Showing titles in Hard Science Fiction

The extermination of Earth is at hand. With his increasingly irrational leadership Basil Wenceslas, chairman of the Hansa, has driven humanity into a corner. His punitive treatment of the Hansa colonies and the Roamers, as well as his refusal to aid an embattled Theroc, have made enemies for the people of Earth.

Humanity’s war with the Coven is going badly. Fleet simply doesn’t have the ships or the manpower to counter the alien’s vast reserves, so Cole Jackson is hauled out of his self-imposed exile and ordered back to the front. The Admirals are gambling on a miracle; that he and his crew can repeat the success of his First Command by repairing vessels and sending them into battle. And maybe snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

In addition to being the man who coined the term 'the Big Bang', world-renowned astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle also produced a fine body of science fiction. The Andromeda Anthology contains the acclaimed duology A for Andromeda and The Andromeda Breakthrough, co-written with John Elliot. The...

Leon Tsarev is a high school student set on getting into a great college program, until his uncle, a member of the Russian mob, coerces him into developing a new computer virus for the mob's botnet - the slave army of computers they used to commit digital crimes. The evolutionary virus Leon creates, based on biological principles, is successful - too successful. All the world's computers are infected.

Commander Scott McNabb, of the science vessel Hermes, is three years into a five-year-long survey of the asteroid belt. It’s an excruciatingly dull mission, yet it keeps him far away from the agencies that are chasing him down. However, his fortunes change, along with the other four crew members, when they discover a derelict spaceship in orbit around a binary asteroid. Scott’s share of the salvage would be enough to clear his name and start a new life.

Manfred Macx is a patent junkie, spending his days dreaming up ideas that will make him rich, very rich indeed. He patents them and then offers them up to anyone for free. In doing so, he has shunned the need for cash, preferring to live off the generosity of his benefactors. Enter uploaded lobsters wanting to defect, government investigations, and a dominatrix ex-girlfriend who works for the IRS and you've got yourself a hip post-cyberpunk tale.

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.

By the time Phil Chase is elected president, the world's climate is far on its way to irreversible change. Food scarcity, housing shortages, diminishing medical care, and vanishing species are just some of the consequences. The erratic winter the Washington, D.C., area is experiencing is another grim reminder of a global weather pattern gone haywire: bone-chilling cold one day, balmy weather the next. BONUS AUDIO: Includes an exclusive introduction by author Kim Stanley Robinson.

In the near future, the nano-drug Nexus can link mind to mind. There are some who want to improve it. There are some who want to eradicate it. And there are others who just want to exploit it. When a young scientist is caught improving Nexus, he’s thrust over his head into a world of danger and international espionage, with far more at stake than anyone realizes.

There is a huge, bold black streak in the sky. Branches appear out of nowhere over North America, Southern Europe, and Central Africa. People who live beneath The Rift can see it. But scientists worldwide are distressed - their equipment cannot pick up any type of signal from it. The rift appears to consist of nothing. Literally. Nothing. Nada. Niente. Most people are curious but not overly concerned. The phenomenon seems to pose no danger. It is just there. Then something jolts the most hardened naysayers, and surpasses the worst nightmares of the world's greatest scientists.

To be a Docile is to be kept, body and soul, for the uses of the owner of your contract. To be a Docile is to forget, to disappear, to hide inside your body from the horrors of your service. To be a Docile is to sell yourself to pay your parents' debts and buy your children's future. Elisha Wilder’s family has been ruined by debt, handed down to them from previous generations. His mother never recovered from the Dociline she took during her term as a Docile, so when Elisha decides to try and erase the family’s debt himself, he swears he will never take the drug.

In the unforgiving silence of deep space, a lone astronaut awakens—disoriented, alone, and haunted by fractured memories. The cryostasis pod that saved her life now feels like a coffin. The rest of the crew? Gone—victims of mysterious malfunctions that ravaged the ship. Only a glitchy, well-meaning robot remains to keep her company.

The galaxy is vast. Finding your place in it is harder. Rufus has spent his life feeling unanchored—defined by a father who disappeared and a system that values obedience over individuality. When he leaves home and steps into the SlipSpace lanes, he isn’t searching for glory. He’s searching for belonging. Thrown together with a handful of strangers—each carrying their own secrets, doubts, and ambitions—Rufus begins to form something unexpected: a Pack. Not bound by rank or blood, but by trust earned the hard way.

When Allie Keane makes a revolutionary discovery in quantum computing, she kicks the ultimate hornets' nest. She doesn't know it, but a hidden battle for tech supremacy is raging around the world, and whoever controls her discovery will dominate the globe. Soon, Allie is being hunted by ruthless forces desperate to learn her secret, and only Zachary Reed, a gifted operative within a shadowy government agency, stands in their way. But as extraordinary as Allie's breakthrough is, it holds the key to unleashing something far bigger.

When a robot defies his programming, is he broken? Or is he something else?

Chief Roach's victory over the ferocious Quatro won't last long, it seems. Strange meteorites have fallen to the surface of Eresos, containing mechs - quadruped mechs, clearly designed for the enemy. If the quad mechs fall into the enemy's possession before Roach can get them to the space elevator, humanity will lose the advantage granted by their own MIMAS mechs, and they'll be right back to where they were: outmatched and overpowered by the murderous alien beasts.

Devastated early in the war, the United Systems Alliance has retaken several key systems lost to the Galactic Union. But getting even isn’t good enough for General Hella. Determined to end the costly war and destroy the Union, Hella launches a daring offensive against the planet Kuut, a key military base deep in Union space. At the tip of the spear, Lieutenant Mark Rizer and the Marines of Orcus Company find themselves in the mud and blood of a planetary ground invasion.

Dark Intelligence is the first novel in the Transformation series, a no-holds-barred adventure set in Neal Asher's popular Polity universe. One man will transcend death to seek vengeance. One woman will transform herself to gain power. And no one will emerge unscathed . . . Thorvald Spear wakes...

Consider Phlebas: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience! * The first audiobook in Iain M. Banks's seminal science fiction series, The Culture. Consider Phlebas introduces listeners to the utopian conglomeration of human and alien races that...

A stunning debut in the blockbuster tradition of Jurassic Park -- enhanced with dramatic sound effects. A pair of fierce but beautiful eyes look out from the undergrowth of conifers. The eyes follow every movement in the great herd of plant-eating dinosaurs that mills around the open meadows...