Space Science Fiction

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?

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.

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....

For years, the ancient alien AI known as Skippy (the Magnificent, don’t forget that part) has been able to do one impossible thing after another. What is his secret? It’s simple: 100 percent Grade-A extreme awesomeness. And also because he had never been faced with an opponent of equal power. Until now. This time, he might need a little help from a band of filthy monkeys.

Year 2197. Earth is suffering from the consequences of an environmental catastrophe. Cities the size of continents are drowning in a toxic industrial fog. Max Bourne is a typical teenager. Like billions of other people, he is forced to live in the protective shell of the individual life support module. His habitat is the virtual Layer. But one day, circumstances force the young man to leave the in-mode. He has no idea that fate will lead him through unimaginable hardships, bring him face to face with military AIs, and teach him to survive in the distant Outlands.

On the planet now known as High Tortuga, the mine workers are far too close to being slaves so the ruler of the planet shut them down. Except for the mine owned by Venfirdri Lan. He's taken his mine off the grid and decided to keep everything running. With no need to pay the workers, profits should be good. After all, who's going to stop him? He had no idea there was a new type of man working for justice on the planet. A man named Barnabas. In fact, he didn't even know who Barnabas was. But he's about to.

Private first-class Wayson Harris was raised in a U.A. orphanage among thousands of clones born and bred as the ultimate soldiers. But Harris isn't like the other Marines: He has a mind of his own. He figures he's paying for that independent streak when his first assignment out of boot camp is the smallest Marine outpost in the whole U.A. When a rogue general surfaces, the remote desert world Harris thought was a dead-end posting becomes anything but. Fighting off the general's raid gains Harris a promotion. But it also brings him to the attention of some unfriendly U.A. leaders.

The best science fiction scrutinizes our culture and politics, examines the limits of the human condition, and zooms across galaxies at faster-than-light speeds, moving from the very near future to the far-flung worlds of tomorrow in the space of a single sentence. Neil Clarke has selected the short science fiction (and only science fiction) best representing the previous year's writing, showcasing the talent, variety, and awesome "sensawunda" that the genre has to offer.

Peacetime can be a rough adjustment for the battle-hardened Merry Band of Pirates.

Especially when aliens don’t get the memo that the shooting is over.

Set in the wake of a galaxywide war and the destruction of a human empire, The Dangerous Type follows the awakening of one of the galaxy's most dangerous assassins and her quest for vengeance. Entombed for 20 years, Raena has been found and released. Thallian has been on the lam for the last 15 years. He's a wanted war criminal whose entire family has been hunted down and murdered for their role in the galaxywide genocide of the Templars.

Contains books one and two of the humorous sci-fi Jane Bond series: Some Assembly Required and Dark Side of the Moon.

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.

For almost a hundred years, Hadrian Marlowe has served the empire in its war against the Cielcin, a vicious alien race bent on humanity's destruction. Rumors of a new king among the Cielcin have reached the imperial throne. This one is not like the others. It does not raid borderworld territories, preferring precise, strategic attacks on the humans' empire.

On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all.

In the galactic prison system, she’s listed as an ‘Organic Weapon of Mass Destruction’… too bad she’s your new cellmate. Grant didn’t sign up for interstellar incarceration. One minute he’s brawling with lizard freaks behind his pickup, next, he wakes up paralyzed in a space supermax. Tagged. Scanned. Sentenced without trial. All because he tried to stop his girlfriend from getting probed by a UFO.

In the past, humans were the dominant star-traveling species in the universe—until the Chapalil came, conquered, and absorbed the Earth into their intergalactic empire. One of the only humans ever granted nobility by the Chapalil, Charles Soerenson once led a failed rebellion against the alien overlords. Now his sister, Terese, has abandoned her homeworld, impelled by a broken heart to seek a new life among the worlds her brother rules. On Rhui, a planet off-limits to interstellar voyagers, Tess stumbles upon a dangerous Chapalil conspiracy.

Ruthless bankers are breathing down their necks, vengeful warlords are promising to pursue them across the galaxy, and now a mysterious new client wants Rade and his Argonauts to escort her to a frontier planet. Problem is, the new client won't reveal her cargo. It's probably something illegal. Well, Rade needs the money, so a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. They arrive to find the frontier colony strangely deserted. When the shit hits the fan and the Argonauts face a possible alien infestation, it's time to pull out the big guns.

On the grim death world of Fenris, the Space Wolves Chapter selects its aspirants from the best and brightest of the young tribesmen. Ragnar of the Thunderfist tribe finds his life changed forever when he is chosen. After being revived from a savage death on the battlefield, Ragnar is recruited into the fearsome Space Wolves Chapter. He is then thrown into a galactic war against the dark forces of Chaos. However, the implanting of the Canis Helix unleashes his primal instincts and Ragnar must fight to control the beast within him.

Frustrated by restrictive rules, maverick warship commander, Dalton Reeves, has crossed the line one time too many. Disciplined for violating orders, Reeves is packed off to “The Abyss”–a dangerous and isolated space city named Concord Station, and officially the worst assignment in the galaxy.

The return of humanity's oldest enemy... An alien prophecy that predicts our species' downfall... And a captain who's the only thing standing in the way of his starship getting mothballed. Wait, what? Imagine Captain Keyes’ surprise when the fate of the galaxy turns out to depend on him, his decrepit ship, and his oddball crew.