Hard Science Fiction Space Opera

Who better to narrate today's best science-fiction stories than today's favorite science-fiction stars? This exciting collection features many.

The Darshik war machine is flagging, but the war is far from over. Even as an exhausted Federation military tenses up for a counterattack after repelling the last Darshik invasion, reports are coming in of a new, more powerful class of ship that's striking deep into Terran space. Captain Jackson Wolfe has been given the fleet's newest, most advanced destroyer and tasked with eliminating this new threat before it can claim any more human lives. What he finds, however, is immeasurably more dangerous than just some new class of starship....

Commander Joe Pikeman has his share of demons. But after a long deployment, he just wants to enjoy some home leave with his daughter. The galaxy has other plans. His last assignment takes him to Earth, humanity’s deserted homeworld. There, he finds Earth’s last settlement littered with the bodies of the people who lived there. As he hunts down those responsible, he runs head-first into some galaxy-shaking questions.

Humanity had appeared to fend off the Sh'daar assault once and for all, though they never learned why the alien empire was driven to halt Earth's advancement toward technological Singularity. But in this war of worlds, victory is always elusive. And now a new battle begins. After 20 years of peace, not one but two fragile truces are unraveling. Alexander Koenig, the former Navy commander whose heroics forced the Sh'daar into submission, has won a second term as President of the United States of North America. But pursuing his mandate - sovereignty from the centuries-old Earth Confederation - becomes a risky proposition....

Each member of Omega Force carries his own baggage. Most of them are running from their pasts or simply trying to forget them. One member of the small mercenary crew is not who he claims to be, however. When his former life collides with his current one, the team is drawn into a conflict that could have profound consequences for the future of an entire species. Captain Jason Burke struggles to find answers as the tight cohesion of his crew seems to dissolve.

The UFS Phoenix returns to Homeworld, after more than three years of searching the galaxy for a way to save humanity from the looming AI threat. Many Fleet captains are unhappy with their own command, following the massive casualties of Nia's first strike. Some say that Captain Erik Debogande is the war leader humanity truly needs. Others warn of civil war. But on Homeworld lurks an even older threat, a secret kept by Fleet Command since Homeworld's first conquest by humans. A secret that could tear Fleet, and Erik's powerful family, apart.

Two centuries after humanity colonized the stars, new dangers emerge. The peaceful inhabitants of the Conclave are threatened by expanding alien powers. Invaders threaten the star cluster, attacking our fringe settlements. Captain Bill Gorman has mysteriously disappeared. His clone, set aside for a dark day like this, awakens and begins to put together the pieces. What’s gone wrong out on the frontier? Why are our colonies being attacked by aliens while the Conclave worlds dream of better days? And what happened to the original Captain Gorman?

In Battle Station, Kyle Riggs faces new challenges, new alien fleets, and learns the secrets behind the war he has been fighting for years. In the fifth book of the Star Force Series, the Eden system is in humanity's grasp, but can they keep it? Star Force is weak after a long war, and many yearn to go home. Knowing the machines will return with a new armada eventually, Riggs seeks a more permanent solution. Along the way, worlds are won and lost, millions perish, and great truths are revealed.

The Hundred Worlds have withstood invasion by the relentless Hok for decades. The human worlds are strong, but the Hok have the resources of a thousand planets behind them, and their fleets attack in endless waves. The long war has transformed the Hundred Worlds into heavily fortified star systems. Their economies are geared for military output, and they raise specialized soldiers to save our species. Assault Captain Derek Straker is one such man among many.

NASA finally made it. The very first human has just set foot on the surface of our neighbor planet. This is the start of a long research expedition that sent four scientists into space. But the four astronauts of the NASA crew are not the only ones with this destination. The privately financed "Mars for Everyone" initiative has also targeted the Red Planet. Twenty men and women have been selected to live there and establish the first extraterrestrial settlement.

The Federation's military command is desperate, and with their fleet still in tatters, they make a last-ditch effort to free the planet: They pull Captain Jackson Wolfe out of retirement and put him in command of a ship they hope can get past the defending armada and provide support to the beleaguered Marines and civilians fighting on the surface of the contested world. There is no reasoning with this enemy. If the Terran Federation wants their planet back, they will have to pay the price.

Trapped on an alternate Earth, the combined crews of a crashed Russian spaceship, a British expeditionary force and a group of strays from the future must work together to survive, escape and discover what led them to this point. All are from parallel universes where small changes in history led to different realities, and the tensions between the groups are rising.

Leo Graf was just your average highly efficient engineer: mind your own business, fix what's wrong, and move on to the next job. But all that changed on his assignment to the Cay Habitat, where a group of humanoids had been secretly, commercially bioengineered for working in free fall. Could he just stand there and allow the exploitation of hundreds of helpless children merely to enhance the bottom line of a heartless mega-corporation?

Ship's counsellor Deanna Troi mysteriously falls ill...and dies. But her death marks the start of an incredible adventure for Commander Riker - an adventure that takes him across time, pits him against one of his closest friends, and forces him to choose between Starfleet's strictest rule and the one he calls Imzadi. Read by Jonathan Frakes, and enhanced with sound effects!

There is a fine line between right and wrong, good and evil. For years Jason Burke has straddled that line as best he can, always convinced that despite the violence carried out by him and his team they were firmly on the right side of that line. But as he reflects on his time with Omega Force, he begins to have his doubts. When strange happenings from the mysterious Avarian Empire cross the expanse and Jason and Omega Force are pulled into the conflict, they must pick sides between two superpowers

Commodore Straker faces new enemies as neighboring interstellar empires decide his New Republic is a growing threat. A two-front war develops, and the Liberator must face both the Mutuality and the Hundred Worlds. Even as the fighting rages, the mysterious Opters are on the move. They make a diplomatic effort to reach out to Straker - but can he trust the Hive Masters? Will they help or stab him in the back?

Captain Jason Burke has begun to suspect that the random attacks on his ship and crew over the last couple of years may not be so random after all. Evidence is mounting that there is something on the Phoenix...something that powerful factions will stop at nothing to get their hands on. While Omega Force races to find out what is hidden on their ship that is causing so much trouble they also must figure out why such powerful enemies bent on obtaining it.

When Pennsylvania state trooper Calvin Morrison is swept into a parallel universe by a freak accident, he finds himself in a world where gunpowder is the key to power—and its production is tightly controlled by a ruthless theocracy known as Styphon’s House. While stranded in the Princedom of Hostigos, a small territory on the brink of obliteration, Calvin must use his understanding of modern chemistry and warfare to help the people of this new world fight for their freedom.

Hella is a planet where everything is oversized. The trees are mile-high, the dinosaur herds are huge, and the weather is extreme - so extreme, the colonists have to migrate twice a year to escape the blistering heat of summer and the atmosphere-freezing cold of winter. Kyle is a neuro-atypical young man, emotionally challenged, but with an implant that gives him real-time access to the colony's computer network. When an overburdened starship arrives, he becomes the link between the established colonists and the refugees from a ravaged Earth.

When humanity reaches for the stars, our probes are destroyed. They crash into an incredibly advanced piece of technology: a massive force-field. Unknown beings have placed a barrier around our star and planets, enclosing us within. We’re locked inside a Great Sphere. Was this invisible obstacle built to imprison us - or to protect us? No one knows the truth, but it soon becomes clear the barrier has leaks. Aliens infiltrate and try to sabotage our efforts to escape our cage.