Showing titles in Hard Science Fiction

Breq - the soldier who used to be a spaceship - is serving the emperor she swore to destroy. She's been given her own warship, her own crew, and ordered to the only place in the galaxy she would have agreed to go: to Athoek Station, to protect the family of the lieutenant she murdered in cold blood. Athoek was annexed by the Empire some 600 years ago, and by now everyone is fully 'civilised'. Or should be - but everything is not as tranquil as it appears.

It has a dark past—one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself “Murderbot”. But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more. Teaming up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don’t want to know what the “A” stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue. What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks.

How could robots be used in a time of war? Could a robot be raised like a child? Could we allow them to have children of their own? Is there any human profession that could never be performed by a robotic replacement? In The Rest of the Robots, robopsychologist Dr. Susan Calvin and engineers Powell and Donovan return to investigate many more puzzling anomalies and catastrophic malfunctions.

James McGill is called upon for a sabotage mission, one that only a man of his unique talents can handle. Unfortunately, he performs too well, and our enemies from Rigel are enraged. They come for us, and war is declared. When this conflict between the great powers spreads, humanity finds itself swept up in the storm. Can McGill escape this disaster he’s created?

Bob Johansson didn't believe in an afterlife, so waking up after being killed in a car accident was a shock. To add to the surprise, he is now a sentient computer and the controlling intelligence for a Von Neumann probe. Bob and his copies have been spreading out from Earth for 40 years now, looking for habitable planets. But that's the only part of the plan that's still in one piece.

1967: Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during China's Cultural Revolution. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind. Four decades later, Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal of scientists after a spate of inexplicable suicides. Wang's investigation will lead him to a mysterious online game and immerse him in a virtual world ruled by the intractable and unpredictable interaction of its three suns.

For someone who didn't intend to wreck the solar system's fragile balance of power, Jim Holden did a pretty good job of it.While Earth and Mars have stopped shooting each other, the core alliance is shattered. The outer planets and the Belt are uncertain in their new - possibly temporary - autonomy. Then, on one of Jupiter's moons, a single super-soldier attacks, slaughtering soldiers of Earth and Mars indiscriminately and reigniting the war.

In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse - mathematical genius and young Captain in the US Navy - is assigned to detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists, and some of those people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt. The mission of Watrehouse and Detachment 2702 - commanded by Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe - is to keep the Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the enemy's fabled Enigma code. In the present, Waterhouse's crypto-hacker grandson, Randy, is attempting to create a "data haven" in Southeast Asia....

Tom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a law enforcement officer with the Panoply. His beat is the multifaceted utopian society of the Glitter Band, that vast swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone, the teeming hub of a human interstellar empire spanning many worlds. His current case: investigating a murderous attack against one of the habitats that left 900 people dead, a crime that appalls even a hardened cop like Dreyfus.

Years after a meteorite strike obliterated Washington, DC—triggering an extinction-level global-warming event—Earth’s survivors have started an international effort to establish homes on space stations and the Moon. The next step–Mars. Elma York, the Lady Astronaut, lands on the Red Planet, optimistic about preparing for the first true wave of inhabitants. The mission objective is more than just building the infrastructure of a habitat–they are trying to preserve the many cultures and nuances of life on Earth without importing the hate. But from the moment she arrives, something is off.

In the fourth book of the series, James McGill is up for promotion. Not everyone is happy about that, and McGill must prove he's worth his stripes. Deployed to a strange alien planet outside the boundaries of the Galactic Empire, he's caught up in warfare and political intrigue. Earth expands, the Cephalopod Kingdom launches ships to stop us, and a grand conspiracy emerges among the upper ranks of the Hegemony military.

En 1942, Larence Pritchard Waterhouse, genio matemático y joven capitán de la Marina estadounidense, es asignado a colaborar con Bobby Shaftoe en una misión secreta que consiste en descifrar los códigos de las potencias del Eje. De este modo se pretende evitar que los nazis perciban que la Inteligencia aliada ha descubierto el sistema de cifrado de su mítico código Enigma. Sesenta años más tarde, Randy Waterhouse, brillante «criptohacker», proyecta la creación en el Sureste asiático de un paraíso de datos y el mayor exponente de la libertad informática: la Cripta.

The UFS Phoenix returns to Homeworld, after more than three years of searching the galaxy for a way to save humanity from the looming AI threat. Many Fleet captains are unhappy with their own command, following the massive casualties of Nia's first strike. Some say that Captain Erik Debogande is the war leader humanity truly needs. Others warn of civil war. But on Homeworld lurks an even older threat, a secret kept by Fleet Command since Homeworld's first conquest by humans. A secret that could tear Fleet, and Erik's powerful family, apart.

There's a reason We Are Legion was named Audible's Best Science Fiction Book of 2016: Its irresistibly irreverent wit! Bob Johansson has just sold his software company for a small fortune and is looking forward to a life of leisure. The first item on his to-do list: Spending his newfound windfall. On an urge to splurge, he signs up to have his head cryogenically preserved in case of death. Then he gets himself killed crossing the street. Waking up 117 years later, Bob discovers his mind has been uploaded into a sentient space probe with the ability to replicate itself.

In the thousand-sun network of humanity's expansion, new colony worlds are struggling to find their way. Every new planet lives on a knife-edge between collapse and wonder, and the crew of the aging gunship, Rocinante, have their hands more than full keeping the fragile peace. In the vast space between Earth and Jupiter, the inner planets and the Belt have formed a tentative and uncertain alliance still haunted by a history of wars and prejudices.

Faced with determining the fate of the galaxy, Golan Trevize hesitantly chose to hand over the rule of the galaxy to planet Gaia. Two mysteries now remain: who has erased the records of Earth – and why? Determined to ensure his choice was right, Golan sets off with Janov Pelorat and Bliss, to answer these questions once and for all. But nothing could prepare them for the secrets which await them on Earth. Secrets which predate history as they know it, and will change its significance forever.

Having traveled the width of the galaxy to unearth details of its own murderous transgressions, as well as those of the GrayCris Corporation, Murderbot is heading home to help Dr. Mensah - its former owner (protector? friend?) - submit evidence that could prevent GrayCris from destroying more colonists in its never-ending quest for profit. But who's going to believe a SecUnit gone rogue? And what will become of it when it's caught?

Neal Stephenson, "the hottest science fiction writer in America", takes science fiction to dazzling new levels. The Diamond Age is a stunning tale; set in 21st-century Shanghai, it is the story of what happens what a state-of-the-art interactive device falls into the hands of a street urchin named Nell. Her life, and the entire future of humanity, is about to be decoded and reprogrammed.

Two centuries have passed since Elijah Baley’s actions on Aurora sent settlers from Earth to new worlds all over the galaxy. The Spacer planet of Solaria has been abandoned by humans, though countless robots remain. When settlers arrive to salvage them, something unthinkable happens – the robots attack. Accompanied by Gladia Delmarre and the robots Daneel and Giskard, a descendant of Elijah Baley sets out for Solaria to investigate, a quest that will lead them to a vast, catastrophic conspiracy and a revolution in the Three Laws of Robotics.

Caesar, an undercover operative, enters Carmichael with the briefest of orders from his boss and a countdown on his phone. What will happen when the clock strikes zero? Deputy Amelia Miller is dispatched from a nearby city, and a series of events keeps her around much longer than she'd expected. In the middle of the night, something shifts, and the whole town disappears off the face of the Earth. Who caused the shift, and what lies beyond the veil of their settlement?