Showing results by publisher "Audible Studios" in Hard Science Fiction

Despite its futuristic technical trappings, enduring family bonds are at the core of this riveting techno-thriller. An alien virus that prolongs life has infected a couple, Zakariah and Mia Davis, and made their blood a valuable black-market staple due to its rejuvenating effects. The eternal virus has not affected their son Rix, and Zakariah is consumed with the search for an active sample to inoculate the teenager against mortality.

Jon Grebbel arrives on the colony world of Janus, and finds himself without memory of his life on Earth. He meets Elinda, an earlier arrival, whose lover, Barbara, vanished and then was found lying in the woods, apparently brain-damaged. Elinda has also lost her memories of Earth. Investigating Barbara's fate and their own, the two find their love and their search for justice turning toward bitter self-discovery and revenge, even as they begin to uncover the darkness at the heart of their world.

Life changes for everyone in general - and for physicist Dean Matthews in particular - when astronomers detect a radio signal from a nearby star. First Contact forces humanity to face hard questions, and do it fast. Every answer spawns new questions. Every solution sets in motion a new and more daunting crisis to challenge Dean, his family - and an expanding number of interstellar civilizations - or generations to come.

Julie E. Czerneda's acclaimed Web Shifters series continues with the story of Esen - the last survivor of a unique alien race. Able to take on the form of any creature she observes, Esen has long since broken the cardinal rule of her species: noninterference.

The battle has been fought and won, and all have been transformed by the struggle. Imago of Lockwood has become Lord Mayor of the City Imperishable, though at a price beyond his wildest imagination. Bijaz the Dwarf has been imbued with a godlike power and a responsibility he scarcely understands. And Jason the Factor, resurrected from death at the hands of his sister, the Tokhari sandwalker Kalliope, has become the sula ma-jieni na-dia, the fabled Dead Man of Winter.

What was the light that mazed every mind's sky - and then was gone? Why has it brought a flying tepui mountaintop home from the stars, and sent investigators into the orbital habitats floating above Earth? How is it connected to a "living fossil" fungus of great entheogenic powers? Or to a dead madman? Or to the fate of a planet overpopulated, hypermediated, corporate dominated, and heat-gas insulated? Forces that are socially and politically polarized, both good and evil, selfless and selfish, must search for the answers to these questions.

Izzy Umboto is a hero of the conflict between the Society of Humanity and the Unity Party. Instead of retiring and living out her days quietly, she's wrangled command of her very own warship. Unfortunately, that ship is the less-than-state-of-the-art Patton. Lieutenant Terrence Tordon, called "Trouble" by both his enemies and his friends, and even himself, is a career marine. The word "quit" isn't in his vocabulary. Now Lieutenant Trouble and his troops have signed on with Commander Umboto, trading a higher paycheck for the promise of action.

It's the 23rd century, and Nasir Deepra is 248 years old, wealthy, kept young by all-pervasive nanotechnology, a corporate executive, and bored with life. To spice things up, he has become an Agonist, dipping into war zones—many of them in satellites orbiting the Earth—and filming his daredevil antics.

Roger Cortland came to the Orbital Complex to continue his life's work in virtual reality. Marissa Correa came to work with Cortland, and to observe this Utopian society up close. Jhana Meniskos came to work in "Orbital Park", the station's biodiversity preserve. But no Utopia is safe-from corruption, from sabotage, from corporate greed. And when this perfect world begins to unravel - attacked from Earth and from within - all three will have to fight to protect their work and their lives.

They are the keepers of history. The dedicated men and women of the Temporal Corps. It is their job to protect the timeline from irreparable harm. And in an era when time travel has created a new breed of criminal, they are the only force standing between the past as we know it and future warped by evil...It is 1963. The foreboding chill of the Cold War is in the air. In Berlin, a wall rises, separating East from West. World peace rests on the shoulders of two volatile men named Khrushchev and Kennedy.

Trotz aller dem Schwarzen Planeten eigenen Gefahren untersuchen zwei Astronauten den neu entdeckten Himmelskörper. Sie finden Hinweise auf seine sagenumwobene Herkunft und sein enormes Alter, und bald bemerken sie, dass Amphitrite ein noch viel größeres Geheimnis verbirgt. Währenddessen nähert sich der uralte Neuling auf seiner ungewöhnlichen Bahn der Erde. Der schwarze Staub, der seine Oberfläche bedeckt, interessiert wegen seiner ungewöhnlichen, gewinnversprechenden Eigenschaften gleich mehrere Unternehmen.

Es ist kein gewöhnlicher Himmelskörper. Es ist Amphitrite: der schwarze Planet. Seit Jahren suchen Astronomen nach einem Planeten jenseits der Neptunbahn. Immer wieder finden sie Indizien - aber der schlagende Beweis, die Beobachtung, schlägt fehl. Die vier Astronauten an Bord der Ganymed Explorer suchen keinen wissenschaftlichen Ruhm. Sie brauchen nichts weiter als einen sicheren Unterschlupf, so weit von jeglicher Zivilisation entfernt wie nur möglich. Dass ausgerechnet sie einen bisher unbekannten Planeten aufspüren, erscheint ihnen praktisch.

Thors Provoni è una figura leggendaria per quasi tutta la razza umana: partito per le stelle in cerca di aiuto per la Terra, però, è ormai dato per disperso nelle profondità cosmiche. Non è ancora stata trovata alcuna prova dell'esistenza di una qualsiasi altra razza intelligente e comunque, anche se esistesse, resta da verificare se sia disposta a venire in soccorso dell'homo sapiens su un pianeta in cui questi non è altro che un cittadino di seconda classe.

La popolazione terrestre si è enormemente ridotta dopo che una guerra globale ha devastato il pianeta rendendo sterile la maggior parte dell'umanità. Le macchine intelligenti sorvegliano la vita quotidiana; le automobili e le farmacie parlano e litigano con gli utenti, e molti, in modo ossessivo, giocano a Bluff, un gioco di gruppo che accoppia in modo sempre diverso gli individui, creando e sciogliendo matrimoni senza interruzione, in una paradossale lotteria che premia la fortuna dell'ambita fertilità.

The year is AD 2790. With space elevators and giant orbital fleets hovering over Earth, open war looks inevitable, and people are anxious to get away. The lines are drawn, with the Confederacy in the East and the First World Alliance in the West. In hopes of finding a refuge from the looming war, the Alliance is sending Captain Alexander de Leon to explore an Earth-type planet, code-named Wonderland, but at the last minute before launch, a Confederate fleet leaves orbit on a trajectory that threatens both the mission and Alliance sovereignty.

Geoff and his friends live in Phocaea, a distant asteroid colony on the Solar System's frontier. They're your basic high-spirited young adults, enjoying such pastimes as hacking matter compilers to produce dancing skeletons that prance through the low-gee communal areas, using their rocket-bikes to salvage methane ice shrapnel that flies away when the colony brings in a big (and vital) rock of the stuff, and figuring out how to avoid the ubiquitous surveillance motes.

Der Wissenschaftler Jim Connolly landet im alten Rom – gefesselt, orientierungslos und auf der Suche nach einem außerirdischen Würfel, der Zeit und Raum beherrscht. Gemeinsam mit dem charismatischen Senator Marcus Dorso kämpft er um die Kontrolle über das mächtigste Objekt der Geschichte.

Dr. Kelly Connolly gehört zu einem streng geheimen Team aus Wissenschaftlern, das den wichtigsten Fund in der Geschichte der Menschheit untersucht: den Enigma-Würfel, ein Artefakt von unfassbarer Macht, das sich den Fesseln von Raum und Zeit zu entziehen scheint. Kelly und der Geheimdienstler Justin Boyd werden mit Feinden konfrontiert, die alles daran setzen, den Würfel in die Finger zu bekommen. Als sich die Situation zuspitzt und ein Kampf um Leben und Tod entbrennt, entdeckt Kelly, dass der Würfel viel gefährlicher ist, als sie angenommen hat.

In una futuristica società avanzata, una donna ha dato il via a un progetto di ricerca archeoinformatica che ha sede in Italia, al PRIA, il Palazzo di Ricerca Informatica Antica. Il capo ricercatore, Iperborea, scopre e analizza archivi e reperti digitali per riportare in luce il passato, un po’ come fa un archeologo quando conduce campagne di scavi. Il suo più grande obiettivo è scoprire chi è stato l’artefice del Grande Crollo, un evento epocale del passato che ha prodotto l’annientamento di ogni struttura sociale.

È un pianeta desertico, letale, una sconfinata distesa di sabbie velenose. Nel corso dell'evoluzione i suoi abitanti si sono applicati a una sola arte, la meccanica, rendendolo il regno delle macchine, del metallo e della ruggine. Eppure Mondo9 vive su una fiorente attività di commerci: titanici veicoli a ruote, grandi come bastimenti e governati da decine di uomini, solcano i deserti tra una città e l'altra. Perché c'è una guerra in corso: macchine contro macchine, metallo contro metallo.