Space Exploration Fiction

The Deathwatch are the elite of the elite - small teams of Space Marines handpicked for special missions that require the utmost courage and cunning. Now recovered from the injuries sustained on his previous mission, Codicier Karras must lead Talon Squad in the hunt for a missing inquisitor. Their only clue is the name of an Imperial planet that has been taken over by the T’au. Is the missing inquisitor alive or dead? Worse still, has she gone rogue, jeopardising one of the Inquisition’s most secret projects?

With The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 3, award-winning editor Neil Clarke provides a year-in-review and 27 of the best stories published by both new and established authors in 2017.

Mitch's mediocre life has just taken a turn for the worse, so his buddy tries to cheer him up by showing him a secret starship. Unfortunately, everything goes south when hostile aliens arrive. In an effort to save his buddy and the starship from the aliens, Mitch does the obvious thing: he accidentally warps hundreds of light-years away. Marooned in a distant star cluster, Mitch is forced to deal with a snarky teenage AI, a rogue auto-pilot, and a beautiful alien soldier who's ready to steal his ship at any moment—so she can fight an oppressive military faction, of course.

When Manchester Yards donates a new training vessel to the Merchant Officer Academy at Port Newmar, Alys Giggone recalls the Chernyakova. She wants Ishmael Wang and his crew to take a crew of cadets into the Deep Dark. They have to sort out the crews of two ships, figure out what lessons they need to teach, and who will get those lessons. Once they agree, the trouble starts.

La Terre est au plus mal... Ses derniers habitants n'ont plus qu'un seul espoir : coloniser le "Monde de Kern", une planète lointaine, spécialement terraformée pour l'espèce humaine. Mais sur ce "monde vert" paradisiaque, tout ne s'est pas déroulé comme les scientifiques s'y attendaient. Une autre espèce que celle qui était prévue, aidée par un nanovirus, s'est parfaitement adaptée à ce nouvel environnement et elle n'a pas du tout l'intention de laisser sa place. Le choc de deux civilisations aussi différentes que possible.

Dorian Hawke's daily routine was pretty straightforward. Wake up, pull his weight around the village, eat potatoes, go to bed. Not too shabby. Not very interesting, maybe, but it was honest work. Then a boat falls like a meteor from the sky. Next thing he knows, a gorgeous elf and stunning faun tell him that magical blood runs through his veins, and they need him to navigate their ship through space.

Glory barely survived its last battle twenty years ago. Captain Drake resigned rather than face court martial. But the enemy is back, and humanity needs everything that can fly. Maybe it’s not the ship at all but the crew. They hold the key. Drake rallies old and young alike to comply with orders so secret even he wasn’t allowed to see them until after the ship left the junkyard. Would it leave? That was another question. The core hadn’t been fired in twenty years.

As if nearly burning up in a freak accident on her way to Earth wasn't bad enough, Daisy had a whole mess of other trouble on her plate. Big trouble. And she was going to get to the bottom of it if it was the last thing she'd do, which it was starting to look like it very well might be. The thing is, Daisy had a simple rule for space travel. Don't blow up, and so far she'd been managing to abide by that, but mere survival wasn't enough.

In NecroTek, the space station Asphodel was accidentally teleported to the far side of the galaxy, where they became embroiled in a never-ending war against ancient cosmic horrors. But there is much more to the story … On Earth, scientists uncover an alien spacecraft buried for millions of years beneath Antarctic ice. Inside are terrible secrets and a creature desperate to escape. Soon the scientists studying the Artifact begin to have terrifying dreams, driving many of them to madness and acts of shocking violence.

In 2204, humanity is expanding into the wider galaxy in leaps and bounds. Cutting-edge technology of linked jump gates has rendered most forms of transportation - including starships - virtually obsolete. Every place on Earth, every distant planet humankind has settled, is now a step away from any other. And all seems wonderful - until a crashed alien spaceship of unknown origin is found on a newly located world 89 light-years from Earth, carrying a cargo as strange as it is horrifying. To assess the potential of the threat a high-powered team is dispatched to investigate. But one of them may not be all they seem....

Le vaisseau Explorateur 1 fait route vers Saturne. À son bord, deux astronautes et le plus puissant ordinateur jamais conçu. Cinq ans plus tôt, un étrange monolithe noir a été découvert sur la Lune. La première preuve d'une existence extraterrestre. Et bien longtemps avant, à l'aube de l'humanité, un objet similaire s'était posé sur Terre et avait parlé aux premiers hommes. On détecte un nouveau signe de cette présence aux abords de Saturne. Que sont ces mystérieuses sentinelles ? Quel message doivent-elles délivrer ?

Kathryn Janeway reveals her career in Starfleet, from her first command to her epic journey through the Delta Quadrant leading to her rise to the top as vice-admiral in Starfleet Command. Discover the story of the woman who travelled further than any human ever had before, stranded decades from home, encountering new worlds and species.

When your luck just plain sucks in not one galaxy, but two, most people would throw in the towel. But not Charlie. In fact, it almost seemed like he was a glutton for that sort of misery.

The Great Devourer is descending on the world of Tarsis Ultra, but to defeat the xenos horrors, Captain Uriel Ventris may have to embark upon a dangerous and unorthodox mission.

Rama II, gigantesque vaisseau-monde, quitte le système solaire. À son bord, Richard, Michael et Nicole. Destination ? Le Point Nodal, une station spatiale démesurée, où les extraterrestres ont décidé d'étudier toutes les espèces de l'univers capables d'explorer l'espace. En attendant, un habitat de type terrestre est aménagé sur Rama pour les trois humains, sur lesquels les E.T. se livrent à des expériences. Puis le vaisseau est renvoyé sur Terre ; deux mille hommes et femmes devront s'y installer afin que les E.T. puissent les observer à leur guise.

Too many years of hunting psychotic vampires night after night have left Rachel with a need for change. So when the opportunity to travel across the galaxy aboard a Lasaran warship to a utopian planet arises, the powerful Immortal Guardian jumps at the chance. Rachel eagerly looks forward to making a fresh start . . . until an enemy attacks and she ends up alone in an escape pod so far from alliance-occupied space that no one can hear her communications. No one except a renegade cyborg who shouldn't exist.

During a routine arrest, Van discovers a stolen spacecraft, its importance far greater than it first appears. Fast, sleek, and beautiful, the ship is a cultural relic from Linulla’s people, and returning their property will set off a chain of events that reveals a new adversary. Rising in the ranks, Van’s confrontation with a pirate leader isn’t just a case of theft, but something far more sinister. And Van’s going to take this case personally. He and his crew will chase the Salt Thieves and their leader in a game that can only have one winner.

On the run and broken, the Equal Grasp faces elimination on earth and everywhere else, their leader gone, their mission a shambles, and with new agents of justice hard on their heels. But the fight isn't over. In fact, it's just begun, and Van knows that every decision he's made for the past decade will come to bear on who lives, and who dies—and who is meant to rule over a universe where freedom and justice are the ultimate pursuit.

A crescent moon set against a jeweled field of stars gracefully slid into view. The thin arc of its crater-filled landscape drew Jack’s mind in. His eyes followed the long, inky shadows cast by jagged crater walls as they cut sharply into the pockmarked ashen terrain. Deeper within the jet-black lunar night-side were the lonely peaks of a smattering of mountain tops, catching a few last rays of sunlight. All Jack felt was a desire to escape; to be down there exploring...perhaps uncovering some new detail in the history of Earth’s nearest neighbor.

When the Equal Grasp and other unsavory aliens launch their plot to open humanity up to the stars—in the name of profit, of course—Van and his crew spring into action, fearing the fallout of a world gone mad. With each passing event in his career, Van continues to unravel locked memories, held by Perry, that explain a family history far more violent than he ever imagined.