Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Science Fiction

Martians, Go Home,originally published in 1955, is a comic science fiction novel that tells the story of Luke Devereaux, a science fiction writer who witnesses an alien invasion of little green men. These Martians haven't come to Earth to harm anyone - just to annoy people.

Pandemic drought, skyrocketing oil prices, dwindling energy supplies, and wars of water scarcity threaten the planet. Only four people canprevent global chaos.

It’s 2026, and catastrophe has struck from an unexpected source. The Alpha Centauri supernova has risen like a second sun, rushing Earth toward its last summer. Floods, fires, starvation, and disease paralyze the planet. In a blue aurora flash of gamma rays, all microchips worldwide are destroyed, leaving an already devastated Earth without communications, transportation, weaponry, or medicine. The disaster sets three groups of survivors on separate quests. A militant cult seizes the opportunity to free their leader, known as the Eye of God, from the long-term coma to which a court sentenced her.

For millennia after the Accident, Earth lay cold and still, its small population punished by the dismal climate, harried by plague, and impoverished by frequent, bloody wars. Then, unexpectedly, a hero emerged and offered hope to the oppressed. With great ice fleets, he conquered the forces of tyranny and brought the promise of renewal to an otherwise miserable world. But nothing was quite as it seemed—either to Michael Ormson or to his followers.

Hiram Granville, a modern Leonardo, secured more than a thousand patents during his lifetime, often just ahead of others who had already been working on the same ideas. His son, John, an economics genius, never lost a cent in the stock market—or any other financial deal—and was investigated for insider trading on more than one occasion. Now Cat, a documentarian; her researcher, Mercy; and Cracker Jack, an electronics whiz, are doing a film about the Granville clan. What they find as they research the family is madness, suicide, and a frightening glimpse about what it means to peer into the future.

Five hundred years have passed since the combined fleets of humanity met and broke the berserker armada at Stone Place. But though the human victory was total, one of the killer machines (weaponless, its star drive a ruin) managed to limp to a secret sanctuary on a planet called Hunter's World. Over the years, a new cult has arisen there, a cult dedicated to Death as the only and ultimate Good.

A deceased scientist's telepathy experiments have been taken over by his unscrupulous assistant. A group determined to stop him is drawn into a web of intrigue involving Senate files, counterfeit money, gambling casinos, and the Secret Service.

When adventurer Bowen Tyler is taken aboard an enemy submarine, he never dreams that his voyage will end in a land where time itself is prisoner. But in the uncharted seas at the bottom of the world, Tyler and the crew of the U-33 discover the mysterious forgotten continent of Caspak, where the savage denizens of a thousand lost ages roam vast primeval jungles.

In the discreet little Key West bar that Jake Stonebender established, Fast Eddie Costigan learned to curse back at parrots as he played the house piano; the Reverend Tom Hauptman learned to tend bar bare-chested, and Long-Drink McGonnigle discovered the margarita. Nobody even noticed them save the universe.

The Big War started in Western Europe with a Soviet nerve gas attack that laid waste to France, Germany, and Spain. The world’s democracies fought back, and pilots like Hawk Hunter led the charge - tearing across the flaming wreckage of the continent at supersonic speeds. They pushed the Russians back and just when victory was in sight, a traitor at the highest level of government turned off America’s missile defense system, and Soviet nukes rained from the sky.

Did you know George Armstrong Custer survived the Battle of the Little Big Horn and became a gunslinging knight - errant in the West - aided by a troupe of Chinese acrobats, cancan-dancing girls, a rebel-flag eye-patch-wearing Southern gambler, and a multilingual Crow Indian scout? H. W. Crocker's rollicking, witty, adventurous new novel Armstrong is an alternative history like you've never before heard.

In a future Earth that's run by brilliant green cities, separated by open land for the good of wild things, two sisters must work together across and between the two vastly different envioronments to root out dangers to both. They must protect the cities and the wilderness from the Reuturners, a group that prefers the toxic past to the difficult present.

Coryn Williams has grown up in the megacity of Seacouver, where her every need is provided for - except satisfaction with her life. After her parents' suicides, her sister, Lou, fled the city to work on a rewilding crew, restoring lands once driven to the brink of ecological disaster by humans to a more natural state. Finally of age, Coryn leaves the city with her companion robot to look for her sister.

In the aftermath of the War with No Name, the Colony has been defeated, its queen lies dead, and the world left behind will never be the same. In her madness, the queen used a strange technology to uplift the surface animals, turning dogs and cats, bats and bears, pigs and wolves into intelligent, highly evolved creatures who rise up and kill their oppressors. And now, after years of bloodshed, these sentient beasts must learn to live alongside their sworn enemies - humans.

Deep below Manhattan, tunnel engineer Josh Reed leads his team as they excavate the East Side Access extending New York's railway service. But sparks fly as the drill hits an unusual crystalline material - one Josh has never seen before. They push on, and Josh discovers something even more unexpected: a vast room, empty and lifeless - or so it seems.

For rising young lawyer Cal Griffin, it's just another day in the Big City, full of stress, screw-ups, deadlines, and anxiety. That is until New York is rocked by a series of bizarre tremors - and the lights go off...for good. Trapped in a giant metropolis and cut off from the rest of the world, Cal tries desperately to make sense of the surreal chaos that engulfs his crippled city. Worst of all, the people around him are...changing. Once-ordinary humans are becoming embodiments of their darkest desires, manifestations of their deepest fears.

Six years ago, with the financial collapse of her country and the death of her parents, Carrie Ashworth swore to protect her siblings. She has fought to build a life for them in her illegal clan. Now home and recovering from a government-spread virus, she's ready to pursue a little happiness of her own - with Greg. Greg Pierce has no plan to join the growing rebellion or their "live free or die" mentality. Even after compulsory military service deepened his hatred of President Rigsby's regime, he wants nothing more than to leave it all behind and start a quiet life with Carrie.

When the posthuman Next suddenly reappear in a solar system that banished them, humans are threatened. Their reactions vary from disgust and anger to yearning to live forever like the powerful Next, who are casually building a new city out of starships in the heart of the rewilded planet Lym. The first families of Lym must deal with invasion while they grapple with their own inner fears.

What if a society banished its worst nightmare to the far edge of the solar system, destined to sip dregs of light and struggle for the barest living? What if that life thrived, grew, learned, and became far more than anyone ever expected, yearning to return to the sun? What if it didn't share your moral compass in any way? The Glittering Edge duology describes the clash of forces when an advanced society that has filled a solar system with flesh-and-blood life meets the near-AIs it banished long ago.

Protozoa is a word from biology via the Greek, meaning "first animals". These short stories were indeed among the first life spontaneously generated in Lois McMaster Bujold's nascent writing career. Along with an introduction by the author, this collection features the short stories "Barter", "Garage Sale", "The Hole Truth", "Dreamweaver's Dilemma", and "Aftermaths".