Search Worlds Without End

Appeared in Ace Double D-443 (1960).

When Earthman Gary Towler is off work, he is a pariah. For his task as chief interpreter for the corrupt and tyrannical nuls makes other humans avoid him as a traitor.

Nor is he trusted by the three-armed mammoth rulers themselves, especially when they learned than an envoy was on the way from their distant planetary headquarters to investigate charges of corruption on Earth. For the leaders realized that Gary knew too much.

When the humans leading the underground rebellion demanded Gary's aid or his life, he was caught between two untrustful forces. And his only way out was to make himself into a one-man third force against two worlds' plotters.

A GREAT SCIENCE-FICTION NOVEL BY THE AUTHOR OF STARSHIP.

The Valgolia rule the Galaxy. But they're fomenting revolt throughout their own empire. Their hope is to unite all of their subjects by giving them a common enemy. But the trick is finding a way not to be destroyed by the rebellion in the process.

This novelette originally appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction, April 1951.

Sturgeon Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, July 2004 and was reprinted in Lightspeed, January 2013. The story can aslo be found in the anthologies Best Short Novels: 2005, edited by Jonathan Strahan, and Not One of Us: Stories of Aliens on Earth (2018), edited by Neil Clarke.

FIRST CONTACT!

The glowing ovoid plummeted downward, the whole sky screaming like a metallic banshee as the air boiled away from its sides. A supersonic bang broke over the forest, but the thing was already gliding down to Earth. As the ovoid settled in among the trees, the entire forest burst into flames. A thin black line appeared and etched a perfect circle on the side of the metal egg, then thickened into a door. The air was rent by a searing hiss. Slowly, the strange being - soon to be known to all mankind as VOR - began to emerge...

Note: An expansion of "The Weakness of RVOG" (1949), which was co-written with Damon Knight.

A young woman working alone in a small special collections library is trapped in the building when invaders overrun her town. She barricades the doors, peeks through a window, and watches in horror as people are murdered outside. The invaders wear uniforms that cover them completely, making it impossible for her to see their faces. However, she realizes at once that they do not intend to subjugate the population. They intend to annihilate it.

Trapped in the R.A.W. is a journal of the young woman's solitary struggle to protect the books while keeping herself fed, hydrated, warm, and sane.

A computer program etched into the atmosphere has a story to tell, the story of two people, of a city lost to chaos, of survival and love. The program's data, however, has been corrupted. As the novel's characters struggle to survive apocalypse, they are sustained and challenged by the demands of love in a shattered world both haunted and dangerous.

1999, on the threshold of a new millennium, the novelist Daniel Langham lives a reclusive life on an idyllic Greek island, hiding away from humanity and the events of the past. All that changes, however, when he meets artist Caroline Platt and finds himself falling in love. But what is his secret, and what are the horrors that haunt him?

1935. Writer Jonathon Langham and Edward Vaughan are summoned from London by their editor friend Jasper Carnegie to help investigate strange goings on in Hopton Wood. What they discover there - no less than a strange creature from another world - will change their lives for ever.

What they become, and their link to the novelist of the future, is the subject of Eric Brown's most ambitious novel to date. Almost ten years in the writing, The Kings of Eternity is a novel of vast scope and depth, full of the staple tropes of the genre and yet imbued with humanity and characters you'll come to love.

It's 2025 and the world is riven by war, terrorist attacks, poverty and increasingly desperate demands for water, oil, and natural resources. The West and China confront each other over an inseperable ideological divide, each desperate to sustain their future.

And then the Serene arrive, enigmatic aliens form Delta Pavonis V, and nothing will ever be the same again.

The Serene bring peace to an ailing world, an end to poverty and violence - but not everyone supports the seemingly benign invasion.

There are forces out there who wish to return to the bad old days, and will stop at nothing to oppose the Serene.

THEY WERE GREEN, THEY WERE LITTLE, THEY WERE BALD AS BILLIARD BALLS AND THEY WERE EVERYWHERE!

Luke Devereaux was a science fiction writer, holed up in a desert shack waiting for inspiration. He was the first to see a Martian - but he certainly wasn't the last. It was estimated that one billion of them had arrived - one to every three human beings on Earth. Obnoxious green creatures who could be seen and heard (but not harmed) and who probed private sex lives as shamelessly as they exposed government secrets.

No one knew why they had come. No one knew how to make them go away - except perhaps, Luke Devereaux. Unfortunately he was going slightly bananas, so it wouldn't be easy. But for a science fiction writer nothing was impossible.

Horror collides with science fiction in this omnibus edition of Brozek's Melissa Allen trilogy, which sees a savvy teenager fighting to save the world from evil.

In "Never Let Me Sleep," virtually everyone in South Dakota falls asleep and dies. Only 14-year-old Melissa, a bipolar paranoid schizophrenic on house arrest, survives. Because of her immunity to whatever killed everyone else, she's tasked by Homeland Security to find the source and stop it, but first she has to defeat terrifying insectoid aliens.

In "Never Let Me Leave," Melissa meets several other teenagers who've survived unusual phenomena; soon they're trapped in a secured scientific facility with an alien capable of possessing humans.

In "Never Let Me Die," Melissa and the survivors of the previous incident undertake a hazardous mission that again brings them into contact with their alien foes.

Originally published in Ace Double D-465 in 1960.

In The Atlantic Abomination, an exploratory expedition to the bottom of the ocean discovers the remnants of a long-lost civilization, and then, the enormous body of an alien being preserved for unknown millennia. An attempt to raise the body unleashes a horror beyond imagining as the creature revives from a long sleep and begins to exert control over men's minds throughout the world.

When suddenly all the fissionable material on Earth was exploded, Earthmen had their first notice of the aliens' arrival.

And by the time the panic, death and chaos had been sorted out, reports were coming in about mysterious cities scattered across the face of the planet - huge areas of flickering light and awesome free energy, disorienting to human senses and impregnable to attack.

The question was: were they alien bases... or something else?

In 1938, acclaimed science fiction author John W. Campbell published the novella Who Goes There?, about a team of scientists in Antarctica who discover and are terrorized by a monstrous, shape-shifting alien entity. The story would later be adapted into John Carpenter's iconic movie The Thing (following an earlier film adaptation in 1951). The published novella was actually an abridged version of Campbell's original story, called Frozen Hell, which had to be shortened for publication. The Frozen Hell manuscript remained unknown and unpublished for decades, and it was only recently rediscovered. Frozen Hell expands the Thing story dramatically, giving vital backstory and context to an already incredible tale. We are pleased and honored to offer Frozen Hell to you now, as Campbell intended it. You will be among the first people to ever read this completed version of the story.

While backpacking in Alaska, Victor Gonser, a 35 year old PhD in political science, finds himself trapped in the body of a 13 year old Tlingit Indian girl. A little later he is forced from there into the spectacularly beautiful body of an 18 year old blonde. He finds that the switches are part of a skirmish for Earth by two alien races... And that is just the beginning.

The final work from the brightest star in science fiction's galaxy. Arthur C Clarke, who predicted the advent of communication satellites and author of 2001: A Space Odyssey completes a lifetime career in science fiction with a masterwork.

30 light years away, a race known simply as the One Point Fives are plotting a dangerous invasion plan, one that will wipe humankind off the face of the Earth...

Meanwhile, in Sri Lanka, a young astronomy student, Ranjit Subramanian, becomes obsessed with a three-hundred-year-old theorem that promises to unlock the secrets of the universe. While Ranjit studies the problem, tensions grow between the nations of the world and a UN taskforce headed up by China, America and Russia code-named Silent Thunder begins bombing volatile regimes into submission.

On the eve of the invasion of Earth a space elevator is completed, helped in part by Ranjit, which will herald a new type of Olympics to be held on the Moon. But when alien forces arrive Ranjit is forced to question his own actions, in a bid to save the lives of not just his own family but of all of humankind.

Co-written with fellow grand master Frederik Pohl, The Last Theorem not only provides a fitting end to the career one of the most famous names in science fiction but also sets a new benchmark in contemporary prescient science fiction. It tackles with ease epic themes as diverse as third world poverty, the atrocities of modern warfare in a post-nuclear age, space elevators, pure mathematics and mankind's first contact with extra-terrestrials.

CLASSIC HUMOROUS SF FROM A HUGO WINNING AUTHOR!

Ralph Kennedy, unassuming personnel psychologist, thought he had headaches when he was faced with clients who had psychic talents they couldn't control. (What Thin Partitions Renaissance E Books 2003). Now, through a case of mistaken identity, Kennedy is pressed into service by Space Navy, as an expert in extraterrestial psychology. The Space Navy doesn't have any aliens--or anything for Kennedy to do--they just want to be prepared. When his attempts to clear up the confusion bog down due to a mirthful mix-up of records, Kennedy has somehow convinced the thick-headed bureaucrats running the Navy that he is their man.

But just as boredom sets in and he is dreaming of suicide, a mysterious Black Fleet of alien saucers appears over Washington and demands the Earth government surrender to it or the entire planet will be destroyed. Kennedy finds everyone turning to him for advice he doesn't have. Then he and the world are saved--or are they?--by the intervention of a squadron of glowing, globe-like ships which beat off the Black Fleet.

But when the rescuing aliens from the globes emerge from their ships, Kennedy faces the biggest challenge of his life. For their appearance raises more problems than it solves: The aliens are god-like human beings in white suites and white hats. Earth is so grateful at being rescued, Kennedy finds he is the only one who is troubled by the alien's providential arrival and appearance.

Here is humorous science fiction with a point by the co-author of the Hugo winning novel, They'd Rather Be Right.

Zack Lightman has spent his life dreaming. Dreaming that the real world could be a little more like the countless science-fiction books, movies, and videogames he's spent his life consuming. Dreaming that one day, some fantastic, world-altering event will shatter the monotony of his humdrum existence and whisk him off on some grand space-faring adventure.

But hey, there's nothing wrong with a little escapism, right? After all, Zack tells himself, he knows the difference between fantasy and reality. He knows that here in the real world, aimless teenage gamers with anger issues don't get chosen to save the universe.

And then he sees the flying saucer.

Even stranger, the alien ship he's staring at is straight out of the videogame he plays every night, a hugely popular online flight simulator called Armada--in which gamers just happen to be protecting the earth from alien invaders.

No, Zack hasn't lost his mind. As impossible as it seems, what he's seeing is all too real. And his skills--as well as those of millions of gamers across the world--are going to be needed to save the earth from what's about to befall it.

It's Zack's chance, at last, to play the hero. But even through the terror and exhilaration, he can't help thinking back to all those science-fiction stories he grew up with, and wondering: Doesn't something about this scenario seem a little... familiar?

At once gleefully embracing and brilliantly subverting science-fiction conventions as only Ernest Cline could, Armada is a rollicking, surprising thriller, a classic coming of age adventure, and an alien invasion tale like nothing you've ever read before--one whose every page is infused with the pop-culture savvy that has helped make Ready Player One a phenomenon.

"Jacky was running. There was no thought in his head, only an intense drive to run. There was no sense he was getting anywhere, no plan, no destination, no future. All he had was a sense of what was behind, what he was running from. Jacky was running."

The Natives of the Colony are restless. The Settlers are eager to have a nation of peace, and to bring the savages into line. Families are torn apart, reeducation is enforced. This rich land will provide for all.

This is not Australia as we know it. This is not the Australia of our history books. This TERRA NULLIUS is something new, but all too familiar.

This is an incredible debut from a striking new Australian Aboriginal voice.

'Welcome to Heaven', said the voice. 'The acquisition programme is entirely for females; but the occasional enterprising male does not displease us.'

Berry, Chief of his clan, knew his people could survive the dangers of the forest; and when winter came he made them build barricades against raiders from other clans. But no barricades were strong enough to hold against the Night Comers - huge silver beings of horrifying strength who carried away the womenfolk and were drastically lowering the human population.

Were the Night Comers men, monsters or gods? Berry believed they were men; and when the inevitable night came when the women of his clan were seized, he managed to follow. He followed them to a huge tapering column of metal, which took him away from the world he had known to an island in the sky called 'heaven'.

And there Berry realised that he had to defeat the Lords of Heaven if the people on Earth were to survive.

Wandl the Invader

There were nine major planets in the Solar System, and it was within their boundaries that man first set up interplanetary commerce and began trading with the ancient Martian civilization. And then they discovered a tenth planet - a maverick!

This tenth world, if it had an orbit, had a strange one, for it was heading inwards from interstellar space, heading close to the Earth-Mars spaceways, upsetting astronautic calculations and raising turmoil on the two inhabited worlds.

But even so none suspected then just how much trouble this new world would make. For it was WANDL THE INVADER and it was no barren planetoid. It was a manned world, manned by minds and monsters and travelling into our system with a purpose beyond that of astronomical accident!

Wandl the Invader is the second in the Gregg Haljan series.

I Speak for Earth

'One citizen of your planet shall go to the capital of the Federation of Worlds. He shall live there for thirty days. If your representative can survive and demonstrate his ability to exist in a civilized society with creatures whose outward appearance and manner of thinking differ from his own, you will pass the test. You will be permitted to send your starships to other planets of the galaxy.

'If he fails the test, if prejudice, fear, intolerance or stupidity trip him up, then you world will be sealed of from the stars for ever!'

This was the ultimatum from space. The task before the world then was - who shall go? What man or woman could be found to take this frightening test for the whole of humanity and be certain not to fail?

Nebula Award nominated novella.

You might have thought that the Fiesta of the Holy Hermit in the Mexican town of Los Remedios was just another of those quaint colourful ceremonies that the Indian natives put on each year for the mystification of tourists. And perhaps for the past few hundred years it had bee nothing more than that - but this year was to be different.

It originally appeared as and Ace Double together with John Rackham's Danger from Vega. It later appeared in standalone edition as well.

On a future Earth, where invading aliens have forced humanity to revert to a feudal society and conducting scientific research is punishable by death, it's good to be the heir to a duchy. Unless your brother has been burnt as punishment for heresy. And unless you intended to do something about it . . .

In Radio Free Albemuth, his last novel, Philip K. Dick morphed and recombined themes that had informed his fiction from A Scanner Darkly to VALIS and produced a wild, impassioned work that reads like a visionary alternate history of the United States. Agonizingly suspenseful, darkly hilarious, and filled with enough conspiracy theories to thrill the most hardened paranoid, Radio Free Albemuth is proof of Dick's stature as our century's greatest science fiction writer.

Two years ago, a misunderstanding between the leaders of Earth and the invading Ilori resulted in the deaths of one-third of the world's population.

Today, seventeen-year-old Ellie Baker survives in an Ilori-controlled center in New York City. With humans deemed dangerously volatile because of their initial reaction to the invasion, emotional expression can be grounds for execution. Music, art and books are illegal, but Ellie still keeps a secret library.

When young Ilori commander M0Rr1S finds Ellie's library, he's duty-bound to deliver her for execution. The trouble is, he finds himself drawn to human music and in desperate need of more.

Humanity's fate rests in the hands of an alien Ellie should fear, but M0Rr1S has a potential solution--thousands of miles away. The two embark on a wild and dangerous journey with a bag of books and their favorite albums, all the while creating a story and a song of their own that just might save them both.

On a warm March night in 2083, Judy Wallach-Stevens wakes to a warning of unknown pollutants in the Chesapeake Bay. She heads out to check what she expects to be a false alarm?and stumbles upon the first alien visitors to Earth. These aliens have crossed the galaxy to save humanity, convinced that the people of Earth must leave their ecologically-ravaged planet behind and join them among the stars. And if humanity doesn't agree, they may need to be saved by force.

But the watershed networks that rose up to save the planet from corporate devastation aren't ready to give up on Earth. Decades ago, they reorganized humanity around the hope of keeping the world liveable. By sharing the burden of decision-making, they've started to heal our wounded planet.

Now corporations, nation-states, and networks all vie to represent humanity to these powerful new beings, and if anyone accepts the aliens' offer, Earth may be lost. With everyone's eyes turned skyward, the future hinges on Judy's effort to create understanding, both within and beyond her own species.

Charley is an athlete. He wants to be painted crossing the finish line, in his racing silks, with a medal around his neck. But Charley isn't a runner. He is a human mount, the property of one of the alien invaders called Hoots. Charley hasn't seen his mother in years, and his father is hiding out in the mountains with the other Free Humans. The Hoots own the world, but the humans want it back. Charley knows how to be a good mount-now he's going to have to learn how to be a human being.

This remarkable novel, winner of the 2002 Philip K. Dick Award, should be read by every fan of speculative fiction, teenagers and adults alike.

When a U.S. Senator's seven-year-old grandson goes missing in the woods behind his home, the only witness, the boy's older brother, says, "The lights took him," and then never speaks again.

As police and the FBI launch a massive search, suspecting everything from domestic terrorism to kidnapping, only the boys' grandmother, Lynn Roseworth, fears she knows the truth.

Before she was a politician's wife, Lynn was a researcher of missing people who mysteriously vanished. But after a series of frightening encounters and great personal upheaval, she ran from that life, vowing never to think of it again.

Now, risking her husband's reputation and the exposure of her own controversial work, she must return to her past in order to find her grandson. Because only Lynn knows that the missing people who she once investigated all disappeared into lights from the heavens, and that her own father repeatedly warned her: "Never go in the woods."

Award-winning science fiction author James Alan Gardner brings us Damon Runyon-esque tale of courteous guys, bullet-proof dolls, and the fedora-clad spacemen that bring them together.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Crushing gravity. Thin air. Winters of unimaginable cold Searing summers under two suns. A deadly wasteland teeming with monsters and killing fever.

That was Ragnarok, the most dreaded planet yet discovered. And Ragnarok was where a thousand untrained Earthmen -- and women and children -- were brutally marooned by a sadistic enemy.

Two hundred died the first night.

In the morning, the survivors knew what they must live for... revenge!

"Professor Incognito Apologizes" is both a heartfelt mea culpa by Professor Incognito on the event of his beloved discovering his disturbing experiments and an in-depth FAQ on how to adjust to that newfound knowledge. It provides an excellent blueprint for young mad scientists to follow when confronted with investigatively inclined significant others.

The story first appeared in the John Joseph Adams anthology The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination: Original Short Fiction for the Modern Evil Genius (2013).

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Two aliens have wandered Earth for centuries. The Changeling has survived by adapting the forms of many different organisms. The Chameleon destroys anything or anyone that threatens it.

Now, a sunken relic that holds the key to their origins calls to them to take them home--but the Chameleon has decided there's only room for one.

From the depths of space comes a startling message: "We're Coming."

On the brink of war and hysteria, Earth must prepare for the arrival. But the question still remains as to who-or what-will actually arrive...

Are we alone? From War of the Worlds to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, ET to Close Encounters, creators of science fiction have always eagerly speculated on just how the story of alien contact would play out. Editor Marty Halpern has gathered together some of the best stories of the last 30 years, by today's most exciting genre writers, weaving a tapestry that covers a broad range of scenarios: from the insidious, to the violent, to the transcendent.

Contents:

• Introduction: Beginnings... - (2012) - essay by Marty Halpern
• The Thought War - (2008) - shortstory by Paul J. McAuley
• How to Talk to Girls at Parties - (2006) - shortstory by Neil Gaiman
• Face Value - (1986) - shortstory by Karen Joy Fowler
• The Road Not Taken - (1985) - novelette by Harry Turtledove
• The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything - (1984) - shortstory by George Alec Effinger
• I Am the Doorway - (1971) - shortstory by Stephen King
• Recycling Strategies for the Inner City - (1990) - shortstory by Pat Murphy
• The 43 Antarean Dynasties - (1997) - shortstory by Mike Resnick
• The Gold Bug - (2007) - novelette by Orson Scott Card
• Kin - (2006) - shortstory by Bruce McAllister
• Guerrilla Mural of a Siren's Song - (1989) - shortstory by Ernest Hogan
• Angel - (1987) - shortstory by Pat Cadigan
• The First Contact with the Gorgonids - (1992) - shortstory by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Sunday Night Yams at Minnie and Earl's - (2001) - novella by Adam-Troy Castro
• A Midwinter's Tale - (1988) - shortstory by Michael Swanwick
• Texture of Other Ways - (1999) - shortstory by Mark W. Tiedemann
• To Go Boldly - (2009) - shortstory by Cory Doctorow
• If Nudity Offends You - (1988) - shortstory by Elizabeth Moon
• Laws of Survival - (2007) - novelette by Nancy Kress
• What You Are About to See - (2008) - shortstory by Jack Skillingstead
• Amanda and the Alien - (1983) - shortstory by Robert Silverberg
• Exo-Skeleton Town - (2000) - novelette by Jeffrey Ford
• Lambing Season - (2002) - shortstory by Molly Gloss
• Swarm - (1982) - novelette by Bruce Sterling
• MAXO Signals: A New and Unfortunate Solution to the Fermi Paradox - (2007) - shortstory by Charles Stross (variant of MAXO Signals 2005)
• Last Contact - (2007) - shortstory by Stephen Baxter
• About the Contributors (Alien Contact) - (2012) - essay by uncredited

Ships are sinking for no apparent reason, carrying hundreds to a dark underwater grave. Strange fireballs race through the sky above the deepest trenches of the oceans. Something is about to show itself, something terrible and alien, a force capable of causing global catastrophe.

Also published as Out of the Deeps.

In the sleepy English village of Midwich, a mysterious silver object appears and all the inhabitants fall unconscious. A day later the object is gone and everyone awakens unharmed – except that all the women in the village are discovered to be pregnant. The resultant children of Midwich do not belong to their parents: all are blonde, all are golden eyed. They grow up too fast and their minds exhibit frightening abilities that give them control over others and brings them into conflict with the villagers just as a chilling realisation dawns on the world outside . . .

The Midwich Cuckoos is the classic tale of aliens in our midst, exploring how we respond when confronted by those who are innately superior to us in every conceivable way.

The Midwich Cuckoos was made into a feature film title The Village of the Damned.

Following a failed alien invasion the world left is sparsely populated with psychologically scarred survivors, some of them technologically-enhanced women. Lo, leader of the small safe haven of Saugatuck, find their technological enhancements put to the test when a spaceship arrives bearing two men with both wonderful and terrifying news. Is this the beginning of a new era of reconstruction -- or the start of a new battle for survival? Not everyone in town wants to fight every comer. Not everyone in town shares Lo's mistrust of outsiders. This is the story not only of Lo's battle to protect the safe isolation of her unique community, but also of her struggle to come to terms with a constantly changing and uncertain world.

2000 years in the future, runaway pollution has made the Earth uninhabitable except in giant biodomes. The society is an anarchy, with disputes mediated through the Machiavellian Committee for the Revolution. Mars, Venus and the Moon support flourishing colonies of various political stripes. On the fringes of the solar system, in the Gas Planets, a strange, new, violent kind of human has evolved. In this unstable system the anarchist Paula Mendoza, an agent of the Committee, works to make peace, and ultimately protect her people, in a catastrophic clash of worlds that destroys the order she knows.

In the year A.D. 3000, Earth is a dystopian wasteland, plundered of its natural resources by alien invaders known as Psychlos. Fewer than thirty-five thousand humans survive in a handful of communities scattered across the face of a post-apocalyptic Earth.

From the ashes of humanity rises a young hero, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler. Setting off on an initial quest to discover a hidden evil, Jonnie unlocks the mystery of humanity’s demise and unearths a crucial weakness in their oppressors. Spreading the seeds of revolt, Jonnie and a small band of survivors pit their quest for freedom in an all-out rebellion that erupts across the continents of Earth and the cosmic sprawl of the Psychlo empire, making it one of the best space opera books of our time.

For the fate of the Galaxy lies on the Battlefield of Earth.

In the Year 1995, high above Earth in starlit velvet blackness, three people encounter one of Man's greatest hopes and most terrifying fears-intelligent alien life.

Nathaniel Broadsword, the ruggedly handsome space shuttle captain. Margot Chambers, his strong, sensual co-pilot. And Curtiss Baxter, the irascible loner who thought he'd left Earth's problems behind him long ago.

They want adventure, and they get it-with the discovery of a great mass hurtling towards Earth. Soon, much to soon, it is close enough to be identified. A ship. A Battleship-ten miles long. No communication can raise it. No pleas for peace can stop it. They call it Armada. And its purposeis suddenly, frighteningly clear...

There was no life on the asteroid, but the miles of rock-hewn corridors through which the earth party wandered left no doubt about the purpose of the asteroid.

It was a mighty fortress, stocked with weapons of destruction beyond man's power to understand.

And yet there was no life here, nor had there been for untold centuries.

What race had built this stronghold? What unimaginable power were they defending against? Why was it abandoned? There was no answer, all was dead.

But--not quite all.

For in a room above the tomb-like fortress a powerful transmitter beamed its birdlike, fluting sounds toward earth. Near it, on a huge star-map of the universe, with light-years measured by inches, ten tiny red sparks were moving, crawling inexorably toward the center.

Moving, at many times the speed of light, with the acquired mass of suns... moving, on a course that would pass through the solar system.

The unknown aliens would not even see our sun explode from the force of their passing, would not even notice the tiny speck called Earth as it died....

This short story oginally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May-June 2017. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection (2018), edited by Gardner Dozois.

From a world far beyond our own, the ultimate invasion is here.

Alien horror becomes a living nightmare as the xenos, meaning "strangers", inflict mayhem on earth. International distress alerts are sent out when planes first seem to disappear, disturbing concepts of space and time and leaving a trail of death and disillusionment.

This bizarre series of "cosmic skyjackings" is shrouded in secrecy by a baffled and frightened military. Intense surveillance fails to reveal the cause of a seemingly hostile yet invisible enemy.

Aircraft continue to disappear, plucked out of the sky without warning, only to reappear months later, thousands of miles off course. National and global security is under threat and the ICARUS committee is formed to investigate.

Military officials, the government and the FBI work alongside physician Mark Freedman and Soviet scientists to uncover the supernatural mystery that lies behind these unexplainable events.

Earth has been found by a horde of creatures that not even the wildest imagination could invent - sinister parasitic creatures that took to their human hosts with deadly speed and bloodthirsty precision.

The terror that unfolds has terrifying consequences for all involved, and the invasion reveals something much more frightening and final than ever suspected.

Earth Has Been Found is a gripping and chilling first contact sci fi novel, from classic science fiction author D. F. Jones.

This Island Earth's thrills and romance begin when engineer Cal Meacham places a routine order for parts; he never dreams he is making himself a pawn in a struggle for galactic supremacy.

A fixup novel derived from three stories appearing in Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1949 and 1950.

The 1955 film version, directed by Joseph Newman, is one of the best-known science fiction films of the 1950s.

The year is 1999. The millennium is approaching fast, and America is ready to believe that the World is indeed about to End. The economy is a disaster, despite a complete restructuring of the money supply. Nuclear war in the middle east has created a new, permanent gasoline shortage. Gene-splicing technology has given terrorists almost undetectable weapons. Poverty, drugs, disease are rampant in the cities, while the new Christian Fundamentalism has taken almost total control of the countryside. The Church is even running the prison system. The most popular on-line news service in America is the Hemisphere Confidential Report, a computer network descendant of today's supermarket tabloids.

George Eberhart is HCR's top reporter and writer--once a legitmate newsman, the crumbling economy has forced him into writing "news" that is little more than fiction. But now George is onto something, something real. He has perceived a pattern in the sensationalist stories he reports, a pattern that has led him to believe that the stories of alien invasion may be something more than hysteria.

The Reverend Jimmy-Don Gilray is a TV evangelist, whose Zion Tribulation Hour brings in millions of dollars and converts every day. His message is simple: on the stroke of midnight, December 31, 1999, God will send his messengers to Earth in a spaceship, and the Day of Judgement will dawn. There is nothing that The Rev wants less than some reporter proving that the Aliens are already here.

And meanwhile, all over America, strange beings who look human are doing totally inexplicable things--committing acts which seem like meaningless cruelty or kindness to their victims.

Once upon a time, in the haunted city of Derry (site of IT and INSOMNIA), four young boys did a brave thing; something that changed them in ways they hardly understand. A quarter-century later, the boys are men who still get together once a year, to go hunting in the north woods of Maine. But this time, a man comes stumbling into their camp, lost, disoriented and muttering about lights in the sky. Before long, these old friends will be plunged into the most remarkable events of their lives and a terrible struggle with a creature from another world. Their only chance of survival is locked in their past and in the boy they once rescued as a child.

A unique imagination illuminates all of William Tenn's work. In this remarkable collection of his short stories, he ranges from the hilarious to the serious, demonstrating vividly his gift for making any dimension of reality as real and immediate as your own street. There are four or five amazing hours of reading for you in this book.

Giant, technologically superior aliens have conquered Earth, but humankind survives - even flourishes in a way. Men and women live, like mice, in burrows in the massive walls of the huge homes of the aliens, and scurry about under their feet, stealing from them. A complex social and religious order has evolved, with women preserving knowledge and working as healers, and men serving as warriors and thieves. For the aliens, men and women are just a nuisance, nothing more than vermin. Which, ironically, may just be humankind's strength and point the way forward.

"The Rithian Terror" is an expanded version of the novella "Double Meaning" originally published in "Startling Stories", January 1953. The expanded edition originally appeared in Ace Double M-113 (1965).

Seven Rithians had landed on Earth. Six had been disposed of. One was loose and had to be found.

But how do you detect a monster that can disguise itself as a man... any man?

The Earth has forcibly been taken from its orbit. It began with an extra-terrestrial pyramid on top of Mt. Everest. And then a "runaway planet" took the Earth as its binary. And now harsh generations have passed since the inhabitants last saw the light of their sun, Sol. Society has grown rigid. The meek lambs have inherited the Earth, even it's a very poor Earth, indeed. It's a hard world for all. But Glenn Tropile is no lamb and if his citizens finds out he's a wolf, it will be the wolf that goes to slaughter.

Delyafam is our world! And these "human" strangers had best move warily here! I am the Kimassu Lady; my duty is to restore equity. "Madame Judge-and-jury," Neill, the dead Terren walking, calls me. "Grem; policechief." Words. Terre words. Though I have learned their language, I cannot understand them. So many differences: their "technology"; their "war"; their males unnaturally the rulers; their lack of all female virtues, especially honor.

Neill claims we are outgunned, outmanned, and outscienced. Worse, my ethical, fiercely conservative people are contemptuous of dangers they cannot understand and will not see; dare I defy... yet I must somehow drive these "guests" who-would-be-conquerors from our blue seas. I restore equity. There--must--be--a--way......

A moving fascinating tale of two opposed alien cultures.

"When the alien gets around to unzipping her jumpsuit it'll be impossible to see what's underneath."

UFOlogist Harold Flint is heartbroken and depressed that the aliens that have landed on the White House lawn appear to be straight out of an old B movie. They wave to the television cameras in their sequined jumpsuits, form a nonprofit organization offering new age enlightenment, and hover their saucers over the streets of New York looking for converts.

Harold wants no part of this kitschy invasion until one of the aliens, a beautiful blonde named Asket, begs him to investigate the saucers again and write another UFO book. The aliens and their mission are not as they seem.

Asket isn't who she seems either. Tracking down her true personality leads Harold and his cowriter through a maze of identity and body-swapping madness, descending into paranoia as Harold realizes that reality, or at least humanity's perception of it, may be more flexible than anyone will admit.

After the Saucers Landed is a deeply unsettling experimental satire, placing author Douglas Lain alongside contemporaries like Jeff VanderMeer and Charles Yu as one of his generation's most exciting and challenging speculative fiction voices.

"The Wandering Earth" is a collection of short stories by Cixin Liu, China's most acclaimed contemporary science-fiction author. Unabashedly classic in the great tradition of Asimov and Clarke, Cixin Liu's science-fiction is firmly rooted in the cosmic.

Cixin Liu uses the unique perspective of science-fiction to take us on a journey into this majestic, desolate cosmos. He gives us the chance to reacquaint ourselves with the fundamental truth that in the face of a vast universe we are no more than a speck of dust; That the Earth is just another celestial body – And an extremely vulnerable one at that. The flash of a gamma-ray burst or the blast of a nearby supernova could, at any moment, reduce our cherished home to nothing but ashes. It can be terrifying to contemplate the end of our world and stories that describe such destruction can be disturbing. At the same time however, they can leave us feeling not only entertained, but exhilarated and inspired. Maybe, they can even give us a chance to renew our love of life.

Most stories found in the "The Wandering Earth" collection take us to a sci-fi vision of Earth's end. But here, there are no Hollywood aliens, descending from the depths of space to blow up our cities. In these futures, the dangers humanity faces are much stranger and whimsical than that. The unexpected calamities that befall his richly detailed worlds are only eclipsed by humanity's epic, but always plausible, attempts to escape destruction.

In all this peril and doom, Cixin Liu always feels for humanity. His stories are full of a deep love for all of Earth's peoples. But even this love does not escape reflection and even ridicule when viewed through his unrelenting cosmic lens. No matter how dearly one loves the Earth, humanity and all its cultures, there is no avoiding the cold, hard truth that they mean absolutely nothing when viewed against the vastness of the universe. But even an infinite universe could not change the simple fact that we are worthy of love, that we need love. It is this twist that lies at the very heart of the stories in this collection.

Hugo, Nebula and Locus award winning novella. It originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, September 1979. At least three different versions of the novella have been published. It can be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction Novellas of the Year #2 (1980) edited by Terry Carr, Nebula Winners Fifteen (1981), edited by Frank Herbert, Baker's Dozen: 13 Short Science Fiction Novels (1985) edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh, and The Hugo Winners, Volume 5: (1980-82) (1986), edited by Isaac Asimov. It is half of Tor Double #6: Enemy Mine/Another Orphan (1989, with John Kessel) and is included in the collection Manifest Destiny (1980).

The story was made into the movie Enemy Mine directed by Wolfgang Petersen and starring Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett, Jr. in 1985. The movie in turn was the basis van the novelization Enemy Mine (1985), written in collaboration with David Gerrold.

How do you help a man that doesn't want to be helped?

A man used by Aliens as an incubation tank, who believes his only friends are Aliens, finds himself thrust back out into his natural environment.

He becomes an Outcast when he finds himself back amongst humans, unable to adjust to life without his Alien overseers.

Alone, Ale stands between two opposing forces - Aliens and Humans. His allegiances to both are stretched to breaking point.

How can this damaged Human protect his loved ones from an Alien force so powerful that they dominate our planet? How can one man make the difference?

Can a man, this broken, find love again? And where?

This is his story.

2026: Something is growing in the Pacific Ocean, a strange fungus-like organism that may threaten our entire food chain. Christened "the slick," the bizarre phenomenon is quickly the subject of intense, top-secret analysis-which rapidly reveals that it contains DNA unlike that of any other life on the planet.

Where is it from? A Chinese mission to Mars is rumored to have discovered life beneath the Martian icecap, but the Chinese aren't talking. Dr. Mariella Anders is recruited by NASA to join an urgent mission to the Red Planet to find out. Brilliant and committed to science, Mariella wants only the truth, but others' motives are less noble. Faced with corporations, activist groups, and superpowers, each with their own secret agendas, Mariella is on a perilous quest for knowledge... and she's about the discover the high price of truth.

She was a restoree, kidnapped. Torn from Earth by a bizarre and nameless black force, Sara had no idea where she was or why she was in a beautiful new body. Controlled by brutal guards and tamed by terror, she could not comprehend her role as a nurse for a man who appeared to be an idiot.

But once she discovered that the planet she had been brought to was Lothar and that the man she was caring for was its regent, Sara knew the restorees had to escape--and fast. And when they did, they became fugitives on a world of multiple evils--bound together on a daring adventure that would either join them for all time... or separate them forever.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, August 2011. It was later expanded into the Campbell-nominated full-length novel Defenders.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

When Earth is invaded by telepathic aliens, humanity responds by creating the defenders. They are the perfect warriors - seventeen feet tall, knowing and loving nothing but war, their minds closed to the aliens. The question is, what do you do with millions of genetically engineered warriors once the war is won?

A novel of power, alliances, violence, redemption, sacrifice and yearning for connection, Defenders presents a revolutionary new vision of alien invasion.

Melanie Stryder refuses to fade away. The earth has been invaded by a species that takes over the minds of their human hosts while leaving their bodies intact, and most of humanity has succumbed.

Wanderer, the invading 'soul' who has been given Melanie's body, knew about the challenges of living inside a human: the overwhelming emotions, the too-vivid memories. But there was one difficulty Wanderer didn't expect: the former tenant of her body refusing to relinquish possession of her mind.

Melanie fills Wanderer's thoughts with visions of the man Melanie loves - Jared, a human who still lives in hiding. Unable to separate herself from her body's desires, Wanderer yearns for a man she's never met. As outside forces make Wanderer and Melanie unwilling allies, they set off to search for the man they both love.

I was home alone on a Saturday night when I experienced the most beautiful piece of music I had ever heard in my life.

Beautiful Remorse is the hot new band on the scene, releasing one track a day for ten days straight. Each track has a mysterious name and a strangely powerful effect on the band's fans.

A curious music blogger decides to investigate the phenomenon up close by following Beautiful Remorse on tour across Texas and Kansas, realizing along the way that the band’s lead singer, is hiding an incredible, impossible secret.

Who will save us from the lobsters from outer space?

It is New York City, 1953. Young pulp-fiction writer Kurt Jastrow's world is thrown into disarray when two extraterrestrial lobster-like creatures arrive at the NBC studios. Though rabid fans of Kurt's "scientific" alter-ego, loveable scientist Uncle Wonder, they also judge that the audience of a religious TV program is "a hive of irrationalist vermin." To Jastrow's horror, the crustaceans scheme to vaporize two million viewers when the next show goes on the air.

Now Jastrow and his co-conspirators have a mere forty hours to produce a script so explicitly rational and yet utterly absurd that it will somehow deter the aliens from their diabolical scheme...

They first appear as a series of dots on astronomical plates, heading from Saturn directly toward Earth. Since the ringed planet carries no life, scientists deduce the mysterious ship to be a visitor from another star.

The world's frantic efforts to signal the aliens go unanswered. The first contact is hostile: the invaders blast a Soviet space station, seize the survivors, and then destroy every dam and installation on Earth with a hail of asteriods.

Now the conquerors are descending on the American heartland, demanding servile surrender--or death for all humans.

Sixty-two years after human life on Earth was annihilated by rampaging alien invaders, the enigmatic Messenger O is sent back in time with a mission to unite humanity of past eras-during the Second World War and ancient Japan, and even back to the dawn of the species itself-to defeat the invasion before it begins. However, in a future shredded by war and genocide, love waits for O. Will O save humanity only to doom himself?

When a massive object crashes into the ocean off the coast of Lagos, Nigeria's most populous and legendary city, three people wandering along Bar Beach (Adaora, the marine biologist- Anthony, the rapper famous throughout Africa- Agu, the troubled soldier) find themselves running a race against time to save the country they love and the world itself... from itself. Lagoon expertly juggles multiple points of view and crisscrossing narratives with prose that is at once propulsive and poetic, combining everything from superhero comics to Nigerian mythology to tie together a story about a city consuming itself.

At its heart a story about humanity at the crossroads between the past, present, and future, Lagoon touches on political and philosophical issues in the rich tradition of the very best science fiction, and ultimately asks us to consider the things that bind us together--and the things that make us human.

There was no time to flee. No time to turn. No time to shriek. And there was no pain. It was like being thrown into the stars.

The year is 2021. The Cold War has stalemated into an "eternally frozen peace." The major geopolitical groups--America, Russia, Europe, Latin/South America, and Asia--have completely isolated from each other. There is no communication, no trade, no cultural exchange of any kind.

A minority of humans have developed powers of telepathy. As the narrator explains, "The total breakdown of intercontinental communication coincided with a sudden upwelling of psi powers among humanity--as if the blockade of Europe and the confiscation of amateur radio equipment had somehow impelled evolution to provide some new means of communication."

In the North American bubble, John Amory rails against the restrictions of an overly conservative society. ("The real Amory had to stay hidden. He never dared express an opinion not carefully tailored to the expectations of his co-workers.") He fancies himself an intellectual and an artist, but he is forced to work for a television studio where art is dictated by ratings, advertising and "an amorphous, anonymous tyranny--public opinion".

Amory's life is upended when he is approached by an emissary of alien archaeologists who want to collect Earth's most precious literature, films, music and paintings. But Amory soon begins to suspect they are actually preparing an invasion army. Using the powers of telepaths and the influence of television, can he find a way to unite the nations of Earth in time to save us all?

The late 21st century seems like a good time to be alive. Earth is at peace. Humans now command self-replicating machines that create engineering marvels on enormous scales. Artificial habitats dot the solar system. Anti-matter driven Valkyrie rockets carry explorers to the stars at nearly the speed of light. All seems well.

Then, from the uncaring black of space come swarms of relativistic missiles. Though they are merely boulder-sized hunks of metal, they move fast enough to hit with the force of many nuclear arsenals. They are impossible to track and impossible to stop. Humanity is all but wiped out by the horrific bombardment.

A handful of survivors desperately struggle to escape the alien mop-up fleet. They hide close to the sun, inside asteroids, beneath the crusts of moons, within ice rings, and in the fathomless depths of interstellar space. But most are hunted down and slaughtered.

The last man and woman on Earth are captured as zoo specimens. In the belly of an alien starship, a squid-like being relates to them the pitiless logic behind human-kind's execution: the moment humans learned to travel at relativistic speeds was the moment mankind simply became too dangerous a neighbor to have around. Nothing personal.

Trina Goldberg-Oneka is a fifty-year-old trans woman whose life is irreversibly altered in the wake of a gentle - but nonetheless world-changing - invasion by an alien entity called The Seep. Through The Seep, everything is connected. Capitalism falls, hierarchies and barriers are broken down; if something can be imagined, it is possible.

Trina and her wife, Deeba, live blissfully under The Seep's utopian influence - until Deeba begins to imagine what it might be like to be reborn as a baby, which will give her the chance at an even better life. Using Seeptech to make this dream a reality, Deeba moves on to a new existence, leaving Trina devastated.

Heartbroken and deep into an alcoholic binge, Trina follows a lost boy she encounters, embarking on an unexpected quest. In her attempt to save him from The Seep, she will confront not only one of its most avid devotees, but the terrifying void that Deeba has left behind.

Gregorio Rivas is retired from the Redemptionist trade - at thirty-one, he's no longer willing to risk his life rescuing new recruits from the savage religion of the Messiah Norton Jaybush, no longer eager to track the caravans of the faithful through the mutated wildernesses of Los Angeles. Once he was the best Redemptionist for hire - once he even tracked a victim right up to the walls of the Messiah's perilous Holy City in Irvine - but that's all over now.

Or it was - until he's approached to perform one last Redemption. And this time the victim who has been brainwashed and carried away by the brutal faith is his long-lost first love, Urania.

And so Rivas sets out to save her, beginning a violent pilgrimage that will take him through the landscape-of-the-damned which is 22nd Century California, and into the very heart of the Jaybush cult - and finally to the nightmare city of Venice, and the fabulous, feared castle at the core of it... Deviant's Palace.

The year is 1893, and the workaday life of a young commercial traveller is enlivened by his lady friend when she takes him to the laboratory of Sir William Reynolds, who is building a Time Machine. It is but a small step into futurity, the beginning of a series of adventures that culminate in a violent confrontation with the most ruthless intellect in the Universe.

This novella originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July-August 2011. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Ninth Annual Collection (2012), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Not One of Us: Stories of Aliens on Earth (2018), edited by Neil Clarke.

Locus-winning and Hugo-nominated Novella

A vast conflict, one that has encompassed hundreds of worlds and solar systems, appears to be finally at an end. A conscripted soldier is beginning to consider her life after the war and the family she has left behind. But for Scur -- and for humanity -- peace is not to be.

On the brink of the ceasefire, Scur is captured by a renegade war criminal, and left for dead in the ruins of a bunker. She revives aboard a prisoner transport vessel. Something has gone terribly wrong with the ship.

Passengers -- combatants from both sides of the war -- are waking up from hibernation far too soon. Their memories, embedded in bullets, are the only links to a world which is no longer recognizable. And Scur will be reacquainted with her old enemy, but with much higher stakes than just her own life.

Russia, 1946. With the Nazis recently defeated, Stalin gathers half a dozen of the top Soviet science fiction authors in a dacha in the countryside. Convinced that the defeat of America is only a few years away-and equally convinced that the Soviet Union needs a massive external threat to hold it together-Stalin orders the writers to compose a massively detailed and highly believable story about an alien race poised to invade the earth. The little group of writers gets down to the task and spends months working until new orders come from Moscow to immediately halt the project. The scientists obey and live their lives until, in the aftermath of Chernobyl, the survivors gather again, because something strange has happened: the story they invented in 1946 is starting to come true.

THREE TO CONQUER (Previously published as CALL HIM DEAD): It's the day-after-tomorrow in the USA. Wade Harper is a telepath, as far as he knows the only one in existence. He has managed to keep his paranormal abilities concealed, sure in the knowledge that his beloved government will try anything, including vivisection, to attempt to learn the source of his power. Until a chance encounter reveals to Harper that alien beings have invaded Earth --- and no one else on the planet can possibly detect them! Can he battle the menace without giving up his treasured secrecy?

The war has raged for nearly a year and Earth desperately needs an edge to overcome the Sirian Empire's huge advantage in personnel and equipment. That's where James Mowry comes in. Intensively trained, his appearance surgically altered, Mowry secretly lands on one of the Empire's planets. His mission: to sap morale, cause mayhem, tie up resources, and wage a one-man war on a planet of 80 million--in short, to be like the wasp buzzing around a car to distract the driver...and causing him to crash.

There's one thing worse than dying. It's coming back to do it again and again...When the alien Gitai invade, Keiji Kiriya is just one of many raw recruits shoved into a suit of battle armor and sent out to kill. Keiji dies on the battlefield, only to find himself reborn each morning to fight and die again and again. On the 158th iteration though, he sees something different, something out of place: the female soldier known as the Bitch of War. Is the Bitch the key to Keiji's escape, or to his final death?

Archaeologist Brandon Thackery and his rival Miles 'Klicks' Jordan fulfill a dinosaur lover's dream with history's first time-travel jaunt to the late Mesozoic. Hoping to solve the extinction mystery, they find Earth's gravity is only half its 21st century value and dinosaurs that behave very strangely. Could the slimey blue creatures from Mars have something to do with both?

This Nebula-winning and Hugo-nominated novelette was collected in Out of the Everywhere and Other Extraordinary Visions (1981) and Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (1990) and anthologized in The 1978 Annual World's Best SF (1978), Nebula Winners Thirteen (1980), Armageddons (1999) and Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology (2015).

Read this story online for free at the Sci Fiction archive.

Originally appeared in Ace Double D-237 in 1957.

Global overcrowding, a new immortality serum and an unfriendly alien ambassador are only a few of the problems confronting Roy Walton, government's new Master of Life and Death in Robert Silverberg's early and accomplished novel. Praised by a distinguished critic, Anthony Boucher, for "its complete clarity and narrative drive" the novel retains its power today.

It Was The Worst of Times...

Fifteen feet tall, the Entities land in cities across Earth. Ignoring humankind, they wall themselves in impenetrable enclaves, enslaving a few willing collaborators with their telepathic PUSH. Then they plunge humans into a new Dark Age without electricity, allowing us to live--but no longer as a dominant species.

But a few refuse to submit to fate, including the Carmichael family, whose patriarch, an aging colonel devoted to resistance, will inspire a daring new generation of dissidents. United in spirit, these diverse rebels--an aging hippie, a cold-blooded Muslim assassin, a prodigal son, and a renegade hacker--will carry on the colonel's legacy as they attempt to kill the mysterious Prime Entity and free the planet.

Expanded from the 1958 novella of the same name. The novel appeared in Ace Double F-195 (1963).

Abner Harris was sent to Earth on a mission of extreme urgency: the universe was in danger of enslavement by the pebble-skinned Medlins, and the fight against them called for Harris to assume the disguise of a flesh-and-blood Earthman.

But once in that new synthetic body, he discovered that the real villains of space were not the Medlins or the people of Earth; THEY WERE HIS OWN KIND.

Suddenly he was alone, alienated from his own race, hated by the Medlins, and an imposter on Earth. No matter what side he chose he'd be a traitor.

Yet choose he must... or forever remain a man without a planet.

An alien invasion which begins with the landing on Jerry Conklin's car of what looks like a huge black box changes life in Lone Pine, Minnesota, and threatens to destroy Earth's civilization, An alien invasion which begins with the landing on Jerry Conklin's car of what looks like a huge black box changes life in Lone Pine, Minnesota, and threatens to destroy Earth's civilization.

Money was worthless; it had no value! It couldn't buy housing, clothing, or food. Someone with enormous quantities of cash was buying houses and tearing them down, buying stores and closing them.

Perhaps a few people could have stopped the transactions before it was too late. They could have said that Earth was being taken over by alien beings in the shapes of bowling balls, talking dogs, and dolls that walked like men.

In fact, they did say it. The trouble was, no one believed them!

Earth, 2065 A.D.: Destruction and confusion everywhere. Cities are deserted, the population is decimated, and the few humans who remain struggle to survive against an insidious alien presence that is consuming the very life energy of this wounded world. The presence is spreading across the planet, infecting everything in its path, killing the Earth one life at a time. Only Dr. Aki Ross, brilliant young woman haunted by dreams of death, may hold the key to saving the world.

When the Inter-Planetary Corporation's (IPC) crack liner, "IPV Arcturus", took off on a routine flight to Mars, it turned out to be the beginning of an unexpected and long voyage.

There had been too many reports of errors in ship's flight positions from the Check Stations and brilliant physicist Dr. Percival Stevens is aboard the Arcturus on a fact-finding mission to find out what's really happening, and hopefully save the honor of the brave pilots of the space-liner Arcturus from the Check Stations desk-jockeys' implications of imprecision - the nastiest insult one could cast at a ship's pilot.

He and the pilots are right, it was the Check Stations that were out of position, not the ships. But that is cold consolation because before the Arcturus reaches Mars, it is attacked by a small, mysterious, globe-shaped space-ship...

At the height of the Cold War, officials at the Ministry of Defence conducted a highly secret investigation into unusual events that occurred along a strip of rugged coastline within the Pembrokeshire National Park nicknamed 'The Broad Haven Triangle'. The events made national headlines: lights and objects hovering in the sky, ghostly figures peering into farmhouse windows, cowering animals, and poltergeists plaguing a terrified family of witnesses.

Thirty years later, official files pertaining to these occurrences were finally released for public scrutiny at the National Archives. The disclosure prompted a new witness to come forward to speak of what he knew. His testimony rocked the very foundations of the British Government. This is his story.

Fraa Erasmas is a young avout living in the Concent of Saunt Edhar, a sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the outside "saecular" world by ancient stone, honored traditions, and complex rituals. Over the centuries, cities and governments have risen and fallen beyond the concent's walls. Three times during history's darkest epochs violence born of superstition and ignorance has invaded and devastated the cloistered mathic community. Yet the avout have always managed to adapt in the wake of catastrophe, becoming out of necessity even more austere and less dependent on technology and material things. And Erasmas has no fear of the outside-the Extramuros-for the last of the terrible times was long, long ago.

Now, in celebration of the week-long, once-in-a-decade rite of Apert, the fraas and suurs prepare to venture beyond the concent's gates-at the same time opening them wide to welcome the curious "extras" in. During his first Apert as a fraa, Erasmas eagerly anticipates reconnecting with the landmarks and family he hasn't seen since he was "collected." But before the week is out, both the existence he abandoned and the one he embraced will stand poised on the brink of cataclysmic change.

Powerful unforeseen forces jeopardize the peaceful stability of mathic life and the established ennui of the Extramuros-a threat that only an unsteady alliance of saecular and avout can oppose-as, one by one, Erasmas and his colleagues, teachers, and friends are summoned forth from the safety of the concent in hopes of warding off global disaster. Suddenly burdened with a staggering responsibility, Erasmas finds himself a major player in a drama that will determine the future of his world-as he sets out on an extraordinary odyssey that will carry him to the most dangerous, inhospitable corners of the planet... and beyond.

Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Theodore Sturgeon reinvents the alien invasion novel with this heart-stopping story of a malevolent, galaxy-consuming hive mind and its surprising human host

Drunk, angry, abusive, and pathetic, Dan Gurlick exists at the very lowest level of human civilization, sleeping in junkyard cars and scrounging through garbage cans for his dinner. But his last rotting meal contains something unexpected: a spore that originated from a galaxy many light-years away. First, Dan eats the spore, then, the spore eats Dan; and the homeless alcoholic becomes a host for the Medusa. An insatiable alien hive mind, the Medusa has already consumed the life forms of a billion planets. Now, it hungers for the dominant species of Earth. But to do so, it must somehow unite the planet's intelligent creatures into a single shared consciousness: an assignment the miserable wretch Dan may prove surprisingly capable of carrying out.

To Marry Medusa is suspenseful, inventive, and surprisingly compassionate; a vibrant and unforgettable exploration of what it means to be more—or less—than human.

This ebook features an illustrated biography of Theodore Sturgeon including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the University of Kansas's Kenneth Spencer Research Library and the author's estate, among other sources.

originally published in 1958 as The Cosmic Rape.

March 9th, 1997: A family murdered, a daughter missing. All evidence points to a dangerous suspect: ex-Navy SEAL Patrick Mursult, who has vanished without a trace. NCIS Special Agent Shannon Moss is determined to take down Mursult and bring the girl home. But Moss isn't only up against the clock -- working together with the FBI, the case runs against walls of uncooperative witnesses and a lack of solid leads. Spanning the coal towns and mountains of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, every moment without a break in the case brings everyone involved closer to tragedy.

Shannon Moss, however, is one of the few federal agents with clearance to investigate strands of the multiverse -- to experience possible futures that grow out of the circumstances of the present.

April 19th, 2014: Moss arrives seventeen years in the future to question witnesses whose lives have changed far from their fears and tensions that had made them so reticent to talk about the killing of the Mursult family when it was close at hand. Filling in details of the long past case, Moss learns the terrible truth about Mursult and the fate of the missing girl.

Moss returns to the present with the information she needs to close the case, but at what cost? Every decision she makes, every plot she unravels, has terrifying consequences -- consequences she sees with every trip to a new future.

A complex science fiction story of a secret military research project involving the investigative powers of the mind and their possible strategic applications and a distant planet which is being threatened by a monumental interstellar entity.

Humans who have shown indications of telepathic ability make mental contact with the Tyrenni, strange alien beings resembling winged squids who dwell in the upper atmosphere of their tempestuous world. But the Tyrenni are threatened by a huge being and forced into the decision to take over the bodies of their human contacts...

Harris Moffatt III, President of the Free United States and Prime Minister of Canada, has never seen Washington, D.C.; it belongs to the Krolp now, along with ninety percent of everything. All he can do is try to keep the rest of it out of their hands.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Contains:

• Vault of the Beast
• The Great Engine
• The Great Judge
• Secret Unattainable
• The Harmonizer
• Heir Unapparent
• The Second Solution
• Film Library
• Asylum

"Man has conquered space and spread throughout the galaxy. Many civilizations of widely varied life forms on several thousand planets are joined in a vast confederation whose existence is threatened by one paranoid race--the Rull. A form so alien that it may have come from some other galaxy, the Rull are man's equal in intelligence and they have a technology which may be superior. Their space-ship fleets have captured several hundred planets, and the final Armageddon which will decide man's fate and that of his galaxy is imminent.

"Scientist Trevor Jamieson, an advance scout in this war of the worlds, ranges the Milky Way as he tries to formulate a last-ditch plan of defense. Of necessity, he plays a lone hand. The Rulls can change their outward appearance at will, and anyone--even his closest friends and colleagues--may be Rull spies. Jamieson fights preliminary skirmishes on several planets thousands of light-years from home.

"At the end he meets the Rull commander in a man-to-Rull duel in which no holds are barred and the weapons used are the most sophisticated instruments of warfare that man and Rull (and Van Vogt) have yet devised."

This novel is based on stories which originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction Magazine under the following titles:

• "Repetition", 1940
• "Cooperate or Else", 1942
• "The Second Solution", 1942
• "The Rull", 1948
• "The Sound", 1950"

Publication of this book has been cancelled by the author.

It's the twenty-fourth century. Humanity has spread throughout the solar system -- but for most of us, life is as precarious as it was in Dickensian England. And while individuals can change their sex at will, traditional gender roles are enforced with unyielding severity.

Brothers Achille, Marcantonio, and Nore have been raised rich, but after their father spends the family fortune and puts a laser to his head, they're forced to face facts. The wealthy Luke Bailey is willing to pay top dollar for what's left of their estate, enough to buy Achille a commission in the space Navy. But only if Marcantonio and Nore will both become female -- Marcantonio to marry Luke, and Nore to be their spinster housekeeper, for as long as Luke lives.

Over the next two decades, the now-female Marcantonio and Nore struggle to make lives for themselves in the service of their wealthy keeper. Then the alien invasion arrives.

When a young British couple, who make jigsaw puzzles, are hired by an ageing Norwegian to take nude photos of themselves in a sculpture park in Oslo, they are drawn into a web of occult Nazi horror. Even more horrifying will be the fate of the whole world some years later if alien visitors achieve their secret aims.

However, the aftermath of events in that Oslo park will provide Anna Sharman with a key to unlock those aims.

Anna is a rebel within Britain's intelligence service at a time when most of the world appeases the aliens because of the gifts they bring - and if she must lose her own body in order to discover the truth, she will do so.

Shiley Jackson Award winning and Hugo and BSFA Award nominated short story. Originally published in Clarkesworld Magazine, January 2010. It can aslo be found in the anthologies Clarkesworld: Year Four (2013), edited by Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Five (2011), edited by Jonathan Strahan, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2011, edited by Rich Horton and The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection (2011), edited by Gadner Dozois. The story is collected in Beyond the Rift (2013).

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

H. G. Wells

Scientific visionary. Social prophet. Master storyteller. Few novelists have captivated generations of readers like H. G. Wells. In enduring, electrifying detail, he takes us to dimensions of time and space that have haunted our dreams for centuries -- and shows us ourselves as we really are.

The Time Machine

In the heart of Victorian England, an inquisitve gentleman known only as the Time Traveler constructs an elaborate invention that hurtles him hundreds of thousands of years into the future. There he finds himself in the violent center of the ultimate conflict between beings of light and creatures of darkness.

The War of the Worlds

Martians invade Great Britain, laying waste turn-of-the-century London. This tale of conquest by superior beings with superadvanced technology is so nightmarishly real that an adaptation by Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater sent hundreds of impressionable radio listeners into panicked flight forty years after the story's original publication.

"30 Day Wonder" is a great tale in which Aliens comically invade Earth, written by science fiction specialist, Richard Wilson.

The story revolves around a reporter--a good one--who's an average guy with a sense of humor and reasonable views about the rights of his fellow man. Maybe that's why the Monolithians picked him to head up their public-relations program. After all, they had to reach a lot of average people and even though they were invulnerable, they couldn't afford to take chances. Because they had a message, and EVERYBODY had to be convinced. So he didn't have any choice in the matter... That's where the system went wrong... no choice. Act peaceful. Love thy neighbor. Obey the law. Why, people could go mad living that way. And many would.

Cassie Klyne, nineteen years old, lives in the United States in the year 2015-but it's not our United States, and it's not our 2015.

Cassie's world has been at peace since the Great Armistice of 1918. There was no World War II, no Great Depression. Poverty is declining, prosperity is increasing everywhere; social instability is rare. But Cassie knows the world isn't what it seems. Her parents were part of a group who gradually discovered the awful truth: that for decades-back to the dawn of radio communications-human progress has been interfered with, made more peaceful and benign, by an extraterrestrial entity. That by interfering with our communications, this entity has tweaked history in massive and subtle ways. That humanity is, for purposes unknown, being farmed.

Cassie's parents were killed for this knowledge, along with most of the other members of their group. Since then, the survivors have scattered and gone into hiding. Cassie and her younger brother Thomas now live with her aunt Nerissa, who shares these dangerous secrets. Others live nearby. For eight years they have attempted to lead unexceptional lives in order to escape detection. The tactic has worked.

Until now. Because the killers are back. And they're not human.

A new release from Anthology Editions hits the street today.

Immerse yourself in Jack Womack's UFO library with Flying Saucers Are Real!

Flying Saucers Are Real! is a catalogue and history of one of the 20th century's most pervasive subcultures. The collection presents an unknown wealth of images taken from mid-century flying saucer books and extensive text by the author-collector outlining the history of the UFO phenomenon and opining on the selections. This first edition features an introduction by science fiction author William Gibson.

Contents:

• The Saliva Tree
• Danger: Religion!
• Day of the Doomed King
• Legends of Smith's Burst
• The Lonely Habit
• One Role With Relish
• Paternal Care
• A Pleasure Shared
• The Source
• Girl and Robot with Flowers

It was a nothing-special Greenwich Village day...

And good ole Chester Anderson - sometime poet, rock 'n' roll singer and self-proclaimed kinf of the Village - strolled along, content.

Content, that is, until he saw a kid make butterflies.

Real butterflies. The kind with pretty wings that flutter.

What at first seemed amusing, if a little strange, quickly changed. Chester and his ragtag pack of singers, groupies and street-wise prophets had stumbled onto a mind-blowing phenomenon that threatened the whole world.

And only Chester an his ragamuffin crew could save it.

From what? From six-foot, blue lobsters from outer space.

How? With a horrifying plan that hinged on the innocence of... The Butterfly Kid.

As the Arab national army advances through Spain and the Ukraine, and the United States struggles with severe climate problems, a European soldier fighting in the Pyrenees has a close encounter with an alien intelligence.

The Planeteers

Collection containing:

• The Brain Stealers of Mars - novelette
• The Double Minds - novelette
• The Immortality Seekers - novelette
• The Tenth World - novelette
• The Brain Pirates - novelette

The Ultimate Weapon

RED SUN RISING:

The star Mira was unpredictably variable. Sometimes it was blazing, brilliant and hot. Other times it was oddly dim, cool, shedding little warmth on its many planets. Gresth Gkae, leader of the Mirans, was seeking a better star, one to which his "people" could migrate. That star had to be steady, reliable, with a good planetary system. And in his astronomical searching, he found Sol.

With hundreds of ships, each larger than whole Terrestrial spaceports, and traveling faster than the speed of light, the Mirans set out to move in to Solar regions and take over.

And on Earth there was nothing which would be capable of beating off this incredible armada -- until Buck Kendall stumbled upon THE ULTIMATE WEAPON.

In the middle of the South Pacific, a thousand feet below the surface of the water, a huge vessel is discovered resting on the ocean floor. It is a spaceship of phenomenal dimensions, apparently undamaged by its fall from the sky. And, most startling, it appears to be at least three hundred years old.

But even more fantastic—and frightening—is what waits inside . . .

Three hundred years had passed since the Tyr conquered the people of Earth as they had previously overcome numerous races throughout the galaxy. In their victory they had taken the very heart out of the human race, isolating the true individualists, the geniuses, all the people who represented the hopes, dreams, and discoveries of the future, and imprisoning them in dome colonies on planets hostile to human life. There the Tyr, a race which itself shared a unified gestalt mind, had left these gifted individuals to work on projects which would, the conquerers hoped, reveal all of human kind's secrets to them.

Yet Daetrin's secret as one no scientist had ever uncovered, for down through the years he had succeeded in burying it so well that he had even hidden his real nature from himself. But, taken into custody by the Tyr, there was no longer any place left for Daetrin to run, no new name and life for him to assume. Now he would at last be forced to confront the truth about himself—and if he failed, not just Daetrin but all humans would pay the price...

First came the news that a flying saucer had landed in Iowa. Then came the announcement that the whole thing was a hoax. End of story. Case closed.

Except that two agents of the most secret intelligence agency in the U.S. government were on the scene and disappeared without reporting in. And four more agents who were sent in also disappeared. So the head of the agency and his two top agents went in and managed to get out with their discovery: an invasion is underway by slug-like aliens who can touch a human and completely control his or her mind. What the humans know, they know. What the slugs want, no matter what, the human will do. And most of Iowa is already under their control.

Sam Cavanaugh was one of the agents who discovered the truth. Unfortunately, that was just before he was taken over by one of the aliens and began working for the invaders, with no will of his own. And he has just learned that a high official in the Treasury Department is now under control of the aliens. Since the Treasury Department includes the Secret Service, which safeguards the President of the United States, control of the entire nation is near at hand . . .

The Plot Against Earth

NEVER FOLLOW A FALLING STAR!

The humanoid worlds of the galaxy were alarmed! Somehow, somewhere the mind-destroying hypnojewels were being trafficked in.

An uneasy Earth, newcomer to the ranks of the civilized planets, sent Lloyd Catton to the Interworld Crime Commission on Morilar to investigate. Although the Commission had made little progress until then, after his arrival things started to happen fast.

For it didn't take Catton long to realize that the hypnojewels were but the thin edge of a murderous wedge that was calculated to shove the Earth back again into the helpless isolation of a world returned to savagery

Recruit for Andromeda

Many had gone - none had returned.

The Sioux Spaceman

Redskin raiders on the galactic rim.

Kade Whitehawk had two strikes against him in the Space Service. First, he had bungled his assignment on the planet Lodi. Second, he believed all creatures had a right to freedom and dignity - and having such opinions was strictly against the rules.

But when he ws assigned to Khot, he found the Ikkinni there - tortured yet defiant slaves of a vicious tyrant race.

Right then Kade swung the last pitch. For rules or no rules, THE SIOUX SPACEMAN knew that he had to help these strange creatures gain freedom... and that he alone, because of his Indian blood, had the key to win it for them.

And Then the Town Took Off

The town of Superior, Ohio was certainly living up to its name! In what was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!

Radio messages simply stated that Superior had seceded from Earth. But Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local townspeople, a crackpot professor.

But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his days on the smallest - and nuttiest - planet in the galaxy!

Master of Life and Death

Global overcrowding, a new immortality serum and an unfriendly alien ambassador are only a few of the problems confronting Roy Walton, government's new Master of Life and Death in Robert Silverberg's early and accomplished novel. Praised by a distinguished critic, Anthony Boucher, for "its complete clarity and narrative drive" the novel retains its power today.

The Secret Visitors

When the World Security Organization asked Doctor Lockhart to treat their mysterious prisoner, they hadn't known that the dying old man would reply to their questions in a totally unknown language. They had expected the stranger to reveal something about the world war which seemed imminent. But they had been thinking in terms of foreign spies - not alien beings!

Now suddenly they found themselves confronted with a Gargantuan task. They had to find a way to another world, a means of communicating with creatures they could barely imagine.

They had to stop a war which was originating in the farthest stars - or else surrender the Earth unconditionally to THE SECRET VISITORS.

In the wake of the Death Year's atomic holocaust, an alien invasion imposes a kind of peace upon the survivors of a shattered Earth until a small community of Quakers decides to confront the saviors with their own version of resistance.

Retro Hugo-nominated Novella

Theodore Sturgeon's stunning debut novel, about a young boy who is drawn into a dangerous conspiracy when he leaves home to join a circus of shadows

Though only eight years old, little Horton "Horty" Bluett has known a lifetime of sadness. Tormented and abused by his adoptive family, he's had enough—and with a beloved broken toy he calls "Junky" as his sole companion, the desperate little boy runs away to join a carnival. There, among the fortune tellers, fire-eaters, sideshow freaks, and assorted "strange people," Horty hopes to find acceptance and, at long last, a real home.

But disgraced doctor Pierre "Maneater" Monetre's traveling show is no ordinary entertainment, and its performers are not what they appear to be. The Maneater has sinister plans for the world that go far beyond fleecing unsuspecting rubes and other easy marks—a dark and terrible scheme that requires unleashing the extraterrestrial power of the dreaming jewels, and the unwitting assistance of a young boy who may be far more remarkable than he's ever imagined.

This ebook features an illustrated biography of Theodore Sturgeon including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the University of Kansas's Kenneth Spencer Research Library and the author's estate, among other sources.

Also published as The Synthetic Man (Pyramid Books, 1957)

Famous for the mistaken panic that ensued from Orson Welles’s 1938 radio dramatization, The War of the Worlds remains one of the most influential of all science fiction works.

The night after a shooting star is seen streaking through the sky from Mars, a cylinder is discovered on Horsell Common in London. Naïve locals approach the cylinder armed just with a white flag—only to be quickly killed by an all-destroying heat ray, as terrifying tentacled invaders emerge.

Soon the whole of human civilization is under threat as powerful Martians build gigantic killing machines, destroying all life in their path with black gas and burning ray. The forces of Earth, however, may prove harder to beat than they appear.

Reese can't remember anything from the time between the accident and the day she woke up almost a month later. She only knows one thing: She's different now.

Across North America, flocks of birds hurl themselves into airplanes, causing at least a dozen to crash. Thousands of people die. Fearing terrorism, the United States government grounds all flights, and millions of travelers are stranded.

Reese and her debate team partner and longtime crush David are in Arizona when it happens. Everyone knows the world will never be the same. On their drive home to San Francisco, along a stretch of empty highway at night in the middle of Nevada, a bird flies into their headlights. The car flips over. When they wake up in a military hospital, the doctor won't tell them what happened, where they are—or how they've been miraculously healed.

Things become even stranger when Reese returns home. San Francisco feels like a different place with police enforcing curfew, hazmat teams collecting dead birds, and a strange presence that seems to be following her. When Reese unexpectedly collides with the beautiful Amber Gray, her search for the truth is forced in an entirely new direction—and threatens to expose a vast global conspiracy that the government has worked for decades to keep secret.

VENGEANCE IS A DISH BEST SERVED HOT

Imperial Intelligence couldn't find them, the Imperial Fleet couldn't catch them, and local defenses couldn't stop them. It seemed the planet-wrecking pirates were invincible. But the pirates made a big mistake when they raided ex-commando leader Alicia DeVries' quiet home world, tortured and murdered her family, and then left her for dead.

Since the Imperial forces seem hog-tied, Alicia decides to turn "pirate" herself, and steals a cutting-edge AI ship from the Empire to start her vendetta. Her fellow veterans think she's crazy, the Imperial Fleet has shoot-on-sight orders. And of course the pirates want her dead, too. But Alicia DeVries has two allies nobody knows about, allies as implacable as she is: a self-aware computer, and a creature from the mists of Old Earth's most ancient legends. And this trio of furies won't rest until vengeance is served.

The United States government stands warned that sterilization procedures for returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere. When a probe satellite falls to the earth two years later, and lands in a desolate area of northeastern Arizona, the bodies that lie heaped and flung across the ground, have faces locked in frozen surprise. The terror has begun.

The alien spaceship was unthinkably huge, enormously powerful, apparently irresistible. It came from the void and settled on Earth, striking awe into the hearts of all who saw it. Its mission, however, was not conquest -- but a call for help!

First contact was a job for the brilliant team of scientists, Arcot, Wade, and Morey. And what they received was an offer of an alliance against an invading foe so powerful that no known force could turn it back!

John W. Campbell's INVADERS FROM THE INFINITE is a veritable odyssey of the universe, exploring world after world and uncovering cosmic secret after cosmic secret. Here is a classic space opera that may never be surpassed!

The year is 2380, and the graduating cadets of Aurora Academy are being assigned their first missions. Star pupil Tyler Jones is ready to recruit the squad of his dreams, but his own boneheaded heroism sees him stuck with the dregs nobody else in the academy would touch...

A cocky diplomat with a black belt in sarcasm
A sociopath scientist with a fondness for shooting her bunkmates
A smart-ass tech whiz with the galaxy's biggest chip on his shoulder
An alien warrior with anger-management issues
A tomboy pilot who's totally not into him, in case you were wondering

And Ty's squad isn't even his biggest problem--that'd be Aurora Jie-Lin O'Malley, the girl he's just rescued from interdimensional space. Trapped in cryo-sleep for two centuries, Auri is a girl out of time and out of her depth. But she could be the catalyst that starts a war millions of years in the making, and Tyler's squad of losers, discipline cases, and misfits might just be the last hope for the entire galaxy.

NOBODY PANIC.

Launching an unprovoked attack upon the Federation, the Klingons have broken the terms of the Organian Peace Treaty – leaving the Enterprise stranded deep in uncharted space, cut off from the rest of the Federation fleet. Captain Kirk and the crew find themselves in the middle of an undeclared war waged by the Klingon Empire. The Organians should be consulted about the war, but their entire planet has disappeared – or been destroyed.

Commander Scott rigged an experimental modification of the transporter system, designed to enable a tachyon replica of Mr. Spock to travel faster-than-light to Organia. But the experiment failed. Suddenly there were two Mr. Spocks. One is the true First Officer of the Enterprise. The other is his complete opposite, a traitor whose very existence poses a grave threat to the crew, the ship, and the Federation itself. One of the Spocks must die. But which one?

On a routine mission, Captain Kirk and the crew of the starship Enterprise detect a rogue planet (dubbed Anomaly) orbited by a miniature black hole. This seems to contravene all scientific laws. Assuming that the system is artificial, Captain Kirk leads a landing party to the planet's surface, where they become trapped. The crew find themselves at the center of a galactic conflict, in which an alien race is threatening to invade Federation space. Dr. McCoy, Mr. Spock, and Captain Kirk must participate in a series of trials that will determine not just their survival, but that of the Federation.

Science fiction meets crime noir, as Jeff Vaughan, jaded telepath, employed by the spaceport authorities on Bengal Station, discovers a sinister cult that worships a mysterious alien god. We follow Vaughan as he attempts to solve the murders and save himself from the psichopath out to kill him. This is Eric Brown's triumphant return to hard SF.

It was the highest honor to defend the Empire against the dreaded Chingers, an enemy race of seven-foot-tall lizards. But Bill, a Technical Fertilizer Operator from a planet of farmers, wasn't interested in honor-he was only interested in two things: his chosen career, and the shapely curves of Inga-Maria Calyphigia. Then a recruiting robot shanghaied him with knockout drops, and he came to in deep space, aboard the Empire warship Christine Keeler. And from there, things got even worse.

A sequel to the author's "Bill, the Galactic Hero", published over 20 years ago, this book is the first of a new series of novels featuring Bill. With two right arms, an artificial foot, and a set of surgically-implanted tusks, Bill sets out to find the source of Chinger-controlled metal dragons.

Hugo and Nebula-winning and BSFA, BFA, and Locus-nominated Novella

Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs.

Knowledge comes at a cost, one that Binti is willing to pay, but her journey will not be easy. The world she seeks to enter has long warred with the Meduse, an alien race that has become the stuff of nightmares. Oomza University has wronged the Meduse, and Binti's stellar travel will bring her within their deadly reach.

If Binti hopes to survive the legacy of a war not of her making, she will need both the the gifts of her people and the wisdom enshrined within the University, itself - but first she has to make it there, alive.

The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2016, edited by Paula Guran, Nebula Awards Showcase 2017, edited by Julie E. Czerneda, and Infinite Stars (2017), edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt.

Award-winning author Mike Resnick takes us back to his wild and wooly Inner Frontier in this tall-tale of an adventure novel.

On the planet Henry II, orbiting the twin suns Plantagenet and Tudor, at the very edge of the great black hole at the center of the Milky Way, there is a tavern called The Outpost. Through the doors of The Outpost have come the greatest heroes, villains, and adventurers of the galaxcy - to drink, to brag, and to swap tales.

The Outpost is neutral territory where fighting is forbidden and blood enemies can have a drink together and tell stories of battles past. After all bounty hunters, con men, intinerant preachers, thieves, and assassins have more in common with each other than they do with the rest of the mundane galaxy.

But their pleasant life of recalling murder and mayhem is interrupted by an alien invasion, and to save their way of life these rugged individualists must try to work together for a change.

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Lovecraft Unbound: Twenty Stories (2009), edited by Ellen Datlow, and was reprinted in Clarkesworld Magazine, #81 June 2013. It can also be found in the anthologies

• The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Four (2010), edited by Jonathan Strahan
• The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2010, edited by Rich Horton
• The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection (2010), edidted by Gardner Dozois
• New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird (2011), edited by Paula Guran
• In Space No One Can Hear You Scream (2013), edited by Hank Davis

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

In the extraordinary Worldwar tetralogy, set against the backdrop of the World War II, Harry Turtledove, the "Hugo-winning master of alternate SF" (Publishers Weekly), wove an explosive saga of world powers locked in conflict against an enemy from the stars. Now he expands his magnificent epic into the volatile 1960s, when the space race is in its infancy and humanity must face its greatest challenge: alien colonization of planet Earth.

Yet even in the shadow of this inexorable foe, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany are unable to relinquish their hostilities and unite against a massive new wave of extraterrestrials. For all the countries of the world, this is the greatest threat of all. This time, the terrible price of defeat will be the conquest of our world, and perhaps the extinction of the human race itself.

In 1942 Hitler led the world's most savage military machine. Stalin ruled Russia while America was just beginning to show its strength in World War II. Then, in Harry Turtledove's brilliantly imagined Worldwar saga, an alien assault changed everything. Nuclear destruction engulfed major cities, and the invaders claimed half the planet before an uneasy peace could be achieved.

A spectacular tale of tyranny and freedom, destruction and hope, Colonization takes us into the tumultuous 1960s, as the reptilian Race ponders its uneasy future. But now a new, even deadlier war threatens. Though the clamoring tribes of Earth play dangerous games of diplomacy, the ultimate power broker will be the Race itself. For the colonists have one option no human can ignore. With a vast, ancient empire already in place, the Race has the power to annihilate every living being on planet Earth...

World War II has evolved into decades of epic struggles and rebellions targeting the aliens known as the Race. As the 1960s begin, one of Earth's great powers launches a nuclear strike against the Race's colonization fleet-and the merciless invaders find themselves confronting a far more complex and challenging species than any they have encountered before. Ultimately, only superior firepower may keep Earth under the Empire's control-or it may destroy the world. While uprisings and aftershocks of war shake the planet, one nation plots a stunning counterattack...

Critics have compared the engrossing space operas of Peter F. Hamilton to the classic sagas of such sf giants as Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert. But Hamilton's bestselling fiction--powered by a fearless imagination and world-class storytelling skills--has also earned him comparison to Tolstoy and Dickens. Hugely ambitious, wildly entertaining, philosophically stimulating: the novels of Peter F. Hamilton will change the way you think about science fiction. Now, with Pandora's Star, he begins a new multivolume adventure, one that promises to be his most mind-blowing yet.

The year is 2380. The Intersolar Commonwealth, a sphere of stars some four hundred light-years in diameter, contains more than six hundred worlds, interconnected by a web of transport "tunnels" known as wormholes. At the farthest edge of the Commonwealth, astronomer Dudley Bose observes the impossible: Over one thousand light-years away, a star... vanishes. It does not go supernova. It does not collapse into a black hole. It simply disappears. Since the location is too distant to reach by wormhole, a faster-than-light starship, the Second Chance, is dispatched to learn what has occurred and whether it represents a threat. In command is Wilson Kime, a five-time rejuvenated ex-NASA pilot whose glory days are centuries behind him.

Opposed to the mission are the Guardians of Selfhood, a cult that believes the human race is being manipulated by an alien entity they call the Starflyer. Bradley Johansson, leader of the Guardians, warns of sabotage, fearing the Starflyer means to use the starship's mission for its own ends,.

Pursued by a Commonwealth special agent convinced the Guardians are crazy but dangerous, Johansson flees. But the danger is not averted. Aboard the Second Chance, Kime wonders if his crew has been infiltrated. Soon enough, he will have other worries. A thousand light-years away, something truly incredible is waiting: a deadly discovery whose unleashing will threaten to destroy the Commonwealth... and humanity itself.

Could it be that Johansson was right?

Peter F. Hamilton's superbly imagined, cunningly plotted interstellar adventures are conceived on a staggeringly epic scale and filled with fully realized human and alien characters as complex as they are engaging. No mere world builder, Hamilton creates entire universes–and he does so with irresistible flair and intelligence. His previous novel, the acclaimed Pandora's Star, introduced the Intersolar Commonwealth, a star-spanning civilization of the twenty-fourth century. Robust, peaceful, and confident, the Commonwealth dispatched a ship to investigate the mystery of a disappearing star, only to inadvertently unleash a predatory alien species that turned on its liberators, striking hard, fast, and utterly without mercy.

The Prime are the Commonwealth's worst nightmare. Coexistence is impossible with the technologically advanced aliens, who are genetically hardwired to exterminate all other forms of life. Twenty-three planets have already fallen to the invaders, with casualties in the hundreds of millions. And no one knows when or where the genocidal Prime will strike next.

Nor are the Prime the only threat. For more than a hundred years, a shadowy cult, the Guardians of Selfhood, has warned that an alien with mind-control abilities impossible to detect or resist–the Starflyer–has secretly infiltrated the Commonwealth. Branded as terrorists, the Guardians and their leader, Bradley Johansson, have been hunted by relentless investigator Paula Myo. But now evidence suggests that the Guardians were right all along, and that the Starflyer has placed agents in vital posts throughout the Commonwealth–agents who are now sabotaging the war effort. Is the Starflyer an ally of the Prime, or has it orchestrated a fight to the death between the two species for its own advantage?

Caught between two deadly enemies, one a brutal invader striking from without, the other a remorseless cancer killing from within, the fractious Commonwealth must unite as never before.

This will be humanity's finest hour–or its last gasp.

All will must bend to the perfect truth of The Praxis

For millennia, the Shaa have subjugated the universe, forcing the myriad sentient races to bow to their joyless tyranny. But the Shaa will soon be no more. The dread empire is in its rapidly fading twilight, and with its impending fall comes the promise of a new galactic order . . . and bloody chaos.

A young Terran naval officer marked by his lowly birth, Lt. Gareth Martinez is the first to recognize the insidious plot of the Naxid -- the powerful, warlike insectoid society that was enslaved before all others -- to replace the masters’ despotic rule with their own. Barely escaping a swarming surprise attack, Martinez and Caroline Sula, a pilot whose beautiful face conceals a deadly secret, are now the last hope for freedom for every being who ever languished in Shaa chains -- as the interstellar battle begins against a merciless foe whose only perfect truth is annihilation.

The Dread Empire of the Shaa is no more, following the death of the last oppressor. But freedom remains elusive for the myriad sentient races enslaved for ten centuries, as an even greater terror arises. The Naxids -- a powerful insectoid species themselves subjugated until the recent Shaa demise -- plan to fill the vacuum with their own bloody domination, and have already won a shattering victory with superior force and unimaginable cruelty.

But two heroes survived the carnage at Magaria: Lord Gareth Martinez and the fiery, mysterious gun pilot Lady Caroline Sula, whose courageous exploits are becoming legend in the new history of galactic civil war. Yet their cunning, skill, and bravery may be no match for the overwhelming enemy descending upon the loyalist stronghold of Zanshaa, as the horrific battle looms that will determine the structure of the universe -- and who shall live to inhabit it -- for millennia to come.

The universe has fallen into bloody chaos now that the dread empire of the tyrannical Shaa is no more -- at the mercy of the merciless insectoid Naxid, who now hunger for domination. But the far-flung human descendants of Terra have finally tasted liberty, and their warrior heroes will not submit. Separated by light-years, Lord Gareth Martinez and the mysterious guerrilla fighter Caroline Sula each pursue a different road to victory in tomorrow's ultimate battle -- for the new order will be far more terrible than the old ... unless one last, desperate stratagem can hold a shattered galaxy together.

After the effortless capture of Earth by vastly superior aliens, humanity is forced to fight for existence on the Moon and other lumps of airless rock. The invention of the Hotline -- a constant stream of data from a star in the constellation Ophiuchus -- facilitates survival and enables the development of amazing new technologies.

Then, after 400 years, humanity's unknown helpers send a bill for their services... and suddenly everything is threatened once again.

The Ophiuchi Hotline was John Varley's first novel, and it received nominations for both the Hugo and Nebula awards he later won both for his book Persistence of Vision.

The year is 1895, the place, London. Amid the fog and cold, a gang of bodysnatchers is at work. The Doctor finds himself caught up in the gruesome goings-on, and discovers that the Zygons have returned to Earth.

The Doctor is repairing the Tardis systems once again when it is swept up by a garbage ship roving space, the Quetzel. When another ship takes the Quetzel by force, the Doctor discovwers that he and Sam are not the only unwitting travellers aboard - Davros awakens.

After twenty-three years, Orson Scott Card returns to his acclaimed best-selling series with the first true, direct sequel to the classic Ender's Game.

In Ender's Game, the world's most gifted children were taken from their families and sent to an elite training school. At Battle School, they learned combat, strategy, and secret intelligence to fight a dangerous war on behalf of those left on Earth. But they also learned some important and less definable lessons about life.

After the life-changing events of those years, these children-now teenagers-must leave the school and readapt to life in the outside world.

Having not seen their families or interacted with other people for years-where do they go now? What can they do?

Ender fought for humanity, but he is now reviled as a ruthless assassin. No longer allowed to live on Earth, he enters into exile. With his sister Valentine, he chooses to leave the only home he's ever known to begin a relativistic-and revelatory-journey beyond the stars.

What happened during the years between Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead? What did Ender go through from the ages of 12 through 35? The story of those years has never been told. Taking place 3000 years before Ender finally receives his chance at redemption in Speaker for the Dead, this is the long-lost story of Ender.

For twenty-three years, millions of readers have wondered and now they will receive the answers. Ender in Exile is Orson Scott Card's moving return to all the action and the adventure, the profound exploration of war and society, and the characters one never forgot.

On one of these ships, there is a baby that just may share the same special gifts as Ender's old friend Bean....

In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn't make the cutyoung Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.

Ender's skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister.

Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender's two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives.

In the aftermath of his terrible war, Ender Wiggin disappeared, and a powerful voice arose: The Speaker for the Dead, who told the true story of the Bugger War.

Now, long years later, a second alien race has been discovered, but again the aliens' ways are strange and frightening... again, humans die. And it is only the Speaker for the Dead, who is also Ender Wiggin the Xenocide, who has the courage to confront the mystery... and the truth.

The war for survival of the planet Lusitania will be fought in the hearts of a child named Gloriously Bright.

On Lusitania, Ender found a world where humans and pequininos and the Hive Queen could all live together; where three very different intelligent species could find common ground at last. Or so he thought.

Lusitania also harbors the descolada, a virus that kills all humans it infects, but which the pequininos require in order to become adults. The Startways Congress so fears the effects of the descolada, should it escape from Lusitania, that they have ordered the destruction of the entire planet, and all who live there. The Fleet is on its way, a second xenocide seems inevitble.

Orson Scott Card brings us back to the very beginning of his brilliant Ender Quartet, with a novel that allows us to reenter that world anew.

With all the power of his original creation, Card has created a parallel volume to Ender's Game, a book that expands and compliments the first, enhancing its power, illuminating its events and its powerful conclusion.

The human race is at War with the "Buggers", an insect-like alien race. The first battles went badly, and now as Earth prepares to defend itself against the imminent threat of total destruction at the hands of an inscrutable alien enemy, all focus is on the development and training of military geniuses who can fight such a war, and win.

The long distances of interstellar space have given hope to the defenders of Earth--they have time to train these future commanders up from childhood, forging then into an irresisible force in the high orbital facility called the Battle School.

Andrew "Ender" Wiggin was not the only child in the Battle School he was just the best of the best. In this new book, card tells the story of another of those precocious generals, the one they called Bean--the one who became Ender's right hand, part of his team, in the final battle against the Buggers.

Bean's past was a battle just to survive. He first appeared on the streets of Rotterdam, a tiny child with a mind leagues beyond anyone else's. He knew he could not survive through strength he used his tactical genius to gain acceptance into a children's gang, and then to help make that gang a template for success for all the others. He civilized them, and lived to grow older.

Bean's desperate struggle to live, and his success, brought him to the attention of the Battle School's recruiters, those people scouring the planet for leaders, tacticians, and generals to save Earth from the threat of alien invasion. Bean was sent into orbit, to the Battle School. And there he met Ender....

The mining ship El Cavador is far out from Earth, in the deeps of the Kuiper Belt, beyond Pluto. Other mining ships, and the families that live on them, are few and far between this far out. So when El Cavador's telescopes pick up a fast-moving object coming in-system, it's hard to know what to make of it. It's massive and moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

El Cavador has other problems. Their systems are old and failing. The family is getting too big for the ship. There are claim-jumping corporate ships bringing Asteroid Belt tactics to the Kuiper Belt. Worrying about a distant object that might or might not be an alien ship seems...not important.

They're wrong. It's the most important thing that has happened to the human race in a million years. The first Formic War is about to begin.

One hundred years before Ender's Game, the aliens arrived on Earth with fire and death. This is the story of the First Formic War.

Victor Delgado beat the alien ship to Earth, but just barely. Not soon enough to convince skeptical governments that there was a threat. They didn't believe that until space stations and ships and colonies went up in sudden flame.

And when that happened, only Mazer Rackham and the Mobile Operations Police could move fast enough to meet the threat.

The story of The First Formic War continues in Earth Awakens.

Nearly 100 years before the events of Orson Scott Card's bestselling novel Ender's Game, humans were just beginning to step off Earth and out into the Solar System. A thin web of ships in both asteroid belts; a few stations; a corporate settlement on Luna. No one had seen any sign of other space-faring races; everyone expected that First Contact, if it came, would happen in the future, in the empty reaches between the stars. Then a young navigator on a distant mining ship saw something moving too fast, heading directly for our sun.

When the alien ship screamed through the solar system, it disrupted communications between the far-flung human mining ships and supply stations, and between them and Earth. So Earth and Luna were unaware that they had been invaded until the ship pulled into Earth orbit, and began landing terra-forming crews in China. Politics and pride slowed the response on Earth, and on Luna, corporate power struggles seemed more urgent than distant deaths. But there are a few men and women who see that if Earth doesn't wake up and pull together, the planet could be lost.

Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston return to their Ender's Game prequel series with this first volume of an all-new trilogy about the Second Formic War in The Swarm.

The first invasion of Earth was beaten back by a coalition of corporate and international military forces, and the Chinese army. China has been devastated by the Formic's initial efforts to eradicate Earth life forms and prepare the ground for their own settlement. The Scouring of China struck fear into the other nations of the planet; that fear blossomed into drastic action when scientists determined that the single ship that wreaked such damage was merely a scout ship.

There is a mothership out beyond the Solar System's Kuiper Belt, and it's heading into the system, unstoppable by any weapons that Earth can muster.

Earth has been reorganized for defense. There is now a Hegemon, a planetary official responsible for keeping all the formerly warring nations in line. There's a Polemarch, responsible for organizing all the military forces of the planet into the new International Fleet. But there is an enemy within, an enemy as old as human warfare: ambition and politics. Greed and self-interest. Will Bingwen, Mazer Rackam, Victor Delgado and Lem Juke be able to divert those very human enemies in time to create a weapon that can effectively defend humanity in the inexorable Second Formic War?

New York Times bestselling authors Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston return to the prequels to Ender's Game following The Swarm with The Hive, book two in the Second Formic War.

Card and Johnston continue the fast-paced hard science fiction history of the Formic Wars--the alien invasions of Earth's Solar System that ultimately led to Ender Wiggin's total victory in Ender's Game.

A coalition of Earth's nations barely fought off the Formics' first scout ship. Now it's clear that there's a mother-ship out on edge of the system, and the aliens are prepared to take Earth by force. Can Earth's warring nations and corporations put aside their differences and mount an effective defense?

Ender's Game is one of the most popular and bestselling science fiction novels of all time. The Formic War series (The First Formic War and The Second Formic War) are the prequels to Ender's story.

World-hopping, high-action adventure starring a smart boy with computer skills and a tough girl who pilots a blimp

The airship Everness makes a Heisenberg Jump to an alternate Earth unlike any her crew has ever seen. Everett, Sen, and the crew find themselves above a plain that goes on forever in every direction without any horizon. There they find an Alderson Disc, an astronomical megastructure of incredibly strong material reaching from the orbit of Mercury to the orbit of Jupiter.

Then they meet the Jiju, the dominant species on a plane where the dinosaurs didn't die out. They evolved, diversified, and have a twenty-five million year technology head-start on humanity. War between their kingdoms is inevitable, total and terrible.

Everness has jumped right into the midst of a faction fight between rival nations, the Fabreen and Dityu empires. The airship is attacked, but then defended by the forces of the Fabreen, who offers theEverness crew protection. But what is the true motive behind Empress Aswiu's aid? What is her price?

The crew of the Everness is divided in a very alien world, a world fast approaching the point of apocalypse.

In the late twentieth century, Admiral Julian 3rd can get no rest, for he knows his future. He will be reborn as his grandson in the next century to journey through space and make an ominous discovery inside the moon; he will live again in the dark years of the twenty-second century as Julian 9th, who refuses to bow down to the victorious Moon Men; and as Julian 20th, the fierce Red Hawk, he will lead humanity's final battle against the alien invaders in the twenty-fifth century. The Moon Maid is Edgar Rice Burroughs's stunning epic of a world conquered by alien invaders from the moon and of the hero Julian, who champions the earth's struggle for freedom, peace, and dignity.

The most complete version of The Moon Maid saga ever made available, this edition contains the story as published serially, along with numerous passages, sentences, and words excised from the magazine version or added later by the author. This edition also features an introduction by Terry Bisson, new illustrations by Thomas Floyd, the classic frontispiece by J. Allen St. John, essays by scholar Richard J. Golsan and writer Phillip R. Burger, a glossary by Scott Tracy Griffin, and a compendium of alterations to the text.

Vicious interstellar conflict with an indestructible alien species. Bloody civil war over the last habitable zones of the cosmos. Political unrest, militaristic police forces, dire threats to the Solar System...

Humanity is on the ropes, and after years of fighting a two-front war with losing odds, so is North American Defense Corps officer Andrew Grayson. He dreams of dropping out of the service one day, alongside his pilot girlfriend, but as warfare consumes entire planets and conditions on Earth deteriorate, he wonders if there will be anywhere left for them to go.

After surviving a disastrous space-borne assault, Grayson is reassigned to a ship bound for a distant colony--and packed with malcontents and troublemakers. His most dangerous battle has just begun.

In this sequel to the bestselling Terms of Enlistment, a weary soldier must fight to prevent the downfall of his species... or bear witness to humanity's last, fleeting breaths.

The time has come to take the fight to the Lankies.

Mars has been under Lanky control for more than a year. Since then, the depleted forces of Earth's alliances have rebuilt their fleets, staffing old warships with freshly trained troops. Torn between the need to beat the Lankies to the punch and taking enough time to put together an effective fighting force, command has decided to strike now.

Once again, seasoned veterans Andrew and Halley find themselves in charge of green troops and at the sharp tip of the spear as the combined military might of Earth goes up against the Lankies. But if there's one constant in war, it's that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy... and the Lankies want to hold on to Mars as badly as humanity wants to reclaim it.

The novel concerns a future where the human race is owned and operated by the invisible Vitons, parasites that feed on human pain and anguish. The Vitons are only visible when humans come into contact with a certain combination of chemicals. After several people use the combination of chemicals painted on the skin and die, the person investigating the suspicious deaths is puzzled by the victims apparently insane actions.

On the far planet Wing IV, a brilliant scientist creates the humanoids--sleek black androids programmed to serve humanity.

But are they perfect servants--or perfect masters?

Slowly the humanoids spread throughout the galaxy, threatening to stifle all human endeavor. Only a hidden group of rebels can stem the humanoid tide...if it's not already too late.

Fist published in Astounding Science Fiction during the magazine's heyday, The Humanoids--sceince fiction grand master Jack Williamson's finest novel--has endured for fifty years as a classic on the theme of natural versus artificial life.

An advanced alien race is considering our sun as a reference point on their star route, but must first determine if there are any intelligent life-forms in its solar system, since altering the sun would be fatal for all the system's life. The aliens seek to contact the most highly-regarded being on planet Earth, coming up with Dusty Britton of the Space Patrol. What they DON'T realize is that he's an actor, star of a hit sci-fi TV show! Egotistical Dusty quickly realizes that he must now play his TV role in real life in order to save the solar system from disaster.

The Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Greece and Rome had returned to Earth -- with all their awesome powers intact. Overnight, Earth was transformed. War on any scale was outlawed, along with boom-and-bust economic cycles, and prudery. No change was more startling than the face of New York, where the Empire State Building became the Tower of Zeus.

In this totally altered world, William Forrester is an acolyte of Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, and a teacher of history. Only Maya Wilson, one of his students and a worshipper of Venus, Goddess of Love, had a different sort of grading in mind. Maya is the first of the many Trials of Forrester, every bit as mighty and perilous as the Labors of Hercules. In love with Gerda Symes (like him, a devotee of Athena and a frequenter of the great Temple of Pallas Athena -- formerly known as the 42nd Street Library) and dedicated to the pleasures of the mind -- Forrester falls under the soft, compelling pressure of soft, compelling devotees of Venus and Bacchus. He's going to be in need of all the strength that he and his Goddess, the beautiful and intellectual Athena, can muster!

Into this sensuous strife stride the Temple Myrmidons -- religious cops sworn to obey orders without question or hesitation -- with a pickup order for William Forrester. Where he is taken, what happens to him, and the truly fantastic discoveries he makes about himself and the Gods and Goddesses... here are the ingredients that make up this science fiction novel of suspense, intrigue, mystery and danger!

A radio operator receives a message from Venusians, warning of an impending invasion by Martians. The Martains are capable of transferring their minds, and would simply take over the bodies of people on Earth. The Martians begin by taking over a naval vessel, outfitting it with antigravity and advanced weaponry. Fortunately, the vessel is defeated and the invasion is repelled.

On a quiet fall evening in the small, peaceful town of Mill Valley, California, Dr. Miles Bennell discovered an insidious, horrifying plot. Silently, subtly, almost imperceptibly, alien life-forms were taking over the bodies and minds of his neighbors, his friends, his family, the woman he loved -- the world as he knew it.

First published in 1955, this classic thriller of the ultimate alien invasion and the triumph of the human spirit over an invisible enemy inspired three major motion pictures.

Also published as Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Contents:

• v - Introduction (The Cosmic Rape) - (1977) - essay by Samuel R. Delany
• 1 - The Cosmic Rape - (1958) - novel
• 161 - To Marry Medusa - (1958) - novella

This spectacular novel established Thomas M. Disch as a major new force in science fiction. First published in 1965, it was immediately labeled a masterpiece reminiscent of the works of J.G. Ballard and H.G. Wells

In this harrowing novel, the world's cities have been reduced to cinder and ash and alien plants have overtaken the earth. The plants, able to grow the size of maples in only a month and eventually reach six hundred feet, have commandeered the world's soil and are sucking even the Great Lakes dry. In northern Minnesota, Anderson, an aging farmer armed with a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other, desperately leads the reduced citizenry of a small town in a daily struggle for meager existence. Throw into this fray Jeremiah Orville, a marauding outsider bent on a bizarre and private revenge, and the fight to live becomes a daunting task.

Philip K Dick's classic dystopian novel set in the future where the remaining human survivors on Earth must gamble for their future with aliens from Titan, one of the moons circling Saturn.

Roaming the pristine landscape of Earth, cared for by machines and aliens, the few remaining humans alive since the war with Titan play Bluff, allowing them to win or lose property and also form new marriages in order to maximise the remote chance some pairings will produce a child. When Pete Garden, a particularly suicidal member of the Pretty Blue Fox game-playing group, loses his current wife and his deed to Berkeley, he stumbles upon a far bigger, more sinister version of the game.

The telepathic, slug-like Vugs of Titan are the players and at stake is the Earth itself. The Game-Players of Titan is a brilliantly conceived vision of a future dystopia, full of imaginative detail, moments of pure humour and thought-provoking musings on the nature of perception, as the seemingly straightforward narrative soon turns into a tumultuous nightmare of delusion, precognition and conspiracy.

Earthmen and Aleriona have met in space and neither side can afford to let the other get too strong. The Aleriona have captured the human outpost, New Europe, and claim that all the inhabitants were killed. The World Federation on Earth seems committed to peace at any price, but there are those, and ex-navy Captain Gunnar Heim is one of them, who know that appeasement will only lead to further Alerion encroachment, and he passionately believes that there must be a showdown now, before its too late.

In one of Robert A. Heinlein's most controversial bestsellers, a recruit of the future goes through the toughest boot camp in the Universe - and into battle with the Terran Mobile Infantry against mankind's most alarming enemy.

It is told through the eyes of Starship Trooper Johnny Rico, from his idealistic enlistment in the infantry of the future, through his rigorous training to the command of his own platoon of infantrymen. His destiny is a galactic war of unlimited violence and destruction, in which he and his fellow troopers scour the metal-strewn emptiness of space to hunt down a terrifying enemy - an insect life form which threatens the very future of mankind.

"Who Goes There?": The novella that formed the basis of "The Thing" is the John W. Campbell classic about an antarctic research camp that discovers and thaws the ancient body of a crash-landed alien. The creature revives with terrifying consequences, shape-shifting to assume the exact form of animal and man, alike.

Paranoia ensues as a band of frightened men work to discern friend from foe, and destroy the menace before it challenges all of humanity!

The story, hailed as "one of the finest science fiction novellas ever written" by the SF Writers of America, is best known to fans as THE THING - it was the basis of Howard Hawks' The Thing From Another World in 1951, and John Carpenter's The Thing in 1982.

Two days before Independence Day, the skies look as if they are on fire. All satellite communications are interrupted, as fear grips the cities of the world. When the skies return to normal, it becomes clear that a force of incredible magnitude has arrived on Earth. Its mission: to eliminate all human life on the planet.

The Tie for the movie.

The No. 1 blockbuster movie Independence Day was only part of the story. After the alien invaders are downed and teams are sent out to find survivors, only some personal belongings of Dr. Brackish Okun, head scientist of Area 51, are found.

Okun's story is amazing, yet completely believable. It begins in the 1970s when this CalTech genius arrives at Area 51 to work with the National Security Agency (NSA) and the CIA on the study of a downed spaceship retrieved from Roswell, New Mexico.

But there is much more to the job than Okun realized. Soon, he begins to suspect that a massive government cover-up has successfuly buried all evidence of alien visitation throughout the years--a cover-up in which Okun is now an unwilling participant. His perseverance leads him to the truth behind the studies at Area 51, the government's fear of an alien invasion and a mysterious encounter in the Mexican desert at a place known as "La Manta de Silencia": The Silent Zone.

It is the Fourth of July. Reeling from the enemy onslaught, a few surviving military pilots gather in the Saudi Arabian desert. Two of the best fliers, flight instructors Reg and Faisal, self-appointed leaders of the Saudi Forces, can barely contain their animosity when a message from the Americans forces them to unite.

A weak point has been found in the alien "City Destroyers." The air war against them was costly--but it worked!... Or did it? Too late, Reg and Faisal discover their "victory" was an illusion--part of a secret ambush that will open the planet to unimaginable horror, unless these overmatched warriors from several Middle Eastern nations can overcome long-standing hatreds and unite against the aliens in the fiercest hand-to-hand combat of the war.

Cities were crushed by the falling spacecraft--but one ship didn't crash. It remained intact, and disgorged hordes of alien soldiers determined to fight to the death.

The abandoned vessels also contained a wealth of advanced technology. Led by David Levinson, the greatest minds of our world developed deadly new hybrid weapons. Bases were built on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

A new generation of defenders had to be trained, for the invaders would return. In the headlong rush to prepare, however, not everyone would survive...

Hybrid fighters merging human and alien technology. Massive cannon emplacements on the Moon and Mars. A planetary defense force with the finest military personnel ever trained. For two decades we've known the enemy would return.

The nations of Earth have collaborated on a unified defense program designed to defend the planet. Yet nothing could prepare us for the immensity of their new assault, and only the courage and skill of a few brave men and women can hope to bring our world back from the brink of extinction.

The novelization for the movie.

Ella Patel -- thief, con-artist and smuggler -- is in the wrong place at the wrong time. One night, on the border of a demilitarized zone run by the body-swapping alien invaders, she happens upon a man and woman being chased by a group of assailants. The man freezes, leaving the woman to fight off five attackers at once, before succumbing. As she dies, to both Ella and the man's surprise, the sparkling light that rises from the woman enters Ella, instead of the man. She soon realizes she's been inhabited by Io, a low-ranking Quasing who was involved in some of the worst decisions in history. Now Ella must now help the alien presence to complete her mission and investigate a rash of murders in the border states that maintain the frail peace.

With the Prophus assigned to help her seemingly wanting to stab her in the back, and the enemy Genjix hunting her, Ella must also deal with Io's annoying inferiority complex. To top it all off, Ella thinks the damn alien voice in her head is trying to get her killed. And if you can't trust the voices in your head, who can you trust?

Someone is sabotaging the Universal Transmitting Company's new technology--instantaneous transport of objects and people around the world. When Detective Jan Darzek investigates, the mystery seems inexplicable--out of this world.

For the last decade we really have been waging a secret war against super-villains. It's just as well the general public are too common-sense to believe any of it...

It's 1969. Astronauts have just landed on the moon. In Britain, Harold Wilson is Prime Minister. And the Avengers are on TV. Detective Sergeant Clare Seeley, juggling work and family commitments, is aware of peculiar goings-on at the heart of the concrete-jungle new town that is her patch...

Agnes Doyle, brilliant computer scientist and unwilling precognitive, is about to be plunged into a lethally perilous situation...

The Sergeant and Lucy Pennyweather, gaudy swinging-London adventurers, are drawn to a peculiar conspiracy surrounding a pirate radio ship...

Henry Messen, veteran of the First World War and a special forces operative in the Second under the cover of a bumbling Home Guard officer, is on the track of a fugitive Nazi engineer with a very strange secret...

And Thelma Bennet, head of Project CLIO, the Cross-Agency League of Intelligence Operatives - is closing in on a global threat.

It's 1969. Not as you know it. The way you always thought it was.

Features the characters from previous CLIO novellas "Project Hades" and "Project Herakles", which were published together as The Paradox Conspiracy (2015).

How can a sexy marketing manager join forces with an Alpha Centauri male in Armani to save the planet-using hairspray, a Mont Blanc pen, and rock n' roll?

Easy...

She's Touched by an Alien

Marketing manager Katherine "Kitty" Katt steps into the middle of what appears to be a domestic dispute turned ugly. And it only gets uglier when the man turns into a winged monster, straight out of a grade-Z horror movie, and goes on a killing spree. Though Kitty should probably run away, she springs into action to take the monster down.

In the middle of the chaos a handsome hunk named Jeff Martini appears, sent by the "agency" to perform crowd control. He's Kitty's kind of guy, no matter what planet he's from. And from now on, for Kitty, things are going to be sexy, dangerous, wild, and out of this world.

Phssthpok the Pak had been traveling for most of his thirty-two thousand years. His mission: save, develop, and protect the group of Pak breeders sent out into space some two and a half million years before...

Brennan was a Belter, the product of a fiercely independent, somewhat anarchic society living in, on, and around an outer asteroid belt. The Belters were rebels, one and all, and Brennan was a smuggler. The Belt worlds had been tracking the Pak ship for days -- Brennan figured to meet that ship first...

He was never seen again -- at least not by those alive at the time.

Contains two short stories in the Legion Universe: The Legion of Time and Aftwer World's End.

The hope of a future utopia hangs literally on a thread of probability. Instead, armageddon lies almost certainly in the future of humanity. Only the Legion of Time can alter the future course of history. Only Denny Lanning can decisively help them. But to do so, he must first die--for the Legion is composed of dead men--and second, he must kill one of the two women that he loves. . .

After World's End, a short novel, is another saga of time-adventure, also included in this volume. An American astronaut helplessly orbits the solar system as millennia pass. And on Earth, humanity's bright future is destoryed by war with an enemy they themselves created.

Suddenly, staying alive is more than a personal problem...

In a galaxy worn down by generations of war against an implacable foe, a star pilot's mission brings him an unexpected ally and a chance to serve his troop--and mankind.

M. Jela Granthor's Guard is a soldier who was born to be a~ soldier, a solider whose genes were selected before birth, whose life was chosen for him as one of service and dedication.

Cantra yos'Phelium is an ace pilot and a thoroughgoing rogue. She trades the dark and the gray markets along the war-torn Rim, running solo, and with an eye firmly on her own profit.

When chance deals her an ex-soldier, she's inclined to leave him where she found him. That was before mutual trouble arose, and Jela proved himself a good man in a tight spot. Still, she thought to ditch him next planet down the line.

Only he wasn't being easy to ditch. Worse, he had a puzzle going that just naturally drew a pilot's close attention.

So the two of them form an unlikely--and uncomfortable - alliance, the soldier intent on his mission; the pirate intent on her survival.

And neither one, in the face of alien technology, outlaws, and the enemy's renewed assaults, can quite forget a life lesson shared by people who live on the edge of chance:

Sometimes, no matter what, you're just going to lose...

The Garde have suffered an unbearable loss. Number Five has betrayed them. Eight is gone forever. Ella has been kidnapped. The others are now scattered.

In Chicago, John makes the unlikeliest of allies: Adam, a Mogadorian who turned his back on his people. He has invaluable information about Mog technology, battle strategies, and weaknesses. Most important, he knows where to hit them: their command base near Washington, DC. During the assault, however, John learns the unimaginable truth: it is too late. The Mogadorians have commenced their ultimate invasion plans.

With a front-row seat to the impending invasion, Ella finds herself in the hands of the enemy. For some reason, she's more valuable to them alive, and they'll stop at nothing to turn her.

Meanwhile, Six, Nine, and Marina make their way through the Florida Everglades, hot on the trail of the traitorous Five. With the development of a new Legacy, Marina finally has the power to fight back--if her thirst for revenge doesn't consume her first.

The Garde are broken and divided once again, but they will not be defeated. As long as one still stands, the battle for Earth's survival is not lost.

For years the Garde have fought the Mogadorians in secret, but now the invasion has begun.

John is on the front lines in New York City. The odds may be stacked against him, but his best friend, Sam, has inexplicably developed a Legacy despite being human--and he isn't the only one. As the pair tracks down Five and Nine amidst the chaos, they encounter another teen with powers. Whether she is a friend or a foe, however, remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, Six, Marina, and Adam are trapped in Mexico. They fought their way into the Sanctuary and were able to awaken the force hidden within, but they don't have any way to reach the others...and the Mogs are coming for them in full force.

The Garde are stretched thin. Their only shot at saving the world is to eliminate the Mogadorian leader once and for all--but his fate is now irrevocably tied with Ella's. The Garde can't destroy one without the other. And if they can't find another way to stop the Mogs, humanity will suffer the same fate as the Loric: annihilation.

The Garde didn't start this war, but they'll do whatever it takes to end it once and for all....

The Mogadorians have invaded Earth. Their warships loom over our most populated cities, and no country will risk taking them head on. The Garde are all that stand in the way, but they'll need an army of their own to win this fight.

They've teamed up with the US military, but it might not be enough. The Garde need reinforcements, and they've found them in the most unexpected place. Teenagers from across the globe, like John Smith's best friend, Sam, have developed abilities. So John and the others must get to them before the Mogs, because if they don't their enemies will use these gifted teens for their own sinister plan.

But after all the Mogadorians have taken from John--his home, his family, his friends, and the person he loves most--he might not want to put any more lives in danger. He's got nothing left to lose, and he's just discovered he has been given an incredible new Legacy. Now he can turn himself into the ultimate weapon. So will he risk his life to save the world, or will he realize that power in numbers will save us all?

10,000 years ago, the Invidians, a warrior race, waged unrelenting war across our galaxy. Arrogant mortal beings, driven to fulfill their destiny and build an everlasting empire, they sought the secret to eternal life. They found it. And then they disappeared. Find out why the galactic order rests on the shoulders of three human beings and one mysterious stranger. To save us, they must follow the ancient path paved in the "Blood of Invidia".

Galaxy Conquering Immortals, Shape Shifting Warriors, Yakuza Ninjas and Gray-skinned Aliens. There's over-the-top action in this SciFi/Paranormal (Non-Romance) novel that's the breathtaking beginning of the Maestru Series!

The mysterious alien Others have prohibited humans from space travel-destroying Earth's fleet of starships in a display of unimaginable power. Now Carmen Dula, the first human to encounter Martians and then the mysterious Others, and her colleagues struggle to find a way, using nineteenthcentury technology, to reclaim the future that has been stolen from them.

In this biting satire, the Cold War may have ended, but the eastern and western governments never told their citizens. Instead they created an elaborate ruse, wherein each side comes up with increasingly outlandish doomsday weapons-weapons that don't work. But when aliens invade, the top designers of both sides have to come together to make a real doomsday device-if they don't kill each other first.

With its combination of romance, espionage, and alien invasion, The Zap Gun skewers the military-industrial complex in a way that's as relevant today as it was at the height of the Cold War.

This novel is set in a future world where the equipment of ordinary, everyday life has become indestructible; there are everlasting lightbulbs and infallible cars, but no-one knows where they have come from.

Dr. Walter T. Goodwin is a botanist on an expedition to examine the varieties of a certain flower which grows in the Middle East. Starting from Tehran in Persia (Iran) Goodwin plans to wander through several countries until he comes to the Himalayas in Tibet. While in a valley in the Himalayas Goodwin comes upon Richard Drake, the son of an old friend who has recently died. Liking one another they decide to combine their expeditions and see where fate leads them. One evening they witness the light of the setting sun behaving oddly. Goodwin offers the explanation that it is the result of some unusual atmospheric effect, but Drake remarks that it almost seemed to be orchestrated by some intelligent force. That night the two hear strange noises, but do not see the source of the sound. The next day they come upon what seems to be a huge footprint from a creature of great weight. Later the same day the two explorers come upon Martin and Ruth Ventnor hiding in the ruins of a stone fortress. This brother and sister are trying to escape from soldiers who fantastically seem to be a throwback to time of Darius, complete with armor, swords and bows and arrows. The four flee from these ancient Persian worriers but are almost captured, when, appearing out of nowhere, an other-worldly woman and a shape-changing metal monster come to their aid. The soldiers are gruesomely annihilated. The strange woman's name is Norhala. Is Norhala the four's savior, or is she an even more dangerous enemy? Even more, what is the nature and secret of the metal monster?

In 1951 John Wyndham published his novel The Day of the Triffids to moderate acclaim. Fifty-two years later, this horrifying story is a science fiction classic, touted by The Times (London) as having "all the reality of a vividly realized nightmare."

Bill Masen, bandages over his wounded eyes, misses the most spectacular meteorite shower England has ever seen. Removing his bandages the next morning, he finds masses of sightless people wandering the city. He soon meets Josella, another lucky person who has retained her sight, and together they leave the city, aware that the safe, familiar world they knew a mere twenty-four hours before is gone forever.

But to survive in this post-apocalyptic world, one must survive the Triffids, strange plants that years before began appearing all over the world. The Triffids can grow to over seven feet tall, pull their roots from the ground to walk, and kill a man with one quick lash of their poisonous stingers. With society in shambles, they are now poised to prey on humankind. Wyndham chillingly anticipates bio-warfare and mass destruction, fifty years before their realization, in this prescient account of Cold War paranoia.

The strange but beautiful purple blossoms now grew wild in his backyard. One day Brad Carter tripped and fell into an alternate world, a world peopled by these very flowers.

Earth does not exist....

Or so they want you to believe.

They are the Voltarians of Voltar--an empire 110 planets strong.

And they are headed straight for us.

The scheming Soltan Gris tells all.

Discover a world where corporate power rules and political corruption is rife. Where governments are driven by oil and controlled by drugs. Where global warming is getting hotter by the minute and a scorching love affair could determine the fate of millions. Where a cosmic conspiracy is about to hit home--posing a grave danger to Earth--and one charismatic Voltarian, Jettero Heller, is out to save the planet from itself.

It's the end of the world as you know it and the beginning of one of the most spectacular, thought-provoking, and wildly inventive works of science fiction and espionage of our time.

The Voltarian Soltan Gris has a confession to make. The mission has begun. Some call it satire. Gris calls it the real story of a very Black Genesis.

They're here. And they're all eyes. The Voltarian scouting party--illegal aliens extraordinaire--on a top-secret expedition led by Jettero Heller, Royal Officer of the Fleet.

His mission: rescue the planet from pollution--and make it safe for the upcoming invasion.

His problem: Soltan Gris is out to sabotage him at every turn. One way or another, Heller is about to undertake a journey of discovery and it's a real trip.

Between the Mafia wars and the brothel whores, between the ruthless IRS agents and the crazy cab drivers, between the muggings and the weapons of mass destruction, he's on one heck of a roller-coaster ride. And before it's over, all Heller will break loose in the name of Black Genesis.

Soltan Gris, you're cunning and crafty Voltarian narrator has seen it all and now he tells all--in The Enemy Within. Is it Satire? Or something far more sinister?

In a web of espionage, intrigue, and betrayal, even Voltarian Royal Combat Engineer Jettero Heller doesn't know whom he can trust. Gris has formed a secret alliance with a dirty DC politician, a ruthless billionaire industrialist, and a mysterious media madman. Their mission: terminate Jettero Heller.

Beset by double-crossing body doubles and backstabbing identity shifters, Heller discovers that the most dangerous battle of all is about to begin against The Enemy Within.

What on Earth are the Voltarians up to now?

Fast cars and fast women.

Voltarian Royal Officer Jettero Heller is putting the pedal to the metal--and the action is about to shift into high gear.

Behind the wheel of his souped-up Caddy, fueled by a new sustainable energy source, Heller's in a race against time--not to mention against suicide car bombers and accelerator bullets. But his greatest challenge is a fight to the death atop the Empire State Building.

Meanwhile, Heller's sworn enemy Soltan Gris has his own battles to figh... and he's learning that, sometimes, love hurts. Especially in the hands of a couple of sadistic sweethearts named Miss Pinch and Candy Licorice--girls who really get under his skin.

People of Earth take note: there is nothing more seductive, more tantalizing, or more terrifying than An Alien Affair.

Truth is a human right.

It's fall 2007. A well-timed leak has revealed that the US government might have engaged in first contact. Cora Sabino is doing everything she can to avoid the whole mess, since the force driving the controversy is her whistleblower father. Even though Cora hasn't spoken to him in years, his celebrity has caught the attention of the press, the Internet, the paparazzi, and the government - and with him in hiding, that attention is on her. She neither knows nor cares whether her father's leaks are a hoax, and wants nothing to do with him - until she learns just how deeply entrenched her family is in the cover-up, and that an extraterrestrial presence has been on Earth for decades.

Realizing the extent to which both she and the public have been lied to, she sets out to gather as much information as she can, and finds that the best way for her to uncover the truth is not as a whistleblower, but as an intermediary. The alien presence has been completely uncommunicative until she convinces one of them that she can act as their interpreter, becoming the first and only human vessel of communication. Their otherworldly connection will change everything she thought she knew about being human - and could unleash a force more sinister than she ever imagined.

Deep in blackest space, the Drasin have watched humanity's journey to the stars--and determined that a species as barbaric as ours has no place in the cosmos.

The wreckage of the starship Odyssey, once Earth's greatest guardian, lies strewn across New York City. Abandoned by all but its captain, Odyssey's sacrifice covered the withdrawal of countless troops as the Drasin assault ravaged the planet. When Captain Eric Weston finally emerges from the rubble, impossibly alive thanks to the mysterious "Gaia," he knows with the Drasin it's kill or be killed.

But not all of the heavens have proven hostile. The Priminae have felt the full brunt of Drasin aggression on their own home world, and they won't leave humanity to face annihilation alone. Together with what's left of the crews of the Odyssey and other starships, they race to join Weston and his group of Earth-bound survivors for a desperate last stand.

The final battle of the Drasin War brings bestselling author Evan Currie's Odyssey One series to its shattering conclusion.

The Galactic Hegemony has been around a long time, and it likes stability--the kind of stability that member species like the aggressive, carnivorous Shongairi tend to disturb. So when the Hegemony Survey Force encountered a world whose so-called "sentients"-"humans," they called themselves-were almost as bad as the Shongairi themselves, it seemed reasonable to use the Shongairi to neutralize them before they could become a second threat to galactic peace. And if the Shongairi took a few knocks in the process, all the better.

Now, Earth is conquered. The Shongairi have arrived in force, and humanity's cities lie in radioactive ruins. In mere minutes, more than half the human race has died.

Master Sergeant Stephen Buchevsky, who thought he was being rotated home from his latest tour in Afghanistan, finds himself instead prowling the back country of the Balkans, dodging alien patrols and trying to organize scattered survivors without getting killed. And in the southeastern US, firearms instructor and former Marine Dave Dvorak finds himself at the center of a growing network of resistance-putting his extended family at lethal risk, but what else can you do?

On the face of it, Buchevsky's and Dvorak's chances look bleak, as do prospects for the rest of the surviving human race. But it may well be that Shongairi and the Hegemony alike have underestimated the inhabitants of that strange planet called Earth...

The Shongairi conquered Earth. In mere minutes, half the human race died, and our cities lay in shattered ruins.

But the Shongairi didn't expect the survivors' tenacity. And, crucially, they didn't know that Earth harbored two species of intelligent, tool-using bipeds. One of them was us. The other, long-lived and lethal, was hiding in the mountains of eastern Europe, the subject of fantasy and legend. When they emerged and made alliance with humankind, the invading aliens didn't stand a chance.

Now Earth is once again ours. Aided by the advanced tech the aliens left behind, we're rebuilding as fast as we can.

Meanwhile, a select few of our blood-drinking immortals are on their way to the Shongairi homeworld, having commandeered one of the alien starships...the planet-busting kind.

With friends like these...

With the Earth in the path of the rapacious Posleen, the peaceful and friendly races of the Galactic Federation offer their resources to help the backward Terrans -- for a price. Humanity now has three worlds to defend.

As Earth's armies rush into battle and special operations units scout alien worlds, the humans begin to learn a valuable lesson: You can protect yourself from your enemies, but may the Lord save you from your allies.

After the Singularity, everyone and everything is sentient and telepathic. Aliens notice and invade Earth. In Rucker's last novel, Postsingular, the Singularity happened and life on Earth was transformed by the awakening of all matter into consciousness and into telepathic communication. The most intimate moments of your life can be experienced by anyone who cares to pay attention, or by hundreds of thousands of anyones if you are one of the Founders who helped create the Singularity.

The small bunch of Founders, including young newlyweds Thuy, a hypertext novelist, and Jayjay, a gamer and brain-enhancement addict, are living a popular, live-action media life. But now alien races that have already gone through this transformation notice Earth for the first time, and begin to arrive to exploit both the new environment and any available humans. Some of them are real estate developers, some are slavers, and some just want to help. But how to tell the difference? Someone has to save humanity from the alien invasions, and it might as well be reality media stars Thuy and Jayjay.

Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion.

Translation by Ken Liu.

Earth is reeling from the revelation of a coming alien invasion—in just four centuries' time. The aliens' human collaborators may have been defeated, but the presence of the sophons, the subatomic particles that allow Trisolaris instant access to all human information, means that Earth's defense plans are totally exposed to the enemy. Only the human mind remains a secret. This is the motivation for the Wallfacer Project, a daring plan that grants four men enormous resources to design secret strategies, hidden through deceit and misdirection from Earth and Trisolaris alike. Three of the Wallfacers are influential statesmen and scientists, but the fourth is a total unknown. Luo Ji, an unambitious Chinese astronomer and sociologist, is baffled by his new status. All he knows is that he's the one Wallfacer that Trisolaris wants dead.

Translated by Joel Martinsen

Note: first published in China in 2008.

Half a century after the Doomsday Battle, the uneasy balance of Dark Forest Deterrence keeps the Trisolaran invaders at bay. Earth enjoys unprecedented prosperity due to the infusion of Trisolaran knowledge. With human science advancing daily and the Trisolarans adopting Earth culture, it seems that the two civilizations will soon be able to co-exist peacefully as equals without the terrible threat of mutually assured annihilation. But the peace has also made humanity complacent.

Cheng Xin, an aerospace engineer from the early 21st century, awakens from hibernation in this new age. She brings with her knowledge of a long-forgotten program dating from the beginning of the Trisolar Crisis, and her very presence may upset the delicate balance between two worlds. Will humanity reach for the stars or die in its cradle?

The Photurians -- a hivemind of sentient AIs and machines -- were awakened by humanity as part of a complex political trap. But they broke free, evolved, and now the human race is almost finished. Once we spanned dozens of star systems; now only four remain, and Earth is being evacuated.

But the Photes can infect us, and among the thousands rescued from our home world may be enemy agents. Tiny colonies struggle to house the displaced. Our warships are failing. The end of humanity has come.

But on a distant planet shielded from both humanity and the Photurians, one hope may still live. The only person who might be able to intervene. The roboteer. He is trapped in a hell of his own making, and does not know he is needed. And so a desperate rescue mission is begun. But can he be reached in time? Or will he be the last remnant of humanity in the universe?

Twenty years after the elemental conflict that nearly tore apart the cosmos in The Saga of Seven Suns, a new threat emerges from the darkness. The human race must set aside its own inner conflicts to rebuild their alliance with the Ildiran Empire for the survival of the galaxy.

In Kevin J. Anderson's The Dark Between the Stars, galactic empires clash, elemental beings devastate whole planetary systems, and factions of humanity are pitted against each other. Heroes rise and enemies make their last stands in the climax of an epic tale seven years in the making.

In the year 2204, humanity is expanding into the wider galaxy in leaps and bounds. Cutting-edge technology of linked jump gates has rendered most forms of transportation--including starships--virtually obsolete. Every place on Earth, every distant planet humankind has settled, is now merely a step away from any other. All seems wonderful--until a crashed alien spaceship of unknown origin is found on a newly located world eighty-nine light-years from Earth, carrying a cargo as strange as it is horrifying. To assess the potential of the threat, a high-powered team is dispatched to investigate. But one of them may not be all they seem....

Bursting with tension and big ideas, Peter F. Hamilton's Salvation is the first book of an all-new series that highlights the inventiveness of an author at the top of his game.

In the twenty-third century, humanity has enjoyed a comparative utopia. But life on Earth is about to change, forever. Feriton Kane's investigative team has discovered the worst threat mankind has ever faced - and we've almost no time to fight back. The supposedly benign Olyix are determined to harvest humanity, to carry us to their god, and vast arc ships are converging upon the earth to gather this cargo.

But humanity won't go gently into that good night - or spend the rest of their days cowering in hiding. Factions unite and animosities are set aside in the face of a common purpose, but is this too little, too late? As disaster looms, human ingenuity and determination will be channelled into just one goal. To wipe this undefeated enemy from the face of creation. Even if it means planning for a future no one present will ever see.

This book is a combination of the two original Buck Rogers stories (Armadeddon 2419 A.D. and The Airlords of Han) together as one.

This is the story of how World War One veteran Anthony Rogers, after investigating an incident at a remote mine, wakes up five hundred years in the future. He awakes to a occupied America, ruled by the Air Lords of the Han with there gleaming cities and giant air ships suspended on beams of force. The Han supress the remants of the American population who live by stealh in the forests with hidden factories and plans to liberate thier homeland from the Han invaders. Buck Rogers, with his knowledge of long forgotten combat and tactics, comes to their aid. With his help, the Han's days are numbered.

The new planet came out of the infinite deeps of insterstellar space, moved in towards the sunlike a comet, and stayed -- a new member of the Solar System, between Earth and Venus. Xenephrene it was named and it made a pretty vision in the evening sky... until other things began to appear in the heavens. flying things, strange visitants, myterious lights -- and people knew then that they were no longer alone. Xenephrene was inhabited, and its inhabitants were discovering the Earth. But were they coming as friends or as invaders? For trade or for conquest?

Appeared in Ace Double G-585 (1966).

RED SUN RISING:

The star Mira was unpredictably variable. Sometimes it was blazing, brilliant and hot. Other times it was oddly dim, cool, shedding little warmth on its many planets. Gresth Gkae, leader of the Mirans, was seeking a better star, one to which his "people" could migrate. That star had to be steady, reliable, with a good planetary system. And in his astronomical searching, he found Sol.

With hundreds of ships, each larger than whole Terrestrial spaceports, and traveling faster than the speed of light, the Mirans set out to move in to Solar regions and take over.

And on Earth there was nothing which would be capable of beating off this incredible armada -- until Buck Kendall stumbled upon THE ULTIMATE WEAPON.

Strange exiles were landing throughout the night... exiles from the unknown depths of outer space -- seeking human beings for food!

In the aftermath of an alien attack and an admiral's traitorous desertion, Commander Nicholas Seafort is left in charge of a doomed ship that carries arrogant colonists, violent street children, and dwindling supplies.

Recovering from injuries at Hope Station, Captain Nicholas Seafort is appointed liaison to the wealthy planters of the verdant colony planet and finds himself called upon to halt a revolution and rally his people against alien invaders.

The fourth and final installment of the Hope Nation science-fiction yarn finds Nick Seafort, Commandant of the UN Naval Academy, in charge of Earth's defenses against the alien invasion that will seal his fate.

Year 2471. A new discovery. Those three words thrill my parents - the galaxy's leading archaeologists - but for me, it means another time jump to a different planet. One so big, my friends will be older than my dad when we arrive. And I'll still be seventeen. Thanks, Einstein.

I really can't blame Einstein, though. No one expected to find life-sized terracotta warriors buried on other planets. So off we go to investigate, traveling through space and time. With my social life in ruins, I fill my days illegally worming into the quantum net - the invention that allows us to travel in space. Of course the only person close to my age is a hot-but-pain-in-the-neck security officer who threatens to throw me into the brig.

But when one of the warrior planets goes silent, we have bigger problems on our hands. The planet's entire population might be dead. And now my worming skills, along with a translation of an ancient alien artefact, might be the key to finding out why. But my attempts to uncover the truth lead to the discovery of a deadly new alien phenomenon, and also alert those who wish to keep it quiet. The galaxy is in real danger and time is not on our side...

In their attitude towards the Planet Earth, the Martians had long been divided into two camps: the Observers, benevolent 'meddlers' in human affairs; and the rebellious Abdicators, who sought the Earth's collapse.

But it wasn't until the extraordinary matter of the Earth-Boy, Angelo Pontevecchio, that the enmity between these two factions came to a definite head.

It started as a contest of wills, waged between two opposing Martians for the soul of a single human child.

And before the end, it threatened all life on both Earth and Mars.

A fabulous tale of pilgrimage and hope, betrayal and transformation by one of science fiction's greatest writers. Only at night on the winds of darkness can she soar. And it was Avluela the Flier's ebony and scarlet wings that lead the Watcher to the seven hills of the ancient city from which, in a moment of weakness, the Watcher failed his vigil, leaving the skies and deep space unguarded. The invaders came and conquered. With Avluela lost in the turmoil of conquest, the Watcher set out alone for the Holy City home of the Rememberers, keepers of the past. This is where the secret of Earth's salvation lay hidden in antiquity. On his journey the Watcher hoped to recapture his youth and find the soaring, beautiful woman he loved. But Avluela held more for the Watcher - and Earth - than love. Her wonder stretched beyond flight, for she knew the riddle that would free all men.

The Great Reawakening did not come quietly. Across the country and in every nation, people began "coming up Latent," developing terrifying powers-summoning storms, raising the dead, and setting everything they touch ablaze. Those who Manifest must choose: become a sheepdog who protects the flock or a wolf who devours it...

In the wake of a bloody battle at Forward Operating Base Frontier and a scandalous presidential impeachment, Lieutenant Colonel Jan Thorsson, call sign "Harlequin," becomes a national hero and a pariah to the military that is the only family he's ever known.

In the fight for Latent equality, Oscar Britton is positioned to lead a rebellion in exile, but a powerful rival beats him to the punch: Scylla, a walking weapon who will stop at nothing to end the human-sanctioned apartheid against her kind.

When Scylla's inhuman forces invade New York City, the Supernatural Operations Corps are the only soldiers equipped to prevent a massacre. In order to redeem himself with the military, Harlequin will be forced to face off with this havoc-wreaking woman from his past, warped by her power into something evil...

Shane, a gifted linguist, has spent his life learning the language of the old and powerful alien race that has conquered Earth. He has learned it so well that the interstellar masters, old hands at enslaving planets, regard him as a valuable servant.

But Shane has a secret. One day, in a rebellious moment, he invented The Pilgrim: a mysterious figure who incites rebellion and vanishes unseen, leaving a distinctive icon behind him.

Now the human underground is preparing to rebel. Shane knows how hopeless their rebellion will be. He knows, as well, that he will be unable to keep himself from taking part.

Cut off from Earth by alien conquerors, the human colony on Keiss was slowly building an underground resistance movement to stand against the Valtegan invaders. But for many of the colonists, it was already too late.

Her twin sister Elise captured by Valtegan soldiers, Carrie telepathically and empathically linked with Elise, experiencing all the pain and terror that her sister was suffering. Only Elise's death freed Carrie from torment, though it also left her completely alone in her own mind for the first time in her life.

But this mental void was unexpectedly filled when Kusac, a felinoid crewman of a crashed starship, touched her thoughts. Drawn to him by their shared Talent, Carrie hid the injured Kusac from the Valtegans and in so doing found a friend and an invaluable ally.

Yet though trust and understanding between Carrie and Kusac was soon unshakable, it would prove far more difficult to convince each of their races that their only hope of overthrowing the Valtegans was to band together against the common foe.

And even such an alliance offered no guarantee of success, for no one on any of the settled worlds had yet found a way to defeat this warrior race ready to lay waste to any civilization they could not conquer.

They had been brought together by mutual need when both their peoples were faced with the threat of the warlike Valtegans, an enemy bent on conquering any other race it encountered.

She was Carrie, the daughter of the human governor of the Terran colony planet Keiss. He was Kusac, the son and heir of the Sholan Clan Lord. Both were telepaths of the highest order, and the bond they formed was compounded equally of love and mind power. But even as they sought to refine their suddenly enhanced and intermingled powers and to define their relationship, the two were thrust into the heart of an interstellar conflict.

For while Terran and Sholan representatives worked together in good faith to negotiate a mutual defense treaty, opposing factions on both their worlds sought to use Carrie and Kusac for their own ends--or failing that to destroy them... and all hope for a Terran-Sholan alliance.

Silence Leigh now faces the ultimate test of her skills as a pilot and of her powers as a sage.

In this exhilarating sequel to The Skylark of Space, momentous danger again stalks genius inventor and interplanetary adventurer Dr. Richard Seaton. Seaton's allies on the planet Kondal are suffering devastating attacks by the forces of the Third Planet. Even worse, the menacing and contemptuous Fenachrones are threatening to conquer the galaxy and wipe out all who oppose them. And don't forget the dastardly machinations of Seaton's arch-nemesis, DuQuesne, who embarks on a nefarious mission of his own. Against such vile foes and impossible odds, how is victory possible?

Featuring even more technological wizardry, alien worlds, and all-out action than its predecessor, Skylark Three is hailed by many as the imaginative high point of the Skylark series.

A pioneer of the space opera, E. E. "Doc" Smith (1890–1965) profoundly influenced the development of American science fiction. Smith's books include the classic Lensman series. Jack Williamson is the author of numerous classic novels, including The Humanoids and Terraforming Earth. He has been inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide; the third expedition in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.

The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.

They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers--they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding--but it's the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.

In the second volume of the Southern Reach Trilogy, questions are answered, stakes are raised, and mysteries are deepened...

Following the disastrous twelfth expedition chronicled in 'Annihilation', the second book of the Southern Reach trilogy introduces John Rodriguez, the new head of the government agency responsible for the safeguarding of Area X. His first day is spent grappling with the fall-out from the last expedition. Area X itself remains a mystery. But, as instructed by a higher authority known only as The Voice, the self-styled Control must battle to 'put his house in order'.

From a series of interrogations, a cache of hidden notes and hours of profoundly troubling video footage, the mysteries of Area X begin to reveal themselves--and what they expose pushes Control to confront disturbing truths about both himself and the agency he's promised to serve.

Undermined and under pressure to make sense of everything, Rodriguez retreats into his past in a labyrinthine search for answers. Yet the more he uncovers, the more he risks, for the secrets of the Southern Reach are more sinister than anyone could have known.

The third volume of the extraordinary Southern Reach trilogy.

It is winter in Area X. A new team embarks across the border, on a mission to find a member of a previous expedition who may have been left behind. As they press deeper into the unknown – navigating new terrain and new challenges – the threat to the outside world becomes only more daunting. In this last instalment of the Southern Reach Trilogy, the mysteries of Area X may have been solved, but their consequences and implications are no less profound – or terrifying.

Chuck never thought too deeply about whether aliens existed - not until Jopp, an intergalactic transport pilot, drunkenly crashed on Earth and tried to steal his truck.

Now, Chuck finds himself unwittingly roped into helping Jobb work off a debt to the universe's most powerful corporation. Through a series of mishaps and misfortune, the duo finds themselves in possession of a mysterious black case. Along the way they are joined by Bhanakhana, an adventurous scientist, and Rohi, a rogue law enforcement agent.

All they want is to get back to their normal lives, but in order to do so, they'll have to fend off murderous marauders, skirt the attentions of an interplanetary police force, deal with a peculiar crime boss, and escape a backwater planet inhabited by friendly yet endlessly frustrating alien yokels. It's a big and scary universe out there, and they'll be damned if they're going to face it sober.

A few short years after the wild series of events that brought them together, intergalactic misfits, Chuck and Jopp, along with their friend and respected scientist, Bhanakhana, are hired by a quirky Professor to join the search for the origin planet of a long lost alien civilization. It's a mystery that's confounded historians for centuries. Meanwhile, Rohi, a Universal Law Enforcement agent, investigates the peculiar murder of a young industrialist. The two endeavors become entwined as Chuck, Jopp, Bhanakhana, and Rohi find themselves running afoul of a clandestine and ruthless organization. What follows is a fun, fast-paced race across the universe toward an unknown finish line that might not even exist at all.

When her Field Base is mysteriously attacked, Dr. Mackenzie Connor must flee for her life. Joining forces with an alien archaeologist, she escapes to his planet on a quest to find a defense against the unknown agressor before they launch a full-scale invasion of Earth.

*36:00:00*

The clock activates so suddenly in my mind, my head involuntarily jerks a bit to the side. The fog vanishes, dissipated in an instant as though it never was. Memories come slotting into place, their edges sharp enough to leave furrows, and suddenly I know. I know exactly who I am.

My name is Lia Johansen, and I was named for a prisoner of war. She lived in the Tiersten Internment Colony for two years, and when they negotiated the return of the prisoners, I was given her memories and sent back in her place.

And I am a genetically engineered human bomb.

Lia Johansen was created for only one purpose: to slip onto the strategically placed New Sol Space Station and explode. But her mission goes to hell when her clock malfunctions, freezing her countdown with just two minutes to go. With no Plan B, no memories of her past, and no identity besides a name stolen from a dead POW, Lia has no idea what to do next. Her life gets even more complicated when she meets Michael Sorenson, the real Lia's childhood best friend.

Drawn to Michael and his family against her better judgment, Lia starts learning what it means to live and love, and to be human. It is only when her countdown clock begins sporadically losing time that she realizes even duds can still blow up. If she wants any chance at a future, she must find a way to unlock the secrets of her past and stop her clock. But as Lia digs into her origins, she begins to suspect there's far more to her mission and to this war, than meets the eye. With the fate of not just a space station but an entire empire hanging in the balance, Lia races to find the truth before her time -- literally -- runs out.

Adam Christopher's dazzling first novel, Empire State, was named the Best Book of 2012 by SciFi Now magazine. Now he explores new dimensions of time and space in The Burning Dark.

Back in the day, Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland had led the Fleet into battle against an implacable machine intelligence capable of devouring entire worlds. But after saving a planet, and getting a bum robot knee in the process, he finds himself relegated to one of the most remote backwaters in Fleetspace to oversee the decommissioning of a semi-deserted space station well past its use-by date.

But all is not well aboard the U-Star Coast City. The station's reclusive Commandant is nowhere to be seen, leaving Cleveland to deal with a hostile crew on his own. Persistent malfunctions plague the station's systems while interference from a toxic purple star makes even ordinary communications problematic. Alien shadows and whispers seem to haunt the lonely corridors and airlocks, fraying the nerves of everyone aboard.

Isolated and friendless, Cleveland reaches out to the universe via an old-fashioned space radio, only to tune in to a strange, enigmatic signal: a woman's voice that seems to echo across a thousand light-years of space. But is the transmission just a random bit of static from the past--or a warning of an undying menace beyond mortal comprehension?

"Builds tension expertly. Claustrophobic in mood but with the scope of great space opera, this is SF you will want to read with the light on."--Library Journal, starred review, on The Burning Dark

From the deepest, darkest reaches of space came the greatest threat the Federation had ever faced: the Borg. Half organic/half mechanical, the Borg were relentless and bent on conquering and "assimilating" all intelligent life; a single Borg vessel destroyed 39 Federation starships, decimating Starfleet. Only the courage and determination of Captain Jean-Luc Picard and his crew prevented the Borg from striking at the heart of the Federation and Earth itself in the year 2367. Picard and the starship USS Enterprise were able to score a stunning victory against the Borg.

But all that has changed, and the Borg are back. Stronger and more dangerous than ever, they are ready to launch a new attack against the Federation, one that threatens its past... present... and future. Once again, Captain Picard, Commander Riker, Lieutenant Commander Data and the rest of the crew must face their greatest foe in a startling confrontation that will take them across time and put them face-to-face with their relentless enemy, revealing the Borg Collective's deadliest secret... and its true face.

FROM THE USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF STAR TREK: A TIME TO HEAL, THE START OF A NEW EPIC IN THE ERA OF THE ORIGINAL SERIES

Returning from its historic first voyage to the edge of the galaxy, the damaged U.S.S. Enterprise journeys through the Taurus Reach, a vast and little-known region of space in which a new starbase has been unexpectedly established. Puzzled by the Federation's interest in an area so far from its borders and so near the xenophobic Tholian Assembly, Captain James T. Kirk orders the Enterprise to put in for repairs at the new space station: Starbase 47, also known as Vanguard.

As Kirk ponders the mystery of the enormous base, he begins to suspect that there is much more to Vanguard than meets the eye. It's a suspicion shared by the Tholians, the Orions, and the Klingon Empire, each of whom believes that there are less than benign motives behind the Federation's sudden and unexplained desire to explore and colonize the Taurus Reach.

But when a calamity deep within the Reach threatens to compromise Starfleet's continued presence in the region, Kirk, Spock, and several key specialists from the Enterprise must assist Vanguard's crew in investigating the cause of the disaster and containing the damage. In the process, they learn the true purpose behind the creation of Vanguard, and what the outcome of its mission may mean for life throughout that part of the galaxy.

On the backwater colony world of Chalcedony, Delta Pavonis, all is not what it seems... All David Conway wants after the death of his daughter and the break-up of his marriage is a quiet life away from Earth and when he comes to Chalcedony he thinks he s found that. What he does find is a group of people whose friendship will change his life forever, as well as a haunted starship, extraterrestrials with an uncanny ability to read future events, and a conflict between alien races that has lasted for millennia... and is about to begin all over again.

In this wonderful series, Eric Brown gives us aliens, fabulous works of art, starships and teleportation... plus some of the most delightful characters ever to grace the printed page.

Table of Contents:

• Starship Summer - (2007) - novella
• Starship Fall - (2009) - novella
• Starship Winter - (2012) - novella
• Starship Spring - (2012) - novella

Ten years after events depicted in Starship Spring, David Conway is enjoying life on the idyllic world of Chalcedony, Delta Pavonis V. Then he receives a communique from his ex-wife who reveals that she is undergoing a remarkable medical process. Not only that, but she is coming to Chalcedony and wishes to meet him. What follows will force Conway to look back at the tragic events of his past and face the mendacity of those seeking to gain from his fame as an Opener of the Way. Starship Coda is the moving epilogue to the successful Starship series.

Historical fiction meets science fiction and the paranormal in this gripping novella set in the Lake District. Cynthia lives in a lakeside parish in Cumbria, where none suspect her blemished past. Then a ghostly scar-faced boy starts to appear to her and strange lights manifest over Blaswater. What of the astromomer Mr Sales, who comes to study the lights but disappears, presumed drowned, only to be found wandering naked days later with a fanciful tale of being 'hopped' into the sky and held within a brass-walled room? What of married mother of two Eliza, who sets Cynthia's heart so aflutter?

Caine Riordan, reluctant diplomatic and military intelligence operative, has just finished playing his part repulsing the Arat Kur's and Hkh'Rkh's joint invasion of Earth.

But scant hours after the attackers surrender, the mysterious but potentially helpful Slaasriithi appeal to Caine to shepherd a diplomatic mission on a visit to their very alien worlds. The possible prize: a crucial alliance in a universe where the fledgling Consolidated Terran Republic has very few friends.

But Caine and his legation aren't the only ones journeying into the unknown reaches of Slaasriithi space. A group of renegade K'tor are following them, hoping to destroy humanity's hopes for a quick alliance. And that means finding and killing Caine Riordan.

Assuming that the bizarre and dangerous Slaasriithi lifeforms don't do it first.

When out-of-shape IT technician Roen Tan woke up and started hearing voices in his head, he naturally assumed he was losing it.

He wasn't.

He now has a passenger in his brain -- an ancient alien life-form called Tao, whose race crash-landed on Earth before the first fish crawled out of the oceans. Now split into two opposing factions -- the peace-loving, but under-represented Prophus, and the savage, powerful Genjix -- the aliens have been in a state of civil war for centuries. Both sides are searching for a way off-planet, and the Genjix will sacrifice the entire human race, if that's what it takes.

Meanwhile, Roen is having to train to be the ultimate secret agent. Like that's going to end up well...

The Prophus and the Genjix are at war. For centuries they have sought a way off-planet, guiding humanity's social and technological development to the stage where space travel is possible.

The end is now in sight, and both factions have plans to leave the Earth, but the Genjix method will mean the destruction of the human race.

That's a price they're willing to pay.

Years have passed since the events in The Deaths of Tao. The world is split into pro-Prophus and pro-Genjix factions, and is poised on the edge of a devastating new World War. A Genjix scientist who defects to the other side holds the key to preventing bloodshed on an almost unimaginable scale.

With the might of the Genjix in active pursuit, Roen is the only person who can help him save the world, and the Quasing race, too. And you thought you were having a stressful day...

After the 1st wave, only darkness remains. After the 2nd, only the lucky escape. And after the 3rd, only the unlucky survive. After the 4th wave, only one rule applies: trust no one.

Now, it's the dawn of the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth's last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan Walker may be Cassie's only hope for rescuing her brother--or even saving herself. But Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death. To give up or to get up.

How do you rid the Earth of seven billion humans? Rid the humans of their humanity.

Surviving the first four waves was nearly impossible. Now Cassie Sullivan finds herself in a new world, a world in which the fundamental trust that binds us together is gone. As the 5th Wave rolls across the landscape, Cassie, Ben, and Ringer are forced to confront the Others' ultimate goal: the extermination of the human race.

Cassie and her friends haven't seen the depths to which the Others will sink, nor have the Others seen the heights to which humanity will rise, in the ultimate battle between life and death, hope and despair, love and hate.

The enemy is Other. The enemy is us. They're down here, they're up there, they're nowhere. They want the Earth, they want us to have it. They came to wipe us out, they came to save us.

But beneath these riddles lies one truth: Cassie has been betrayed. So has Ringer. Zombie. Nugget. And all 7.5 billion people who used to live on our planet. Betrayed first by the Others, and now by ourselves.

In these last days, Earth's remaining survivors will need to decide what's more important: saving themselves... or saving what makes us human.

In the year 2038, the earth has been ravaged by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Retroviruses run rampant through humanity. Economic disaster has destabilised the world, the US has undergone a socialist revolution, and the balance of power has changed.

Then the aliens arrive.

With no clear understanding of the visitors' intent, factions form, including the anti-alien group White Queen, working to turn humans against these extra-terrestrial tourists. Caught in the middle is Johnny Guglio, an American exile whose only fault was living near the landing site, and Braemar Wilson, a cutthroat reporter who will do whatever she needs to get ahead of the story. And for better or for worse, it seems being caught in the middle is the best place for them to uncover the truth.

Two centuries after the Earth fell to enigmatic alien machines known as the Visitors, humanity survives in sparse nomadic tribes. Macsen is an adventurer, undertaking hazardous quests for the captivating Hona Loy; quests that have made him a hero.

Macsen never fails, but this time he crosses the path of a Jugger, one of the deadliest of all the Visitors. Can he find a way to defeat the alien and survive, or will it fall to his faithful companion Laylaw to return to the tribe with the tale of his noble death?

Nebula-nominated Novella

In December of 2012, the Mayan calendar reached the end of its 13th baktun, completing the Long Count and signaling the end of the world... metaphorically. That was the day of Galactic First Contact, and the beginning of a new age for humans and aliens.

Eighty years later, Conroy, stage-hypnotist-turned-wealthy-CEO, attempts to slip away from the corporate grind just to enjoy a little downtime performing for conventioneers in the midwest.

But the alien Uary have come to Earth, and are intent on luring the Amazing Conroy down to Mexico with the promise of gourmet cuisine. They want to hypnotically regress the descendant of a Mayan priest and ask him a simple question about the end date of that ancient calendar: How did they know?

There's just one problem. Another alien, a Svenkali, has dedicated its life to purging the galaxy of the Uary. It's tracked them to Earth and while it bungled one assassination attempt, it managed to steal Reggie, Conroy's buffalito, in the process. What's a hypnotist to do?

Read this story online for free at Noble Fusion Press.

One of three stories inspired by the same painting by Richard Anderson. Anthologized in The Anderson Project.

Ken Liu is among the most prominent new award-winning SF writers of the last decade, and this vision of a really uncanny alien invasion set in Boston, MA, is a stunner, with echoing reverberations, of love, identity, resistance and revolution.

This story can also be found in the anthology Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction (2018), edited by Irene Gallo, and Not One of Us: Stories of Aliens on Earth (2018), edited by Neil Clarke.

Read this story online for free at Tor.com.

A sweeping, cinematic tale about a young woman who becomes an overnight celebrity before realizing she's part of something bigger, and stranger, than anyone could have possibly imagined...

The Carls just appeared.

Roaming through New York City at three a.m., twenty-three-year-old April May stumbles across a giant sculpture. Delighted by its appearance and craftsmanship--like a ten-foot-tall Transformer wearing a suit of samurai armor--April and her best friend, Andy, make a video with it, which Andy uploads to YouTube. The next day, April wakes up to a viral video and a new life. News quickly spreads that there are Carls in dozens of cities around the world--from Beijing to Buenos Aires--and April, as their first documentarian, finds herself at the center of an intense international media spotlight.

Seizing the opportunity to make her mark on the world, April now has to deal with the consequences her new particular brand of fame has on her relationships, her safety, and her own identity. And all eyes are on April to figure out not just what the Carls are, but what they want from us.

The Earth is dying.

Plants, animals and humans are being infected by spores from space and becoming part of a vast alien intelligence.

When 16-year-old Callie discovers her little sister Gracie is Changing, she flees with Gracie to the Zone to escape termination by the ruthless officers of quarantine.

What Callie finds in the Zone will alter her forever and send her on a journey to the stars, and beyond.

The first book in an heart-stopping trilogy from award-winning author James Bradley.

A chaplain serving in Earth's space fleet is trapped behind enemy lines where he struggles for both personal survival and humanity's future.

The mantis cyborgs: insectlike, cruel, and determined to wipe humanity from the face of the galaxy.

The Fleet is humanity's last chance: a multi-world, multi-national task force assembled to hold the line against the aliens' overwhelming technology and firepower. Enter Harrison Barlow, who like so many young men of wars past, simply wants to serve his people and partake of the grand adventure of military life. Only, Harrison is not a hot pilot, nor a crack shot with a rifle. What good is a Chaplain's Assistant in the interstellar battles which will decide the fate of all?

More than he thinks. Because while the mantis insectoids are determined to eliminate the human threat to mantis supremacy, they remember the errors of their past. Is there the slightest chance that humans might have value? Especially since humans seem to have the one thing the mantes explicitly do not: an innate ability to believe in what cannot be proven nor seen God. Captured and stranded behind enemy lines, Barlow must come to grips with the fact that he is not only bargaining for his own life, but the lives of everyone he knows and loves. And so he embarks upon an improbable gambit, determined to alter the course of the entire war.

TO SAVE THEIR CIVILISATION HE MUST DESTROY IT...

When images of a lost civilization are 'dreamed' by a self-proclaimed prophet of the age, Nigel Sheldon, inventor of wormhole technology and creator of the Commonwealth society, is asked to investigate. Especially as the dreams seem to be coming from the Void - a mysterious area of living space monitored and controlled because of its hugely destructive capabilities. With it being the greatest threat to the known universe, Nigel is committed to finding out what really lies within the Void and if there's any truth to the visions they've received. Does human life really exist inside its boundary?

But when Nigel crash lands inside the Void, on a planet he didn't even know existed, he finds so much more than he expected. Bienvenido: a world populated by the ancestors of survivors from Commonwealth colony ships that disappeared centuries ago. Since then they've been fighting an increasingly desperate battle against the Fallers, a space-born predator artificially evolved to conquer worlds. Their sole purpose is to commit genocide against every species they encounter. With their powerful telepathic lure - that tempts any who stray across their path to a slow and painful death - they are by far the greatest threat to humanity's continued existence on this planet.

But Nigel soon realizes that the Fallers also hold the key to something he'd never hoped to find - the destruction of the Void itself. If only he can survive long enough to work out how to use it...

After centuries trapped inside the Void, the planet Bienvenido--along with its inhabitants, both human and Faller--has been expelled into normal space. But the survivors are millions of light-years from the Commonwealth, which knows nothing of their existence. As the two races plunge into mortal conflict for sole possession of the planet, the humans seem destined to lose--despite the assistance of the mysterious Warrior Angel, who possesses forbidden Commonwealth technology.

With the Fallers' numbers growing, and their ability to mimic humans allowing them to infiltrate all levels of society, it's only a matter of time before they surge to victory. Then, on a routine space flight, Major Ry Evine inadvertently frees a captive vessel that crash-lands on Bienvenido carrying the last, best hope for human survival: a baby. But a far from ordinary one.

The child not only ages at a remarkable rate but demonstrates knowledge and abilities far beyond those of Bienvenido's humans. Hunted by Fallers and humans alike, she is a crucial link to humanity's lost past--and a glorious future already almost out of reach.

The John W. Campbell award-winning author of Virtual Girl offers an eyewitness account of "a complex alien ecology" (Washington Post Book World) in her stunning new novel. Amy Thomson captivated readers with her national bestselling debut, Virtual Girl. Her acclaimed thriller, The Color of Distance, was praised by Vonda N. McIntyre as "an energetic and entertaining first-contact novel." Now, Thomson has imagined a first-contact of a different sort-as two members of an alien species struggle for survival on a strange planet... called Earth.

THE HUB IS A VERY DANGEROUS PLACE - BUT SO ARE ITS CITIZENS.

The Federation of the Hub: thousands of rough, ornery and tough-minded human worlds with only the subtlest of interstellar governments holding them all together. Stable at last after centuries of war, the Hub is now prime real estate ... making it a merciless arena for the conflicting schemes of criminals, unscrupulous corporations, and invaders from beyond the edges of Federation space.

But the Hub is well-defended, and not only by professional heroes such as Telzey Amberdon and Trigger Argee. In Hub Space a citizen is expected to stand up for herself, blaster in hand, as needs must; so when Trouble comes Hubward in large doses, there are an awful lot of armed citizens waiting for it....

Table of Contents:

• The Searcher - (1966) - novella
• Grandpa - (1955) - novelette
• Balanced Ecology - (1965) - short story
• A Nice Day for Screaming - (1965) - short story
• The Winds of Time - (1962) - novelette
• The Machmen - (1964) - short story
• The Other Likeness - (1962) - short story
• Attitudes - (1969) - novelette
• Trouble Tide - (1965) - novelette
• The Demon Breed - (1968) - novel
• Afterword - essay by Eric Flint
• Recurring Characters in the Hub Series - essay by Guy Gordon

The final book in C. S. Lewis's acclaimed Space Trilogy, which includes Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, That Hideous Strength concludes the adventures of the matchless Dr. Ransom.

The dark forces that were repulsed in Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra are massed for an assault on the planet Earth itself. Word is on the wind that the mighty wizard Merlin has come back to the land of the living after many centuries, holding the key to ultimate power for that force which can find him and bend him to its will.

A sinister technocratic organization is gaining power throughout Europe with a plan to "recondition" society, and it is up to Ransom and his friends to squelch this threat by applying age-old wisdom to a new universe dominated by science.

The two groups struggle to a climactic resolution that brings the Space Trilogy to a magnificent, crashing close.

The sudden appearance of a second space elevator in Brazil only deepens the mystery about the aliens who provided it: the Builders. Scavenger crew captain Skyler Luiken and brilliant scientist Dr. Tania Sharma have formed a colony around the new Elevator’s base, utilizing mobile towers to protect humans from the Builders’ plague. But they are soon under attack from a roving band of plague-immune soldiers. Cut off from the colony, Skyler must wage a one-man war against the new threat as well as murderous subhumans and thugs from Darwin—all while trying to solve the puzzle of the Builders’ master plan . . . before it’s too late for the last vestiges of humanity.

WHO OWNS THE STARS?

For ten thousand years Nova Babylonia has been the greatest city of the Second Sphere, an interstellar civilization of human and other beings who have been secretly removed, throughout history, from Earth.

Now humans from the far reaches of the Sphere have come, to offer immortality-and to urge them to build defenses against the alien invasion they know is coming.

As humans and aliens compete and conspire, the wheels of history will lathe all the players into shapes new and surprising. The alien invasion will reach New Babylon at last-led by the most alien figure of all.

We are not alone.

The alien protomolecule is clear evidence of an intelligence beyond human reckoning. No one knows what exactly is being built on Venus, but whatever it is, it is vast, powerful, and terrifying.

When a creature of unknown origin and seemingly impossible physiology attacks soldiers on Ganymede, the fragile balance of power in the Solar System shatters. Now, the race is on to discover if the protomolecule has escaped Venus, or if someone is building an army of super-soldiers.

Jim Holden is the center of it all. In spite of everything, he's still the best man for the job to find out what happened on Ganymede. Either way, the protomolecule is loose and Holden must find a way to stop it before war engulfs the entire system.

CALIBAN'S WAR is an action-packed space adventure following in the footsteps of the critically acclaimed Leviathan Wakes.

James S. A. Corey is a collective pseudonym for authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck.

For generations, the solar system -- Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt -- was humanity's great frontier. Until now. The alien artifact working through its program under the clouds of Venus has appeared in Uranus's orbit, where it has built a massive gate that leads to a starless dark.Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante are part of a vast flotilla of scientific and military ships going out to examine the artifact. But behind the scenes, a complex plot is unfolding, with the destruction of Holden at its core. As the emissaries of the human race try to find whether the gate is an opportunity or a threat, the greatest danger is the one they brought with them.

The war is over. Its heroes forgotten. Until one chance discovery.

Idris has neither aged nor slept since they remade him in the war. And one of humanity's heroes now scrapes by on a freelance salvage vessel, to avoid the attention of greater powers.

After earth was destroyed, mankind created a fighting elite to save their species, enhanced humans such as Idris. In the silence of space they could communicate, mind-to-mind, with the enemy. Then their alien aggressors, the Architects, simply disappeared – and Idris and his kind became obsolete.

Now, fifty years later, Idris and his crew have discovered something strange abandoned in space. It's clearly the work of the Architects – but are they returning? And if so, why? Hunted by gangsters, cults and governments, Idris and his crew race across the galaxy hunting for answers. For they now possess something of incalculable value, that many would kill to obtain.

Stephen R. Donaldson's thrilling Gap series--The Real Story, Forbidden Knowledge, A Dark and Hungry God Arises, and Chaos and Order--introduced us to an adventure as vast as the galaxy and unpredictable as the human heart. It is the work of a storytelling genius with more than ten million copies of his books in print worldwide. Now in this dark, intense story, Donaldson delivers the thrilling conclusion to one of the most powerful science fiction stories ever told.

The countdown has begun. The battleworn crew of Trumpet is in disarray, as they attempt to pursue the pirate ship Soar and her captain Sorus Chatelaine. With one crew member infected by the Amnion and another stranded in the vacuum of space, all their hopes lie with Angus Thermopyle, once a bloodthirsty pirate, now a cyborg working against his will for the United Mining Companies Police--the strongest, most rapacious force in all of human space. As Angus, Morn Hyland, and her force-grown son Davies race for home across the vast reaches of forbidden space, they have no way of knowing that the final confrontation between Warden Dios and The Dragon has begun. Or that the fate of all humankind hangs in the balance.

At last--the ultimate book in the renowned Heechee Saga! Advanced Heechee technology had enabled Robinette Broadhead to live after death as a machine-stored personality, enjoying his life by flitting along the wires from party to party with a host of other machine-people. But suddenly his decadent existence ends when an all powerful alien race intent on the utter destruction of all intelligent life reappears after eons of silence, and threatens the lives of all heechee and humans.

Even Robin, virtually immortal and with unlimited access to millennia of accumulated data, cannot discover how to stop these aliens. It began to seem that only a face to face meeting could determine the future of the entire universe....

Robert Heinlein called it "possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read." The San Francisco Chronicle declared that "as science fiction, The Mote in God's Eye is one of the most important novels ever published." Now Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, award winning authors of such bestsellers as Footfall and The Legacy of Heorot, return us to the Mote, and to the universe of Kevin Renner and Horace Bury, of Rod Blaine and Sally Fowler.

There, 25 years have passed since humanity quarantined the mysterious aliens known as Moties within the confines of their own solar system. They have spent a quarter century analyzing and agonizing over the deadly threat posed by the only aliens mankind has ever encountered-- a race divided into distinct biological forms, each serving a different function. Master, Mediator, Engineer. Warrior. Each supremely adapted to its task, yet doomed by millions of years of evolution to an inescapable fate. For the Moties must breed-- or die. And now the fragile wall separating them and the galaxy beyond is beginning to crumble.

The complete Patternist series – Butler’s acclaimed vision of a world transformed by a secret race of telepaths and the violence, intolerance, and plague that follow their rise to power.

In the late seventeenth century, two immortals meet in an African forest. Anyanwu is a healer, a three-hundred-year-old woman who uses her wisdom to help those around her. The other is Doro, a malevolent despot who has mastered the power of stealing the bodies of others when his wears out. Together they will change the world.

In a frightening near future, an alien disease is poised to become a devastating global epidemic - unless someone can stop it.

Blake Maslin and his two daughters are driving to Flagstaff when bandits swarm their car. At gunpoint, the marauders kidnap one of Blake's children, promising to keep her safe in return for medical care. Warily, the doctor goes with them, not realizing that he has just taken the first step down a terrifying path that will consume his life.

The gunmen take him deep into the desert, to a colony of people infected with a gruesome alien disease. It causes weakness, sallow skin, and birth defects so horrible that the children who suffer them cannot rightly be called human. The victims have quarantined themselves in the desert lest their illness spread and doom mankind. But as their willingness to accept isolation falters, Blake becomes the last hope for the survival of an uncontaminated Earth.

They were feared as witches and demons...

They possessed superhuman powers...

They could read minds, free objects from gravity, fly through the air...

They lived alone and outcast in an isolated canyon...

They were THE PEOPLE!

When the Rho Project's lead scientist, Dr. Donald Stephenson, is imprisoned for his crimes against humanity, the world dares to hope the threat posed by the Rho Project's alien technologies is finally over.

The world is wrong.

In Switzerland, scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider have discovered a new threat, a scientific anomaly capable of destroying the earth--and only Rho Project technology can stop it. In exchange for a full pardon, Dr. Stephenson agrees to create a wormhole that will send the anomaly into deep space. But his promise masks the alien agenda that brought the Rho Ship to earth.

Now a trio of altered humans, Heather McFarland and Mark and Jennifer Smythe, must infiltrate Stephenson's wormhole project and stop it, no matter the cost. The ultimate battle has begun and, this time, mankind cannot afford to lose. The final installment to Richard Phillips's Rho Agenda trilogy brings the epic tale to an explosive conclusion that will echo long past the final page.

Commander Lanoe is one of the Navy's greatest heroes, but the civil war left him with nothing but painful memories. When a planetary governor is murdered, it falls to Lanoe to hunt down the killer and bring them to justice.

Yet his pursuit will lead him towards the greatest threat mankind has ever faced.

An unknown armada has emerged from the depths of space, targeting an isolated colony planet. As the colonists plead for help, the politicians and bureaucrats look away. But Lanoe has never run from a fight - and he will not abandon thousands of innocents to their fate.

Aleister Lanoe has won a stunning victory against the alien armada that threatened Niraya, but it's not enough to satisfy his desire for vengeance. He won't rest until he's located the armada's homeworld and reduced it to ashes.

Yet his personal vendetta will have to wait. Lanoe now faces a desperate race against time, and the merciless Centrocor corporation, if he's to secure the Earth's future--and discover the truth he seeks.

The battle is over. But the war has only just begun.

As a child, Rose Franklin made an astonishing discovery: a giant metallic hand, buried deep within the earth. As an adult, she's dedicated her brilliant scientific career to solving the mystery that began that fateful day: Why was a titanic robot of unknown origin buried in pieces around the world? Years of investigation have produced intriguing answers -- and even more perplexing questions. But the truth is closer now than ever before when a second robot, more massive than the first, materializes and lashes out with deadly force.

Now humankind faces a nightmare invasion scenario made real, as more colossal machines touch down across the globe. But Rose and her team at the Earth Defense Corps refuse to surrender. They can turn the tide if they can unlock the last secrets of an advanced alien technology. The greatest weapon humanity wields is knowledge in a do-or-die battle to inherit the Earth... and maybe even the stars.

Long ago, the Tripods--huge, three-legged machines--descended upon Earth and took control. Now people unquestioningly accept the Tripods' power. They have no control over their thoughts or their lives. But for a brief time in each person's life--in childhood--he is not a slave. For Will, his time of freedom is about to end--unless he can escape to the White Mountains, where the possibility of freedom still exists. The Tripods trilogy follows the adventures of Will and his cohorts, as they try to evade the Tripods and maintian their freedom and ultimately do battle against them. The prequel, When the Tripods Came, explains how the Tripods first invaded and gained control of the planet.

Long ago, the Tripods--huge, three-legged machines--descended upon Earth and took control. Now people unquestioningly accept the Tripods' power. They have no control over their thoughts or their lives. But for a brief time in each person's life--in childhood--he is not a slave. For Will, his time of freedom is about to end--unless he can escape to the White Mountains, where the possibility of freedom still exists. The Tripods trilogy follows the adventures of Will and his cohorts, as they try to evade the Tripods and maintian their freedom and ultimately do battle against them. The prequel, When the Tripods Came, explains how the Tripods first invaded and gained control of the planet.

When the aliens invade, all seems lost.The world as they know it is destroyed. Their friends are kidnapped. Their families are changed.

But with no adults left to run things, young trans-girl Violet and her new friend Bo realize that they are free to do whatever they want to to do and be whoever they want to be.

Except the invaders won't leave them alone for long...

This thrilling debut by one of the most acclaimed short form writers in science fiction tells the story of two young outsiders who must find a way to fight back against the aliens who have taken over their city.

First there were good times: humankind reached glorious heights, even immortality. Then there were bad times: Earth was occupied by the faceless, brutal Qax. Immortality drugs were confiscated, the human spirit crushed. Earth became a vast factory for alien foodstuffs.

Into this new dark age appears the end of a tunnel through time. Made from exotic matter, it is humanity's greatest engineering project in the pre-Qax era, where the other end of the tunnel remains anchored near Jupiter. When a small group of humans in a makeshift craft outwit the Qax to escape to the past through the tunnel, it is not to warn the people of Earth against the Qax, who are sure to follow them. For these men and women from the future are themselves dangerous fanatics in pursuit of their own bizarre quantum grail.

Michael Poole, architect of the tunnel, must boldly confront the consequences of his genius.

Timelike Infinity: the strange region at the end of time where the Xeelee, owners of the universe, are waiting...

STEP INTO THE FOLD.

IT'S PERFECTLY SAFE.

The folks in Mike Erikson's small new England town would say he was just your average, everyday guy. And that's exactly how Mike likes it. Sure, the life he's chosen isn't much of a challenge to someone with his unique gifts, but he's content with his quiet and peaceful existence.

That is, until an old friend presents him with an irresistable mystery, one that Mike is uniquely qualified to solve: far out in the California desert, a team of DARPA scientist has invented a device they affectionately call the Albuquerque Door. Using a cryptic computer equation and magnetic fields to "fold" dimensions, it shrinks distances so a traveler can travel hundreds of feet in a single step.

The invention promises to make mankind's dreams of teleportation a reality. And, the scientists insist, travelling through the Door is completely safe.

Yet evidence is mounting that this miraculous machine isn't quite what it seems -- and that its creators are harboring a dangerous secret.

As his investigation draws him deeper into the puzzle, Mike begins to fear there is only one answer that makes sense, And if he's right, it may be only a matter of time before the project destroys... everything.

In the present day, Time Agents Ross and Gordon come with settlers to the water-dominated planet, Hawaika, to search remains of the alien Baldies from the distant past. Local intelligent dolphins assist them. While investigating, a time gate fails, destroying itself and stranding them widely in the unknown past.

The native dolphins and humans can communicate, and Ross learns Gordon is hostage in a castle through a native, Loketh. Ross and Loketh are captured by seafaring Rovers, then join them. They recover a Rover island captured by the Baldies. Ross convinces a coalition of natives the Baldies are playing them against one another. Ross finds Ashe at last, in a castle the company of the mystic and advanced Foanna, who turn out to be only three, the last of their race. The Foanna set a trap for the Baldies, using their assets as bait, but they cannot win against the whole force without increasing their numbers. Ross and Ashe agree to a process mentally joining them with the Foanna. A second encounter with the Baldies, they win. In a final encounter, Ross is teleported to a Baldy ship like the one familiar to him from Galactic Derelict, and sets its course to a random destination. The main Baldy installation is simultaneously attacked and the Baldies driven off the planet.

MATHER'S DILEMMA

Soldier of fortune Eric Mathers has signed on to help in a war among the European nations that resembles what in our timestream is called World War I. But this war continues in the 1970's, and involves an army called the American Colonial Forces--said to be subjects of Britain's King George X!

The non-human Kriths, whom Eric workd for tell him they are altering history to forestall a time-wide catastrophe that their hypertechnology has told them is inevitable. Buth then the anti-Krith forces Eric encounters tell him his whole rationale for his life as a Krith soldier is false.

On Eric's resolution of this dilemma hangs the existence of all civilizations in all timestreams--hangs, in face, the existence of existence itself. Or so it seems...

AN INVASION FROM SPACE IN THE YEAR 4000 A.D. WILL WIPE OUT ALL LIFE...

That terrifying message is received by the Kriths, strange creatures from an alternate Earth. And so the Timeliners are formed: fierce commandos that skudd through alternate worlds, battling the present in hopes of changing the future.

But how honorable, really, are the Kriths' motives? This question and others gnawed at Eric Mathers each time he killed for the Kriths. Such disloyalty brought him a death sentence from his former masters.

Now Eric is hiding in a parallel line, waging the war he is so used to. Buth this time he kills for semifeudal powers invading the North American continent. His enemies are men.. and sometines not. If the answers are here, Eric will find them--or die trying.

ALIENS HAVE MEDDLED WITH TIME, CREATING COUNTLESS PARALLEL WORLDS IN THE PROCESS.

But as Eric Mathers desperately skudds through a dazzling array of Timelines, they crumble around him. The prophecy of a catastrophe in the far future is coming true now!

Eric's survival depends on two things. He must follow the direction of a phantom force known only as the Shadowy Man, And he must travel to a parallel Earth in search of a true time machine. But to obtain it, Eric becomes the general of an army--of his own clones. And that is only the beginning...

Divide and Rule:

On a future Earth, where invading aliens have forced humanity to revert to a feudal society and conducting scientific research is punishable by death, it's good to be the heir to a duchy. Unless your brother has been burnt as punishment for heresy. And unless you intended to do something about it...

The Sword of Rhiannon:

Greed pulls the archaeologist Matt Carse into the forgotten tomb of the Martian god Rhiannon and plunges the unlikely hero into the Red Planet's fantastic past, when vast oceans covered the land and the legendary Sea-Kings ruled from terraced palaces of decadence and delight.

Code name SHADO. The most secret, sophisticated -- and important -- group on Earth. Only they know that mankind is under attack by a hostile intelligence from outer space.

A silent, invisible invasion by deadly aliens, bent on conquest and extermination. And SHADO's mission is to seek, find, and destroy the un-humans.

Why are the aliens kidnapping humans? SHADO has to know fast. They think they've scored when they capture an alien alive. But when he dies, the mission of the un-human invaders becomes horrifyingly clear...

Code name SHADO. The most secret, sophisticated -- and important -- group on Earth. Only they know that mankind is under attack by a hostile intelligence from outer space.

A silent, invisible invasion by deadly aliens, bent on conquest and extermination. And SHADO's mission is to seek, find, and destroy the un-humans.

Are the aliens un-human invaders, or new friends? Should humanity make welcome or war? SHADO can't afford to guess wrong -- the stakes are the survival of the human race.

V tells the exciting story of mysterious Alien visitors who are ready to solve Earth's problems. But soon after arriving, the Aliens' true nature is revealed, and like so many oppressive regimes of Earth's past, as long as people are not directly under attack, they will turn a blind eye to their tyrannical overlords. Now it is up to a small band of resistance fighters who know the aliens' true nature to stand up for all of humanity. Few people are quick to join their cause, and the fight to expose the aliens to the public will not be an easy one.

Freedom fighters in the Earth resistance movement face off against alien invaders in New York City.

The rebels had taken over the Los Angeles mothership, deactivated the doomsday device with the help of the Starchild, and is enroute back to earth when their engines freeze over due to the strain of trying to get it out of earth's atmosphere as fast as possible when it was going to blow up. Can they get going again and capture Diana...?

The Saga continues...

With their mothership in hiding, their ranks broken, the Visitors set a desperate plan in motion...

The Visitor Diana is setting up a "special experiment" hidden deep in the florida swamps... and when the resistance finds out about this little operation, can they handle the frightning truth...?

The Earth has had another reprieve from alien domination. A daring desert resistance raid has reclaimed three key human prisoners -- marked for conversion or death aboard the Mother Ship -- from Commander Diana and her security chief, Lydia. The furious Diana blames Lydia, who plans a terrible vengeance; she will spin a diabolical web to snare Diana's power -- and trap her most hated enemies: Resistance heroes Mike Donovan and Ham Tyler. Meanwhile, the resistance has troubles of its own. Trusted friends may be collaborating with the alien enemy. Every smile may hide a secret, as the fate of every living soul in Los Angeles turns on the violent outcome of plot and counterplot, disguise and deception...

As Tokyo becomes the Visitors' slaughterhouse under the nefarious commander Chen, America's victorious resistance fighters speed to their aid...

A deadly new Visitor plot spells ecological disaster for the entire West Coast.

Barely escaping death from a Visitor ambush, resistance warrior Rick Hurley is rescued by Sheryl Lee Darcy and a band of Texas freedom fighters carrying vital drugs to the sick and wounded of their native state -- where the red dust toxin, once fatal to the lizard-like aliens, has lost its effect. The Visitors have placed a stranglehold on the Dallas-Fort Worth area, rounding up the terrified populace for cold storage aboard the Mother Ship. There the Texas resistance strike-and-hide guerrilla raids, aimed at the Visitors' processing centers, keep the inhuman enemy in confusion and disarray. But when Sheryl Lee is taken prisoner, it's Rick who plans a daring rescue, with the help of wild-man rancher Charlie Scoggins, striking at the heart of the enemy stronghold, across hundreds of miles of lizard-held terrain, at the deadly, desperate end...

The Visitor's plot to bring about a new ice age through world-freezing technology while they bio-engineered bacteria that metabolizes heating oil into uselessness. The goal is to freeze humanity into submission in the cold areas where the Visitors can't survive because of the regenerative red dust. But when cases of a mysterious poisonous gas kills people in buildings that use heating oil begin showing up, a scientific research group discovers the fact that the oil has been tainted after studying collected samples from these locations. If it were not for the poison gas bi-product, they would not have discovered the cause, nor the Visitor plan to use the bacteria to wipe out the world's crude oil supply by injecting it directly into underground reserves. Travel with the resistance from New York through New England and overseas to the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, as American resistance members join forces with Israeli and Arab resistance fighters in an attempt to foil Diana's latest plan, with the help of an egotistical computer expert who may also be a double agent.

The Visitor's latest invasion is taking place in the British Isles where the England resistance and the IRA put aside their political differences to join forces in the fight for the survival of humanity. A female American exchange student gets caught up in the struggle after she believes her fiance has been killed by the Visitors. On the run, she is picked up by the resistance and taken to Ireland after their HQ is found and destroyed, thanks to an insider collaborator. Now with the IRA, she finds an inner strength as she trains with them for the fight, becoming an inspirational figurehead in the process. The national philosophy of Stay Calm and Carry On, as Parliament and the House of Lords are telling citizens to do in an attempt to maintain a false peace with the Visitors, is not the best course to follow when malevolent aliens arrive on your planet to eat you.

The Visitors try again along the Oregon coast.

The Visitors' next nefarious plot involves going below the edge of hearing, below the limits of Human vision... can they decimate the Human race by using our own physical attributes against us...?

A race of death against the invading aliens...

Millions thrilled to Kenneth Johnson's hugely popular mini-series "V," an action filled drama of alien invasion, a TV event that was also a number one bestselling novel. Now, in a new novel based on the sequel miniseries currently being developed for TV, the tension between The Visitors and Earth's human inhabitants has reached a boiling point.

The reptilian Visitors, who cleverly portray themselves as Earth's protectors, are anything but. Our oceans are being drained in order to fuel the aliens' motherships, and our scientists are treated like wanted criminals. And they have pods of preserved humans destined for even more sinister purposes.

But hope is not lost. A small, yet resourceful Resistance risks everything to undermine the Visitors' stranglehold on Earth's people. Despite their heroic efforts, without more help they will be crushed by the Visitors and their human militia. Just when Earth's doom seems inevitable, agents of an alien civilization from another planet arrive in answer to humanity's desperate call for help. But can these other aliens be trusted? Or might we defeat one alien overlord, only to be delivered into the hands of another, equally as oppressive?

Time is running out for the Resistance, for when the Visitors' Leader arrives, the aliens will complete their mission on Earth, with devastating consequences for all life on the planet.

Kenneth Johnson's Warner Bros. television series V swept the nation and drew in hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide. Now, the novel V is finally back in print, with an all-new, never-before-seen revised ending.

V tells the exciting story of mysterious Alien visitors who are ready to solve Earth's problems. But soon after arriving, the Aliens' true nature is revealed, and like so many oppressive regimes of Earth's past, as long as people are not directly under attack, they will turn a blind eye to their tyrannical overlords. Now it is up to a small band of resistance fighters who know the aliens' true nature to stand up for all of humanity. Few people are quick to join their cause, and the fight to expose the aliens to the public will not be an easy one.

With fast-paced action, political intrigue and memorable characters, V is sure to stir fond memories for fans of the original miniseries, as well as make fans out of a new generation.

Ryan Oronzi is a paranoid, neurotic, and brilliant physicist who has developed a quantum military technology that could make soldiers nearly invincible in the field. The technology, however, gives power to the quantum creature known as the varcolac, which slowly begins to manipulate Dr. Oronzi and take over his mind. Oronzi eventually becomes the unwilling pawn of the varcolac in its bid to control the world.

The creature immediately starts attacking those responsible for defeating it fifteen years earlier, including Sandra and Alex Kelley--the two versions of Alessandra Kelley who are still living as separate people. The two young women must fight the varcolac, despite the fact that defeating it may mean resolving once again into a single person.

1898. New York socialite Emma Harlow agrees to marry well-to-do Montgomery Gilmore, but only if he first accepts her audacious challenge: to reproduce the Martian invasion featured in H. G. Wells's popular novel The War of the Worlds. Meanwhile in London, Wells himself is unexpectedly made privy to certain objects, apparently of extraterrestrial origin, that were discovered decades earlier on an ill-fated expedition to the Antarctic. On that same expedition was an American crew member named Edgar Allan Poe, whose inexplicable experiences in the frozen wasteland would ultimately inspire him to create one of his most enduring works of literature.

When eerie, alien-looking cylinders begin appearing in London, Wells is certain it is all part of some elaborate hoax. But soon, to his great horror, he realizes that a true invasion of Earth has indeed begun. As brave bands of citizens converge on a crumbling London to defend it against utter ruin, Emma and her suitor must confront the enigma that is their love, a bright spark of hope even against the darkening light of apocalypse.

With the human population ravaged by a series of devastating plagues, the alien Chtorr arrive to begin the final phase of their invasion. Even as many on Earth deny their existence, the giant wormlike carnivores prepare the world for the ultimate violation--the enslavement of humanity for food!

McCarthy was drafted from his college biology studies and became a member of the Special Forces. Then he is given the opportunity to contact the Chtorr, but when a helicopter crash leaves him and his companions stranded in enemy territory, he must decide whether to communicate with the Chtorr--or kill them!

Still reeling from the alien plagues that killed two-thirds of the planet's population, humanity now confronts the most deadly enemy Earth has ever known?the giant man-eating Chtorr. Lieutenant James McCarthy has grown to manhood under the shadow of the terrifying invasion of the Chtorr. As a student, he learned all he could to understand their alien behavior. As a Special Forces commando, he made violent first contact. Now this battle-hardened warrior faces a profound challenge. Captured by an anarchistic band of men and women known as renegades, McCarthy must secretly gather vital information while fighting indoctrination into their cult?which serves and worships the Chtorr.

As tenacious aliens transform the wartorn Earth into a replica of their own terrifying world, a handful of scientists, soldiers, and citizens prepares to fight back.

After barely surviving his last tour on Mars, Master Sergeant Michael Venn finds himself back on earth in enforced isolation. Through a dangerous series of operations he returns to Mars to further his investigation into the Drifters - ancient artifacts suddenly reawakened on the red planet.

But another front in the war leads his team to make the difficult journey to Saturn's moon, Titan. Here, in the cauldron of war, hides new truths about the Drifters, the origin of life in our solar system and the plans of the supposedly benevolent Gurus, who have been "sponsoring" and supporting humanity in their fight against outside invaders.

Killing Titan is the second book in the epic interstellar War Dogs trilogy from master of science fiction, Greg Bear.

After the revelations on Titan about what the supposedly benign alien Gurus are really up to, Master Sergeant Michael Venn now has a whole new war on his hands.

As the Antag invasion wreaks havoc in the distant reaches of the solar system, Venn voyages towards the battle that could decide the fate of not just the human race, but that of the whole galaxy.

It's here that Venn will finally understand his destiny and that of every intelligent being in the solar system - including the enigmatic Gurus.

Take Back the Sky is the climactic book in the epic interstellar War Dogs trilogy from master of science fiction, Greg Bear.

UNFOLDING THE WINGS OF VICTORY!

Humanity is under siege. Strange, hostile beings known only as pillars are stripping away the very life force of the Earth, turning vast tracts of the planet into barren wasteland. The only ones who can stand in their way are the Valkyries, the chosen of Odin himself who fight with his blessing in divine machines that arc gracefully through the air, leading the countercharge of the human race. Even with their support, the fighting is desperate, and hope is hard to come by on the European front. Rusalka is determined to do everything she can to change that as one of the chosen warriors tasked with retaking the skies and bringing humanity back from the brink of extinction!

They are the last survivors of their race, beings who live on and communicate through energy, who are capable of assuming the shape of any other species. When their youngest member is assigned to a world considered safe to explore, she is captured by the natives. To escape, she must violate the most important rule of her kind, and reveal the existence of her species to a fellow prisoner - a human being.

Now her race is in danger of extinction, for even if the human does not betray her, the Enemy who has long searched for her people may finally discover their location...

The growing threat of the dimension-invading Weird has driven the Expansion government to outright paranoia. Mandatory telepathic testing is introduced, and the colony Braun's World -- following reports of a new Weird portal opening -- is destroyed from orbit, at an unimaginable cost in lives.

Delia Walker, a senior analyst in the Expansion's intelligence bureau and a holdout of the pragmatic old guard, protests the oppressive new policies and is drummed out. Sure there's a better way, she charters the decrepit freighter the Baba Yaga and heads into the lawless "Satan's Reach," following rumours of a world where humans and the Weird live peacefully side by side.

Hunted by the Bureau, Walker, her pilot Yershov, and Failt -- a Vetch child stowaway, fleeing slavery -- will uncover secrets about both the Weird and the Expansion; secrets that could prevent catastrophic war...

"My name is Cassandra. My mother was the Walker."

The peace and stability of Stella Maris have been lost, perhaps forever. Weeks after Delia Walker found the remote world, trailing murderers and soldiers in her wake, more ships are coming. And now the impossible: a young woman claiming to be Walker's daughter has come out of the Weird portal, demanding passage off the planet.

For Cassandra, her mother's former young charge Failt, and the cynical, worldly-wise Yale, a desperate race begins to reach the very heart of the Expansion and avert a disaster.

On Stella Maris--the "star of the sea"--a fight has begun to preserve the refuge and its fragile harmony from those who would exploit it.

It has been 14 years since the Martians invaded England. The world has moved on, always watching the skies but content that we know how to defeat the Martian menace. Machinery looted from the abandoned capsules and war-machines has led to technological leaps forward. The Martians are vulnerable to earth germs. The Army is prepared.

So when the signs of launches on Mars are seen, there seems little reason to worry. Unless you listen to one man, Walter Jenkins, the narrator of Wells' book. He is sure that the Martians have learned, adapted, understood their defeat.

He is right.

Thrust into the chaos of a new invasion, a journalist - sister-in-law to Walter Jenkins - must survive, escape and report on the war.

The Massacre of Mankind has begun.

A sequel to The War of the Worlds authorized by the H. G. Wells Estate.

From Pearl Harbor to panzers rolling through Paris to the Siege of Leningrad and the Battle of Midway, war seethed across the planet as the flames of destruction rose higher and hotter.

And then, suddenly, the real enemy came.

The invaders seemed unstoppable, their technology far beyond human reach. And never before had men been more divided. For Jew to unite with Nazi, American with Japanese, and Russian with German was unthinkable.

But the alternative was even worse.

As the fate of the world hung in the balance, slowly, painfully, humankind took up the shocking challenge...

NO ONE COULD STOP THEM--

NOT STALIN, NOT TOGO, NOT CHURCHILL, NOT ROOSEVELT...

The invaders had cut the United States virtually in half at the Mississippi, vaporized Washington, D.C., devastated much of Europe, and held large parts of the Soviet Union under their thumb.

But humanity would not give up so easily. The new world allies were ruthless at finding their foe's weaknesses and exploiting them.

Whether delivering supplies in tiny biplanes to partisans across the vast steppes of Russia, working furiously to understand the enemy's captured radar in England, or battling house to house on the streets of Chicago, humankind would never give up.

Yet no one could say when the hellish inferno of death would stop being a war of conquest and turn into a war of survival--the very survival of the planet...

Russia, Communist China, Japan, Nazi Germany, the United States: they began World War II as mortal enemies. But suddenly their only hope for survival--never mind victory--was to unite to stop a mighty foe--one whose frightening technology appeared invincible.

Far worse beings than the Nazis were loose. From Warsaw to Moscow to China's enemy-occupied Forbidden City, the nations of the world had been forced into an uneasy alliance since humanity began its struggle against overwhelming odds. In Germany, where the banshee wail of hostile jets screamed across the land, caches of once-forbidden weapons were unearthed, and unthinkable tactics were employed against the enemy. Brilliantly innovative military strategists confronted challenges unprecedented in the history of warfare.

Even as lack of fuel forced people back to horse and carriage, physicists worked feverishly to create the first nuclear bombs--with horrifying results. City after city joined the atomic pyre as the planet erupted in fiery ruins. Yet the crisis continued--on land, sea, and in the air--as humanity writhed in global combat. The tactics of daredevil guerrillas everywhere became increasingly ingenious against a superior foe whose desperate retaliation would grow ever more fearsome.

No one had ever put the United States, or the world, in such deadly danger. But if the carnage and annihilation ever stopped, would there be any pieces to pick up?

WORLDWAR: BOOK 4

At the bloody height of World War II, the deadliest enemies in all of human history were forced to put aside their hatreds and unite against an even fiercer foe: a seemingly invincible power bent on world domination.

With awesome technology, the aggressors swept across the planet, sowing destruction as Tokyo, Berlin, and Washington, D.C., were A-bombed into submission. Russia, Nazi Germany, Japan and the U.S. were not easily cowed, however. With cunning and incredible daring, they pressed every advantage against the invader's superior strength, and, led by Stalin, began to detonate their own atom bombs in retaliation.

City after city explodes in radioactive firestorms, and fears grow as the worldwide resources disappear; will there be any world left for the invaders to conquer, or for the uneasy allies to defend?

While Mao Tse-tung wages a desperate guerrilla war and Hitler drives his country toward self-destruction, United States forces frantically try to stop the enemy's push from coast to coast. Yet in this battle to stave off world domination, unless the once-great military powers take the risk of annihilating the human race, they'll risk losing the war.

The fatal, final deadline arrives in Harry Turtledove's grand, smashing finale to the Worldwar series, as uneasy allies desperately seek a way out of a no-win, no-survival situation: a way to live free in a world that may soon be bombed into atomic oblivion.

The year is 2067. The city of Rosewater is chaotic, vibrant and full of life - some of it extra-terrestrial.

The charismatic mayor, Jack Jacques, has declared Rosewater a free state, independent to Nigeria. But the city's alien dome is dying. Government forces await its demise, ready to destroy Rosewater's independence before it has even begun.

And in the city's quiet suburbs, a woman wakes with no memory of who she is - with memories belonging to something much older and much more alien.

Life in the newly independent city state of Rosewater isn't everything its citizens were expecting...

Mayor Jacques finds that debts incurred during the insurrection are coming back to haunt him. Nigeria isn't willing to let Rosewater go without a fight. And among the city's alien inhabitants, a group has emerged who murder humans to provide bodies for their takeover.

Operating across spacetime, the xenosphere and international borders, it is up to a small group of hackers and criminals to prevent the extraterrestrial advance. The fugitive known as Bicycle Girl, Kaaro and his old handler Femi, may be humanity's last line of defence.

Butler’s acclaimed Xenogenesis trilogy about humanity’s struggle for survival after nuclear apocalypse, and the alien race that could save the world—or destroy it.

The newest stage in human evolution begins in outer space. Survivors of a cataclysmic nuclear war awake to find themselves being studied by the Oankali, tentacle-covered galactic travelers whose benevolent appearance hides their surprising plan for the future of mankind. The Oankali arrive not just to save humanity, but to bond with it—crossbreeding to form a hybrid species that can survive in the place of its human forebears, who were so intent on self-destruction. Some people resist, forming pocket communities of purebred rebellion, but many realize they have no choice. The human species inevitably expands into something stranger, stronger, and undeniably alien.

Rescued from Earth's destruction, one woman is called upon to revive mankind.

Lilith Iyapo has just lost her husband and son when atomic fire consumes Earth-the last stage of the planet's final war. Hundreds of years later Lilith awakes, deep in the hold of a massive alien spacecraft piloted by the Oankali-who arrived just in time to save humanity from extinction. They have kept Lilith and other survivors asleep for centuries, as they learned whatever they could about Earth. Now it is time for Lilith to lead them back to her home world, but life among the Oankali on the newly resettled planet will be nothing like it was before.

The Oankali survive by genetically merging with primitive civilizations-whether their new hosts like it or not. For the first time since the nuclear holocaust, Earth will be inhabited. Grass will grow, animals will run, and people will learn to survive the planet's untamed wilderness. But their children will not be human. Not exactly.

As humans and Oankali struggle to live together, the future of both species rests in the hands of Lilith's hybrid son.

Nuclear war had nearly destroyed mankind when the Oankali came to the rescue, saving humanity - but at a price. The Oankali survive by mixing their DNA with that of other species, and now on Earth they have permitted no child to be born without an Oankali parent. The first true hybrid is a boy named Akin - son of Lilith Iyapo -and to the naked eye he looks human, for now.

He is born with extraordinary sensory powers, understanding speech at birth, speaking in sentences at two months old, and soon developing the ability to see at the molecular level. More powerful than any human or Oankali, he will be the architect of both races' intergalactic future. But before he can carry this new species into the stars, Akin must decide which unlucky souls will stay behind.

Child of two species, but part of neither, a new being must find his way.

Human and Oankali have been mating since the aliens first came to Earth to rescue the few survivors of an annihilating nuclear war. The Oankali began a massive breeding project, guided by the ooloi, a sexless subspecies capable of manipulating DNA, in the hope of eventually creating a perfect starfaring race.

Jodahs is supposed to be just another hybrid of human and Oankali, but as he begins his transformation to adulthood he finds himself becoming ooloi-the first ever born to a human mother. As his body changes, Jodahs develops the ability to shapeshift, manipulate matter, and cure or create disease at will. If this frightened young man is able to master his new identity, Jodahs could prove the savior of what's left of mankind. Or, if he is not careful, he could become a plague that will destroy this new race once and for all.

Long ago, so the stories say, the old-fathers came to Nanagada through a worm's hole in the sky. Looking for a new world to call their own, they brought with them a rich melange of cultures, religions, and dialects from a far-off planet called Earth. Mighty were the old-fathers, with the power to shape the world to their liking---but that was many generations ago, and what was once known has long been lost. Steamboats and gas-filled blimps now traverse the planet, where people once looked up to see great silver cities in the sky.

Like his world, John deBrun has forgotten more than he remembers. Twenty-seven years ago, he washed up onto the shore of Nanagada with no memory of his past. Although he has made a new life for himself among the peaceful islanders, his soul remains haunted by unanswered questions about his own identity.

These mysteries take on new urgency when the fearsome Azteca storm over the Wicked High Mountains in search of fresh blood and hearts to feed their cruel, inhuman gods. Nanagada's only hope lies in a mythical artifact, the Ma Wi Jung, said to be hidden somewhere in the frozen north. And only John deBrun knows the device's secrets, even if he can't remember why or how!

Crystal Rain is the much-anticipated debut novel by one of science fiction's newest and most promising talents.

Nebula-nominated novella

Aliens have landed in New York. After several months of no explanations, they finally reveal the reason for their arrival.

The news is not good.

Geneticist Marianne Jenner is having a career breakthrough, yet her family is tearing itself apart. Her children Elizabeth and Ryan constantly bicker, agreeing only that an alien conspiracy is in play. Her youngest, Noah, is addicted to a drug that keeps temporarily changing his identity. The Jenner family could not be further apart. But between the four of them, the course of human history will be forever altered.

Earth's most elite scientists have ten months to prevent a disaster--and not everyone is willing to wait.

Anthologized in Paula Guran's The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2015.

More than thirty years ago, a hyper-dimensional passageway suddenly appeared over the continent of Antarctica. Fighters from the mysterious alien force known as the JAM poured through the passage, the first wave an attempted terrestrial invasion. Their ferocity was unquestionable, their aim unknown. Humanity, united by a common enemy, managed to repel the invaders, chasing them back through the passageway to the strange planet nicknamed "Fairy."

The task of finishing the battle was given to the newly formed FAF, a combat force created to go to Fairy and eliminate the JAM bases once and for all. Now, in the midst of a war with no end in sight, Second Lieutenant Rei Fukai carries out his missions in the skies over Fairy. Attached to Tactical Combat and Surveillance Unit 3 of the Special Air Force, his duty is to gather information on the enemy and bring it back to base—no matter the human cost. His only constant companion in this lonely task is his fighter plane, the sentient FFR-31 Super Sylph, call sign: Yukikaze.