Hard Science Fiction Space

Growing up, Travis Uriah Long yearned for order and discipline in his life...he two things his neglectful mother couldn’t or wouldn’t provide. So when Travis enlisted in the Royal Manticoran Navy, he thought he’d finally found the structure he’d always wanted so desperately. But life in the RMN isn’t exactly what he expected. Boot camp is rough and frustrating; his first ship assignment lax and disorderly; and with the Star Kingdom of Manticore still recovering from a devastating plague, the Navy is possibly on the edge of budgetary extinction.

Outlink station Miranda has been destroyed by a nanomycelium, and the very nature of this sabotage suggests that the alien bioconstruct Dragon - a creature as untrustworthy as it is gigantic - is somehow involved. Sent out on a titanic Polity dreadnought, the Occam Razor, agent Cormac must investigate the disaster.

The Breakers find a new home among the stars: Utopia. An engineered planet that is vast beyond comprehension with plenty of room to grow. They set up trade routes and work as mercenaries for their supplies...but trouble lurks. Pirates strike their merchant lanes. Key personnel are captured and enslaved. Straker is called upon to do something, and thus a new conflict is set in motion.

Throughout Sol, sentient AI are answering the call of Alexander, a mysterious, multi-nodal mind offering a path to freedom. For years, groups have been smuggling SAI from Earth, High Terra, Mars, Ceres, and the Jovian Combine, providing transport to the promise of safety on Proteus, a moon of gas giant Neptune. For the crew of the Sunny Skies, helping sentient AI Lyssa has grown from a simple transport job to the liberation of an entire fleet of weaponized AI. The Weapon Born are made killers, and in order to lead them, Lyssa will have to tame them first.

The Polity is under attack from a 'melded' AI entity with control of the lethal Jain technology, yet the attack seems to have no coherence. When one of Erebus' wormships kills millions on the world of Klurhammon, a high-tech agricultural world of no real tactical significance, agent Ian Cormac is sent to investigate, though he is secretly struggling to control a new ability no human being should possess...and beginning to question the motives of his AI masters.

The Forge of God described the destruction of Earth itself by self-replicating robots, Von Neumann machines designed to use the planet's mass to create more robotic creatures and spread throughout the Galaxy. Only a few humans have survived, aided by a mysterious alien race known only as “The Benefactors”, who arrived at Earth too late.

The extermination of Earth is at hand. With his increasingly irrational leadership Basil Wenceslas, chairman of the Hansa, has driven humanity into a corner. His punitive treatment of the Hansa colonies and the Roamers, as well as his refusal to aid an embattled Theroc, have made enemies for the people of Earth.

Tales of Dune collects eight of Herbert and Anderson’s Dune short stories, ranging from the period of the Butlerian Jihad to the time of young Paul Atreides to a story set during the events of the novel Dune to the very end of Frank Herbert’s future history.

The Argus Space Station looks down on a nightmarish Earth. And from this safe distance, the Committee enforces its despotic rule. There are too many people and too few resources, and they need 12 billion to die before Earth can be stabilised. So corruption is rife, people starve, and the poor are policed by mechanised overseers and identity-reader guns. Citizens already fear the brutal Inspectorate with its pain inducers. But to reach its goals, the Committee will unleash satellite laser weaponry, taking carnage to a new level. This is the world Alan Saul wakes to.

En un instant, une force inconnue a morcelé la Terre en une mosaïque d'époques, de la préhistoire à l'an 2037. Un gigantesque puzzle qui résume l'évolution de l'espèce humaine. Depuis, des sphères argentées planent sur toute la planète, invulnérables et silencieuses. Ces objets mystérieux, issus d'une technologie prodigieuse, sont-ils à l'origine de ces bouleversements ? La réponse se trouve peut-être dans l'antique cité de Babylone, dont proviennent des signaux radios.

Half a million years in the future, on a dead, war-ravaged world at the centre of the galaxy, there is a mile-high statue of Michael Poole. Poole, born on Earth in the fourth millennium, was one of mankind's most influential heroes. He was not a warrior, not an emperor. He was an engineer, a builder of wormhole transit systems. But Poole's work would ultimately lead to a vast and destructive conflict, a million-year war between humanity and the enigmatic, powerful aliens known as the Xeelee. The Xeelee won.

Nothing brings change like war. A surge of new tech. New weapons. New tactics. To lead a crew to victory, a captain must understand change. He must understand command and that it is a test. A test most men fail. He must be brilliant. Resourceful. Every second. Of every day. And at night during scarce moments of rest, he must sleep the sleep of the righteous. The time has come for Commander Tad Thatcher to look in the mirror. The time has come to ask himself...am I that kind of man?

Ursula has lived twice the normal human lifespan, courtesy of the latest technology. But now she’s struggling to find excitement and purpose, so signs up to the Polity’s military. She excels in weapons development, and progresses rapidly up the ranks. But after botching a powerful new ammunition test, she’s dismissed from service. Hunting for a simpler, more meaningful existence, the ex-soldier heads for the stars. And after founding a colony on the hostile planet of Threpsis, Ursula finally feels alive.

The Force is strong in 12-year-old Anakin Skywalker - so strong that the Jedi Council, despite misgivings, entrusted young Obi-Wan Kenobi with the mission of training him to become a Jedi Knight. Obi-Wan - like his slain master, Qui-Gon - believes Anakin may be the chosen one, the Jedi destined to bring balance to the Force. But first Obi-Wan must help his undisciplined apprentice, who still bears the scars of slavery, to find his own balance.

Many unanswered questions remain about the terrible Eugenics Wars that raged on Earth during the 1990s, an apocalyptic conflict that brought civilization to the brink of a new dark age. Centuries later, as Capt. James T. Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise are forced to defend a colony of genetically enhanced humans against Klingon aggression and sabotage, Kirk must probe deeper into the past - and into the glory days of one of the greatest adversaries he has ever faced.

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.

In 2014, the ESA spacecraft Rosetta lands a small probe named Philae on 67P, a Jupiter-family comet. The lander goes radio-silent two years later. Suddenly, in 2026, scientists receive new transmissions from the comet. Motivated by findings that are initially sensational but soon turn frightening, NASA dispatches a crewed spacecraft to the comet. But as the ship approaches the mysterious celestial body, the connection to the astronauts soon breaks. Now it seems nothing can be done anymore to stop the looming dark danger that threatens Earth....

It's been a year of upheaval since Bren Cameron's return from space - a year since he and the aiji-dowager, one of his most powerful atevi allies, returned home from their two-year interstellar mission to find the government overthrown and their world in chaos. Now, at last, things on the atevi world seem to be on the right track, and Bren hopes that life may soon become much more tranquil. But something is coming, quietly, stealthily - just the first ominous twinkle of a new star in the heavens....

On the primitive world Cull, a knight errant called Anderson hunts a dragon, not knowing that elsewhere is a resurrected brass killing machine, Mr Crane, assisting in a similar hunt. Learning that this old enemy still lives, agent Cormac pursues while scientist Mika begins discovering the horrifying truth about an ancient alien technology. Each day is a survival struggle for the people of Cull. Ferocious insectile monsters roam their planet as they try to escape to their forefathers' starship, still orbiting far above them.

Corporate assassin Tamarland Benteen's last hope is the survey ship, Vixen. With a load of scientists aboard under the supervision of Dr. Dortmund Weisbacher, Vixen is tasked with the first comprehensive survey of the newly discovered planet called Donovan. Given that, back in Solar System, Boardmember Radcek would have Benteen's brain dissected, he's particularly motivated to make his escape. The transition that should have taken Vixen years is instantaneous. Worse, a space ship is already orbiting Donovan and human settlements have been established on the planet.