Hard Space Opera

Chris Holt, working in his office at the Space Resources Corporation, discovers that one of the asteroids he is surveying for mining is actually not an asteroid at all but a derelict spaceship. The word gets out and soon the world's powers are competing to explore and claim for themselves the secrets that it holds. What they don't know is that across the galaxy, a war has been underway for millennia. A war between alien civilizations that have very different ideas about what should be done about emerging spacefaring civilizations like our own.

The colony ship Ragtime docks in the Lagos system, having traveled light-years to bring one thousand sleeping souls to a new home among the stars. But when first mate Michelle Campion rouses, she discovers some of the sleepers will never wake. Answering Campion’s distress call, investigator Rasheed Fin is tasked with finding out who is responsible for these deaths.

The Outer Worlds are engulfed in conflict. The Solar Assembly are preparing to send troops to intervene, a move which threatens to thrust the entire Solar System into civil war. On Mars, Emile Chandraskher and his Formist Faction, are preparing the final stages of their decades-long plan for ultimate control. In the midst of this, an unlikely group of dissenters and misfits emerge. And they have a score to settle!

Das Raumschiff Shepherd-1 ist unterwegs zum sonnennächsten Stern. Auf halbem Weg gelingt es der Besatzung, mithilfe der Gravitationslinsen-Technologie scharfe Bilder vom Ursprung des Universums anzufertigen – und damit die Antwort zu erhalten, die verrät, wie der Kosmos entstanden ist und ob ein Gott dabei seine Hand im Spiel hatte oder nicht. Doch kaum teilt die Crew das der Erde mit, verstummt die Funkverbindung, obwohl das Schiff offenbar funktionsfähig ist.

Three colonizing vessels are voyaging to find a new world to colonize when Earth as they know it ends. Generations later, mankind is still in conflict and must find a solution.

What was the light that mazed every mind's sky - and then was gone? Why has it brought a flying tepui mountaintop home from the stars, and sent investigators into the orbital habitats floating above Earth? How is it connected to a "living fossil" fungus of great entheogenic powers? Or to a dead madman? Or to the fate of a planet overpopulated, hypermediated, corporate dominated, and heat-gas insulated? Forces that are socially and politically polarized, both good and evil, selfless and selfish, must search for the answers to these questions.

John Bandicut and his companions are summoned to a star-cloud called Starmaker, known to humans as the Orion Nebula, to discover what force threatens newborn stars - and possibly every world within a thousand light-years. Their journey takes them not just into the perils of a stellar nursery, but into confrontation with the Mindaru, a billion-year-old AI and adversary of life as they know it. The task is daunting. But with the aid of Deep and Dark, sentient clouds who are perhaps the strangest beings they have met yet in their exceedingly strange journey, there may be hope.

Xenophobia, the fear of that which is alien, different, or strange; it is xenophobia that drove the reptilian natives of Sua’kul into the arms of an alien force even more terrible than that which they feared. Driven by a radicalized ideology and malevolent intervention, the new order on Sua’kul has become a threat to the Empire. In response the half human and half Illani noble family of Valor has been dispatched to subdue the planet before it can become another front in an ever expanding war of alien aggression against the last vestige of human civilization.

As the conflict in the asteroid belt escalates, Luca finds herself seeking out the help of Athena, the QI on Earth. Together they hatch a complex plan to end the power of the Van Heilding family. Meanwhile, resistance to the ongoing power grab by the Xiang Zu Corporation is gaining traction in Elektra, a quadruple asteroid system and the second most populous sector of the Belt. Miranda, Scott, and Cyrus find themselves being dragged into this fight following rumors that the QI, stolen en route to New World One, has resurfaced in the hands of the rebels.

This boxed set contains 3 complete science-fiction novels. This is science-fiction at its best - future engineering, intrigue, first contact. It’s a space opera like none you’ve experienced before. The audiobooks will keep you listening late into the night, and you won't be able to stop....

Geoff and his friends live in Phocaea, a distant asteroid colony on the Solar System's frontier. They're your basic high-spirited young adults, enjoying such pastimes as hacking matter compilers to produce dancing skeletons that prance through the low-gee communal areas, using their rocket-bikes to salvage methane ice shrapnel that flies away when the colony brings in a big (and vital) rock of the stuff, and figuring out how to avoid the ubiquitous surveillance motes.

When Ximon Sabo retires from the Kremniy Republic Scout Force he’s awarded a retired scout ship, the Mantis, but he has to find work to keep her flying. On missions across a dozen solar systems, Ximon and his crew make first contact with an alien species, pull off a daring rescue from a beleaguered outpost, face hostile pirates, and even face a murder mystery. The Mantis team - a female engineer with a drinking problem, a sensor operator who’s also a priest, Ximon’s sexy companion robot, and the ship’s AI computer - must work together to face challenge after challenge.

Auf dem Asteroiden "Gateway" nahe der Sonne werden knapp eintausend außerirdische Raumschiffe einer verschollenen Rasse gefunden, den "Hidschi". Niemand weiß, wie diese Raumschiffe funktionieren und wohin ihr Kurs führt. Es finden sich aber genügend wagemutige Piloten, sogenannte Prospektoren, die sie zu ihren unbekannten Zielen fliegen, um dort nach Hitschi-Technologie zu suchen. Obwohl die Verlustrate extrem hoch ist, verstehen die Menschen die Hitschi-Schiffe als Chance, dem Elend auf der ausgeplünderten Erde zu entkommen.

For millions of years, the ark flotilla wandered through inter-galactic space until it reached a new galaxy, and, eventually, a new world. Father, the Artificial Intelligence tasked with ensuring the safety of the ark flotilla and the human embryos and gametes aboard, named this new world Takali, and he terraformed it until it could sustain human life.

Hannah has finally adjusted to life on board the Ventas-341, when a series of strangely catastrophic hull breaches and a devastating viral outbreak decimates the crew. Now, she finds herself stranded in the shadows of the asteroid belt. Together with the only other surviving crew members, Colin and the robotic Brother Anderson, she must somehow overcome their chaotic relationships if they are to have any chance of escaping the doomed ship.

Martian terraformer Kaylee Fourteen is a recent immigrant from Earth. Residents of the domed colonies of Mars can practically smell the day they’ll be able to walk outdoors on their own planet without the need for air supplies. But the committees on Earth control the resources the colonists need, and their interference threatens the terraforming project’s very existence. Until a group of radicals takes hostages to force the release of the tech and materials the terraformers need.

The Meteor Shooters Association has protected deep space colonies from the destruction of meteor showers for over 80 years. For the members, it’s a competition to see who the best shooter is. Van Wilcox was behind schedule and struggled to charter a private spacecraft to take him on the final stretch. Thankfully, he found an unorthodox pilot willing to go against protocol, because they needed all shooters armed and on the firing line for this storm.

The Outer Layer is an enigma to its residents. Representatives from countless races and civilizations wander the many territories, hoping to unlock the secrets and progress further into its depths. An anomaly has been detected in space by an artefact from an extinct civilization. Ciqalo, a machine intelligence from the Wanderer civilization, is tasked with investigating and weaponizing the anomaly for a galactic war.

Die Venus ist ein lebensfeindlicher Planet, bedeckt von aktiven Vulkanen. Trotzdem startet die NASA eine Expedition, die nach Leben suchen soll, denn die dichten Wolken der heißen Schwester der Erde könnten dafür gute Bedingungen bieten. Ein speziell entwickeltes Airship dient den vier Astronauten als Forschungsplattform. Doch dann entdecken sie auf der glühenden Oberfläche gefährliche Aktivitäten, für die es nur eine Erklärung geben kann: Dort muss eine hoch entwickelte Lebensform am Werk sein.

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.