Showing results by publisher "Podium Audio" in Hard Science Fiction

From the Audie-nominated narrator of The Martian. In eleven years' time, a million members of an alien race will arrive at Earth. Years before they enter orbit, their approach will be announced by the flare of a thousand flames in the sky, their ships' huge engines burning hard to slow them from the vast speeds needed to cross interstellar space. These foreboding lights will shine in our night sky like new stars, getting ever brighter until they outshine even the sun, casting ominous shadows and banishing the night until they suddenly blink out.

Silas Keene sees things no one else can: distant places, hidden truths, and sometimes, the horrors waiting in the dark. It's a gift he doesn't understand—until he meets the Ganzfeld Collective, a small group of extrasensory enthusiasts. Encouraged by his new friends, Silas opens a door he can't close. When red eyes bloom across a stone wall and track his location, he realizes something—or someone—is watching. Soon after, covert operatives working with the Smithsonian hunt him down along with the Collective.

At long last, humanity has moved beyond Earth and begun seeding new worlds. Colonies extend across the solar system, from Luna to Mars to Saturn's satellite Titan. Even Jupiter's moon Europa has become home to a couple thousand brave souls willing to risk their lives adapting to its frozen and deadly landscape.

Piloted by a six-year-old girl, the godlike Skalm guards the Districts of TASC. Her family is long dead. Her adopted father is a synthetic copy of an alien, her nanny an artificial mind connected via subspace to every part of the globe, feeding the young girl information, finding prey to satiate her growing thirst. But the young girl is an innocent, a victim, one of millions the war has already claimed.

The Majority always gets what it wants. Thomas Hill just wishes it didn't want him. There's no way to escape a galactic mob of mind readers, no way for him to blend in with his foster family and other average Americans. Because Thomas invented a way to save his own life. His custom medicine halts the progress of his degenerative neuromuscular disease. Newscasters proclaim him the next Einstein, but mere humans have no idea his bioengineered processing capacity rivals that of a supercomputer. They just think he's smart. However, there are other bioengineered supergeniuses in the Majority.

Humans have reached the stars. There is no evidence any other species survived its own sentience long enough to do the same. Until now, when the Magellanix deep-space scout Accipiter discovers the Artifact, a million-year-old alien construct resting in a dormant volcano on a faraway world.

The Shift is closed between Earth and Arcadia. The residents of Lost Town acclimate to their new reality. They are forever stuck on another planet, with only each other to rely on. Amelia, anxious to see more of their home, travels with Milton's old map-filled journal, discovering an ancient civilization. John is eager to start a new life, until tragedy strikes at the heart of Lost Town. Restarting from scratch isn't ideal, but the locals will do anything to succeed.

In the 25th century, humans have conquered space. The advent of faster-than-light travel has opened up hundreds of habitable planets for colonization, and humans have exploited the virtually limitless space and resources for hundreds of years with impunity. So complacent have they become with the overabundance that armed conflict is a thing of the past, and their machines of war are obsolete and decrepit. What would happen if they were suddenly threatened by a terrifying new enemy?

The Earth lies shaken in the aftermath of a conspiracy. Some of the smartest minds on the planet have striven for and died in an effort to scour the skies of four vast alien satellites, but their success has brought a terrible vengeance down upon us. While alien agents stalk the Earth, a team of exhausted scientists and military outcasts struggle to fight them among a planet on the brink - the brink of plague, the brink of war, and the brink of an invasion larger than they can possibly imagine. But they have allies.

An alien Entity had waited megaannum, millions of years, for sentience to emerge on a planet with an ecosystem vibrant enough to foster the evolution of complexity. Impervious to impatience, dispassionate, and deliberate, the Entity's patience was rewarded with a promising species—humans. When the time was right, the warning was given: "The tenure of sentience is ephemeral." The Entity had borne witness to the extinction of civilizations and their species, an outcome that must not be repeated. Not this time. Not with a species of such potential.

When Simon and Katherine Hawke stumble upon an alien shuttle that has landed on earth, it’ll not only change the course of their lives, but of the entire world. Taking the shuttle into orbit, they discover a much larger ship left adrift with no one on board. Commandeering it, they confirm that we’re not alone in the universe and must prepare the human race for what is about to come. Recruiting from all over the world, they begin to expand their fleet and build a federation to give humans a foothold in the galaxy.

Rigel is a thousand lightyears farther from the Core Worlds than Earth, so they suffer the first attacks. The mood at Central is jubilant. Our greatest rival is falling—now is the time to strike while they’re weak! Legion Varus is deployed to Jungle World, a vital planet deep in Rigellian territory. Our foes, fighting on two fronts, are driven back with ease. But one man questions the wisdom of this move. Should Earth expand with greed, aiding new monsters from the Galactic Rim? That lone voice of reason comes from James McGill.

A new age of exploration is taking humanity to the stars. It's a chance to build a new life from the ground up, to make your fortune and help the colonies grow. Anyone can become someone out in the stars. When John Carver, a veteran of the Halfway War, arrives on the colony of Greenworld, he finds it completely abandoned, as though its residents simply walked out, leaving all of their belongings behind. All that remains are half-built greenhouses and habitats, poorly maintained farmlands, and basic supplies.

Jonas kills people...with his mind. He reaches out, focuses for a moment, and feels a snap of pain between his eyes. Then his target falls over dead: a hole in the center of their brains. The cause of death is unknown to all aside from Jonas, and his lone companion, Bubbles, a sarcastic AI with aspirations to be more human, or a serial killer. One of the two. Maybe both. Jonas calls his ability...mind bullet.

With the power gone, the UK falls into a state of panic. The ensuing anarchy is simply the warm-up act. Shaun Taylor is stranded far from home, far from a broken family he needs to make whole again, and he will do whatever it takes to get back to them. What would you do to get home? What would you do if the lights went out?

Things have gone bad among the colonies. Insurgents are building alien-hybrid armies and planet-killing weapons, threatening to upend the fragile balance of power in Province 921. There's not only trouble in the province—the Core Worlds are igniting as well. The Mogwa have asserted claims upon the Imperial Throne, causing their rivals to move against them. Earth's Hegemony and the rebels are pulled into a conflict that could tear the galaxy apart.

The last living astronaut to walk on the Moon has been murdered… Silas visits his estranged grandfather's lakehouse in the aftermath of the deadly home invasion. What he discovers hidden below the floorboards triggers a mystery buried since the final trip to the Moon, over fifty years earlier. Rory returns to her family home in Vermont to write her second novel, but fate has a different story in mind. Her reunion is shattered when she's thrust into danger revolving around the same tokens.

In the 31st century, humanity stands on the precipice of extinction. The human colonies throughout the galaxy have been decimated by the relentless assault of the Korilian Empire, leaving Earth as the final refuge. Humankind's last hope rests on the tactical prowess of Admiral Jon McCarthy and the foresight of the Nexus House, an ancient conclave of clairvoyants who have long guided humanity's path.

Seventeen-year-old Truth Medici scavenges for scraps to eat; weathers his parents' abuse; and battles derelicts, killer pimps, and demons in the soul-crushing stretch of desperation he calls home. Even the cops steer clear of the toxic Harban slums. But just across the canal live the magical elite, with their wealth, flying carpets, gorgeous mages, and custom spell beasts, all thanks to the patronage of the almighty Starbrite Corporation. Getting there, and taking his three vulnerable siblings with him, is Truth's only dream.

The Darshik war machine is flagging, but the war is far from over. Even as an exhausted Federation military tenses up for a counterattack after repelling the last Darshik invasion, reports are coming in of a new, more powerful class of ship that's striking deep into Terran space. Captain Jackson Wolfe has been given the fleet's newest, most advanced destroyer and tasked with eliminating this new threat before it can claim any more human lives. What he finds, however, is immeasurably more dangerous than just some new class of starship....