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

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.

Nearly 100,000 years after first contact with the machines that dominate the universe, only a few hundred humans survive. Trapped on Snowglade, a barren world near the center of the galaxy, Killeen and his child, Toby, of the Bishop Tribe, are primitive scavengers, homeless and hunted by the ruling “mechs”. Then suddenly, a strange cosmic entity – neither organic nor cybernetic or living matter – reaches out from a black hole to speak with Killeen.

Onboard an ancient starship, Killeen and the Bishop tribe escape the mech-ruled world of Snowglade. Seeking refuge on a faraway planet, they discover vast wonders: an organic life-form as large as a world, a planet-coring cosmic string, a community of humans ruled by a brutal tyrant, and ultimately an alien race more awesome than any they have encountered. As they battle for survival against these myriad dangers, Killeen and his crew will gain an unforeseen ally - one that may determine humanity’s true destiny.

Within the L, a tri-star system located inside the Aquilian Nebula, Jax makes a living trading and smuggling whatever goods pay the best. So far, he’s avoided being caught with anything too damning in his ship’s holds, but when he takes a job for Korinth, an infamous arms dealer, all that changes. The haul is worth 10 times his ship, and when the contents gets him embroiled in a tug of war between the major political factions of the L, Jax has to keep the criminals he works for from discovering that he’s playing both sides.

Nel XXI secolo gli Stati Uniti d'Europa e d'America sono governati da una coppia incantevole: "der Alte", il presidente, e la First Lady, vero motore del potere. Popolare e amatissima star televisiva, la donna nasconde segreti che ne potrebbero destabilizzare l'autorità, e si oppone a ogni tentativo di rovesciamento del suo benigno regime.

Planet Suran ist ein Paradies und bietet dem Leben beste Bedingungen. Seine vielfältigen Bewohner sind intelligent – alle. Der Legende nach sollen die Erbauer, höhere Wesen, kurz nach der Erschaffung der Welt der Schöpfung Intelligenz eingehaucht haben. Die Wissenschaft sieht das anders: Biologen haben Anzeichen dafür gefunden, dass sämtliches Genmaterial suranischen Lebens in jüngerer Vergangenheit künstlich verändert wurde.

On June 30, 1908, an object fell from the sky, releasing more energy than a thousand Hiroshima bombs. A Siberian forest was flattened, but the strike left no significant crater. The anomaly came to be known as the Tunguska Event, and scientists have never agreed whether it was the largest meteor strike in recorded history - or something else. Alien artifacts have been uncovered since the 1908 event, and a new star drive is discovered.

The crew of Moonbase Columbus makes an amazing discovery on the far side of the Moon - a massive alien structure is erecting itself, built up atom by atom by living machines, microscopically small, intelligent, and unstoppable, consuming everything they touch. The mysterious structure begins to expand and take shape, and its creators begin to multiply. Is this the first strike in an alien invasion from the stars? Or has human nanotechnology experimentation gone awry, triggering an unexpected infestation?

The Skaintz Imperium was eradicated from the backwater planet of Garm, but at great cost. The population of the world was decimated within weeks, and Garm will never be the same. At least humanity can breathe easily knowing that the mysterious aliens are all dead.... But are they? Using their natural form of communication, Skaintz radio signals did chirrup and click, however briefly. Transmissions in their ancient language now spread at the speed of light in a growing sphere.

On the eve of a secret military operation, an assassin's bullet strikes President Seth Jerrison. He is rushed to the hospital, where surgeons struggle to save his life. At the same hospital, researcher Dr. Ranjip Singh is experimenting with a device that can erase traumatic memories. Then a terrorist bomb detonates. In the operating room, the president suffers cardiac arrest. He has a near-death experience - but the memories that flash through Jerrison's mind are not his memories.

Hamilton Felix, the result of generations of genetic selection, finds his life as the ultimate man boring - until a gang of revolutionaries tries to enlist him in their cause.

On Jupiter's moon, Callisto, a mysterious Recovery Man kidnaps Rhonda Shindo after he terrorizes and then abandons her brilliant 13-year-old daughter, Talia. While authorities on Callisto search for Rhonda, her employers at the Aleyd Corporation try to gain custody of Talia. Somehow, Callisto authorities realize, she's part of the crime, even though she was left behind.

Stranded on the moon after a global economic crash, Nick Morrison and his friends must take decisive action to secure their supply chain before they starve to death. The capture of a space station wins them some breathing room. But the powers that be on Earth cannot tolerate an independent, thriving lunar colony. Amidst a high-stakes arms race, Nick and his friends struggle to hold off the entire might of Earth. At the same time, Nick must also fight his old nemesis, Joe Massad, for control of the lunar base.

Still reeling from a former teammate's betrayal, Commonwealth operative Simon Kovalic and his band of misfit spies have no time to catch their breath before being sent on another impossible mission: to pull off the daring heist of a quasi-mythical alien artifact, right out from under the nose of the galaxy's most ruthless crime lord. But their cold war rivals, the Illyrican Empire, want the artifact for themselves. And Kovalic's newest recruit, Specialist Addy Sayers, is a volatile ex-con with a mean hair-trigger who might put the whole mission at risk.

They call it Company Town - a city-size oil rig off the coast of the Canadian Maritimes, now owned by one very wealthy, powerful, byzantine family: Lynch Ltd. Hwa is of the few people in her community (which constitutes the whole rig) to forgo bioengineered enhancements. As such, she's the last truly organic person left on the rig - making her doubly an outsider as well as a neglected daughter and bodyguard extraordinaire.

At 25, General Jason Wander has fought and won man's only alien conflict. Now, after long years in space, he's coming home...but to what? Earth's desperate nations, impoverished by war damage and military spending, are slashing defense budgets. There's just one problem with this new worldwide policy - the first alien invasion was merely Plan A. Suddenly, the real assault begins: Earth is attacked by a vast armada of city-sized warships. To block their invasion, mankind has only one surviving craft and a single guerrilla strike force...a suicide squad led by Jason Wander.

Mankind's first alien contact tears into Earth: Projectiles launched from Jupiter's moon, Ganymede, vaporize whole cities. Under siege, humanity gambles on one desperate counterstrike. In a spacecraft scavenged from scraps and armed with Vietnam-era weapons, foot soldiers like 18-year-old Jason Wander-orphans that no one will miss-must dare man's first interplanetary voyage and invade Ganymede. They have one chance to attack, one ship to attack with. Their failure is our extinction.

Passage at Arms tells the intimate, detailed and harrowing story of a climber crew and its captain during a critical juncture of the war. Cook combines speculative technology with a canny and realistic portrait of men at war and the stresses they face in combat. Passage at Arms is one of the classic novels of military science fiction.

Earth’s first colony ship finally reaches the target world. The excitement of planetfall is indescribable, but quickly transforms into sick disappointment when they find the atmosphere is a roiling mass of hydrochloric acid, carbon dioxide, and other deadly poisons. They fly onward, seeking better planets. They find them, but none are ideal. The search goes on for a century, then longer still. As they move farther from Earth, aliens discover the intruding ship, and they begin to investigate humanity. They find our species unacceptable.

LA detective Anna Abbott can see brief, cryptic visions of the future. She just doesn't know it yet. But others do. Others who will stop at nothing to ensure that her abilities never see the light of day. Soon Anna is fighting for her life against an array of powerful adversaries, and not all of them are human. Because a small group of aliens hiding on Earth believe that she can single-handedly alter the course of an interstellar war. One that has raged for thousands of years, but which is completely unknown to humankind. Until now.