repeat and contact lead to war, as has so often happened in humanity's past?

It's May, 1978, and a UFO requests permission to land. A human girl in her early teens and a robot exit the craft, and a strange botanical lifeform is found onboard later that night by a USAF landing party. The vehicle, robot, and the strange plant are impounded and subsequently sent to Area 51. NASA astrobiologist Gabriel Greenley is called in to study this new lifeform that at first appears similar to a botanical species known as oxalis. As a psi-sensitive, Greenley quickly learns the specimen is highly intelligent and potentially dangerous when he attempts to take a leaf sample.

World War III is about to break out. As if that wasn’t dangerous enough, the enigmatic extraterrestrials called the Flickers have returned with a warning: do not venture beyond the moon. Faced with the ultimate threat, can humanity put aside their differences and unite to face the common danger?

2005 setzt die von der Erde gesandte Sonde Huygens auf dem Saturnmond Titan auf. 40 Jahre später empfängt ein Radioteleskop Signale vom Titan, die nur von dem längst vergessenen Lander kommen können. Zur selben Zeit kehrt eine internationale Expedition gerade vom Nachbarmond Enceladus zurück. Die Crew landet auf Titan und stößt dort auf ein gefährliches Geheimnis, das ihre Rückkehr in Frage stellt.

Im Jahre 2031 finden Forscher in den Signalen einer Roboter-Sonde, die den Saturnmond Enceladus studiert, eindeutige Spuren biologischer Aktivität. Beweise für außerirdisches Leben - eine Weltsensation. Fünfzehn Jahre später macht sich ein eilig dafür gebautes, bemanntes Raumschiff auf die weite Reise zum Ringplaneten. Der internationalen Crew stehen nicht nur schwierige siebenundzwanzig Monate bevor: Falls sie es ohne Zwischenfall bis zum Enceladus schafft, muss sie mit einem Bohrschiff den kilometerdicken Eispanzer des Mondes durchdringen.

Ein mysteriöses Signal, ein Start-up, das die Welt verändern will und eine Zukunft, die nicht mehr uns gehört. Als in der Weite der finnischen Wälder ein Fremder mit einem High-Tech-Implantat gefunden wird, wittern der Neurochirurg Bill und sein Freund und Informatiker Steve die große Chance, ihrem Start-up zum Durchbruch zu verhelfen. Doch sie wissen nicht, mit welchen Mächten sie sich einlassen und müssen sich schon bald fragen, über welche Grenzen sie für ihren Erfolg bereit sind zu gehen. Zehn Jahre später hat sich die Welt verändert.

Four hundred years ago, Ed and Alice Rico threw themselves through a mysterious portal on the London Underground, hunting for Ed's lost brother - Alice's husband - Verne. Now, starship captain Katherine Abdulov embarks on a desperate race against ruthless rival captain - and her former lover - Victor Luciano, to try and earn back her family's trust. Tomorrow, all their lives will be thrown together by disaster, as an ancient evil stirs among the stars, threatening the survival of all life.

Vincent Frieso is a lowly salesman, wasting his days away at a computer store with no prospects or hopes for the future. However, when a strange new lifeform hitches a ride to Earth on an asteroid and lands in the Southern Pacific, the whole world flips over in an instant. The world that Vincent once knew had permanently changed. Whether for better or for worse, he did not yet know. Will Vincent find himself swept away by the currents of change and history? Or will he forge his own path in a world that becomes increasingly alien by the day?

Humanity has united under one government and has started to take to the stars. However, FTL is dangerous, expensive, and still slow. So a probe is sent out to gather samples and bring them back for analysis. Dr. Avery Hutton is one of the scientists assisting in analysis back on Earth. But these samples contain something a bit nastier than anything humanity had encountered before. A pathogen that, if not contained, could kill everything on Earth.

When a high-ranking businessman and two clones are murdered, Marshal Onima Gwok of the Confederation Bureau of Investigation (CBI) gets assigned the case. But nothing quite adds up. Is there something more insidious going on? There is just one witness - a clone. When the war ended 10 years ago, the clones who had fought it were discarded, forgotten, and became second-class citizens of the new confederation. Jace Rojas, designated AC J7-2247, is an infantry clone.