Short Stories Science

Centuries from now, the basic right to expand human intelligence beyond its natural limits has become a war-worthy cause for the Demarchists and Conjoiners. Only vast lighthugger starships bind these squabbling colonies together, manned by the panicky and paranoid Ultras. And the hyperpigs just try to keep their heads down. The rich get richer. And everyone tries not to think about the worrying number of extinct alien civilizations turning up on the outer reaches of settled space...because who's to say that humanity won't be next?

Seven superb stories, from the world's no. one storyteller. Meet the boy who can talk to animals and the man who can see with his eyes closed. And find out about the treasure buried deep underground. A cleaver mix of fact and fiction, this collection also includes how master storyteller Roald Dahl became a writer. With Roald Dahl, you can never be sure where reality ends and fantasy begins.

Terraform hones the predictive capacity of science fiction and seeks new, vivid, and visceral ways to depict the future we’re hurtling toward, translating the decay and anxiety that surround us into something else, something unexpected, something that burns like a beacon and upends the conventional ideas of where we’ll end up next. Section by section—Watch/Worlds/Burn—the book takes on surveillance, artificial intelligence, and climate collapse. With a potent roster of established names and rising talents, it confronts the issues that orbit our everyday existence.

In four new novellas, Christina Henry returns to the world of Alice and Red Queen, where magic runs as freely as secrets and blood.

This collection includes four novellas: Vektal & Georgie, Raahosh & Liz, Aehako & Kira, and Rukh & Harlow.

More than a hundred years into the future, as the US approaches its 400th anniversary, Tomas, a young graduate student, searches for the real identity of one of the cyborgs that maintained American homes. He has been haunted for years by an audio clip of a cyborg named Felipe and is intent on writing Felipe’s biography. In the clip, Felipe can only recite that he was made in America, but Tomas must find out: Where was the Self-made Man really from?

You know about the invasion of Earth, and the Garde who will do anything to stop it. Yet there is still so much to learn. The stories in Zero Hour will help you get the answers you seek, but only the Garde and their allies can save our planet.

The Barsoom Collection: Books 1-6 is the collection of the first six novels in Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom series, read by esteemed narrator Christopher Ragland.

The last thing I remember was being cryogenically frozen, but now I was in a strange room, surrounded by advanced technology I had never seen before. My confusion only grew as I explored this new world–a future that was nothing like I ever could have imagined. It didn't take long for me to learn that humanity was extinct and that I was now in the hands of a stunning AI, a siren with camouflaging powers, and a monster girl who happens to be a great engineer–beings that are as fascinating as they are strange.

Waking up with no memory of his past, a man finds purpose within a resistance, drawn to their fight against Drekar, the Lich Lord threatening to consume the continent, turning anyone who opposed him undead. But when fragments of his past resurface, he uncovers a chilling possibility. This revelation shakes his identity and compromises the very cause he’s sworn to fight for. As he grapples with betrayal, destiny, and the battle for his own soul, his journey forces him to confront the question—can he defy the role he was born into, or is he bound to the will of another after all?

When the Colonial Marines set out after their deadliest prey, the Xenomorphs, it's what Corporal Hicks calls a bug hunt - kill or be killed. Here are fifteen all-new stories of such "close encounters", written by many of today's most extraordinary authors. Set during the events of all four Alien films, sending the Marines to alien worlds, to derelict space settlements, and into the nests of the universe's most dangerous monsters, these adventures are guaranteed to send the blood racing - one way or another.

Equipped with the entirety of human knowledge, a sentient ship is launched on a last-ditch journey to find a new home for civilization. Trillions of miles. Tens of thousands of years. In the space between, the AI has plenty of time to think about life, the vastness of the universe, everything it was meant to do, and—with a perspective created but not limited by humans—what it should do.

Unconfirmed accounts of a group of Araluen warriors - tales of adventure, battle, and triumph over evil - have spread for centuries throughout the known world. Most notable is a clan shrouded in mystery, phantom warriors known as the Rangers. Two names pass the lips of every storyteller: Halt, and his apprentice, Will. They and their comrades in arms are said to have traveled throughout the kingdom and beyond its borders, protecting those who needed it most.

I thought I’d left my past behind for good. But when my older brother gets killed in a car accident, I’ve got to come back to take over his car-tuning business. But things are not like I remember. There’s something weird going on in Santo Domingo, something that seems connected to the city’s underground street racing scene. There’s the orange-haired mechanic at the tuning shop with the FOXGRRL license plate. There’s the strange black cat hanging around my house, and the dreams I’ve been having about a racer girl with cat ears and a tail.

Jack Zombie is a thrilling post-apocalyptic series that follows a tight-knit group of people as they travel the zombie-ridden wasteland once known as the United States. As you follow Jack and his family, you'll soon discover that nothing can rival a human's will to survive.

Rhona and her paladin brother, Alastar, belong to a holy people who have waged war on witches and warlocks and their clans from the highlands. But when she uses magic to save his life, their world is thrown upside down. On the run, having left all they knew behind, they have to rely on those who hate paladins. All magic is evil, the high paladin taught.... But Alastar starts to understand that he might have been misled.

The best science fiction scrutinizes our culture and politics, examines the limits of the human condition, and zooms across galaxies at faster-than-light speeds, moving from the very near future to the far-flung worlds of tomorrow in the space of a single sentence. Neil Clarke has selected the short science fiction (and only science fiction) best representing the previous year's writing, showcasing the talent, variety, and awesome "sensawunda" that the genre has to offer.

These 18 darkly complex short stories and novellas touch upon human nature and perception, metaphysics and epistemology, and gender and sexuality, foreshadowing a world in which biological tendencies bring about the downfall of humankind. The Nebula Award-winning short story "Love Is the Plan, the Plan Is Death", the Hugo Award-winning novella The Girl Who Was Plugged In, and the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novella Houston, Houston, Do You Read? are included.

I am a bashful, dorky human—your average refugee on Risda III. Haina is tall, blue, and magnificent. She is effortlessly confident, and her laugh is contagious. I might hide behind the candle section at the store in Risda's port just to get a weekly glimpse at her when she makes her vendor runs. I might be in love with her from afar. Someday I'll get the courage to talk to her. Someday. But fate steps in, and 'someday' turns out to be a lot sooner than I expected.

Earth's protection comes at a price! Discover the Warlord Brides universe with growly, protective alien warriors who will do anything for their mates. Contains four complete books: Paax, Kalen, Mylomon, and Vox.