Space Opera First Contact

When avid gamer Brandon awakes surrounded by endless snow and countless monsters, he knows his survival odds look slim at best. Not that he's planning to go down without a fight. Being a self-confessed nerd doesn't mean he's going to roll over and die. Brandon's determined to get himself home and protect whoever he finds upon the way. That includes a couple of stunning alien women who need his help as much as he needs theirs.

Year 2522. Lyra Daniels is dead. Okay, so I only died for 66 seconds. But when I came back to life, I got a brand new name and a snazzy new uniform. Go, me! Seriously, though, it's very important that Lyra Daniels stays dead, at least as far as the murdering looters know. While dying is the scariest thing that's happened to me, it morphed my worming skills. I can manipulate the Q-net like never before. But the looters have blocked us from communicating with the rest of the galaxy, and now they believe we've gone silent, like Planet Xinji (where silent really means dead).

Alien ambassadors are dying. The locals are in over their heads. Or are they turning a blind eye? The Magistrates band together to learn about the law, each other, and even themselves. They still need outside help to solve the case. Who do they call? And Barnabas stops by to refuel and spin a tale. More training for the Magistrates. But duty takes them away. Another Ambassador is brutally murdered. Rivka takes her team to find the perp and end the violence.

It’s the 22nd century. The galaxy has opened up to humanity as a hyperactive beehive of stargates and new technologies, and we suddenly find ourselves in a vast playground of different races, environments, and cultures. There’s just one catch: We are pretty much at the bottom of the food chain, and there’s only one way for humanity to move up - by becoming mercenaries. In every mercenary’s life, though, there comes a time when things go wrong and even the best laid plans go awry.

After more than 20 years in special operations, USMC Gunnery Sergeant Wolf Mathison wasn’t looking forward to retirement when—implanted with an experimental artificial intelligence—he deployed on his last mission with a platoon of Marine Raiders being sent to the Jovian moon Europa. The USS Jefferson was destroyed en route, though, and only Mathison and three other marines survived. Trapped in stasis, they were hurled into the outer reaches of the solar system, where they wouldn’t be found for hundreds of years.

The Queller race has lived for millennia in isolation. However, a secret kept by the Queller senior elder and a few associates drives the elder to make contact with another race. Little do the Quellers know that they send a QASAP ship, an autonomous search ship, to engage the conclave. Not detecting an aggressive society, Julien chooses to accept the autonomous ship’s invitation, and a small fleet commanded by Commodore Tocknicka follows the QASAP’s star map to the Queller home world.

With a traitor in our midst, I shouldn’t be consumed with memories of our night together. And I definitely shouldn’t be thinking about just how well he lit my fuse. Especially when that traitor’s attacks are getting deadlier and hitting closer to home each time. Can I protect both the academy and my heart? Or will they end up shattered beyond repair?

Over half of Earth's population has left the planet, mainly as contract workers for aliens, and the homeworld is losing relevance to the emigrants. The EarthCent president takes on the task of making sure that humanity isn't permanently stuck in a rut of low-skilled labor. Can the ambassador put aside her new-found obsession with the Galactic Free Press crossword puzzle and help save the day?

Three years have passed, and the children are growing like weeds as Aisha grows into a new career. A mob of alien party animals has settled near Union Station like a plague, but nobody seems willing to see them off. They bring word of a new wave of helpful artificial intelligence, but perhaps there's such a thing as too helpful?

Caine Riordan, reluctant diplomatic and military intelligence operative, has just finished playing his part repulsing the Arat Kur's and Hkh'Rkh's joint invasion of Earth. But scant hours after the attackers surrender, the mysterious but potentially helpful Slaasriithi appeal to Caine to shepherd a diplomatic mission on a visit to their very alien worlds. The possible prize: a crucial alliance in a universe where the fledgling Consolidated Terran Republic has very few friends.

The Dusman offered to let humanity become their servitors, but the leaders of Earth’s Four Horsemen were unified in their decision: No, thanks. With the Dusman returning in strength, though, and steadily growing their influence and armed presence, humanity finds itself in a difficult place. The Guild War continues to rage, with planets becoming increasingly desperate for nonexistent help, while the Mercenary Guild continues to sit on its hands, despite Nigel Shirazi’s attempts to break the deadlock.

It is 2076: Lancer, Earth’s first starship, is on a mission to find interstellar civilizations. Although astronaut Nigel Walmsley’s experiences with alien encounters make him the expert, no one believes Nigel’s theory that machines are the dominant intelligent beings left in the galaxy and that their purpose is to annihilate all organic life. Then the explorers discover once-living planets where only machines remain – and ruined worlds where fugitive survivors must evade omnipresent and lethally advanced A.I. warships.

Nearly 100,000 years after first contact with the machines that dominate the universe, only a few hundred humans survive. Trapped on Snowglade, a barren world near the center of the galaxy, Killeen and his child, Toby, of the Bishop Tribe, are primitive scavengers, homeless and hunted by the ruling “mechs”. Then suddenly, a strange cosmic entity – neither organic nor cybernetic or living matter – reaches out from a black hole to speak with Killeen.

Humanity's last encounter with aliens saw 16.2 billion people killed in a war with the Merkiaari that had spanned decades. Two hundred years later, the Alliance is cautiously exploring beyond its borders again, but the survey corp is considered a mere gesture by some. General Burgton of the 501st Infantry Regiment believes a lack of expansion is leading the Alliance into stagnation. So when one small ship discovers a new alien race, it should be an easy decision to make contact, but what if the aliens are like the Merkiaari?

Keith Stoner lay frozen in an alien spacecraft for 15 long years. During that time he came to be something more than just an astronaut, or just a man. Stoner became partly alien himself, merged with an alien intelligence embodied in the nanotechnology that lived inside his body.

Janet Chamberlain, an aging field operative with the Northern Democratic Union—and Jim Atteberry’s ex-wife—is compelled to undertake one last mission: to save their daughter Mary from those who will stop at nothing to scrape her mind for the alien secrets she holds. Chased by the ruthless Benedikt Winter of the Prussian Consortium, and coveted by Titanius CEO Clayton Carter, the Atteberry’s search for a way to remove the alien Keechik’s knowledge that is destroying Mary’s brain. But time is running out . . .

The second book in author Jo Clayton’s phenomenal Diadem science fiction space opera series continues the adventures of Aleytys, blessed and cursed by an alien power that has both marked and altered her, as she crosses the galaxy on an epic fantasy quest that rivals anything imagined by Andre Norton or C. J. Cherryh.

Now privateers rather than criminals, the Redshift Runners protect Earth and its colonies from pirates... Until trade routes are attacked by the unmanned fleets of the Prestige, the former protectors of ancient Earth. Though the deadly raids threaten the stability Deadeye and Talon have sacrificed so much to achieve, they discover its true purpose: an operation code-named Termination Vector, which has targeted the Runners for destruction.

After deactivating Parallax and restoring access to Earth, Deadeye and the Redshift Runners have become the most infamous pirates in the Orion Spur. Yet the old order has its hands full with Dying Suns, a political movement calling for a return to Earth—while leaving the barren, ‘dying’ worlds they were forced to colonize. Miners, farmers, and other settlers petition the Runners to fly them to humanity’s birthplace.

Human descendants of the Earth colony ship Destiny face an incursion into their area of space by a powerful race. The Imperium Empire, which is ruled by the Krackus, is one wormhole away from the humans, and a rim mining planet, Kilmer, would be the alien race’s first contact. Fear rules the company leader. The Krackus represent danger. They sail powerful battleships. Moreover, the Naiad Council reels from the news that an alien race abuts their space. For centuries, humans in the Axis Crossing region thought they were alone.