Hard Science Fiction Space Opera

The lost battle of Terra Nova has shown even the biggest skeptics how serious the alien threat really is. The power blocs of the solar system unite for one last cataclysmic showdown. Meanwhile, an unlikely trio races against time to prevent the conflict from reaching Earth. Tsai Yini, the tachyon chronicler, is hoping for help from her father, who has survived a hundred-year journey and seems to have a special relationship with the attackers.

Few writers have successful blended hard science and speculation with fully realized characters as Gregory Benford has in his critically acclaimed novels. Now he draws us into a vortex of mystery and danger at the heart of the galaxy in his dazzling epic drama, Furious Gulf.

Millennia of conflict between humans and mechs have driven the human race to near-extinction. Now, as the fierce AI mechs begin their final assault on mankind, it soon becomes apparent that three men – three generations in a family of voyagers – are their targets. Toby Bishop, his father, Killeen Bishop, and his grandfather, Nigel Walmsley, each carry a piece of the lethal secret that can destroy their enemies. But hunted through space and time by relentless assassins, they have no idea that they possess the only weapon that can save humanity.

War is bad for business. The crew of the freighter Fives Full want to enjoy the profits of their dangerous voyage; but when war breaks out, they're pressed into service for missions a warship can't do. Winning the war demands pilot Michigan Long act ruthlessly...and it may cost her conscience and her marriage.

The year is AD 2790. With space elevators and giant orbital fleets hovering over Earth, open war looks inevitable, and people are anxious to get away. The lines are drawn, with the Confederacy in the East and the First World Alliance in the West. In hopes of finding a refuge from the looming war, the Alliance is sending Captain Alexander de Leon to explore an Earth-type planet, code-named Wonderland, but at the last minute before launch, a Confederate fleet leaves orbit on a trajectory that threatens both the mission and Alliance sovereignty.

Captain James Worthington, Roland Barcus and the crew of the deep space survey ship Ventura have been betrayed and blown out of the orbit of the planet Baytirus in a heinous ambush. As they struggle to survive, the crew discovered they were sacrificed to protect a dark agenda. Now that they've fought their way free of their planet-bound trap, the survivors are ready to go home. Whether Earth wants them back or not.

Bruised by tragedy, Space Corps agent Elfrida Goto accepts an assignment on Mercury, the factory of the solar system. But she's soon swept up in an election that could lead to the evacuation of the planet's colonists. Elfrida is torn between doing her job and supporting the colonists, who've built a vibrant underground world. When violence threatens, Elfrida turns for help to a reclusive local corporation that's hiding a terrible secret.

Ignis Glace is a war-torn world of fire and ice. Tidally-locked to its tiny red sun, one side of the planet bakes while the other side is forever frozen. Known as Sunside and Nightside, these two wastelands are bordered by a narrow inhabitable region known as Twilight. Humans and mechs battle for control of their world, even while a third player approaches the game: the Skaintz Imperium. Once the aliens strike, no world is ever the same.

The starship New Horizon is Earth's first attempt at an FTL capable spaceship. But others don't want the mission to succeed. The mission goes suddenly and horribly wrong with the possibility of inadvertently leading the Hocklyns to Earth decades in advance of their estimated arrival time. Can the cadets on the New Horizon stop the deadly plot before it's too late?

This star system is burning down. Seaman Jake Price's "betters" have failed the people of the Steele System, so he's taking matters into his own hands. Darkstream has tricked the public into believing the Quatro are the enemy, but the company has already sold the system's security to the true enemy: the Progenitors. Now, Jake is calling on everyone who remembers what it means to fight out of duty instead of money. If they can't stop Darkstream in time, the system will burn.

Der mittlerweile schwerreiche Robinette Broadhead finanziert einen Forschungsflug in die Oortsche Wolke, um eine zuvor dort entdeckte Nahrungsmittelfabrik der Hitschi zu untersuchen. Wie bei Gateway handelt es sich um einen ausgehöhlten Asteroiden, angefüllt mit Hitschi-Technik.

They came from the poorest cities on Earth. They were promised free food and housing. They didn't know that they, or their children, would never see Earth again. A few years ago, a military doctor walking the corridors of New Jakarta Space Station saved Melati's life. She signed up for the International Space Force to pay back her moral debt to him.

The ITS Santa Maria is a generation ship in the truest sense—her colonial mission to the alluringly habitable TRAPPIST-1 system will span several. Her crew, though, original and descendent both, need not necessarily accept their lot to live and die between the stars. Greased elbows and palms tend to lubricate a path toward longevity. Wealth aboard Santa Maria is measured not in dollars and cents, but in Minutes and Seconds. Work, favors, and shrewdness are paid in Minutesand Minutes are spent in Suspension.

The premier's adult daughter begins to behave with an utter absence of wherewithal and insight. An admiral's dreamboat son engages in five years of profligate behavior after his sterling, top-of-his-class academy graduation. A doctor called in to examine both scions determines they're mutaclones.

Things are never so bad they can’t get worse. For the Brightstars, they just did. Dirck Brightstar knows his family is in serious trouble. If his father doesn’t finish building the heat exchanger before Opposition’s heat sets in, they’ll all perish. Then what little money they had will be confiscated and his father hauled off to prison in a midnight raid. And it all started because his missing sister, Creena, couldn’t follow the rules.

Pleo Tanza is a survivor. Her father was broken by tragedy, her twin sister is dead - chewed up and spat out by the corruption and injustice of Chatoyance - but she's going to make it, whatever it takes. She's going to get off this rock. But escape is for the rich or lucky. Pleo's framed for the murder of a rival student - the daughter of one of the colony's wealthy, squabbling clans - and goes on the run, setting off a chain of events that could destroy the fragile balance of the old colony forever.

Teenage Breq escapes the grim streets of a resource-low, near-future world to take a job as a "corpse diver" in a massive online sci-fi game, Bane. Breq finds himself in a dangerous, life-threatening adventure within the game as he searches for the reason for the death of his best friend. With landscapes and settings that evoke the sci-fi classics, our hero must level up his character as fast as he can, so as to be able to take on and defeat a sinister, masked figure. Especially as the threat posed by the unknown character is not limited to events within the game.

Die Erde der Zukunft ist durch die Große Katastrophe von ihren ehemaligen Kolonien abgeschnitten worden. Captain William Sparhawk von der Sternengarde soll als Kommandant der Defiant, dem gigantischen Schlachtkreuzer der Beta-Kolonisten, den er zur Erde zurückgebracht hat, zu einer brisanten Mission aufbrechen: die verloren geglaubten Sternensysteme der ehemaligen Kolonien erkunden und neue Handelsbeziehungen anknüpfen. Die Kolonisten, auf die sie treffen, scheinen allerdings wenig erpicht auf den erneuten Aufbau friedlicher Handelsbeziehungen mit der Erde, so dass Sparhawk und seine Crew sich immer wieder in Kampfhandlungen verwickelt sehen.

Walking On the Sea of Clouds is the story of such lunar pioneers: two couples, Stormie and Frank Pastorelli and Van and Barbara Richards, determined to survive and succeed in this near-future technological drama about the risks people will take, the emergencies they'll face, and the sacrifices they'll make as members of the first commercial lunar colony.

As the post-attack chaos forces Earth's governments to realize they no longer have the ability to maintain order, the destiny of mankind falls to a select group of human and artificial intelligence to prepare a defense against annihilation by the Nubl hives.