Hard Science Fiction Space

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.

Fifteen years ago, Guard Four stood by and watched her friend, Atalant, be jettisoned into space for questioning their planet's religion. Atalant should have died. Instead, she disappeared. Consumed by guilt, Guard Four trawls space, hopping from spaceport to spaceport, hoping to find and bring Atalant home with exonerating evidence that Ardulum, the traveling planet her people worship, is no mystic deity. At the edges of the known galaxy, Guard Four finds the shattered remains of a murdered world...

When the miners on Mars form a trade union and call a planet wide strike, the president of the Council of Economic Unions orders the federal forces on Mars to take a firm hand.

SHORT STORY: At the bottom of the sea, a trawler crawls across an abyssal plain, carefully cleaning microplastics off the ancient mineral-rich nodules, when the crew finds something that shouldn't be possible. Slimy Things Did Crawl is one of six short solarpunk stories in the Halfway to Better collection.

Fighting for freedom from galactic tyranny, General Cherry Lindstrom is responsible for the defense of the colony world, Concordia. This last outpost of human civilization lives under constant threat of attack from hostile aliens who claim the planet as their own. But decades have passed since the last assault, and the colonists have grown complacent. Thanks to the effects of time dilation, only Cherry and a handful of others remember the devastation wreaked on Concordia previously.

The world is in turmoil, facing inertias on both a conscious and subconscious level, which no one quite knows how to stop. James Black, also known primarily as "The Scientist," was just dabbling around in a makeshift lab he had created for himself, when after combining a plethora of random variables together, he made a discovery that changed everything... and showed him everything for better or for worse. He created the first time machine, but it was far more than just that.

Captain Graciela is where she wants to be, far from her controlling mother, in a rented solar sail cargo ship, trading and gambling throughout the heliosphere. It can be lonely in the void, but the crew on the H2LiftShip, the LunaCola, is all the help she needs: Jack, a talking dog with a nose for Earth jerky, Tang, a poker-obsessed orangutan, and Octopus, in his watery navigation station, are her constant companions on her journey.

In this world, life begins in a coffin, cars float, a good ray gun is your best friend, and computer displays are activated with a flick of the wrist. It all feels so real, so right … and it all feels so wrong. Some things remain the same in every reality: People with power crave more power. You’re free to live your life as long as you don’t challenge the status quo. Tom doesn’t like the status quo. Never has. Never will. With a smart-mouthed computer program, a quick-shooting bounty hunter, and a pissed-off stranger as his allies, Tom takes on a corrupt, authoritarian government.

For the past five years, Ruma Nuway has been plotting, planning to leave Doonya, the human planet. Now's her chance. With the Misguided mercenary by her side, she stands guard over the bound Zrivisi crew and the alien ship at her complete disposal. The hard part is done. All she needs now are the launch codes from the Zrivisi captain before the bomb goes off. When the captain refuses, sending her Misguided companion past the edge, Ruma faces impossible choices.

For two centuries, the planet of the Dedelphi has been riven by war. Though delicate, swanlike creatures, the planet’s natives are fierce in battle, and their ceaseless conflict has reduced their world to a wasteland. To save themselves and their world, the Dedelphi have forged a fragile peace and called for outside intervention. The Earth corporation Bioverse constructs a plan to heal the shattered planet. It’s the most ambitious engineering project the universe has ever seen, and if it backfires, the result will almost certainly be genocide.

Über vierhundert Jahre in der Zukunft bricht Raumschiffpilot Reid Malenfant, frisch aus dem Kälteschlaf geholt, zum Marsmond Phobos auf, nachdem die Erde einen Notruf von seiner Frau Ema erhalten hat. Was Reid, Deidre und die restliche Besatzung des Raumschiffes Last Small Step dort vorgefunden haben, ist atemberaubend: ein abgestürztes russisches Raumschiff und eine englische Forschungscrew.

On a far-future Earth, a linked system of artificial intelligences called the cybercosm runs the planet and the universe far more efficiently than any flesh and blood ruler ever could, in essence rendering the human race obsolete. On the Earth's moon, genetically engineered Lunarians carrying the DNA of Dagney Beynac - a descendant of the legendary Anton Guthrie, founder of the powerful and visionary Fireball Enterprises - struggle to preserve their lives, their freedom, and their satellite's resources in the face of threats posed by encroaching humans and controlling machines.

Seit seiner Kindheit wollte Reid Malenfant Astronaut werden, doch die NASA lehnte ihn ab. Seine Frau Emma ist erfolgreicher: Sie bricht 2004 mit einer Expedition zum Marsmond Phobos auf, um eine Anomalie zu erkunden. Doch ein Jahr später reißt der Kontakt ab, und Emma gilt seither als verschollen. Reid bekommt schließlich doch noch einen Platz als Space-Shuttle-Pilot, stürzt 2019 jedoch bei einem tragischen Unfall ab.

Oasis, der letzte bewohnbare Ort auf der post-apokalyptischen Erde, sollte eigentlich ein Paradies sein, ein Ort, an dem alle zufrieden sind. Theo, ein dreiundzwanzigjähriger Jugendlicher, hat noch nie so richtig in die fröhliche Gesellschaft von Oasis gepasst, die nach Altersstufen getrennt ist. Aber erst als er beginnt, die Stimme eines Mädchens in seinem Kopf zu hören, begreift er, dass nichts so ist, wie es zu sein scheint.

Rika is mech-meat, a cyborg killing machine, created by the Genevian military and cast aside when the war was lost.This volume contains the first three novels of the Rika’s Marauders series: Rika Outcast, Rika Redeemed, and Rika Triumphant.

Far into the reaches of space, Anson Guthrie and a band of colonists have forged a new existence on Amaterasu not as physical beings but as downloaded consciousness watched over by the benevolent Life Mother. Yet as idyllic as their lives may be, back home on Earth the situation is growing grim.

Onboard an ancient starship, Killeen and the Bishop tribe escape the mech-ruled world of Snowglade. Seeking refuge on a faraway planet, they discover vast wonders: an organic life-form as large as a world, a planet-coring cosmic string, a community of humans ruled by a brutal tyrant, and ultimately an alien race more awesome than any they have encountered. As they battle for survival against these myriad dangers, Killeen and his crew will gain an unforeseen ally - one that may determine humanity’s true destiny.

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.

First, vampires in space. And now...zombies. Really? Jebediah and the others are trying to get over the horrors they faced in deep space, and now this. When a mysterious ship from space arrives on Resolve, it unleashes a horde of undead that might spell the end of the survivors and their dreams of peace. Will the specters of the past save them, or seal their fate?

General Keith Brennan would rather face an army with his trusty rifle than attend another state dinner. When the president of the solar system is assassinated on Mars, Brennan is the obvious choice to investigate. If he comes up with the wrong answer, though, his career will be over.