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

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.

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.

They were the beautiful dreamers. From a hidden city deep in the Ural mountains, they walked the world as the coldest of Cold Warriors, under the command of the Kremlin and under the power of their own expansive minds. They slipped into the minds of Russia's enemies with diabolical ease, and drove their human puppets to murder, and worse. They moved as Gods. And as Gods, they might have remade the world. But like the mad holy man Rasputin, who destroyed Russia through his own powerful influence... in the end, the psychic spies for the Motherland were only in it for themselves.

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.

The moon has suddenly acquired its own satellite: a two-mile-across starship that represents a hitherto unsuspected Galactic Commonwealth. The F'thk, a vaguely centaur-like member species for whom Earth's ecology is hospitable, have been sent to evaluate humanity for prospective membership. The F'thk are overtly friendly but very private - "Information is a trade good." As Earth's scientists struggle to understand their secretive appraisers, odd inconsistencies emerge. As troubling as those anomalies is the reemergence of a bit of insanity humanity thought it had outgrown: cold war and nuclear saber-rattling.

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.

Few writers have successful blended hard science and speculation with fully realized characters as Gregory Benford has in his critically acclaimed novels. Now he draws us into a vortex of mystery and danger at the heart of the galaxy in his dazzling epic drama, Furious Gulf.

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.

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.

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.

Cosa succederebbe se i nostri ricordi potessero essere trasferiti sul cloud e le persone potessero condividere i propri pensieri in tempo reale? Sorgerebbe una nuova forma d’intelligenza – una coscienza collettiva condivisa – oppure sarebbe l’inizio di un processo di espropriazione delle esperienze personali che porterebbe alla scomparsa dell’individualità umana e al caos? Ecco le premesse del romanzo di Regina Kanyu Wang, Nuvole e nebbia, ambientato in una Cina futura che altro non è se non lo specchio della nostra società, sempre più connessa e dipendente da tecnologie tanto comode e pervasive quanto piene di rischi e pericoli.

Milano 2032: sono passati pochi anni dal lancio sul mercato dei primi cartoni animati per assunzione retinica. Un fantomatico serial killer, che si fa chiamare "il Mescolatore", uccide a ripetizione uomini e cartoni viventi: li smembra, li taglia a pezzi e li riconsegna agli inquirenti in "scatole di montaggio"... Come se non bastasse si moltiplicano i casi del Morbo, una forma di febbre emorragica che passa dai cartoon infetti al sangue umano. E' cominciata la partita più nera dopo Infect@, l'ultimo atto della guerra al crimine nell'Italia del futuro.

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.

Nach einer Reihe ungeklärter Vorfälle kommt es 2025 auf der ISS zu einer Katastrophe und von drei Besatzungsmitgliedern können sich nur ESA-Astronaut Thomas Ehrmann und NASA-Astronautin Patricia Michaels mit einer Sojus-Kapsel zur Erde retten. Nach ihrer Landung in Kasachstan werden sie gegen ihren Willen in Russland festgehalten, weil die Regierung Zweifel am Schicksal des dritten Besatzungsmitglieds, dem Kosmonauten und Volkshelden Oleg Rashkin, hegt. Um zu verhindern, dass sich an diesem Vorfall ein internationaler Konflikt entzündet, entsendet die ESA ihre Top-Psychologin Amina Young nach Moskau.

En un futuro no muy lejano… se lleva a cabo el primer trasplante de cerebro, pero al despertar, en el piso 931 del edificio Huntington, el paciente no reconoce su cuerpo ni su rostro ni el lugar donde se encuentra. Tampoco comprende qué le ocurrió. Entonces los cirujanos le explican que su cerebro fue trasplantado a otro cuerpo. Lo doctores también le informan que la humanidad renunció a la vida humana e inmigró a la vida virtual.

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.