Showing titles in Hard Science Fiction

At long last, Earth has a handful of starships. Surrounded by Rebel Kher, Imperials, and the mysterious Nomads, humanity dares to assert our right to independence. The interstellar community reacts harshly. In the eyes of our neighbors, we’re upstarts, dangerous beings who don’t know our place. For the Kher, freedom can only be won through battle. War fleets arrive to instruct us, and Captain Leo Blake is again sent out to voyage among hostile stars.

Six months have passed since the release of Nexus 5. The world is a different, more dangerous place. In the USA, the freedom fighters of the Post-Human Liberation Front use Nexus to turn men and women into human time bombs aimed at the President and his allies. The first blows in the war between human and post-human have been struck.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER Humanity is under assault by malevolent “antimemes”—ideas that attack memory, identity, and the fabric of reality itself—in this whip-smart tale of science-fiction horror, an entirely reimagined and expanded version of the beloved online novel. “Utterly...

A self-proclaimed Tyrant controls the colony ship still orbiting overhead—a fortress that should have been dismantled to build their new world. Armed with surveillance drones and brutal enforcers, he's turned a struggling settlement into his personal kingdom. Anyone who defies him vanishes into the ship above, never to return.

Merritt Alder is done with Earth. The planet is polluted and overpopulated, and its people are hungry. Earth's first colony, Galena, is a pioneer world 10,000 light-years away. It has clean air, unpolluted water, and continents of arable land. Anyone can start a new life…if they can get there. For Merritt, the journey is only the beginning. Obstacles arise every step of the way, forcing compromise and sacrifice. And not everyone on his ship is pure of heart.

Having obliterated entire civilizations, the Torth Majority is now threatening humanity itself. Barreling through deep space—and hunted every dark mile by armadas, saboteurs, and kamikaze armies—the passengers of a refugee streamship must outrun everything they left behind if they hope to stay alive.

Rigel is a thousand lightyears farther from the Core Worlds than Earth, so they suffer the first attacks. The mood at Central is jubilant. Our greatest rival is falling—now is the time to strike while they’re weak! Legion Varus is deployed to Jungle World, a vital planet deep in Rigellian territory. Our foes, fighting on two fronts, are driven back with ease. But one man questions the wisdom of this move. Should Earth expand with greed, aiding new monsters from the Galactic Rim? That lone voice of reason comes from James McGill.

Get the Earth's Last Gambit bundle, featuring all four books in this first-contact series blending hard sci-fi and edge-of-your-seat action.

Sera leads a simple life. A little smuggling, some drinking contests, and captaining her star freighter, Sabrina. But when she picks up a mysterious shipping container on Coburn Station, things begin to go wrong. She finds herself at odds with The Mark, a dangerous pirate organization that wants the cargo on her ship. Inside the container she not only finds a woman, but a secret thought lost millennia ago.

Lost Town is being rebuilt in the wake of tragedy. With no connection to Earth for three months, Caesar has the chance to regroup and determine the threat level from Lithos. John can't shake the sensation that the worst is yet to come, and it's confirmed when Anders and Haley leave to investigate a potential second alien tower on Arcadia. While Harrison takes a step back, Amelia must keep the peace between the rogue agents who are putting their mission in danger. Meanwhile, on Earth, Summer is contacted by a mysterious stranger who predicts a looming invasion.

Planet Nibiru wants them dead. All of them. Trapped by the destruction of their own satellites, the Marines on Nibiru suddenly find themselves without orbital or air superiority. With help months away, Po and his brothers must quickly figure out how to stabilize and survive against an exploding alien insurgency. Po learned young to rely on no one but himself. Now, he's slowly realizing that nothing from bootcamp, or from his trials on Earth's moon, could have prepared him for this. If he can't rip up some deep-rooted beliefs about his place in the universe, and fast, it may cost him his life.

Mary Robinette Kowal continues the grand sweep of alternate history begun in The Calculating Stars. The Fated Sky looks forward to 1961, when mankind is well established on the moon and looking forward to its next step: journeying to, and eventually colonizing, Mars. Of course the noted Lady Astronaut Elma York would like to go, but there’s a lot riding on whoever the International Aerospace Coalition decides to send on this historic - but potentially very dangerous - mission. Could Elma really leave behind her husband and the chance to start a family to spend several years traveling to Mars?

If Truth Medici has learned anything, it’s that the country isn’t neatly divided into safe and dangerous zones. Everywhere is a battlefield and a hunting ground. Everyone is both predator and prey, slumrats on the run from bigger rats. Truth is finally one of the bigger rats, so elite that ordinary people can’t even see him. But though he may be a walking ghost, he’ll be acknowledged one way or another. Truth holds the power to slay the very oppressors who made him what he is. And he’s resolved to wield this power toward a righteous end.

Astronomers in England and America have made a terrifying discovery: an ominous black cloud the size of Jupiter is travelling straight towards our solar system. If their calculations are correct, the cloud’s path will bring it between the Earth and the Sun, blocking out the Sun’s rays and threatening unimaginable consequences for our planet.

There is a world that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism and global financial collapse. Such a world requires a firm hand and a guiding light. But does it need the Concern...

Gideon, a young and gifted electromagnetics engineer, finds himself stationed at Green Bank Observatory, with the United States' most powerful radio telescope at his fingertips. Utilizing groundbreaking techniques, he stumbles upon an unexplainable radio signal emerging from just outside our solar system. Soon, he is thrust into a world of science and politics as humanity steps into the unknown. Trust morphs into fear as the dark shroud of the discovery is lifted, revealing the true intentions that will forever alter the course of the human race.

A civilization-destroying omega cloud has switched direction, heading straight for a previously unexplored planetary system--and its alien society. And suddenly, a handful of brave humans must try to save an entire world--without revealing their existence.

What if you found a way to send something back in time? But not weeks, days, or even minutes back. What if you could only send something back a fraction of a second? Would this be of any use? You wouldn't have nearly enough time to right a wrong, change an event, or win a lottery. Nathan Wexler is a brilliant physicist who thinks he's found a way to send matter a split second back into the past. But before he can even confirm his findings, he and his wife-to-be, Jenna Morrison, find themselves in a battle for their very lives.

The Hundred Worlds have withstood invasion by the relentless Hok for decades. The human worlds are strong, but the Hok have the resources of a thousand planets behind them, and their fleets attack in endless waves. The long war has transformed the Hundred Worlds into heavily fortified star systems. Their economies are geared for military output, and they raise specialized soldiers to save our species. Assault Captain Derek Straker is one such man among many.

On a privately financed orbital habitat above the planet Uranus, political idealism conflicts with pragmatic - and illegal - methods of financing. Add a scientist who has funding to launch a probe deep into Uranus‘ ocean depths to search for signs of life, and you have a three-way struggle for control. Humans can’t live on the gas giants, making instead a life in orbit. Kyle Umber, a religious idealist, has built Haven, a sanctuary above the distant planet Uranus.