Space First Contact

Priscilla “Hutch” Hutchins discovers an interstellar message from a highly advanced race that could be her last chance for a mission before the program is shut down for good. Hutch has been the academy’s best pilot for decades. She’s had numerous first contact encounters and even became a minor celebrity. But world politics have shifted from exploration to a growing fear that the program will run into an extraterrestrial race more advanced than humanity and war.

Still with no news of her father and the Galileo space station. Emily Rhodes and her colleagues will have to set up a permanent base on the surface of Kepler-442b. To be able to do this, they will have to deal with the threat presented by the Yokai, the terrifying creatures which attacked their camp and took the life of Private Parrish. Meanwhile they will have to establish contact with the other civilization which inhabits the planet.

Kanti had spent many sleepless nights torturing himself with thoughts of the day when he would give up on returning to Tish. Old and grey, back-stooped from decades of labor, he would try to get up out of bed, and change his mind. Why bother? He couldn’t have been more wrong. He was still young, his pelt still tanned, and his back didn’t hurt when he rose. Everything had conspired to keep the two lovers apart: rivals, foes, distance. Now, he needs his friends’ help more than ever if he wants his old life back.

Captain Sophia Coloma of the Clarke has a simple task: Ferry around representatives from Earth in an aging spaceship that the Colonial Union hopes to sell to them. But nothing is as simple as it seems, and Coloma discovers the ship she’s showing off holds suprises of its own...and it’s not the only one with secrets. "Tales from the Clarke" is a tale from John Scalzi's The Human Division, a series of self-contained but interrelated short stories set in the Old Man's War universe.

After initial contact with an alien entity leaves Kaylan unconscious, she wakes up to discover that she's now in command of the Athena mission stranded in a star system far from Earth. The ship's computer is malfunctioning, and former hacker and astronaut trainee Zack Quick is the only one who can fix it. If he can't figure out what's wrong, they have no hope of getting back home. In order to survive, the crew of the Athena must explore an alien star system to find the species that summoned them.

Written in two parts, Triplanetary introduces the concept of two warring alien races: the Arisians and the Eddorians, whose battles on Earth are unknown to the human race, and in fact the humans are unaware that the Arisians have been secretly and selectively breeding the humans to use as weapons for these battles. From the time of Rome to World War II, the author takes the listener on a lightning-fast journey through Earth's history as the warzone for aliens.

Kilian Drake, the most renowned swordsman of a generation, has searched the galaxy for fragments of a lost star blade. Now, on a remote world called Earth, he may have found answers.

Albert Birnbaum was once one of the biggest political talk show hosts around, but these days he’s watching his career enter a death spiral. A stranger offers a solution to his woes, promising to put him back on top. It’s everything Birnbaum wants, but is there a catch? And does Birnbaum actually care if there is? "A Voice in the Wilderness" is a tale from John Scalzi's The Human Division, a series of self-contained but interrelated short stories set in the Old Man's War universe.

Isaac Lestroud, admiral of the Exilium Space Fleet, has spent the last three years working with Ambassador Amelie Lestroud to build an alliance against the Rogue Matrices, AIs bent on converting every world into a paradise, regardless of whether anyone lives on it. As Isaac hunts the Rogue that destroyed one of their allies’ homeworlds, Amelie begins negotiations with a potential new ally that could tip the balance.

Restored to his prestigious position within NUESSA, Jericho Fox takes command of the Marquis-class ship’s test program on a mission that promises to move humanity to a habitable exoplanet. But not everyone believes he’s fit for the job. As launch hour nears, can Jericho keep his crew from following the doomed fate of his last mission? Meanwhile, Dr. Evelyn Park leads her team of scientists in decoding the now legendary alien transmission that survived the Astraea Station catastrophe.

“What’s wrong?” The bigger geroo asked, twisting Kanti’s helmet free. “Can’t breathe?” The commissioner accidentally let his last cleaning crew starve to death. So now, Kanti and 49 of his teammates will have to spend the rest of their lives in a one-room barracks, with only a single airlock protecting them from the planet’s poisonous atmosphere. Surrounded by towering monsters, on a world where the very air is lethal, mysterious burrowing strangers are pushing the crew into a panic. Will Kanti be able to keep them from tearing each other apart?

Abandoned on a sabotaged ship amid the wreckage of an ancient space battle, Doctor Hank Murphy and his friends won’t last another day without a miracle. What they find instead is a frozen planet, a Prothean invasion, and a mysterious double agent named Axu. But hope is not lost. Murphy still holds the secret key to technology that will change the war. Everyone wants it, and everyone will kill to get it. Leveraging the unique talents of his closest friends, Murphy is determined to find a way out of this mess, race back to Tamondran, and save the rebellion from multiple enemies.

After first contact, humanity learns that the galaxy is a place of ancient and far-reaching authorities. The Earth has not emerged as an autonomous peer into a community of sovereign worlds, but as an involuntary entrant into a galactic society whose demands are not light. John Riley, the physicist who inadvertently touched off first contact with his research into gravitation, now sees that the implications of his discoveries lead to more than technical frontiers. The galaxy, the nature of the Universe itself, is not what humanity has believed it to be.

Wildcat colonies are illegal, unauthorized, and secret - so when an injured stranger shows up at the wildcat colony New Seattle, the colony leaders are understandably suspicious of who he is and what he represents. His story of how he’s come to their colony is shocking, surprising, and might have bigger consequences than anyone could have expected. Walk the Plank is a tale from John Scalzi's The Human Division, a series of self-contained but interrelated short stories.

Space isn't so big after all. The Black Sheep are ready for a vacation. Instead, they get sucked into a black hole that spits them out into an uncharted system with a single rogue planet that's inhabited by an AI force that's none too fond of humanity. From there, they find themselves at the front of a deadly military operation to stop the alien threat before it's too late. The battle against planet rogue has arrived.

Federation takes close encounters to a whole new level. A galactic empire of a quarter of a million worlds stumbles across the earth. When they ask, "take me to your leader", the world is thrown into panic. We have no world leader, only many who might like to be. With elements of a political thriller, there is an intriguing storyline which addresses the environmental and myriad social problems faced by the world today.

Trapped in an alternate dimension, the tough and self-confident Skeen confronts slavers, monsters, and alien assassins in a fast-paced space adventure.

A dying world, shattered by a broken machine. A desperate flight, their only hope for refuge. A robotic race, ally and destroyer alike. The Republic of Exilium has grown in strength and confidence at the far end of the galaxy from the rest of mankind, sending out scout ships to survey the worlds around them as they try to learn more about the mysterious Construction Matrix AIs. Finding one of the genocidal rogues of that mysterious “race” in the process of destroying an inhabited world, Captain Octavio Catalan takes his ship into a desperate battle.

Throughout the galaxy, the reclusive alien race known as The One are incapacitated by terror. On the planet Luddeccea, wolf-human hybrid Volka harbors a terrible secret...a secret that must explain her nightmares. Trapped on a luxurious asteroid, pleasure ‘bot 6T9 struggles to find purpose - until he receives a message from an Unidentified Caller. The worlds of The One, Volka, and 6T9 are about to collide. The galaxy will be shaken to its core. The starship is waking.

Major Jacob Berger’s career takes the next step when he becomes captain of the Revenge, a reverse-engineered Xeno starship. When the starship is attacked in hyperspace, Jacob is given a gift from beings from another realm. Jacob finds himself stranded on an alien planet with only one task: find the Revenge’s missing crew members. To do that, he’ll need to survive a world filled with hostile aliens. Luckily, he’s the most powerful human the universe has ever seen.