Showing titles in Space Exploration

Ottanger always believed his mutation to be chance or perhaps the actions of fate. Or even the result of pollution on a hellish overpopulated Earth, ruled by a totalitarian Committee and its ruthless Inspectorate. But, when Ottanger is captured, tortured and made the subject of a strange experiment by the Inspectorate, he discovers otherwise - his mutation allows him to walk between alternate worlds. When Ottanger is thrown from his timeline from the far future, he meets the Fenris – humanity’s future form.

A Fire Upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale. Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function.

Icrul never fit in. From her awkward body to her clever mind, so full of questions, she stood out in a city where conformity ruled—and tradition kept creative minds in check. Abandoned by her scheming mother, Icky and her Da face a cruel teacher, a decaying ship, and financial ruin. They also face... a grasping hand that will use the law to strip them of everything they worked for.

In the wake of victory, Hank hopes that things will calm down. But by now, he should know better. As the fractured Consortium government scrambles to determine the next course of action, one of the Buzzard's crew vanishes in the night. Did they leave on their own or were they taken? And what does this disappearance portend?

When Ishmael takes a crew of academy cadets into the Toe Holds, he's unprepared for the level of trouble green hands can get into. Meanwhile, their academy liaison discovers what can go wrong when you learn the wrong lessons and try to teach the wrong students. Will they all make it back to the academy before somebody accidentally takes a short walk out the airlock without a suit?

Not every visitor to or from Earth has good intentions, and the Peacemakers are faced with an uncomfortable reality. The Earth is about to meet aliens. Some of the aliens are bringing goods to trade. And among those items are weapons. When a secret cabal of humans who want to exploit the Earth is revealed, Van has to decide how and where to fight this threat. Along the way, he reveals a secret history that began in the Great War—and ends with mass chaos on his home planet.

Captain Jacob T. Grimm has lost his ship. Relegated to training duty, he's a warrior without a war. Until an assassin strikes, leaving Nadia wounded and the Alliance on the defense. The Fleet Admiral needs every ship to strike at the Caliphate and end the war. Which leaves only one problem, Alexandria will be defenseless. There's only one man who can fill the void. Commanding a nameless, untested battleship, Jacob must defend Alexandria against a Caliphate Task Force armed with an experimental juggernaut.

On the 300th anniversary of Earth’s first expedition to another solar system, the original colony ship miraculously appears near Saturn. But the crew of Excursion One is nowhere to be found. All that’s left is a broken android, and a string of clues. Captain Calvin Brooks, a hero from the Solar Wars, spends his days trying to forget the past on Link Station, until he’s thrust into danger when he’s asked to pilot the decayed ship back through the wormhole to search for the Ethos colony.

Naval Officer Jack Samson thought a posting to the frontier of human-inhabited space was the death blow to his career. He couldn't have been more wrong. A routine inspection of a small merchant vessel leads to devastating loss and the discovery of strange, fascinating objects. As astonishing discoveries unfold, a mysterious and hostile ship proves that Samson has a competitor in unlocking the secrets of an ancient alien civilization and that humanity might not be alone in the galaxy after all.

The Quantum Thief is a dazzling hard SF novel set in the solar system of the far future - a heist novel peopled by bizarre post-humans but powered by very human motives of betrayal, revenge and jealousy. It is a stunning debut. Jean le Flambeur is a post-human criminal, mind burglar, confidence artist and trickster.

Deadwood, USA. A girl sneaks out just before dark to ride her new bike. Suddenly, the ground disappears beneath her. Waking up at the bottom of a deep pit, she sees an emergency rescue team above her. The people looking down see something far stranger.... That girl grows up to be Dr. Rose Franklin, a brilliant scientist and the leading world expert on what she discovered.

When Gyre Price lied her way into this expedition, she thought she’d be mapping mineral deposits and that her biggest problems would be cave collapses and gear malfunctions. She also thought that the fat paycheck - enough to get her off-planet and on the trail of her mother - meant she’d get a skilled surface team, monitoring her suit and environment, keeping her safe. Keeping her sane. Instead, she got Em. Em sees nothing wrong with controlling Gyre’s body with drugs or withholding critical information to “ensure the smooth operation” of her expedition.

On the eve of her twenty-third birthday, Luca Lee-McNabb learns from the quantum intelligence Athena that she must flee Earth to escape the VanHeilding family, who seek her unique biology, and try to reach New World One despite the risks. To survive, she must confront her greatest fear: jacking into the data-grid and battling the Node Runners, risking brain death to avoid being a subject in a VanHeilding genetics lab.

On a voyage toward the boundaries of the known universe, nine misfit academics seek out first contact with a shadowy alien race. But another enigma is the Nightflyer itself, a cybernetic wonder with an elusive captain no one has ever seen in the flesh. Soon, however, the crew discovers that their greatest mystery - and most dangerous threat - is an unexpected force wielding a thirst for blood and terror.... Also included are five additional classic George R. R. Martin tales of science fiction that explore the breadth of technology and the dark corners of the human mind.

During her pursuit of the human traitors known as Nemesis, Mage-Captain Roslyn Chambers ventured deep into alien stars. She destroyed her enemy at the final moment but saw firsthand the might of the alien empire Nemesis called the Reejit. The lost world Chimera has hidden between human and alien space for generations. Roslyn must protect the planet from this waking threat, but both the human and alien colonists see her as a harbinger of nightmares.

Bryan Norton was a loner with a love for shooting, and the vast Arizona desert at his disposal to cater to that passion. A former Marine Captain, he was the beneficiary of an early medical retirement due to a blown knee and now had three hundred and sixty five days of vacation a year, use it or lose it. A chance encounter with a stranger on a desert outing was about to change his life.

The greatest threat humanity has ever faced lies beyond the frontier of its galactic civilization, but dangers closer to home have been overlooked and allowed to grow. As greed and personal ambition in the Terran Union push the common good aside, the Navy is forced to turn to unconventional means. Jack Samson is ordered to team up with former allies to uncover and destroy the rot eating the Union from the inside. Chasing down a trail of smuggled alien technology through the Union's underworld, they soon discover the web of treachery reaches farther than anyone could have expected.

Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as a refuge from her unhappy home life and volatile father. Enchanted by the marine world of her childhood, she excels in postgraduate research on ancient algae. When an unfathomable vent appears in the mid-Atlantic floor, Leigh joins the investigating team; what she finds there will change her life forever. Around the same time, a trio of engineers, unknown to each other, make a seismic breakthrough in rocket propulsion, announcing an almost limitless era of space exploration.

Nicholas Briggs reads the brand-new novelisation of the spectacular 50th anniversary TV episode. When the entire universe is at stake, three different Doctors will unite to save it. The Tenth Doctor is hunting shape-shifting Zygons in Elizabethan England. The Eleventh is investigating a rift in space-time in the present day. And one other - the man they used to be but never speak of - is fighting the Daleks in the darkest days of the Time War.

The winds of Fortune continue to try to drive Archer Devereaux onto the rocks of fate. Enemies abroad and incompetent leadership at home combine to make his life dangerously difficult. Luckily, when he’s able to put his hand on the tiller, he somehow manages to steer clear of total disaster. Having demonstrated a knack for achieving results no matter how long the odds, the navy calls on Archer for its most dangerous assignments as the war heats up. Even "tame" assignments turn deadly, as Archer's presence at diplomatic functions seems to guarantee disaster.