Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Hard Science Fiction

While J. Robert Oppenheimer and his Manhattan Project team struggle to develop the A-bomb, Edward Teller wants something even more devastating: a weapon based on nuclear fusion - the mechanism that powers the sun. But Teller’s research leads to a terrifying discovery: by the year 2030, the sun will eject its outermost layer, destroying the entire inner solar system - including Earth. After the war ends, Oppenheimer’s physicists combine forces with Albert Einstein, computing pioneer John von Neumann, and rocket designer Wernher von Braun.

Hugo Award winner Elizabeth Bear has won high praise for her thought-provoking science fiction. The second in Bear’s powerful Jacob’s Ladder series, Chill finds the generation starship Jacob’s Ladder with a new captain—Perceval. As Perceval struggles with the ship’s recent damage, remnants of the rebellion still linger and a threat to the crew grows.

Booklist calls the world of Hugo Award winner Elizabeth Bear’s spellbinding Jacob’s Ladder series “magnificently populated, well worth visiting.” Here the trilogy that began with Dust and Chill draws to its stunning conclusion. The passengers of the generation spaceship Jacob’s Ladder have found a new home at last. But the planet Grail is already inhabited - and its population of genetically engineered humans has no intention of sharing the world.

The Cure is a genre-bending thriller reminiscent of Michael Crichton or Douglas Preston, about the biological underpinnings of psychopathy. As a child, her family was taken from her by a serial killer. Erin Palmer is left orphaned and forever scarred. She dedicates her life to the study of psychopaths, conducting one-on-one interviews and tests with inmates. When Erin finally finishes years of exhaustive research, she finds herself in possession of the key to ending psychopathic behavior - in the species - forever. That' s when they try to kill her.

Centuries after a war with the Mutes, the first aliens to be encountered by humankind, a startling new discovery in the far reaches of the Orion Nebula appears. On a planet with conditions favorable to life, explorer vessel The Columbia comes across a small town seemingly inhabited by an intelligent species not yet discovered. But when a highly publicized follow-up mission is sent to make contact mere months later, the entire town has vanished, leaving no trace—or such is presumed to be the case until Alex Benedict and his archaeological crew show up to investigate.

Hayden Lichfield’s life is ripped apart when he finds his father murdered in their lab, and the camera logs erased. The killer can only have been after one thing: the Sisyphus Formula the two of them developed together, which might one day reverse death itself. Hoping to lure the killer into the open, Hayden steals the research. In the process, he uncovers a recording his father made in the days before his death, and a dying wish: Avenge me.

Maya has died and been resurrected into countless cyborg bodies through the years of a dangerous long career with the infamous Dirty Dozen, the most storied crew of criminals in the galaxy, at least before their untimely and gruesome demise. Decades later, she and her diverse team of broken, diminished outlaws must get back together to solve the mystery of their disastrous last mission and to rescue a missing and much-changed comrade … but they’re not the only ones in pursuit of the secret at the heart of the planet Dimmuborgir.

Edge of Infinity is an exhilarating new SF anthology that looks at the next giant leap for humankind: the leap from our home world out into the solar system. Featuring stories by Hannu Rajaniemi, Alastair Reynolds, James S. A. Corey, John Barnes, Stephen Baxter, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Elizabeth Bear, Pat Cadigan, Gwyneth Jones, and more.

What happens when we reach out into the vastness of space? What hope for us amongst the stars? Multi-award winning editor Jonathan Strahan brings us 14 new tales of the future, from some of the finest science fiction writers in the field. The 14 startling stories in this anthology feature the work of Greg Egan, Aliette de Bodard, Ian McDonald, Karl Schroeder, Pat Cadigan, Karen Lord, Ellen Klages, Adam Roberts, Linda Nagata, Hannu Rajaniemi, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Ken MacLeod, Alastair Reynolds, and Peter Watts.

Elias McKay is an Extractionist. As an “Xwire” with a head full of experimental mites, he specializes in pulling minds out of virtual space and getting them back into their bodies intact. He’s one of the best. But he’s fallen on hard times. After getting banned by the government from doing lucrative legal work due to a past indiscretion, McKay picks up shady gigs wherever he can find them. His latest job takes him to Singapore for a quick extraction of a corporate bigwig, but things go from bad to worse when hired muscle, black ops agents, and hackers attack him and his client.

Kris Ballard is a motorcycle courier. A nobody. Level Two trash in a multilevel city that stretches from San Francisco to the Mexican border - a land where corporations make all the rules. A runaway since the age of 14, Kris struggled to set up her life, barely scraping by, working hard to make it without anyone's help. But a late-day delivery changes everything when she walks in on the murder of one of her clients. Now she's stuck with a mysterious package that everyone wants.

Alice works at the Scottish embassy in Tallinn in Estonia as a member of the Cultural Section. When two men bring her the jeweled skull of a Scottish saint, her world gets turned on its head, and she becomes the latest recruit to Les Coureurs des Bois. On a Greek island, Benno is just one of hundreds of refuges dreaming of a new life in continental Europe. After hatching an audacious escape plan, he may just get his dream, but at the price of serving some powerful mysterious new masters.

Humanity has conquered the Solar System. What’s more, death itself has been vanquished. Wellstone - programmable matter - insures that no one need ever die, or indeed, age past adulthood. But for the children of immortal parents, life remains a constant state of arrested development. And a prince shall remain a prince forever, never inheriting the throne. So what is a minor royal to do?

Brash and idealistic, they were rebels without a cause in a world governed by science, reason...and immortality. Banished for their troubles to the starship Newhope, they now face a bold future: to settle the worlds of Barnard’s Star. Now King Bascal Edward de Towaji Lutui, former prince of the Queendom of Sol, together with Captain Xiomara “Xmary” Li Weng and her lover, first mate Conrad Mursk, face a perilous voyage with thousands of their fellow exiles. The journey will last a century.

The highly-anticipated final volume of the critically-acclaimed science fiction anthology series....

The United States. 2030. John McDean executive produces "Vigilance", a reality game show designed to make sure American citizens stay alert to foreign and domestic threats. Shooters are introduced into a "game environment", and the survivors get a cash prize. The TV audience is not the only one that's watching though, and McDean soon finds out what it's like to be on the other side of the camera.

Aemilius thought he would die heroically in battle like his forefathers, mourned by a loving wife and many children, but he’s barely a man when a harpy flies down out of the old myths and knocks him from his horse. Stunned and helpless, he waits for his end … and is saved. Formed on the bloody battlefield of Teutoburg, the Hidden Legion are an order of soldiers, magicians, and rogues so secret that the Empire itself would hunt them down if they were exposed. And now Aemilius is one of them.

Adda Karpe and Iridian Nassir have escaped the murderous AI that was trapping them on Barbary Station and earned themselves a place on Captain Sloane's fabled pirate crew. And now that they've arrived at Vesta, Sloane's home base, they can finally start making a living stealing from well-off megacorporations. Unfortunately, the political situation has deteriorated in Captain Sloane's absence. Adda and Iridian find themselves trapped in a contract with Oxia Corp., one of the very megacorporations they'd hoped to prey on, forced to rob and intimidate targets.

Orson Scott Card, Kevin J. Anderson, and Larry Niven have seen the future. Now you can, too. A constellation of the brightest lights in the science fiction and fantasy firmament have judged these authors to be the best, the brightest, the truest emerging stars in the field.

The universe shifts and changes: suddenly you understand, you get it, and are filled with wonder. That moment of understanding drives the greatest science-fiction stories and lies at the heart of Engineering Infinity. Whether it's coming up hard against the speed of light - and with it the enormity of the universe, realizing that terraforming a distant world is harder and more dangerous than you'd ever thought, or simply realizing that a hitchhiker on a starship consumes fuel and oxygen with tragic results, it's hard science-fiction where a sense of discovery is most often found and where science-fiction's true heart lies.