Captain Herix Trellis just wanted to command the UPS Alpaca, not fight to the death against a vicious reptilian alien species known as the Gorkeens. One year after crash-landing on an unknown planet and with his crew dispersed, there isn’t much hope of a rescue. One issue is they got there by a portal they couldn’t avoid, and now they have no idea where they are or when. Another problem is that over half the crew has been enslaved and used for food. It also doesn’t help that another third of the crew escaped and has not been heard from since.

Logan Willis’s life is falling apart: he lost his job and found out that his wife is cheating on him all in the same day. Thinking that his world has ended, Logan checks into a hotel and turns on the TV to see that he's not far wrong - radio telescopes have detected mysterious signals coming from inside our solar system, and the source is moving toward us at over 500 miles per second. The media concludes that these signals must be of an alien origin. Still reeling from the news, Logan gets a phone call from his brother-in-law. 

Deathworld centers on Jason dinAlt, a professional gambler who uses his somewhat erratic psionic abilities to tip the odds in his favor. He is challenged by a man named Kerk Pyrrus (who turns out to be the ambassador from the planet Pyrrus) to turn a large amount of money into an immense sum by gambling at a government-run casino. He succeeds and survives the planetary government's desperate efforts to steal back the money.

Michael Freeman is a disabled veteran who had just been fired from his mind-numbing cubicle job, which allowed his opportunistic girlfriend to dump him. Now, he only wants to spend some time at his grandfather's mountain cabin so he can unwind, away from the drudgery of daily life and with a cold beer in his hands. Standing in his way is an ancient spaceship with an emotional AI, nanites that have invaded his body, an international crime syndicate, a suicidal FBI agent on a vigilante mission, terrorists . . . and that's just the beginning.

Deadly radiation from a passing comet is about to destroy life on Earth. In desperation, the US government constructs a series of underground shelters to protect as many people as possible. They are expected to be underground for 20 years before returning back to the surface. But can they survive their time within the confines of the underground shelter? And what will they find when they finally emerge?