Space Fantasy

As METAtropolis: Green Space moves into the 22nd Century, human social evolution is heading in new directions after the Green Crash and the subsequent Green Renaissance. Nearly everyone who cares to participate in the wired world has become part of the "Internet of things", a virtual environment mapped across all aspects of the natural experience. At the same time, the serious back-to-the-land types have embraced a full-on paleo lifestyle, including genetically engineering themselves and their offspring.

Follow a core group of characters known as the Trailblazers as they use alien technology and knowledge discovered in Antarctic ruins to obtain limited immortality and lead humanity out into the galaxy, encountering, befriending, and fighting hundreds of alien races all the while desperately trying to prepare Earth for the unbeatable threat at the core of the Milky Way that is destined to return and reclaim their lost colony and their former human slaves.

In the year AD 3000, Earth is a dystopian wasteland, plundered of its natural resources by alien conquerors known as Psychlos. Fewer than 35,000 humans survive in a handful of communities scattered across the face of a post-apocalyptic Earth. From the ashes of humanity rises a young hero, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler. Setting off on an initial quest to discover a hidden evil, Jonnie unlocks the mystery of humanity’s demise and unearths a crucial weakness in their oppressors.

Copernicus Smith, everyone's favorite starship repairman, scoundrel and deep-cover spy, has stumbled upon a conspiracy of galactic proportions. It has also gotten him beat up, near death and a captive of the secretive Ryness Cartel. And they will continue to torture him until he reveals what he knows. The problem: He knows nothing. Now Adam Cain, Sherri Valentine and Riyad Tarazi are on the hunt for their friend and on-again, off-again teammate. But just when our heroes think they have the mystery figured out, something new jumps up that throws all their assumptions into a tailspin.

While the crew of the UN Expeditionary Force's pirate starship Flying Dutchman are enjoying a luxury vacation cruise (not!), UNEF troops are still stranded on an alien-controlled planet. Major Emily Perkins and her team are busy picking up the pieces, and it's not easy, because there is trouble on Paradise...

Finn has finally reached Haven and with his arrival the fires of rebellion have been stoked inside Zavetgrad. But his daring escape was not without cost and more heartbreak. Now he must strive to live up to his reputation as the “Hero of Metalhaven” and work with Haven’s leadership to inspire a revolution in all nine of Zavetgrad’s cruel work sectors. But Haven’s plan to bring down the Authority places Finn in a difficult position.

For a decade, peace has reigned in interstellar space. A tripartite agreement between the Colonial Union, the Earth, and the alien Conclave has kept the forces of war at bay, even when some would have preferred to return to the fighting and struggle of former times. For now, more sensible heads have prevailed – and have even championed unity. But now, there is a new force that threatens the hard-maintained peace: The Consu, the most advanced intelligent species humans have ever met, are on the cusp of a species-defining civil war.

Two centuries ago, the First Expansionary Fleet set off to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, hoping to explore, colonize, and conquer new worlds in the name of humanity. But when the fleet was violently and unexpectedly thrown off course, the colonists found themselves trapped in an unexplored region of the galaxy—and caught right in the middle of a bloody interstellar war. Now, after generations of relentless fighting, a tentative truce has finally ushered in an era of growth and prosperity.

In the stunning continuation of the epic adventure begun in Hyperion, Simmons returns us to a far future resplendent with drama and invention. On the world of Hyperion, the mysterious Time Tombs are opening. And the secrets they contain mean that nothing - nothing anywhere in the universe - will ever be the same.

Max is a cheery xeno-archeologist from Earth, stranded and trying to find a way home. Lahra is a stern warrior of a nearly extinct race, searching for her people's heir. Wheel is the couple's cybernetic pilot, running from her past and toward an unknown future. On Wheel's ship the Kettle, the trio traverses the galaxy, dodging Imperial patrols and searching ancient temples and ruins for anything they can sell. Back on the Wreck, their home and base of operations, they're deeply in debt to the drifting city's most powerful gangster, and she wants her money back.

The immense ark-ship Odyssey and its ten thousand hibernating settlers have left behind a dying Earth—journeying for fifty years to the nearest star and its lone habitable planet, Proxima-b. This new home for humanity is perpetually bombarded by deadly solar flares on its dayside, while the icy wasteland on its opposite hemisphere freezes in endless darkness. When the battered Odyssey arrives, its crew discovers the automated radiation shield has failed. Something appears to have damaged or perhaps even sabotaged their technology on a world where humans have yet to set foot.

There are those in the great expanse of the galaxy that seek profit wherever it is to be found: the deal makers, the opportunists and explorers – the Rogue Traders. Granted power by an ancient charter, sanctioned by the Emperor Himself, these scoundrels, entrepreneurs and adventurers roam the galaxy in search of fortune and glory. None perhaps are as hungry for these twin vices as Janus Draik.

It's been eighty years since Thorn split his people into six societies spread across the galaxy. He's known all that time a timeline shift was coming, and the role he needed to play when it did. The mages of his world are ready, including his great-great nephew, Bud. For Bud, living in the shadow of his legend relative hasn't really been an issue, and his role in the timeline shift is supposed to be minor. But Kali has an agenda, magic has its own agenda, and since Thorn is old, and tired of his people's reliance on him, he too has an agenda.

The Great Ones arrived on Earth and conquered us with little bloodshed. They collected our strongest warriors and shipped them off to a world called Hadran—a one-of-a-kind artificial planet, a cosmic gladiatorial arena where the slave races engage in blood sports for the Great Ones' entertainment. But Earth has lost the last of its real champions and now risks losing its candidate status. If that happens, it will become less than a slave colony.

Phil Kelly continues his look at the life of Commander Farsight with his first campaign against the full might of the Imperium and shows how the T'au Empire's technological superiority fares against Imperial grit.

The Alien Legion has a new mission, and this time, they are working for the enemy. Also against the enemy. Like every operation that Emily Perkins plans, it’s complicated. But plans require good intel, and when the plan falls apart, the Mavericks are in freefall....

In the grand tradition of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, Stanislaw Lem's The Invincible tells the story of a space cruiser sent to an obscure planet to determine the fate of a sister spaceship whose communication with Earth has abruptly ceased. Landing on the planet Regis III, navigator Rohan and his crew discover a form of life that has apparently evolved from autonomous, self-replicating machines—perhaps the survivors of a “robot war.” Rohan and his men are forced to confront the classic quandary: what course of action can humanity take once it has reached the limits of its knowledge?

As Guilliman, Regent of Terra, heads off to lead the Indomitus Crusade, he leaves behind a world still in turmoil, beset by cult activity. Stripped of its huge armies for the galactic offensive, recovery is precarious. The Custodians do what they can while keeping the Palace secure, and the Sisters of Silence rebuild their citadel on Luna. When the warship Phalanx returns, it seems that stability will at last be assured. However, as reconquest forces push out further into the slums, they come across signs that another mysterious foe is active.

Three hundred years ago, a liaison-robot-turned-warrior sided with humans in the Great A.I. War. He's one of few hi-level sentients allowed to live. But all this doesn't matter now because he's on the run. Armed with emotion-chip-fueled determination and his beloved weapons, the general flees to a nearby planet where he must unravel a tangled conspiracy to prove his innocence. But that's easier said than done.

Almost 400 years the Terran Imperium has languished, an Empire in name only. The young colonies exploded out of the Diaspora Era, supplanting the homeworld in importance as they left a broken world in their wake. Earth's people, guided by the Conwin line, have clawed and climbed from the darkness left the night the lights went out. They built and rebuilt the weary and weakened world they inherited, even when it seemed bent on killing them from sheer spite.