Space Science Fiction

Needle in a Timestack is Robert Silverberg at his very best - intelligent, inventive, and visionary. This collection showcases his talent for thought-provoking science fiction, ranging in themes from time travel to space travel, the media to mortality. In the titular story - under development as a feature film by Oscar-winning screenwriter John Ridley - a jealous ex-husband warps time in a vindictive attempt to destroy his former wife's new marriage. Thirty-one identical sons have a shocking surprise for their mother in "There Was an Old Woman".

The Bobiverse is a different place in the aftermath of the Starfleet War, and the days of the Bobs gathering in one big happy moot are far behind. There’s anti-Bob sentiment on multiple planets, the Skippies playing with an AI time bomb, and multiple Bobs just wanting to get away from it all. But it all pales compared to what Icarus and Daedalus discover on their 26,000-year journey to the center of the galaxy.

From a New York Times best-selling and Hugo award-winning author comes a modern masterwork of science fiction, introducing a captain, his crew, and a detective as they unravel a horrifying solar system wide conspiracy that begins with a single missing girl. Humanity has colonized the solar system - Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond - but the stars are still out of our reach. Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt.

Humanity needs help, and they need it fast. Following a particularly devastating loss, Liam learns that the All-Kind have found a suitable candidate species to become humanity’s allies: a species called the Sulti. This might seem like a stroke of luck, except the Sulti have fought the Deathbringers before, and there is no love lost between them. But they’re going to have to put all that behind them. Because the Sulti Empire, which spans thousands of populated worlds, is where the Ferox have chosen to mount a full-scale invasion.

The Merry Band of Pirates offered the bad guys a ceasefire. We won’t mess with them, if they don’t mess with us. Easy, right? No. The aliens chose to do things the hard way. So, the Pirates are racing around the galaxy to clean up the threat to Earth. The infant UN Navy has their own mission with the Alien Legion: Get humanity some allies in the fight. And the Ethics & Compliance Office might have to do something...ethical. Unless they can find a way around it.

Ten teenagers broke behavioral law. Sentenced to be reeducated on the moon of Jerem, they were placed in stasis on the automated ship Phetteron for their six day journey. They never reached their destination. Thrown off course by a computer malfunction, the Phetteron is damaged in an asteroid belt and crash lands on the uninhabited ice planet of Valkrys.

Rejected scientist Alexander Hawke is down to his last chance. Brilliant but sheltered, every banker in New York has refused to finance his ideas. Enter the Russian—charming, dangerous, and offering an Antarctic expedition that promises answers to all of his questions. Now, Alexander stands at the edge of a bottomless chasm. With a helpful shove from his foreign benefactor, he plunges into adventure. Landing in darkness, Alexander finds a portal to destiny—weirder than New York, colder than Russia, and filled with the ruins of an empire that once spanned the galaxy.

Bob thought he was doing fine on his own. Then the love of his life fell out of the sky. Can he get her back in the air with auto parts and a cutting torch? If he does, will she ever come back? Nikki took a job before she saw the equipment. Can she keep her passengers alive on a strange planet? Are the natives friendly?

Hella is a planet where everything is oversized. The trees are mile-high, the dinosaur herds are huge, and the weather is extreme - so extreme, the colonists have to migrate twice a year to escape the blistering heat of summer and the atmosphere-freezing cold of winter. Kyle is a neuro-atypical young man, emotionally challenged, but with an implant that gives him real-time access to the colony's computer network. When an overburdened starship arrives, he becomes the link between the established colonists and the refugees from a ravaged Earth.

We are the last humans. We are hunted. We are refugees. We must return to Earth. The alien scorpions attack us across the galaxy. They butcher millions. Humans are now an endangered species. But we have not given up. We still have a few starships. We still have some hope. And we have a map home. On Earth, we can be free again. On Earth, we can stand tall. On Earth, we can rebuild what we have lost. Earth is but an echo, calling from beyond the darkness. We will answer her call. We will find our lost world. We will defeat our enemies. We will rise again!

Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr is a Confederation Marine's marine. She has survived more deadly encounters---and kept more of her officers and enlistees alive---than anyone else in the Corps. Unexpectedly pulled from battle, Torin finds herself in an underground POW camp that shouldn't exist, where her fellow marine prisoners seem to have lost all will to escape.

When asubatomic physics experiment causes a massive explosion, interdimensional gateways open in Florida - and aliens pour out. Some intend to bring Earth to its knees. Others seem willing to help, but will annihilate the planet if Navy SEAL Command Master Chief Robert Miller can't stop the menace from spreading.

Ethan Bryant was supposed to fall asleep on a ship leaving Earth and wake up 50 years later with his family on the planet Minea. Instead, after the ship's caretaker - the lone human in charge of monitoring the ship's vital systems - suddenly died, the ship's computer locked Ethan out of his stasis chamber and gave him the job. That was five years ago. Five years of checking to make sure everything ran smoothly on a ship Ethan knows almost nothing about.

Chuck Ramsey is a traveling con man fronting as a comedian. After a gig on Earth, he picks Mordecai The Brown, a hitchhiking wizard on the run from his own kind. Chuck's ship, the Radio City, is a Winnebego of the stars, serving as both home and transport as he schemes and scams across the galaxy with his family. The pair form an unlikely bond, and "Mort" becomes a part of that family. The Ramseys, wizard in tow, embark on a journey of criminal hijinks, magical mayhem, and evasion of consequences for both.

Stranded thousands of light-years from home, General Connor Gates faces the brutal reality: their battered ship is failing, supplies are dwindling, and home is an impossible distance away. Their only hope lies with a mysterious alien prisoner who offers a dangerous bargain—freedom in exchange for guidance to an ancient outpost with technology that could save them all. Their voyage plunges them farther into uncharted space, where every shadow hides peril.

Here for the first time the stories and short novels of the war with the Outs are collected into a novel-length chronicle. The Outs had mental powers they could use to make humans see illusions and convince them to change sides. Obviously, they were unbeatable - until some troublesome humans found their Achilles' heel.

The galaxy is doomed. Monkeys may be clever and too stubborn to give up, but Skippy The Idiot Who Got Played knows the harsh truth: this is a fight he can’t win. The odds are not only stacked against him, he was designed not to win this fight. Maybe he can salvage some faint memory of the civilizations that inhabit the galaxy, but those beings are doomed. Doomed. Including the Merry Band of Pirates.

Benjamin Carter Mason died last night. Maybe he threw himself off a bridge into Los Angeles Harbor, or maybe he burned to death in a house fire in San Pedro; it doesn't really matter. Today, Mason's starting a new life. He's back in boot camp, training for the only war left that matters a damn.

Why we think it’s a great listen: It’s easy to say that when it comes to sci-fi you either love it or you hate it. But with Ender’s Game, it seems to be you either love it or you love it.... The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Enter Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, the result of decades of genetic experimentation.

The Merry Band of Pirates are in desperate trouble after the end of their last mission, and the real danger to humanity is just getting started. Hostile aliens have discovered there is something odd going on with wormholes in the galaxy, and their investigations could lead to finding a shortcut to Earth....