Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Publishing" in Science Fiction

Starting a business is hard, especially when making your living requires staying alive long enough to get paid. Our troublesome trio, Chill, Ivan, and Kortez, haven’t exactly hit the big time yet, but they’ve got dreams. Big ones. But big dreams, big plans, and big guns mean that they’re looking at some big problems. When you’re establishing a mercenary company, let’s just say the complications start to pile up like shell casings.

Our narrator is the most talented salesperson at Dare to Know, an enigmatic company that has developed the technology to predict anyone’s death down to the second. Divorced, estranged from his sons, and broke, he is driven to violate the cardinal rule of the business by forecasting his own death day. The problem: His prediction says he died 23 minutes ago. The only person who can confirm its accuracy is Julia, the woman he loved and lost during his rise up the ranks of Dare to Know.

For Flight Engineer Cynthia Han and her fellow astronauts aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 81 has proved as mundane as space travel ever gets. Yes, this would be Cynthia’s final NASA mission, for reasons she has so far kept from the rest of the crew; and yes, the latest billionaire “space tourist” has managed to irritate everyone on board. Still, none of them could have asked for a smoother experience. Until the morning they wake up to silence. All communication with Earth, gone.

In the near future, the United States has fought a short, bloody war with China in the Pacific. The fighting is over, but the US Navy maintains a blockade. Some call it the First Sino-American War. Others worry it is the start of World War III. In a prison cell in Beijing, Navy fighter pilot Jack Knapp tells his story about the victory in the Battle of Taiwan and how he ended up in a Chinese show trial, accused of crimes against humanity. With his life in the balance, Jack will have to choose between survival and participating in his captors’ lies.

Ten “Doc” Low is a medic with a dark past, riding the wastes of the desert moon Factus, dispensing medicine to the needy and death to those who cross the laws of the mysterious Seekers. Cursed by otherworldly forces, she stays alone to keep herself safe, and to keep others safe from her … But when she experiences a terrifying vision of conflict and the deaths of those she once called friends, she must drag herself back to the land of the living to stop a war before it begins.

While the DEMC haven’t gone native, they’re finding that their particular brand of varied vector violence is appreciated in the Bast Station populace. Deck by deck, meter by meter, they are leading the efforts at reclamation. Remarkably, they’ve found the rough-and-ready inhabitants of the station rallying around them. That’s before other mercenaries come to Coil Cove, drawn by the DEMC’s success. The more the merrier, right? Except these newcomers threaten to throw the hard-won balance into chaos.

Our trio of madcap mercenaries have brought peace to Mugh-9, but it turns out that peace is bad for business. What is a merc to do but head out into the galaxy and find some work? There’s always someone in need of a steady hand, a strong arm, and a propensity toward violence, right? Our trio hit the jackpot when they are approached by a representative from a crumbling regime.

What holds a community, a civilization, or a world together? Shared values? Mutual interests? Perhaps something less definable, like an ineffable source of unity? Or is it blood and terror, and primal drives that force the pack to close in and bare their fangs? Such questions may be more suited to philosophers, but the DEMC and its mercenaries are the ones who will be doling out the answers.

Life as a merchant marine is not for the faint-hearted. People are not easy. For Jozzun, living with a bunch of blunt-brained humans is even more difficult. Especially when less-than-legitimate operations go from bad to worse … The human saying “may you live in interesting times” is starting to make sense to Jozzun. He finds himself wishing he’d considered the consequences of signing up to the crew of the Atlanta. The crew are bound for trouble, or perhaps trouble is just bound for them.

Daria was not having a good day, even before she found herself locked up. Betrayed by her brothers-in-arms, Daria barely escaped being killed in the fallout. Without a friend in the galaxy, she finds herself dragged away for something those treacherous bastards did. What else could go wrong in one day? Help is coming, just not the kind Daria was expecting. A dapper gent she’s never met blasting the doors off her cell pulls Daria deeper into the rabbit hole. She must decide whether to fight the charges against her or make a run for her life with her rescuer.

The Angelos Dominion is done playing coy. Their Red Crow lackeys are pulling out all the stops and things are getting dicey. Lombe, Daira, and Jozzun are going to have to figure things out—even if they have to break a few dynasties to do it. There will be chaos, gunplay, killer robots, and…podding? Don’t ask. Seriously, just don’t.

When pulp-fiction writer Lior Tirosh returns to his homeland in East Africa, much has changed. Palestina - a Jewish state established in the early 20th century - is constructing a massive border wall to keep out African refugees. Unrest in the capital, Ararat, is at fever pitch. While searching for his missing niece, Tirosh begins to act as though he is a detective from one of his own novels. He is pursued by ruthless members of the state's security apparatus while unearthing deadly conspiracies and impossible realities.

In the Czar’s Suite of Kiev’s five-star Persian Palace, police discover a body jammed impossibly deep in a narrow ventilation duct. Security cameras reveal that no one else entered the supersecure room. An ocean away, Interpol rookie Delta Devlin witnesses an attempted assassination, but the bullet meant for the Ukrainian prime minister hits her father instead, lodging next to his heart. Investigations reveal that ex-KGB operator Yuri Korshunov smuggled a 3D-printed plastic gun into the UN Building.

Just a few hundred genes separate humans from chimpanzees. Imagine someone altering the chimp genome, splicing in human genes to increase the size of the cranium, reduce the amount of body hair, enable speech. What sort of creature would result? Sims takes place in the very near future, when the science of genetics is fulfilling its vaunted potential. A world where dangerous or boring manual labor is gradually being transferred to “sims”, genetically altered chimps who occupy a gray zone between simian and human.

After the Last War destroyed most of the world, survivors form a new society in four self-sustaining cities in the Mojave Desert. Everything is carefully planned and controlled: the seasons, the weather - and the residents. To prevent mankind from destroying each other again, its citizens undergo a memory wipe every four years in a process called tabula rasa, a blank slate, to remove learned prejudices. With each new cycle, they begin again with new names, jobs, homes, and lives. No memories. No attachments. No wars.

Despite economic and territorial tensions, no one wants the city-states of the Eight Worlds to repeat the Terran Collapse by going to war. But when war accidentally happens, everyone seeks ways to exploit it for gain. The Landry and Peregoy ruling dynasties see opportunities to grab territory, increase profits, and settle old scores. Exploited underclasses use war to fuel rebellion. Ambitious heirs can finally topple their elders’ regimes - or try to.

When Raisa Hopeland, determined to win her race to become the next electromancer of London, bumps into Amon Brightbourne―tweed-suited, otherworldly, guided by the Grace―in the middle of a London riot, she sets in motion a series of events which will span decades, continents, and a series of events which will change the world.

In the six months since the raid that destroyed the makeshift transmitter, the Lost Soldiers have scratched out a permanent base on the world of R’Bak. But life in an often surprising and very alien binary system has not become any easier. Major Mara “Bruce” Lee’s pregnancy becomes a powerful reminder of that: without special indigenous plants, she might lose both her unborn child and her life. And, in the process of securing enough of that rare compound, her friend and crew chief Elroy Frazier will have to risk life, limb, and mind.

About Time offers a delightful return to the world of time travel and light comedy that distinguished Jack Finney’s all-time classic Time and Again. The protagonists of these 12 stories are well-meaning but at odds with their surroundings and their lives. The time to which they escape - through time travel - doesn’t always fulfill their expectations in the way they had hoped, but sometimes, they can still find their dreams.

Imperium is the most expensive structure ever created. Once an orbiting laboratory, it is now a space hotel for the fantastically wealthy. But as the station preps for its first group of space tourists, Dr. Chloe Bonilla, Imperium’s resident biophysicist, finds herself questioning whether babysitting a passel of space glampers is worth the distraction from her research.