Space Science

Fleet of Worlds takes a closer look at Human-Puppeteer (Citizen) relations and the events leading up to Niven's first Ringworld novel. Kirsten Quinn-Kovacks is among the best and brightest of her people. She gratefully serves the gentle race that rescued her ancestors from a dying starship, gave them a world, and nurtures them still. If only the Citizens knew where Kirsten's people came from.

As an engineer on the arkship Pilgrim-9, bound for the Tau Ceti solar system, Morgan Hall thought his life would revolve around maintaining and repairing the ship and supporting the needs of the five thousand colonists aboard. But when he’s roused early from a 240-year stasis, he’s confronted with chaos. Along with his shipmates, Morgan is brought down to a planet teeming with peril. Forced to fight for their survival without any of their tech to hand, they must adapt quickly to overcome countless threats in a world where magic is as real as science.

This is the way the world ends—not with a whimper, but a bang. It was the only thing running through Cedrick Jonkheer's mind when the alien pylons made landfall. The Intergalactic Imperium used their right of Eminent Domain to appropriate the planet to build a goddamned highway… and all Jonx got was a sarcastic AI and some superpowers. The end of times came, and mankind was not prepared. He watched his world burn, then hid himself away at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Over the past few decades, a handful of scientists have been racing to explain a disturbing aspect of our universe: only four percent of it consists of the matter that makes up you, me, our books, and every star and planet. The rest is completely unknown. Richard Panek tells the dramatic story of the quest to find this “dark” matter and an even more bizarre substance called “dark energy”. This is perhaps the greatest mystery in all of science, and solving it will bring fame, funding, and certainly a Nobel Prize.

So you’ve fallen in love with space and now you want to see it for yourself, huh? You want to witness the birth of a star, or visit the black hole at the center of our galaxy? You want to know if there are aliens out there, or how to travel through a wormhole? You want the wonders of the universe revealed before your very eyes? Well stop, because all that will probably kill you.

In the future: A united Earth, to deal with the problem of population control, divides its population into classes of citizen and non-gratis. To be born a non-gratis means a life of little freedoms and the constant possibility of being assigned to work on a colony. Lacking citizenship, every aspect of their life is controlled from where they live down to marriage and childbearing regulations. The only possible escape from life as a non-gratis is to qualify for one of the limited slots available for entrance into the military.

Two hundred years ago, aliens invaded Earth. A violent war followed. The enemy won. Some of us escaped, most of us didn’t. On Proxima they flourished - the invasion forgotten. On Earth we floundered - the horror began. Their world is advanced, peaceful, and secure. Our world is broken, savage, and overrun. A new invasion is coming. A hunger that has swallowed half the universe. They don’t care which planet we live on. They want to end us all. But where there is life, there is hope. And where there is hope, there are heroes. This time, vengeance will be ours.

Damien Montgomery is as much a nobody as a Mage of the star-spanning Protectorate of Mars can be. Trained as a Jump Mage, one of the elite who teleport ships across interstellar space, he lacks the connections to find a ship that will take him. Until pirates and politics strand Captain David White of the jump freighter Blue Jayin his home system. The two men's matching needs birth a choice and a partnership that will take them from high-end orbitals to prisons to alien graveyards in forgotten star systems.

The first interstellar war, a generation ago, left humanity enslaved. Now humans fight in the armies of their masters to save themselves from annihilation. At least, that's what the propaganda insists is true. What the layers of lies keep hidden is how badly the new war is going for the people of earth. Now it's Dylan Kane's turn to blast into the heavens and join the battle, but what his masters don't know is that by putting a weapon in his hands, they're giving him the key to unlocking his hopes of freedom.

Neil deGrasse Tyson's number-one New York Times best-selling guide to the cosmos, adapted for young listeners. From the basics of physics to big questions about the nature of space and time, celebrated astrophysicist and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson breaks down the mysteries of the cosmos into bite-sized pieces.

When a time travel "prank" goes wrong. Jessie and Eric Ramsey are launched five years into a future they don't recognize. Now she's a deserter from Earth Navy and he's been branded a dark wizard. On the run as fugitives, they make their way through the galaxy, making friends and allies. Along the way, they meet new alien friends, discover a powerful starship, and learn the political landscape of a galaxy that's falling apart.

In the not-too-distant future, a 21-member crew launches from Earth. Their mission: to establish a temporary colony on Mars. Little do they know that colony will become permanent–and the last stand of the human race. Because, without warning, every single person left on Earth simply...vanishes. Now, a thousand years later, the resources needed to sustain life are running out, and the very existence of the Mars colony is threatened. Humankind has only one option–to return to its home planet.

Two hundred years ago, a fleet of colony ships left Earth and started a settlement on Proxima Centauri. Centurion Space Force pilot Nathan Stacker didn't expect to return home to find his wife dead. He didn't expect the murderer to look just like him, and he definitely didn't expect to be the one to take the blame. But his wife had control of a powerful secret. A secret that stretches across the light years between two worlds and could lead to the end of both. Now that secret is in Nathan's hands, and he's about to make the most desperate evasive maneuver of his life.

Low on fuel and hunted by the Fleet of Knives, the sentient warship Trouble Dog follows a series of clues that lead her to the Intrusion - an area of space where reality itself becomes unstable. But with human civilization crumbling, what difference can one battered old ship have against an invincible armada?

On a remote, gas-wreathed outpost of a human colony on Jupiter, a man goes missing. The enigmatic Investigator Mossa follows his trail to Valdegeld, home to the colony’s erudite university―and Mossa’s former girlfriend, a scholar of Earth’s pre-collapse ecosystems. Pleiti has dedicated her research and her career to aiding the larger effort towards a possible return to Earth. When Mossa unexpectedly arrives and requests Pleiti’s assistance in her latest investigation, the two of them embark on a twisting path in which the future of life on Earth is at stake.

Nora Devi is a xeno-archaeologist with a complicated past. She has buried more secrets than she’s dug up. Widowed in the recently ended twelve year war between Capitoline and Palantine, she now makes a living as an independent tagger in border space. Captain Liam Kimani could be credited with ending the latest royal war. Instead, he’s blamed for it. Dirty commoners aren’t meant to lay their hands on royalty. He has no regrets.

Heather Kilgore is the deadliest assassin in the Fringe, a fearsome agent for her King and star nation. But when a high-profile defector is found dead outside the embassy on a contested world, Heather is pulled back into a past she'd tried to forget. Her orders are simple: find out why her name was in the dead man's pocket. But nothing is simple in a galaxy of shifting loyalties and buried truths.

Adrian Tchaikovksy's critically acclaimed stand-alone novel Children of Time is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet. Who will inherit this new Earth? The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden.

The starship Earthling, filled with thousands of hibernating colonists en route to a new world at Tau Ceti, is stranded beyond the solar system when the ship's three organic mental cores—disembodied human brains that control the vessel's functions—go insane. The emergency skeleton crew sees only one chance for survival: build an artificial consciousness in the Earthling's primary computer that can guide them to their destination—and hope it doesn't destroy the human race.

Aiyana and Kendra Cassidy never anticipated becoming the key to humanity's survival. As leaders of the Heavy Lift Corporation, their objective is clear: secure humanity’s future among the stars. Politics? Who needs it, when the galaxy is calling? The consequences of failure are stark: three-quarters of Earth’s population face starvation within decades, and the Solarian Union’s dominance could become unassailable. Success, however, means a rebirth for humanity—a chance to explore the stars, establish new colonies, and reclaim control over their destiny.