Hard Contact

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.

Reports of a strange, new habitable world have reached the 20 Planets of human civilization. When a team of scientists is assembled to investigate, exoethnologist Sara Callicot is recruited to keep an eye on an unstable crewmate. Thora was once a member of the interplanetary elite, but since her prophetic delusions helped mobilize a revolt on Orem, she's been banished to the farthest reaches of space to minimize the risk her very presence may pose.

When the first astronauts of the Mars Colony returned to Earth, they brought a mysterious, metal box they had found half-buried in the red dirt, called the Mars Cube. The scientists assigned to uncover its secrets tested it, scanned it, tried to blow it up, and everything in between. Then they accidentally opened it. Biosafety level-4 laboratories, BSL4, hold the most deadly viruses on the Earth, and Juliet handled them daily. Her research at the CDC landed her a position on the Mars Cube Investigative Team in the world’s only BSL-5 lab.

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?

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.

Life on the planet Jupiter? Former Senator Mitchell Ryan had always been told the violent, storm-tossed world was devoid of life. He had dismissed rumors of a strange life form living in the energy rich atmosphere as mere fantasy. Confronted with several mysterious deaths, sabotage, and similar acts of terrorism - possibly perpetrated by wealthy politicians who profit from the current crisis of fear - Ryan faces a dilemma that will change his life and determine the fate of the solar system forever.

How far would you go to help a parasitic insect from the stars? Tweeskzaht nudges human civilization and technology forward from the shadows. Unaware of the war in the stars above it, Earth is in the cross-hairs of both sides. To save her adopted home, she must reveal herself to a small band of humans. Will Mike's self-sacrifice, Kindra's cunning, and David's intelligence be enough to save Earth from becoming a hunting ground?

The Prince of Peril – Using his secret method Dr. Morgan projects a young Martian's astral body into a certain Harry Thorne on Earth, who then gets transported to an ancient Venus. He arrives there in the body of Prince Zinlo of Olba, and he is soon forced to escape assassination, since an ambitious noble is killing off the Royals in a bid to seize the throne. With the help of the fellow interplanetary traveler Vorn Vangal he gets to know the planet and the rules of it.

Childhood therapy cured Stephen Fisher of disturbing visions and the delusion of having come from another world. But when his daughter obsesses over a star in the night sky, he fears that his genetic legacy may have burdened her with the same illness. His sanity is then shattered when he loses his child and the military abducts him claiming that she recorded a song broadcast from another world.

A troubled young woman is recruited by a race of ancient alien explorers to be their emissary to save the human race from extinction. The problem is that not everyone believes the world is doomed, and not everyone trusts the aliens' motives. Holly Burton will have to overcome opposition from world leaders, attacks by religious zealots, assassination attempts, intractable bureaucracies, and her own fears and doubts if she is to save the human race, not just from the coming apocalypse, but from itself.

Abyss Deep is a foreboding ocean planet torn by extremes: boiling storm world on one side, unbroken glacier on the other. Humans established a research colony there to study the planet's giant sea serpents - but the colony has gone ominously silent. When Carlyle's team arrives, they discover a vessel belonging to a warlike alien species hovering above the atmosphere. But below the ice lurks a mystery so chilling it will make even Elliot Carlyle's blood run cold.

Humanity's future has been disrupted and shaped by the mysterious alien Jackaroo. We spread to the planets they gave us, and we discovered the ruins of a dozen previous civilisations. All previous clients of the Jackaroo, all dead. So far we have escaped that fate - but we have also escaped from the Jackaroos' planets and begun to explore the galaxy. The discovery of ancient spaceships and the unlocking of their mysteries has led to a new way of life. But humanity's failings and conflicts are always with us.

Kate Braddock, a sexually ambiguous ex-Spacer, isolates herself on Luna. After detecting a faster-than-light ship en route to Earth several years ago, she now conducts geophysical surveys for a mineral resources consortium. One day, she and a young intern, Mary Atteberry, discover an anomaly in the dust near the Mare Marginis that is clearly unnatural, and clearly alien.

Attention all you Salvage-5 and Colonel Tucker Petersen fans!! Hold on to your seat. The swashbuckling, cigar chomping, whiskey drinking, no-nonsense hero is back. Tucker goes on a personal quest to rescue Captain Cassandra Phillips. It’s been a long six months for the Colonel, but now the time has come for him to steal the SSV-5 and embark on their most dangerous mission yet: Return to asteroid 52 Europa.

The planet of Hope Nation has always loomed large in Nicholas Seafort's life. It was there that he built a name for himself, saving the planet from civil war and from the insatiable, fishlike aliens. But not everyone in that colony appreciated Seafort's efforts. Randy Carr, son of Seafort's old friend, Derek Carr, blames him for his father's death and wants Seafort to pay for this bitter loss. Trouble brews for Seafort on Earth and on Hope Nation.

Orson Scott Card, Kevin J. Anderson, and Larry Niven have seen the future. Now you can, too. A constellation of the brightest lights in the science fiction and fantasy firmament have judged these authors to be the best, the brightest, the truest emerging stars in the field.