Space Colony

A Recommended Summer Read from The Verge and io9 A Recommended June Read from Hello Giggles and Tor.com When the world ends, where will you go? In a breathtakingly vivid and emotionally gripping debut novel, one woman must confront the emptiness in the universe—and in her own heart—when a...

Maggie Barnes is at the end of her rope. She’s young and broke living in New York, and her newspaper job has been taken by robots. When she’s offered a job aboard the first civilian space colony, Maggie thinks it’s her lucky break. For Jonah Wyatt, the Space Force is his last shot at a military career. After years of tracking down the members of a deadly cyberterrorism ring, he was discharged from the army and stuck working one menial job after another. Now this disgraced combat specialist is headed to space.

Being blindsided is never easy, even when you’re on the right track. Experimenting with technology that stretches our understanding of the universe, Connor and a small group of survivors find themselves stranded on a ship far beyond known space. The answers they seek may lie in a distant star system, but Connor is about to find out that not all encounters are by chance.

Over the years, Connor has pieced together evidence of a mysterious group of aliens who roamed the multiverse and have been to New Earth. Setting off to make new discoveries about them is straightforward enough, but this is New Earth, and Connor Gates has a knack for finding trouble. For over 20 years, Connor and Diaz have been friends. They’ve survived two wars and have seen the best and the worst of each other. When a terrorist attack takes the life of Diaz’s son, their friendship will be pushed to the breaking point.

Ten years ago, the Ark II departed on a long journey through interstellar space, but shortly after they reached their destination, all communications ceased. All attempts to re-establish contact have failed. Utilizing prototypical FTL technology that he invented, one brave man will lead a small expedition into the unknown to discover the colony’s fate.

Earth builds her first war fleet! The greatest warships ever constructed in known space rise up one by one, soon dominating our skies. They strike fear into the hearts of every citizen and rebel colonist alike. Captain William Sparhawk, the very man who convinced the secretive Council to build this terrifying fleet, now has doubts about the project. What is their exact mission? How could anyone have built these huge ships so quickly? And, most puzzling of all, what's happening out at the isolated laboratory complex on Phobos, Mars' lopsided moon?

Captain William Sparhawk flies Earth's single starship on a voyage of exploration. His crew of veteran spacers begins the mission with high hopes and the best of intentions, but the universe has other plans. Instead of space merchants and potential allies, they discover Earth's impending doom. Sparhawk must decide whether to hunt down enemy scouts to keep Earth's new starship a secret or to head home to warn Star Guard of the danger. Either way, he's ignited an interstellar war.

Humanity's last stand. An attack by unknown aliens has devastated the Nova Fortuna colony. Its long-term survival seems impossible. But the colonists aren't going down without a fight. Ethan must prepare the Gens for their final battle. Geneticist Cariad must decide whether to reactivate the sinister Guardians to aid in the colony's defense. Earth is lost. The new world settlers are without hope. When the moment to decide humanity's fate arrives, will they be ready?

What do you do when you find yourself in the middle of a fight you didn't start? Whatever you need to do to survive. As an unprecedented enemy grows beyond measure, Dean is faced with a choice to confront the demons of his past or let them kill him in present. The future of two species hang in the balance. No pressure. But war is never easy, and the stakes have never been higher. Dean will need all of his allies and more if he hopes to make it out alive.

Alex Archer is a soldier now, the only civilian survivor from Scorpio to join the NAC Defense Corps. With their training complete, Alex and her friend Private Isa Cressey find themselves on emergency combat deployment with their new unit. The destination is the Alpha Corvi system, where an allied warship has vanished. Alex can guess why.

For years, Connor and others in the colony have unraveled the mysteries of New Earth and the global catastrophes that nearly destroyed its previous inhabitants. Their work led to the discovery of other worlds beyond the known universe. It became clear that many of those worlds had been attacked by an interdimensional invader that left untold amounts of manipulation, hardship, and annihilation in its wake. It’s only a matter of time before the colony becomes the next target.

A corporate aristocracy descended from Africa rules a colony on a distant planet. Life here is easy—for the rarified and privileged few. The aristocrats enjoy a powerful cybernetic technology that extends their life spans and ensures their prosperity. Those who serve them suffer under a heavy hand. But within this ruthless society are agents of hope and change. In a secret underwater laboratory, a separatist cult has created a threat to the aristocracy. The Primes are highly intelligent, manipulative products of genetic engineering, designed to lead a rebellion.

General Connor Gates is leading a task force on the most ambitious exploration initiative to date. The crew aboard the ships are mix of military and civilian, and include his son, Ethan, who has grown into a well respected leader. While exploring a strange alien world, the team investigating the wreckage of an alien ship is brutally attacked. The survivors barely escape and are now fighting for their lives and their sanity…including Ethan. They’ve been exposed to a dangerous contagion, and it’s going to spread.

Chen JieMin hypothesized the existence of hyperspace. The government of Arcadia put a project together to build a hyperspace probe. Chen ChaoLi managed the project to build a successful probe and transition it there and back.

Agetha has survived many more battles than she anticipated when she first landed on her new home planet. She's older and wiser, has gained family and lost loved ones. And yet her reward for four decades of service is to be pushed to the colony's outer edges with the other aging Generationals. But that was only the beginning of her adventure.

In the year 3152, humanity is at war with three species who suppress our existence. While one is more ruthless than the others, our species is viewed as an unstable threat to the galactic balance. Resources are finite, battle is ubiquitous, and the enemies of Earth are unrelenting. The average human is born to fight for the species’ survival, deprived of a normal life so that one day a future generation may know peace. The expansions of Alpha Centauri are under siege while the Wolf System is down to just a few outposts. Not all is lost, though.

Maverick Enterprises has been reduced to rubble. Mordecai has fled from Earth. He's ensconced himself in a galactic fortress and surrounded himself with an army of bots. When Jonah is framed for the attack on Maverick, Maggie must go to Elderon alone. She is determined to clear Jonah's name and stop Mordecai's reign of tyranny, but a stowaway onboard the space station has her own ideas. Even worse, the US military is plotting an attack - one that could kill everyone on Elderon.

With the Gral sent home, abandoning their posts around the colonies, humans are once again in charge of their own fate. Zane and Julia are determined to find the mysterious forty-fourth colony. They devise a plan and set into action while Lorna and Henry search the Forever World for evidence of the elusive alien race. Carl is sent into enemy territory with only a shred of hope as his guiding light. For both father and son, choice is synchronous with consequence, but how can you be sure you've made the right one?

In 1969, Princeton physicist Gerard O'Neill began looking outward to space colonies as the new frontier for humanity's expansion. A decade later, Eric Drexler, an MIT-trained engineer, turned his attention to the molecular world as the place where society's future needs could be met using self-replicating nanoscale machines. These modern utopians predicted that their technologies could transform society as humans mastered the ability to create new worlds, undertook atomic-scale engineering, and, if truly successful, overcame their own biological limits.

Master storyteller Ben Bova continues his multi-volume "Grand Tour" saga chronicling humanity's exploration of near space with Titan, a fast-paced thriller focused on the first manned mission to the Solar System's most intriguing world. Skillfully blending high drama, passionate characters, and daring speculation with the latest discoveries from the current Cassini/Huygens probe of Saturn's moon, Bova has crafted a heart-stopping tale of epic adventure on mankind's next frontier.