Hard Science Fiction Space Opera

Luck has always run in both directions for Naval Commandant Nicholas Seafort. While he has managed to save the Hope Nation colony from alien attack, he and his friends have paid a heavy price. Most recently his exploits have earned him a dignified position as an instructor at the United Nations Naval Academy. But as Seafort suspects, trouble isn't far behind. A return to Earth means a return to his roots, some of which he wishes would remain buried.

The United States of North America is now engaged in a civil war with the Earth Confederation, which wants to yield to the demands of the alien Sh'daar, limit human technology, and become a part of the Sh'daar Galactic Collective. USNA President Koenig believes that surrendering to the Sh'daar will ultimately doom humankind. But when highly advanced, seemingly godlike aliens appear through an artificial wormhole in the Omega Centauri Cluster 16,000 light years from Earth, President Koenig is faced with a tremendous choice.

When Carson Flint traded his Commonwealth military badge for the quiet life, he thought he'd left his battles behind. Two years of running a saloon called the Bulwark, a volatile hub for refugees, smugglers, and the occasional war-weary soldier, was the peace he'd been looking for. He's never had it easier, or been so bored. But when a fugitive Commonwealth operative arrives with dangerous secrets and a war criminal on his tail, Carson's sanctuary quickly becomes a target.

Adrift in the divide between galaxies and surrounded by the vast emptiness of the intergalactic void, the Tantalus Cluster is the only home humanity has ever known. Desperate and facing starvation, humanity’s only hope is a strange nebula that has suddenly appeared beyond the edge of the cluster. Its shifting clouds may hide a source of salvation for the people of Tantalus, but time is running out.

They banned him from space. But someone has offered him a way back. Can he afford the price? Famed engineer and test pilot Jericho Fox has been grounded for reasons he'd rather put behind him. But a political leader from a rival party offers to send him back to space. Fox finds himself stuck between working for the enemy and doing what he loves again. Meanwhile, high above Earth on Astraea Station, decorated astrophysicist Dr. Evelyn Park is on the verge of a scientific breakthrough that could make history.

Humanity's last encounter with aliens saw 16.2 billion people killed in a war with the Merkiaari that had spanned decades. Two hundred years later, the Alliance is cautiously exploring beyond its borders again, but the survey corp is considered a mere gesture by some. General Burgton of the 501st Infantry Regiment believes a lack of expansion is leading the Alliance into stagnation. So when one small ship discovers a new alien race, it should be an easy decision to make contact, but what if the aliens are like the Merkiaari?

The sky is not the limit. From an alley in New York to an interstellar wormhole, the path to the future looks different for everyone. These cosmic short stories from some of today’s most influential Black authors reveal a universe of possibilities.

Alpha Station, orbiting the world of the atevi, has taken aboard 5,000 human refugees from a destroyed station in a distant sector of space. With supplies and housing stretched to the breaking point, it is clear that the refugees must be relocated down to the planet, and soon. But not to the atevi mainland, rather to the territory reserved for humans: the island of Mospheira. Tabini-aiji, the powerful political head of the atevi, tasks his brilliant human diplomat, Bren Cameron, to negotiate with the Mospheiran government.

Jon Grebbel arrives on the colony world of Janus, and finds himself without memory of his life on Earth. He meets Elinda, an earlier arrival, whose lover, Barbara, vanished and then was found lying in the woods, apparently brain-damaged. Elinda has also lost her memories of Earth. Investigating Barbara's fate and their own, the two find their love and their search for justice turning toward bitter self-discovery and revenge, even as they begin to uncover the darkness at the heart of their world.

In the mid-23rd century, Darwin, Australia, stands as the last human city on Earth. The world has succumbed to an alien plague, with most of the population transformed into mindless, savage creatures. The planet’s refugees flock to Darwin, where a space elevator—created by the architects of this apocalypse, the Builders—emits a plague-suppressing aura.

A hidden corner of space is swarming with lethal alien technology, a danger to all sentient life. It's guarded by Orlandine, who must keep it contained at any cost - as it has the power to destroy entire civilizations. She schemes from her state-of-the-art weapons station, with only an alien intelligence to share her vigil. But she doesn't share everything with Dragon....

The sparsely populated moon, Io, is destroyed in a terrorist attack. Hundreds are dead in the cataclysmic explosion. Thousands become refugees as the shattered remnants of the moon threaten the Jupiter Alliance. Billions throughout the solar system are wondering, "Where next?" Those responsible must be found and brought to justice. The explorer ship Erebus is reassigned from its mission and sent to Jupiter to investigate this atrocity with Trent's international team onboard.

When a colonist dies in tragic circumstances, just a few sols before a major terraforming experiment, Dr. Jann Malbec begins to suspect that all is not what it seems. Her fears begin to grow when every attempt she makes to investigate the death is thwarted by the ruling council on Mars. In desperation, she resorts to secretly recruiting a recently arrived colonist, Mia Sorelli, an ex-cop with a troubled past, to quietly look into the incident. But Mia has some very good reasons why she left her old life on Earth behind.

Earth is rising in the House of Voltar.... And there’ll be hell to pay! That’s right. The invasion is on...and it’s coming soon to a galaxy near you. The action couldn’t be hotter, and the plot couldn’t be more diabolical. Earth is coming to Voltar - and the Voltarians won’t know what hit them. Murder, blackmail, drugs, psychoanalysis, PR firms, sex-crazed teenyboppers, riots in the streets, women in chains. These are the powerful secret weapons of war.

In 2088, humankind is at last ready to explore beyond Earth's solar system. But one uncertainty remains: Where do we go? Astrophysicist Reggie Straifer has an idea. He's discovered an anomalous star that appears to defy the laws of physics and proposes the creation of a deep-space mission to find out whether the star is a weird natural phenomenon or something manufactured.

One of the greatest science-fiction epics ever written, John Varley's Titan, Wizard, and Demon comprise a groundbreaking trilogy that will live forever. Human explorers have entered the sprawling mind of the alien Gaea. Now they must fight her will. For she is much too powerful. And definitely insane....

Tanis Richards, commander of the TSS Kirby Jones and her crew are at the tail end of a long patrol on the fringes of the Terran Hegemony when they come across a freighter suspected of smuggling goods out of InnerSol. The Norse Wind looks like just another dumpy cargo ship hauling goods across the Sol System, but someone up the chain thinks the vessel is worth looking into. Tanis and her boarding team gear up for another routine inspection that turns into anything but as the two crews struggle for supremacy out in the cold dark between worlds.

Having successfully repelled the Resistance incursion into the Sol system, Terran Fleet Command must now deal with the far-flung worlds of the Sajeth Collective, which sponsored the attack. Task forces are dispatched to Damara and Lesheera to begin the first human blockades of entire planets. With the only ships fast enough to quickly bring the fight to the enemy's doorstep, TFC must do so alone, leaving only minimal forces behind to safeguard the Earth.

On the eve of Luca Lee-McNabb’s 23rd birthday the quantum intelligence, Athena delivers her some bad news. Due to a devastating attack on its infrastructure it can no longer protect her and keep her hidden. She must leave Earth immediately and try to make it to New World One, a gargantuan habitat being constructed out in the asteroid belt. For Luca, leaving her home means potentially exposing herself to the powerful VanHeilding family, who will stop at nothing to harvest her unique biology.

Kas is a junior researcher on a fact-finding mission to old Earth. But when a con-artist tricks her into wagering a large sum of money belonging to her university on the outcome of a manned robot arena battle, she becomes drawn into the seedy underworld of old Earth politics and state-sponsored battle-droid prizefights.