Space Exploration Fiction

On a privately financed orbital habitat above the planet Uranus, political idealism conflicts with pragmatic - and illegal - methods of financing. Add a scientist who has funding to launch a probe deep into Uranus‘ ocean depths to search for signs of life, and you have a three-way struggle for control. Humans can’t live on the gas giants, making instead a life in orbit. Kyle Umber, a religious idealist, has built Haven, a sanctuary above the distant planet Uranus.

Aran awakens in chains with no memory. He’s conscripted into the Confederate Marines as a Tech Mage, given a spellrifle then hurled into the war with the draconic Krox and their Void Wyrm masters. Desperate to escape, Aran struggles to master his abilities while surviving the Krox onslaught. Fighting alongside him are a Major who will do anything to win, a Captain who will stop at nothing to see him dead, and a woman whose past is as blank as his own.

They were sent to investigate the first extraterrestrial signal. What they found was beyond anything they could have imagined - or feared. On a voyage to a mysterious moon in the Alpha Centauri system, the UEA Centaurus meets with disaster. Only the quick thinking of the flight engineer, Rachel Terman, saves some of the crew. Crash-landing on the moon, trillions of kilometers from Earth, they struggle to carry out their mission and try to survive. But nothing has prepared them for what they will face.

A hundred years in the future, a war wages between the Five Dragons - five families that control the moon's leading industrial companies. Each clan does everything in their power to claw their way to the top of the food chain - marriages of convenience, corporate espionage, kidnapping, and mass assassinations. Through ingenious political manipulation and sheer force of will, Lucas Corta rises from the ashes of corporate defeat and seizes control of the moon. The only person who can stop him is a brilliant lunar lawyer: his sister, Ariel.

Navy Lieutenant Podkayne, daughter of Ray Garcia-Strickland, is tired of her job as Martian consul in California - and Earth’s oppressive gravity. So she’s okay with getting called back to Mars, even if it’s because her great-grandmother is sick and being put into suspended animation. After a family reunion, Podkayne’s next port of call is Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, where she can finally realize her dream of being a singer. But just when her life seems to be improving for the better, disaster strikes and Podkayne is put into her own state of suspension.

Jazz Bashara es una criminal... O al menos lo parece. La vida en Artemisa, la primera y única ciudad de la Luna, es difícil si no eres un turista adinerado o un multimillonario excéntrico. Así que hacer un poco de contrabando de lo más inofensivo no cuenta, ¿verdad? Sobre todo cuando hay que pagar deudas y tu trabajo como transportista apenas paga el alquiler.

Sandstorm: Publisher's Pack 2 contains the final two books in the Sandstorm series: Dustborn, Book 3 and War Torn, Book 4. Tired, dirty, and sick, the Red Rock survivors eke out an existence on the Watchers' cliffs, hoping to avoid the monster. But life up high is almost as bad as life on the ground. Water is scarce, and no meal is guaranteed. And deep inside the tunnels, a new threat is building, something that might consume them all....

The Omnian expeditionary fleet sails for the faraway place they call "the wall". The worlds of humankind have consolidated their resources to create a powerful armada to confront the alien federation. During the Omnians' previous encounter with an alien fleet at the wall, the Nua'll comm sphere spoke to them in multiple languages. When the messages were deciphered by SADEs, the humans' digital friends, the Omnians realized two things. One, they would face a vast empire composed of hundreds of races, and, two, the Nua'll were not the leaders of the federacy. They had spoken of masters.

Collected in one volume is all three books in C. J. Cherryh's epic The Faded Sun trilogy: Kesrith, Shon'jir, and Kutath.

Lux finds traveling outside Earth's magnetic fields is possible with the gravity drive, but the military from the US and other nations begins to push hard for the tech. Could they use it to help mine the moon, asteroids, and the moons of other planets? Who controls the areas away from Earth when humans establish bases on different planets? Lux becomes known around Earth, and the fame may be too much. He finds he is a target for governments and corporations that want to control him and his knowledge.

A nuclear attack in the Persian Gulf wrongly implicates Jake Bayard. Everyone seems to be hunting for him. Bayard flees to Garm, an ice-age world full of sabertooths, dire wolves, mammoths, and Neanderthals. Unfortunately, Institute Homo habilises are also there: extraterrestrial, crafty, small, and deadly hominids. They've enslaved the Neanderthals to mine for dreaded alibite.

Jake Bayard led tormented Neanderthals in a successful slave revolt on the planet Garm. But when the Corporation owners fled, they took all the women with them. The Neanderthals are blaming Bayard for their lack of mates, and every day that passes is making the lonely brutes angrier. Bayard needs a solution fast, or his former friends are going to string him up. He decides to risk a raid onto Saddoth where millions of Ophidians eat and keep herds of meat Neanderthals. He can only take nine with his traveling power—nine to free nubile females for the Neanderthals of Garm.

Lee had expertise in different sciences and 24th-century tech due to learning machines that could transfer an expert's knowledge. He had the latest high-tech weapons. He had acquired the latest protective equipment. He was sixteen and got his great-grandfather's A.I., Anna, to find him a planet that had magic. His A.I. hacked a portal to take him there. He might have bitten off more than he could chew.

Traveling faster than light, the transport ship Redundancy is cut off from communication as effectively as an ancient ocean liner. The isolation suits crew member Ace Vance just fine—she’s got nowhere else to be. But when a wealthy passenger turns up dead during a routine voyage, Ace will have to connect with the passengers and crew to uncover the truth. Tragedy will strike again—it’s only a matter of time.

Two years have passed since comet Anduru skimmed the clouds of Saturn on its way to Earth. Kath and Nolan are looking for answers, trying to find ways to protect Earth from the possibility of an invasive alien species overrunning the planet.

Elio es un niño de 11 años con una gran imaginación y una gran pasión por el espacio. Un día es transportado accidentalmente al Comuniverso, una organización interplanetaria con representantes de galaxias muy lejanas, donde es identificado por error como el líder de la Tierra. Ahora Elio se enfrenta al reto de entablar relaciones con excéntricos alienígenas, sortear una crisis intergaláctica y descubrir quién es realmente y a dónde pertenece.

In the shadows, evil stirs. A race woven from arachnid and human DNA. They hunt like spiders. They think like men. They are the perfect killers. Like a virus, they invade the Freedom. James “Bulldog” King, commander of the Freedom, has fought alien fleets. This is different. This is worse. The infestation swarms through Freedom’s labyrinthine halls. Destroying. Eating up the Freedom from the inside. King must muster all his courage. All his strength. He must reclaim his ship. Or not only Freedom will fall—but Earth itself.

Evaran and the gang travel to another universe to investigate something that should not have happened. What they find embroils them in a cosmic conflict. Although they’re happy to meet Sivaran, another one of Evaran’s plane forms, the situation is not good. One problem is that Wardax, the supreme ruler of the Zayt Empire, has been sweeping across the galaxy with his enforcers and infected swarms. His assimilation has enveloped thousands of worlds, but he has also destroyed others. The gang will need to not only deal with Wardax, but also restore the galactic balance of power.

Two hundred thousand feet up, things go horribly wrong. An experimental low-orbit spaceplane breaks up on reentry, falling to earth over a trail hundreds of miles long. And in its wake is the beginning of the most important mission in the history of spaceflight.

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.