Search Worlds Without End

Otto McGavin is peaceful and idealistic by nature, an Anglo-Buddhist, who seeks employment with the Confederacion because he believes in it and its mission to protect the rights of humans and nonhumans. The only problem is that the Confederacion needs him as a Prime Operator for its secret service, the TBII, and the TBII wants Otto as a spy, a thief and an assassin.

It's not, of course, a problem for the Confederacion, which simply uses immersion therapy and hypnosis for Otto's training, and then sends him out in deep cover on a variety of dangerous missions on a number of bizarre worlds. But for Otto, it's a different matter: what he has to witness and what he is forced to do take a terrible toll on him...

Sleeping Dogs

This short story originally appeared in Gateways (2010) edited by Elizabeth Anne Hull. It can also be found in the anthologies Year's Best SF 16 (2011), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Kramer, and The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection (2011), edited by Gardner Dozois. It is included in the collection The Best of Joe Haldeman (2013).

Fallen Dragon

Peter F. Hamilton

Born in a colony world in 2310, Lawrence Newton hankered after the golden era of starships exploring the galaxy. But the age of human starflight was drawing to a close, so this hot-heated teenager ran away from home in search of adventure...Twenty years later, he's the sergeant of a washed-out platoon taking part in the bungled invasion of another world. The giant corporations call such campaigns 'asset realization', but in practice it's simple piracy. While he's on the ground, being shot at and firebombed by local resistance forces, Lawrence hears stories about the Temple of the Fallen Dragon -- and a sect devoted to the worship of a mythical creature that fell to the ground millennia ago. More importantly, its priests are said to guard a hoard of treasure large enough to buy lifelong happiness -- which information prompts him to mount a private-enterprise operation of his own.

The Outward Urge

John Wyndham

Published as by John Wyndham and Lucas Parkes (Lucas Parkes is a pen-name of John Wyndham)

Contains: (original publication had 4 stories, later editions 5)

The Space Station: A.D. 1994
The Moon: A.D. 2044
Mars: A.D. 2094
Venus: A.D. 2144
The Emptiness of Space: The Asteroids A. D. 2194

The Day After Tomorrow

Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriot

When the United States is destroyed by invading PanAsians, the only hope for the country's survival rests with six men and a newly-developed nuclear weapon.

Under Pressure

Frank Herbert

Four men were on board the atomic subtug Fenian Ram S1881. They were on a mission to steal vitally needed oil from underwater deposits in enemy territory - a mission from which none of the last tugs had returned..

Four men who knew everything they had to know about one another - except which one of them was the saboteur who could destroy them all.

Final Blackout

L. Ron Hubbard

London 1975. The World War is grinding to a halt. A force more sinister than Hitler's Nazi regime has seized control of Europe and is systematically destroying every adversary. Ordered by his superiors to return to British Headquarters, located in a vast underground fortress, "the Lieutenant" is torn between abiding by military codes and doing what he knows is right for his country.

The Light Brigade

Kameron Hurley

They said the war would turn us into light. I wanted to be counted among the heroes who gave us this better world.

The Light Brigade: it's what soldiers fighting the war against Mars call the ones who come back... different. Grunts in the corporate corps get busted down into light to travel to and from interplanetary battlefronts. Everyone is changed by what the corps must do in order to break them down into light. Those who survive learn to stick to the mission brief--no matter what actually happens during combat.

Dietz, a fresh recruit in the infantry, begins to experience combat drops that don't sync up with the platoon's. And Dietz's bad drops tell a story of the war that's not at all what the corporate brass want the soldiers to think is going on.

Is Dietz really experiencing the war differently, or is it combat madness? Trying to untangle memory from mission brief and survive with sanity intact, Dietz is ready to become a hero--or maybe a villain; in war it's hard to tell the difference.

Project Itoh

Solid Snake is a soldier and part of a worldwide nanotechnology network known as the Sons of the Patriots. Time is running out for Snake though, as he will soon succumb to the FOXDIE virus, but not before spreading the disease to nearly everyone he encounters, in essence becoming a walking biological weapon. Snake will need every advantage he can get, as the SOP network is about to be hacked by his old enemy Liquid Ocelot, and whoever controls SOP controls the world.

Operation Terror

Murray Leinster

Operation Terror, written by one of the giants of the golden age of sci-fi, is a thrilling tale about a rather unconventional type of alien invasion. The story tells of an unidentified, large object that touched down in Boulder Lake Park, Colorado. What had initially been perceived as a meteor turned out to be a large, unusual alien vessel carrying many strange beings with paralyzing rays that could render their victims blind.

Can the lone survivors who have yet to be caught by the aliens actually escape? And is it really an alien attack, or a coordinated offensive that is secretly based on a Russian agenda?

The Last Day of Creation

Wolfgang Jeschke

The story of an extraordinary century in the history of London.

By 1700, after half a century of relentless expansion, London had overtaken Paris to become the largest -- if disputably the finest -- city in Europe. A striking feature of this monster city in 1700 was its newness. In September 1666 some three-fifths of the City of London had been destroyed in the Great Fire. The losses were immense -- 13,200 houses were burnt to the ground and so were most of the great public buildings, including St. Paul's Cathedral.

London in the Eighteenth Century details the growth of the city and urban change; the make-up of the Londoner from home and abroad; ways of earning a living from banking to begging; the public pleasures of London and the crime and prostitution that accompanied them; the tightening sinews of power and discipline; and the hesitant beginnings of London democracy.

The Cyborg, the Tinman, the Merchant of Death

Rich Larson

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, December 2016.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

A Plague of Demons

Keith Laumer

When John Bravais was sent on a secret mission to observe a war in North Africa he found out more than it was safe for him to know - even after he had secretly been surgically transformed so that he was as strong as a Bolo tank, and nearly as tough: Wolf-like aliens, invisible to the ordinary eye, were harvesting the brains of the fallen fighters! Brevais might have become the Ultimate Warrior, but still he was only one man against A Plague of Demons.

Damage

David D. Levine

In the extremities of war, we may know what we've been, but not what we will become. "Damage" is a tale of desperate times, desperate measures, and the inner life of a fighter spacecraft.

This story is included in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 1 (2016), edited by Neil Clarke, Nebula Awards Showcase 2017, edited by Julie E. Czerneda, and Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction (2018), edited by Irene Gallo.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Ball Lightning

Cixin Liu

When Chen's parents are incinerated before his eyes by a blast of ball lightning, he devotes his life to cracking the secret of this mysterious natural phenomenon. His search takes him to stormy mountaintops, an experimental military weapons lab, and an old Soviet science station.

The more he learns, the more he comes to realize that ball lightning is just the tip of an entirely new frontier in particle physics. Although Chen's quest provides a purpose for his lonely life, his reasons for chasing his elusive quarry come into conflict with soldiers and scientists who have motives of their own: a beautiful army major with an obsession with dangerous weaponry, and a physicist who has no place for ethical considerations in his single-minded pursuit of knowledge.

The Supernova Era

Cixin Liu

Celestial giants don't go peacefully. They tear themselves to pieces, unleashing a tsunami of ultra high-energy radiation. Eight years ago and eight light years away, a supermassive star died and tonight its supernova shockwave will finally reach Earth. Dark skies will shine bright as a new star blooms in the heavens and within a year everyone over the age of thirteen will be dead, their chromosomes irreversibly damaged.

And so the countdown begins.

Parents apprentice their children and try to pass on the knowledge they'll need to keep the world running.

But the last generation may not want to carry the legacy of their parents' world. And though they imagine a better, brighter future, they may not be able to escape humanity's darker instincts.

Enemy Mine

Barry B. Longyear

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.

The Human Front

Ken MacLeod

The Human Front follows the adventures of a young Scottish guerrilla, drawn into low-intensity sectarian war in a high-intensity future, when the arrival of an alien intruder (complete with saucer) calls for new tactics and strange alliances. MacLeod's unique vision is developed even further in a new commentary written especially for this edition, and in his delightful personal account of a Hebridean youth's first encounter with the post-capitalist world. Also featured is our Outspoken Interview showcasing the author's deep erudition and skeptical, mordant wit.

This novella can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Nineteenth Annual Collection (2002), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Infinities (2002), edited by Peter Crowther. It is included in the collections Giant Lizards from Another Star (2006) and The Human Front (2013).

Hearts, Hands and Voices

Ian McDonald

For almost 30,000 years The Land has been a dependency of The Empire Across The River. The Empire retains a mechanistic technology in the hands of the wealthy and the civil service, but The Land uses its dead, whose brains are linked to a massive data network.

Published in the US as The Broken Land.

Ascent

Jed Mercurio

Yefgenil Yeremin is a flyer and he is a phantom.

In the Korean War he shoots down more American jets than any other pilot in history. He becomes the legendary ace dubbed "Ivan the Terrible." But the Soviet Union's involvement in Korea must be kept secret, so his name remains unknown, his victories uncelebrated.

Exiled to a remote Arctic base, he becomes a spectator to the new battlefield of Cold War rivalry: space. Yefgenil longs to do battle once more with America's finest aviators, but he remains invisible, forgotten... until the day in 1964, when a man arrives from Moscow, from the Space Committee, in search of a volunteer. Five years later, Yefgenil Yeremin sets off on the greatest mission of all: his destination is the Moon.

Ascent is the story of how a single act can not only define the meaning of a man's life, but also that of a nation and a species.

The Siege of Burning Grass

Premee Mohamed

The Empires of Varkal and Med'ariz have always been at war.

Alefret, the founder of Varkal's pacifist resistance, was bombed and maimed by his own government, locked up in a secret prison and tortured by a 'visionary' scientist. But now they're offering him a chance of freedom.

Ordered to infiltrate one of Med'ariz's flying cities, obeying the bloodthirsty zealot Qhudur, he must find fellow anti-war activists in the enemy's population and provoke them into an uprising against their rulers.

He should refuse to serve the warmongers, but what if he could end this pointless war once and for all? Is that worth compromising his own morals and the principles of his fellow resistance members?

Shambling Towards Hiroshima

James Morrow

Hugo- and Nebula-nominated Novella, Sturgeon Award winner

It is the early summer of 1945, and war reigns in the Pacific Rim with no end in sight. Back in the States, Hollywood B-movie star Syms Thorley lives in a very different world, starring as the Frankenstein-like Corpuscula and Kha-Ton-Ra, the living mummy. But the U.S. Navy has a new role waiting for Thorley, the role of a lifetime that he could never have imagined.

The top secret Knickerbocker Project is putting the finishing touches on the ultimate biological weapon: a breed of gigantic, fire-breathing, mutant iguanas engineered to stomp and burn cities on the Japanese mainland. The Navy calls upon Thorley to don a rubber suit and become the merciless Gorgantis and to star in a live drama that simulates the destruction of a miniature Japanese metropolis. If the demonstration succeeds, the Japanese will surrender, and many thousands of lives will be spared; if it fails, the horrible mutant lizards will be unleashed. One thing is certain: Syms Thorley must now give the most terrifyingly convincing performance of his life.

In the dual traditions of Godzilla as a playful monster and a symbol of the dawn of the nuclear era, Shambling Towards Hiroshima unexpectedly blends the destruction of World War II with the halcyon pleasure of monster movies.

The Last Good Man

Linda Nagata

Scarred by war, in pursuit of truth.

Army veteran True Brighton left the service when the development of robotic helicopters made her training as a pilot obsolete. Now she works at Requisite Operations, a private military company established by friend and former Special Ops soldier Lincoln Han. ReqOp has embraced the new technologies: robotics, big data, and artificial intelligence are all tools used to augment the skills of veteran warfighters-for-hire.

But the tragedy of war is still measured in human casualties, and when True makes a chance discovery during a rescue mission, old wounds are ripped open. She's left questioning what she knows of the past, and resolves to pursue the truth, whatever the cost.

Seven Years from Home

Naomi Novik

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Warriors (2010), edited by Gardner Dozois and George R. R. Martin, and was reprinted in Clarkesworld Magazine, #95 August 2014. I can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection (2011), edited by Gardner Dozois, Space Opera (2014), edited by Rich Horton, and Galactic Empires (2017), edited by Neil Clarke.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

Gunpowder Moon

David Pedreira

The Moon smells like gunpowder. Every lunar walker since Apollo 11 has noticed it: a burnt-metal scent that reminds them of war. Caden Dechert, the chief of the U.S. mining operation on the edge of the Sea of Serenity, thinks the smell is just a trick of the mind -- a reminder of his harrowing days as a Marine in the war-torn Middle East back on Earth.

It's 2072, and lunar helium-3 mining is powering the fusion reactors that are bringing Earth back from environmental disaster. But competing for the richest prize in the history of the world has destroyed the oldest rule in space: Safety for All. When a bomb kills one of Dechert's diggers on Mare Serenitatis, the haunted veteran goes on the hunt to expose the culprit before more blood is spilled.

But as Dechert races to solve the first murder in the history of the Moon, he gets caught in the crosshairs of two global powers spoiling for a fight. Reluctant to be the match that lights this powder-keg, Dechert knows his life and those of his crew are meaningless to the politicians. Even worse, he knows the killer is still out there, hunting.

In his desperate attempts to save his crew and prevent the catastrophe he sees coming, the former Marine uncovers a dangerous conspiracy that, with one spark, can ignite a full lunar war, wipe out his team... and perhaps plunge the Earth back into darkness.

Slow Bullets

Alastair Reynolds

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.

Salt

Adam Roberts

After 37 years on a brutal and dangerous journey through space, a federation of settlers finally arrives on the planet Salt. Thus begins the colonization of this brave new world--a process that inevitably slips into a tragedy of biblical proportions. The two communities who undertook the voyage originally united in peace and a shared vision of a fresh beginning. Once isolated in a landscape of cruel majesty and minimal resources, however, ancient enmities begin to tear them apart. Related alternately by Petja, from the Alsist people, and Barlei (a Senaarian), their different voices, perspectives, and experiences come together to make an unusually rich and complex story about the fragility of life.

Wasp

Eric Frank Russell

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.

All You Need is Kill

Hiroshi Sakurazaka

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?

Firstborn

Brandon Sanderson

Of the son of a High Duke of the interstellar Empire, much glory is expected. And expected. And still expected, despite endless proof that young Dennison Crestmar has no talent whatsoever for war. But the life Dennison is forced to live will have its surprising lessons to impart...

Anthologized in Galactic Empires (2017), edited by Neil Clarke.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

The Healer's War

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

A literary departure for acclaimed fantasy author Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, The Healer's War draws on her personal experience as an army nurse in Da Nang to create a classic novel of the Vietnam War, enriched with a magical, mystical twist.

Lt. Kitty McCulley, a young and inexperienced nurse tossed into a stressful and chaotic situation, is having a difficult time reconciling her duty to help and heal with the indifference and overt racism of some of her colleagues, and with the horrendously damaged soldiers and Vietnamese civilians she encounters during her service at the China Beach medical facilities. She is unexpectedly helped by the mysterious and inexplicable properties of an amulet, given to her by one of her patients, an elderly, dying Vietnamese holy man, which allows her to see other people's "auras" and to understand more about them as a result. This eventually leads to a strange, almost surrealistic journey through the jungle, accompanied by a one-legged boy and a battle-seasoned but crazed soldier--as McCulley struggles to find herself and a way to survive through the madness and destruction.

Life During Wartime

Lucius Shepard

David Mingolla is one of many drug-pumped grunts slugging it out in the rotten jungles of Guatemala, an expendable pawn in an endless, amoral war. Then he meets Debora, an enigmatic young woman who may be working for the enemy, and stumbles into the deadly war zone of psychic conflict where the mind is the greatest woapon, and thoughts are used to kill.

Salvador

Lucius Shepard

Hugo, Nebula, and SF Chronicle Award-nominated Short Story and winner of the Locus Reader's Poll for Best Short Story.

This story follows Dantzler, a soldier in the Special Forces of the US Military. He and his platoon are in El Salvador looking for Sandinista patrols prior to an invasion of Nicaragua. The soldiers rely on ampules, drugs which help them stay calm and focus their rage -- but discover that their increasing use of the drug make it difficult to distinguish between reality and hallucination.

Published originally by The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in April 1984, this story was later anthologized in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Second Annual Collection (1985), The 1985 Annual World's Best SF (1985), Beyond Armageddon: Twenty-One Sermons to the Dead (1985), The Best from Fantasy & Science Fiction: A 40th Anniversary Anthology (1989), The Legend Book of Science Fiction (aka Modern Classics of Science Fiction) (1991), Future Earths: Under South American Skies (1993), Future War (1999), The Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction (2005), The Mammoth Book of The Best of The Best New SF (2008), The End of the World: Stories of the Apocalypse (2010), The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction: Volume 2 (2014), and collected in The Jaguar Hunter (1987) and The Best of Lucius Shepard (2008).

Read this story online for free at Baen.

Starman's Quest

Robert Silverberg

The Lexman Spacedrive gave man the stars - but at a fantastic price.

Interstellar exploration, colonisation, and trade became things of reality. The benefits to Earth were enormous but, because of the Fitzgerald Contraction, a man who shipped out to space could never live a normal life on Earth again. Travelling at speeds close to that of light, spacemen lived at an accelerated pace. A nine-year trip to Alpha Centauri and back seemed to take only six weeks to men on a spaceship. When they returned, their friends and relatives had aged enormously in comparison, old customs had changed, even the language was different.

Alan was a spacer, just like his whole family - until, suddenly and without intending to, he in turn jumped ship and remained on Earth. There were times he regretted that. Earth was a bewildering and utterly hostile place. To stay alive, he had to play a ruthless game - and he couldn't even find anyone to tell him the rules....

Bright Red Star

Bud Sparhawk

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, March 2005. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 11 (2006), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.

Listen to the full story for free at Escapepod.

Islands in the Net

Bruce Sterling

In the high-tech twenty-first century, a family of "corporate associates" descends into an underworld of data pirates and bootleg biogenetics to discover the identity of new-order terrorists.

Roadside Picnic

Arkady Strugatsky
Boris Strugatsky

Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those young rebels who are compelled, in spite of extreme danger, to venture illegally into the Zone to collect the mysterious artifacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is dominated by the place and the thriving black market in the alien products. But when he and his friend Kirill go into the Zone together to pick up a "full empty," something goes wrong. And the news he gets from his girlfriend upon his return makes it inevitable that he'll keep going back to the Zone, again and again, until he finds the answer to all his problems.

First published in 1972, Roadside Picnic is still widely regarded as one of the greatest science fiction novels, despite the fact that it has been out of print in the United States for almost thirty years. This authoritative new translation corrects many errors and omissions and has been supplemented with a foreword by Ursula K. Le Guin and a new afterword by Boris Strugatsky explaining the strange history of the novel's publication in Russia.

Some Desperate Glory

Emily Tesh

A thrillingly told queer space opera about the wreckage of war, the family you find, and who you must become when every choice is stripped from you...

While we live, the enemy shall fear us.

Since she was born, Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the murder of planet Earth. Raised in the bowels of Gaea Station alongside the last scraps of humanity, she readies herself to face the Wisdom, the powerful, reality-shaping weapon that gave the majoda their victory over humanity.

They are what's left. They are what must survive. Kyr is one of the best warriors of her generation, the sword of a dead planet. When Command assigns her brother to certain death and relegates her to Nursery to bear sons until she dies trying, she knows she must take humanity's revenge into her own hands.

Alongside her brother's brilliant but seditious friend and a lonely, captive alien, Kyr escapes from everything she's known into a universe far more complicated than she was taught and far more wondrous than she could have imagined.

In the Black

Patrick S. Tomlinson

In a demilitarized zone on the border of human space, long range spy satellites are mysteriously going quiet, and no one knows why. Captain Susan Kamala and her crew are dispatched to figure out what's going on and solve the problem.

That problem, however, is a mysterious, bleeding edge alien ship that no human vessel could hope to match in open conflict. But, it's not spoiling for a fight.

Now, the Captain and her Crew must figure out how to navigate a complicated game of diplomacy, balancing the needs of their corporate overlords, and the honest desire for a lasting peace between the two races, all without letting a long standing cold war turn hot.

How Few Remain

From the master of alternate history comes an epic of the Second Civil War. It was an epoch of glory and success, of disaster and despair. Twenty years after the South won the Civil War, America writhed once more in the bloody throes of battle. Furious over the annexation of key Mexican territory, the United States declared total war against the Confederate States of America. And so, in 1883, the fragile peace was shattered.

But this was a new kind of war, fought on a lawless frontier where the blue and gray battled not only each other, but the Apache, the outlaw, and even the redcoat. Along with France, England entered the fray on the side of the South, with blockades and invasions from Canada.

Out of this tragic struggle emerged figures great and small. The disgraced Abraham Lincoln crisscrossed the nation championing socialist ideals. Confederate cavalry leader Jeb Stuart sought to prevent wholesale slaughter in the desert Southwest, while cocky young Theodore Roosevelt and stodgy George Custer bickered over modern weapons--even as they drove the British back into western Canada.

Thanks to the efforts of journalists like Samuel Clemens, the nation witnessed the clash of human dreams and passions. Confederate genius Stonewall Jackson again soared to the heights of military expertise, while the North's McClellan proved sadly undeserving of his once shining reputation as the "young Napoleon." For in the Second War Between the States, the times, the stakes, and the battle lines had changed... and so would history.

Once again, Harry Turtledove has created a thoroughly engrossing alternate history novel, a profoundly original epic of blood and honor, courage and sacrifice, set amidst the raw beauty of young America's frontier wilderness.

The Guns of the South

Threshold of Eternity / The War of Two Worlds

"It is absolutely unique--without question the most fascinating Civil War novel I have ever read."

Professor James M. McPherson

Pultizer Prize-winning BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM

January 1864--General Robert E. Lee faces defeat. The Army of Northern Virginia is ragged and ill-equpped. Gettysburg has broken the back of the Confederacy and decimated its manpower.

Then, Andries Rhoodie, a strange man with an unplaceable accent, approaches Lee with an extraordinary offer. Rhoodie demonstrates an amazing rifle: Its rate of fire is incredible, its lethal efficiency breathtaking--and Rhoodie guarantees unlimited quantitites to the Confederates.

The name of the weapon is the AK-47....

Dead Space

Kali Wallace

Hester Marley used to have a plan for her life. But when a catastrophic attack left her injured, indebted, and stranded far from home, she was forced to take a dead-end security job with a powerful mining company in the asteroid belt. Now she spends her days investigating petty crimes to help her employer maximize its profits. She's surprised to hear from an old friend and fellow victim of the terrorist attack that ruined her life--and that surprise quickly turns to suspicion when he claims to have discovered something shocking about their shared history and the tragedy that neither of them can leave behind.

Before Hester can learn more, her friend is violently murdered at a remote asteroid mine. Hester joins the investigation to find the truth, both about her friend's death and the information he believed he had uncovered. But catching a killer is only the beginning of Hester's worries, and she soon realizes that everything she learns about her friend, his fellow miners, and the outpost they call home brings her closer to revealing secrets that very powerful and very dangerous people would rather keep hidden in the depths of space.

The Escape Orbit

James White

A captured human officer leads his fellows in an escape from an alien-dominated prison planet.

Home Fires

Gene Wolfe

Gene Wolfe takes us to a future North America at once familiar and utterly strange. A young man and woman, Skip and Chelle, fall in love in college and marry, but she is enlisted in the military, there is a war on, and she must serve her tour of duty before they can settle down. But the military is fighting a war with aliens in distant solar systems, and her months in the service will be years in relative time on Earth. Chelle returns to recuperate from severe injuries, after months of service, still a young woman but not necessarily the same person-while Skip is in his forties and a wealthy businessman, but eager for her return.

Still in love (somewhat to his surprise and delight), they go on a Caribbean cruise to resume their marriage. Their vacation rapidly becomes a complex series of challenges, not the least of which are spies, aliens, and battles with pirates who capture the ship for ransom. There is no writer in SF like Gene Wolfe and no SF novel like Home Fires.

The Colors of Space

Marion Zimmer Bradley

Marion Zimmer Bradley was a popular author of fantasy science fiction from the 1950's to the late 1990's. In 2000, she was posthumously awarded the World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement.

In The Colors of Space, young Bart Steele, Space Academy graduate, is waiting in a spaceport for a ship to take him home when something happens that suddenly thrusts him into the center of a quest for the secret of interstellar travel. The method of faster than light travel, called "warp drive" in later Sci-Fi stories, is a tightly kept secret of an alien race known as the "Lhari." Some humans feel that they should not have to depend on the Lhari to get to far away planets and enlist Bart to help them wrest the secret from the Lhari by undertaking a perilous mission. Bart's survival and the freedom of the human race suddenly depend on his courage and wits.

Embedded

Dan Abnett

HE'D DO ANYTHING TO GET A STORY. When journalist Lex Falk gets himself chipped into the brain of a combat soldier, he thinks he has the ultimate scoop - a report from the forbidden front line of a distant planetary war, live to the living rooms of Earth. When the soldier is killed, however, Lex has to take over the body and somehow get himself back to safety once more... broadcasting all the way.

Heart-stopping combat science fiction from the million-selling Warhammer 40,000 author.

Poul Anderson
John Brunner

Threshold of Eternity

Because of a twist in the structure of Time, three strangers were brought unexpectedly together: Red Hawkins of California, Chantal Vareze of London and a man from the 41st Century. Their meeting seemed an impossible prank of a universe gone mad - but it turned out to be quite otherwise.

For it seemed there was a war going on throughout space and time. A war fought by men of different epochs, on planets of different cultures, but for a cause that all could acknowledge - the very continued existence of creation itself.

And the coming together of these three very unlikely people - a modern man, a lovely girl and a futurian soldier - was to prove the master stroke of a super-science strategy that had already brought humanity to the THRESHOLD OF ETERNITY.

The War of Two Worlds

The twenty-year Earth-Mars war was finally over. What was left of Earth - its crumbled cities, its ruined farmlands - were firmly and completely under the rule of the Martian Archon. And this powerful planetary ruler was taking no chances: he intended to reduce the Terrans to a society of primitive agricultural tribes in less than a generation!

But for David Arnfeld, ex-spaceman and Earth Base Commander, there was something in the whole set-up which did not ring true. Why had both sides muffed countless chances to end that awful war in the first year or two? And why had the two planets gone to war in the first place?

In the back of Arnfeld's mind an idea was growing...perhaps there was yet a chance to save the doomed population of Earth. But if his idea was true, and proof was available, he had to work fast. Too many people were involved in this War of the Two Worlds to let one man upset their plans.

Cold Allies

Patricia Anthony

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.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

Max Brooks

“The end was near.” —Voices from the Zombie War

The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.

Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.

Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, “By excluding the human factor, aren’t we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn’t the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as ‘the living dead’?”

Note: Some of the numerical and factual material contained in this edition was previously published under the auspices of the United Nations Postwar Commission.

Eyewitness reports from the first truly global war

“I found ‘Patient Zero’ behind the locked door of an abandoned apartment across town. . . . His wrists and feet were bound with plastic packing twine. Although he’d rubbed off the skin around his bonds, there was no blood. There was also no blood on his other wounds. . . . He was writhing like an animal; a gag muffled his growls. At first the villagers tried to hold me back. They warned me not to touch him, that he was ‘cursed.’ I shrugged them off and reached for my mask and gloves. The boy’s skin was . . . cold and gray . . . I could find neither his heartbeat nor his pulse.” —Dr. Kwang Jingshu, Greater Chongqing, United Federation of China

“‘Shock and Awe’? Perfect name. . . . But what if the enemy can’t be shocked and awed? Not just won’t, but biologically can’t! That’s what happened that day outside New York City, that’s the failure that almost lost us the whole damn war. The fact that we couldn’t shock and awe Zack boomeranged right back in our faces and actually allowed Zack to shock and awe us! They’re not afraid! No matter what we do, no matter how many we kill, they will never, ever be afraid!” —Todd Wainio, former U.S. Army infantryman and veteran of the Battle of Yonkers

“Two hundred million zombies. Who can even visualize that type of number, let alone combat it? . . . For the first time in history, we faced an enemy that was actively waging total war. They had no limits of endurance. They would never negotiate, never surrender. They would fight until the very end because, unlike us, every single one of them, every second of every day, was devoted to consuming all life on Earth.” —General Travis D’Ambrosia, Supreme Allied Commander, Europe

Falcon

Emma Bull

When his home planet is besieged by agents of the Central Worlds Concorde, star-pilot Niki Falcon resumes taking the deadly drug that is the source of his power and must choose between saving his planet and destroying himself.

Tales of the Next Great War, 1871-1914: Future Warfare and of Battles Still-to-Come

I. F. Clarke

This selection of short stories offers a return journey through the future as it used to be. Time speeds backwards to the 1870s - to the alpha point of modern futuristic fiction - the opening years of that enchanted period before the First World War when Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and many able writers delighted readers from Sydney to Seattle with their most original revelations of things-to-come. In all their anticipations, the dominant factor was the recognition that the new industrial societies would continue to evolve in obedience to the rate of change. One major event that caused all to think furiously about the future was the Franco-German War of 1870. The new weapons and the new methods of army organization had shown that the conduct of warfare was changing; and, in response to that perception of change, a new form of fiction took on the task of describing the conduct of the war-to-come.

Contents:

1 - Introduction: The Paper Warriors and Their Fights of Fantasy - (1995) - essay by I. F. Clarke
27 - The Battle of Dorking: Reminiscences of a Volunteer - (1871) - novella by George Tomkyns Chesney
74 - The Battle of Dorking - (1871) - poem by Anonymous
77 - Der Ruhm, or, The Wreck of German Unity. The Narrative of a Brandenburger Hauptmann - (1871) - shortstory by Anonymous
95 - War in the Twentieth Century - [Le vingtième siècle / The Twentieth Century - 2] - (1995) - shortstory by Albert Robida (trans. of La Guerre au vingtième siècle 1887)
113 - The Taking of Dover (excerpt) - (1888) - shortfiction by Horace Francis Lester
139 - In a Conning Tower: How I Took HMS Majestic Into Action - (1888) - novelette by Hugh Oakley Arnold-Foster
162 - The Stricken Nation (excerpt) - (1890) - shortfiction by Hugh Grattan Donnelly
193 - The Raid of Le Vengeur - (1901) - shortstory by George Griffith
210 - The Green Curve - (1909) - novelette by Ole-Luk-Oie [as by Ernest Swinton ]
234 - The Trenches - (1908) - shortstory by C. E. Vickers
251 - The Secret of the Army Aeroplane - (1909) - shortstory by A. A. Milne
257 - The Unparalleled Invasion - (1910) - shortstory by Jack London
271 - A Vision of the Future - (1912) - shortstory by Gustaf Janson
281 - Planes! - (1913) - shortstory by F. Britten Austin [as by Frederick Britten Austin ]
293 - Danger!: Being the Log of Captain John Sirius - (1914) - novelette by Arthur Conan Doyle (variant of Danger!)
321 - Frankreichs Ende im Jahr 19?? (excerpt) - (1995) - novelette by Adolf Sommerfeld

The Great War with Germany, 1890-1914: Fictions and Fantasies of the War-to-Come

I. F. Clarke

In the second of a series of anthologies on future war stories, the leading specialist in the field presents a selection of prophetic tales about the conflict-to-come between the British and the Germans, tales which had immense influence in the quarter-century before the First World War. An extensive range of contemporary illustrations is included.

Contents:

1 - 'Horribly Stuffed with Epithets of War' - essay by I. F. Clarke
29 - The Great War of 198- (excerpt) - (1893) - shortfiction by Colonel J. F. Maurice, R. A. and Rear-Admiral P. Colomb and Captain F. N. Maude and Archibald Forbes and Charles Lowe and D. Christie Murray and F. Scudamore
72 - The Final War (excerpt) - (1896) - shortfiction by Louis Tracy
80 - The Spies of the Wight (excerpt) - (1899) - shortfiction by Headon Hill
87 - Die Abrechnung mit England (excerpt) - (1900) - shortfiction by Karl Eisenhart
102 - The Invaders (excerpt) - (1901) - shortfiction by Louis Tracy
108 - The Enemy in Our Midst (excerpt) - (1903) - shortfiction by Walter Wood
116 - The Riddle of the Sands (excerpt) - (1903) - shortfiction by Erskine Childers
129 - A New Trafalgar (excerpt) - (1902) - shortfiction by A. C. Curtis
139 - The Invasion of 1910 (excerpt) - (1906) - shortfiction by William Le Queux
152 - When the Eagle Flies Seaward (excerpt) - (1907) - shortfiction by Patrick Vaux and Lionel Yexley
167 - The Death Trap (excerpt) - (1907) - shortfiction by Robert W. Cole (variant of The Death Trap (Extract)) [as by Robert William Cole ]
178 - The Child's Guide to Knowledge - (1909) - shortstory by Anonymous
183 - The Coming Conquest of England (excerpt) - (1906) - shortfiction by August Niemann
201 - Armageddon 190- (excerpt) - (1907) - shortfiction by Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff [as by Seestern ]
225 - Die 'Offensiv-Invasion' gegen England (excerpt) - (1907) - shortfiction by Karl Bliebtreu
233 - Berlin-Bagdad: Das Deutsche Weltreich im Zeitalter der Luftschifffahrt, 1910-1931 (excerpt) - (1907) - shortfiction by Rudolf Martin
249 - The Real Le Queux (excerpt) - (1938) - shortfiction by N. St. Barbe Sladen
256 - Before the Lights Went Out (excerpt) - (1945) - shortfiction by Esmé Wingfield-Stratford
256 - Bouquets for Fleet Street (excerpt) - (1951) - shortfiction by Bernard Falk
258 - About German Spies - (1910) - essay by Charles Lowe
276 - The Essence of Parliament - (1908) - shortstory by Anonymous
278 - Les Fictions guerrières anglaises - (1910) - essay by Louis C.
281 - Incidents of the Coming Invasion of England (cartoon) - (1910) - interior artwork by W. Heath Robinson
293 - Die Invasion Englands in englischer Belechtung - (1908) - essay by Anonymous
296 - Vademecum für Phantasiestrategen - (1908) - essay by Carl Siwinna
313 - The Swoop! or, How Clarence Saved England (excerpt) - (1909) - shortfiction by P. G. Wodehouse
326 - The Boy Galloper (excerpt) - (1903) - shortfiction by L. James
339 - The Message (excerpt) - (1907) - shortfiction by A. J. Dawson
356 - When England Slept - (1909) - shortstory by Capt. H. Curties
363 - The North Sea Bubble - (1906) - shortstory by Ernest Oldmeadow
368 - When William Came (excerpt) - (1913) - shortfiction by Saki
377 - The Cliffs - (1909) - poem by Charles Doughty
381 - The Battle of the North Sea (excerpt) - (1912) - shortfiction by Rear Admiral Eardley-Wilmot
385 - 'Sink, Burn, Destroy': Der Schlag gegen Deutschland (excerpt) - (1905) - shortfiction by Anonymous
390 - The Germans in Hampton Court (excerpt) - (1904) - shortfiction by August Niemann
398 - 100 Jahre deutsche Zukunft (excerpt) - (1913) - shortfiction by Max Heinrichka
408 - Hindenburgs Einmarsch in London (excerpt) - (1915) - shortfiction by Paul Georg Münch
413 - America Fallen (excerpt) - (1915) - shortfiction by J. Bernard Walker
413 - Epilogue: Meanwhile, Across the Atlantic - essay by I. F. Clarke
413 - Introduction (America Fallen by J. Bernard Walker) - (1915) - essay by George Haven Putnam
422 - Notes (The Great War with Germany, 1890-1914) - essay by I. F. Clarke

The Man in the High Castle

Philip K. Dick

It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco, the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some 20 years earlier the United States lost a war--and is now occupied jointly by Nazi Germany and Japan.

This harrowing, Hugo Award-winning novel is the work that established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction while breaking the barrier between science fiction and the serious novel of ideas. In it Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a nightmare from which it may just be possible to awake.

Time Out of Joint

Philip K. Dick

Time Out of Joint is Philip K. Dick's classic depiction of the disorienting disparity between the world as we think it is and the world as it actually is.

The year is 1998, although Ragle Gumm doesn't know that. He thinks it's 1959. He also thinks that he served in World War II, that he lives in a quiet little community, and that he really is the world's long-standing champion of newspaper puzzle contests. It is only after a series of troubling hallucinations that he begins to suspect otherwise. And once he pursues his suspicions, he begins to see how he is the center of a universe gone terribly awry.

Redliners

Rumors of War and Infernal Machines: Technomilitary Agenda-Setting in S-F

Having seen too much war to be safely returned to civilian life, Strike Force Company C41 is assigned to guard a colony on a hostile planet, but when the mission goes terribly wrong, the troops encounter unexpected danger.

Charles E. Gannon

Rumors of War and Infernal Machines: Technomilitary Agenda-setting in American and British Speculative Fiction

This provocative and unique work reveals the remarkably influential role of futuristic literature on contemporary political power in America. Tracing this phenomenon from its roots in Victorian Britain, Rumors of War and Infernal Machines offers a fascinating exploration of how fictional speculations on emergent or imaginary military technologies profoundly influence the political agendas and actions of modern superpower states. Gannon convincingly demonstrates that military fiction anticipated and even influenced the evolution of the tank, the development of the airplane, and also the bitter political battles within Britain's War Office and the Admiralty.

In the United States, future-fictions and Cold-War thrillers were an officially acknowledged factor in the Pentagon's research and development agendas, and often gave rise_and shape_to the nation's strategic development of technologies as diverse as automation, atomic weaponry, aerospace vehicles, and the Strategic Defense Initiative ('Star Wars'). His book reveals a striking relationship between the increasing political influence of speculative military fiction and the parallel rise of superpower states and their technocentric ideologies.

With its detailed political, historical, and literary analysis of U.S. and British fascination with hi-tech warfare, this lively and revealing study will appeal to students, literary and cultural scholars, military and history enthusiasts, and general readers.

The Puppet Masters

We All Died at Breakaway Station

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 . . .

Richard C. Meredith

When race survival teetered in the balance...

Captain Absolom Bracer, with an artificial brainpan and synthetic eyes. Astrogation officer Gene O'Gwynn, a lady with a plastic face. Weapons officer Akin Darby and Communications officer Miss Cyanta, both with assorted prosthetic parts.

These were the officers of the Iwo Jima, one of the two heavy battle-cruiser starships protecting the vast cumbersome Rudolph Cragston, a hospital ship returning to Earth with thousands of wounded in cold sleep.

These brutally injured officers had been restored to temporary, artificial life to do this job because no intact man or woman could be spared from the main conflict.

But then Breakaway Station, a vital link with Earth, was suddenly threatened..

Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen

H. Beam Piper

The Paratime Police patrolled the vast number or alternate time dimensions. Their aim was to keep the existence of the alternate Earths a secret and prevent these Earths from mixing and destroying each other.

But the TIme Police made mistakes sometimes, and they made a big one when a seemingly ordinary Pennsylvania State Trooper named Calvin Morrison from the Fourth Level, Europo-American, Hispano-Columbian subsector, was accidently switched into the Aryan Transpacific sector, Stypon's House sector.

In just a few weeks, Morrison was being hailed as Lord Kalvan, and was masterminding a campaign that could blow the whole Paratime secret sky-high.....

Future Wars: The Anticipations and the Fears

David Seed

The subject of this timely book is that body of fiction which speculates in narrative form about the nature of wars likely to break out in the near or distant future. Although earlier instances occur, the origins of this mode lie primarily in the late nineteenth century but writing about future wars continues to this day with notable fiction on the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ranging widely across periods and conflicts real and imagined, and boasting contributions from the late I. F. Clarke, H. Bruce Franklin and Patrick Parrinder, Future Wars explores the fascinating process of interaction between politics and literature, science fiction and war in a range of classic texts. Individual essays explore Reagan's 'star wars' project, nuclear fiction, Martian invasion, and the Pax Americana among other topics. The use of future war scenarios in military planning dates back to the nineteenth century. Future Wars concludes with an assessment by an officer in the U.S. Army of the continuing usefulness of future wars fiction.

On the Beach

Nevil Shute

Nevil Shute’s most powerful novel—a bestseller for decades after its 1957 publication—is an unforgettable vision of a post-apocalyptic world.

After a nuclear World War III has destroyed most of the globe, the few remaining survivors in southern Australia await the radioactive cloud that is heading their way and bringing certain death to everyone in its path. Among them is an American submarine captain struggling to resist the knowledge that his wife and children in the United States must be dead. Then a faint Morse code signal is picked up, transmitting from somewhere near Seattle, and Captain Towers must lead his submarine crew on a bleak tour of the ruined world in a desperate search for signs of life.

Both terrifying and intensely moving, On the Beach is a remarkably convincing portrait of how ordinary people might face the most unimaginable nightmare.

Armor

John Steakley

Body armor has been devised for the commando forces that are to be dropped on Banshee-the home of the most implacable of humanity's enemies. A trooper in this armor is a one-man, atomic-powered battle fortress, but he will have to fight a nearly endless horde of berserk, hard-shelled monsters.

The War of the Worlds

H. G. Wells

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.

Bitter Angels

Sarah Zettel

An Imploding Star System.

A Murdered Galactic Spy.

A Woman Seeking the Truth—and Finding the Unbelievable...

The Erasmus System is a sprawling realm of slavery, smugglers, spies—and constant, creeping decrepitude. Here everyone who is not part of the ruling Four Families is a slave of one kind or another. But the Guardians, a special-forces branch inside the United World Government for Earth, have deemed Erasmus a “hot spot.” Somehow, it is believed, this failing colony intends to launch a war upon the solar system.

Ex-Field Commander Terese Drajeske, now a mother of three, has been called back to active duty and sent to Erasmus, ostensibly to investigate the murder of her colleague—and friend—Bianca Fayette. At first blush, the death defies explanation: Bianca was immortal. But beneath that single murder lies a twisted foundation of deceptions. Suddenly Terese is plunged into a vortex of shattered lives, endemic deceit, and one dreadful secret. In this society without hope, someone has put into motion a plan that will cast humanity into chaos. And Terese, who has given up her family and her sanity to prevent war, may be asked to make the ultimate sacrifice....

1632

163x: Book 1

Eric Flint

1632 In the year 1632 in northern Germany a reasonable person might conclude that things couldn't get much worse. There was no food. Disease was rampant. For over a decade religious war had ravaged the land and the people. Catholic and Protestant armies marched and countermarched across the northern plains, laying waste the cities and slaughtering everywhere. In many rural areas population plummeted toward zero. Only the aristocrats remained relatively unscathed; for the peasants, death was a mercy.

2000 Things are going OK in Grantville, West Virginia. The mines are working, the buck are plentiful (it's deer season) and everybody attending the wedding of Mike Stearn's sister (including the entire membership of the local chapter of the United Mine Workers of America, which Mike leads) is having a good time.

THEN, EVERYTHING CHANGED....

When the dust settles, Mike leads a small group of armed miners to find out what's going on. Out past the edge of town Grantville's asphalt road is cut, as with a sword. On the other side, a scene out of Hell; a man nailed to a farmhouse door, his wife and daughter Iying screaming in muck at the center of a ring of attentive men in steel vests. Faced with this, Mike and his friends don't have to ask who to shoot.

At that moment Freedom and Justice, American style, are introduced to the middle of The Thirty Years War.

1633

163x: Book 2

David Weber
Eric Flint

AMERICAN FREEDOM AND JUSTICE
VS. THE TYRANNIES OF
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

The new government in central Europe, called the Confederated Principalities of Europe, was formed by an alliance between Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, and the West Virginians led by Mike Stearns who were transplanted into 17th-century Germany by a mysterious cosmic accident. The new regime is shaky. Outside its borders, the Thirty Years War continues to rage. Within, it is beset by financial crisis as well as the political and social tensions between the democratic ideals of the 20th-century Americans and the aristocracy which continues to rule the roost in the CPE as everywhere in Europe.

Worst of all, the CPE has aroused the implacable hostility of Cardinal Richelieu, the effective ruler of France. Richelieu has created the League of Ostend in order to strike at the weakest link in the CPE's armor--its dependence on the Baltic as the lifeline between Gustav Adolf's Sweden and the rest of his realm.

The greatest naval war in European history is about to erupt. Like it or not, Gustavus Adolphus will have to rely on Mike Stearns and the technical wizardry of his obstreperous Americans to save the King of Sweden from ruin.

Caught in the conflagration are two American diplomatic missions abroad: Rebecca Stearns' mission to France and Holland, and the embassy which Mike Stearns sent to King Charles of England headed by his sister Rita and Melissa Mailey. Rebecca finds herself trapped in war-torn Amsterdam; Rita and Melissa, imprisoned in the Tower of London.

And much as Mike wants to transport 20th-century values into war-torn 17th-century Europe by Sweet Reason, still he finds comfort in the fact that Julie, who once trained to be an Olympic marksman, still has her rifle...

1636: Commander Cantrell in the West Indies

163x: Book 16

Eric Flint
Charles E. Gannon

Eddie Cantrell, now married to the king of Denmark's daughter, is sent by Admiral Simpson to the Caribbean to secure access to the most valuable commodity on that continent--not the gold and silver which the Spanish treasure, but the oil which up-time machines and industry need. The admiral has also provided Eddie's small task force with the new steam-powered frigates that have just come out of the navy's shipyards.

Even with the frigates, a giant obstacle stands in his way: the Gulf-girdling Spanish presence in the New World. So a diversion is needed, carried out by an up-time car mechanic and a down-time mercenary colonel who also happens to be the last earl of Ireland. Their mission: grab the oil fields on Trinidad, and so distract the attention of Spain's New World governors.

While the Spanish galleons and troops head for Trinidad, Commander Cantrell's smallest and fastest steam sloop will make a run to the Louisiana coast. There, her crew will wind their way up the bayous to the real New World prize: the Jennings Oil Field.

But Cantrell's plans could be wrecked in a multitude of ways. He faces often-hostile natives, rambunctious Dutch ship captains, allied colonies on the brink of starvation, and vicious social infighting that can barely be contained by his capable and passionate new wife. When the galleons finally come out in force to engage his small flotilla, Eddie will discover that the Spanish aren't the only enemies who will be coming against him in a fateful Caribbean show-down.

86--EIGHTY SIX, Vol. 1

86: Book 1

86--EIGHTY SIX, Vol. 2: Run Through the Battlefront (Start)

A War Without Casualties

The Republic of San Magnolia has long been under attack from the neighboring Giadian Empire's army of unmanned drones known as the Legion. After years of painstaking research, the Republic finally developed autonomous drones of their own, turning the one-sided struggle into a war without casualties-or at least, that's what the government claims.In truth, there is no such thing as a bloodless war. Beyond the fortified walls protecting the eighty-five Republic territories lies the "nonexistent" Eighty-Sixth Sector. The young men and women of this forsaken land are branded the Eighty-Six and, stripped of their humanity, pilot the "unmanned" weapons into battle...

86: Book 2

86--EIGHTY SIX, Vol. 3: Run Through the Battlefront (Finish)

Let's go back to where we belong

Having bid Lena farewell, Shin and the surviving members of the Spearhead squadron continue into the heart of Legion territory. There, they endure countless hardships until they're rescued by the Federal Republic of Giad, a reformed nation that offers them a second chance at a peaceful life. But it isn't long before a sense of duty calls the Eighty-Six back to the battlefield. Choosing to enlist in the military, they willingly walk back through the gates of hell, this time joined by a peculiar new ally-Frederica Rosenfort: a haughty young girl with a rare ability and wisdom far beyond her years.

86: Book 3

86--EIGHTY SIX, Vol. 4: Under Pressure

Pride is all we have

The attack Shin foresaw has finally come to pass. Wielding a weapon with destructive force hitherto unseen, the Long-Range Artillery-type Legion unit rains unmitigated chaos over the battlefield. Both the Federacy's western front and the Gran Mur of the Republic crumble under the might of the monolithic railgun, capable of dealing catastrophic damage from hundreds of kilometers away. With their backs against the wall, the Giadian military makes a controversial decision: A special strike force will charge into the heart of Legion territory, engage the Railgun type from close range, and destroy it. Shin and the Eighty-Six will spearhead the operation.

...But Shin has not been himself lately. Having defeated his brother's ghost and freed himself from the Republic, the Reaper finds himself without purpose. What reason does he have to go?

86: Book 4

86--EIGHTY SIX, Vol. 5: Death, Be Not Proud

Old Friends, New Enemies

Against all odds, Shin and the Eighty-Six have emerged victorious from their battle with the Morpho, liberating scores of surviving Republic citizens from the Legion's dark agenda. Lena, in turn, has fulfilled her promise and finally caught up to the Spearhead squadron. And while her presence has brought out a softer side in Shin, it seems to have roused the competitive spirits within Kurena and Frederica. But the fun comes to an end when the Eighty-Sixth Strike Package, with Lena at the helm, receives its first mission. Their destination: an abandoned subway tunnel in the Republic's northern secondary capital, Charité. Deep underground, the gaping maw of a subterranean Legion base awaits them...

86: Book 5

86--EIGHTY SIX, Vol. 6: Darkest Before the Dawn

What makes a Monster?

"Come find me."

Legion developer Zelene Birkenbaum, a figure shrouded in mystery, has left the Eighty-Sixth Strike Package a trail of bread crumbs leading all the way to the frozen north. But as Shin and the Eighty-Six acquaint themselves with the United Kingdom of Roa Garcia, they learn of an anti-Legion strategy that chills them worse than the cold. Here on this new battlefield, surrounded by mechanical ghosts that exist only to fulfill their duty, the Eighty-Six are forced to acknowledge an unsettling truth...

86: Book 6

86--EIGHTY SIX, Vol. 7: Mist

Live to fight. Die with honor.

That was all they knew, and they were proud. But as they saw themselves reflected in the Sirins-slaughtered by the thousands with nothing to show for it-a crack formed in their ironclad resolve. Shin's mind festered with doubt. Lena's heart tore at the seams as she struggled to understand him. Would they find common ground over the course of the United Kingdom operation? Or would they drift further apart...?

86: Book 7

86--EIGHTY SIX, Vol. 8: Gun Smoke on the Water

FOREVER... IF POSSIBLE

The Merciless Queen, a high-ranking commander unit for the Legion, has finally been taken into custody. Now the Federacy, the United Kingdom, and the Alliance of Wald can conduct a thorough analysis of this special Ameise, which houses the consciousness of Legion developer Zelene Birkenbaum. If their efforts bear fruit, they may learn the secret to stopping the Legion once and for all! In the meantime, the Federacy has decided to rest its battle-worn blades. The Eighty-Sixth Strike Package has been allowed leave for the first time in ages. As they arrive in the Alliance of Wald's territory, they are able to step away from the iron and blood and enjoy a rare vacation! And it seems that two members of the Strike Package are getting a bit cozier than the rest...

86: Book 8

86--EIGHTY SIX, Vol. 9: Valkyrie Has Landed

A PATH TO PURPOSE LAID WITH IRON RAILS.

An end to the endless war--the possibility of stopping the Legion once and for all. Such is humanity's most fervent desire. But in the war-free world of tomorrow, what will become of the Eighty-Six? Many have gained renewed faith in the future. Some have found love; others, new aspirations. But what of those who have yet to dream? The warm rays of hope have bent their iron wills and distorted their realities. For those tragic few, the worst is yet to come...

86: Book 9

86--EIGHTY SIX, Vol. 10: Fragmental Neoteny

LIKE LOOKING IN A MIRROR...

For better or worse, the battle with the Noctiluca has drawn to a close... for now. The Eighty-Six's minds are heavy with thoughts of close friends and bitter enemies swallowed by the cold, dark abyss. Among the casualties are Shana, Shiden's vice captain, joining the fallen in their watery grave, and Theo, whose loss of his left hand had all but sealed his fate as a Processor. As Shiden swears revenge, Kurena, who blames herself for Shana';s death, cracks beneath the weight of her guilt. While the Eighty-Six struggle to pick up the pieces, though, the Legion inexorably pursue their bloodless objective, and the Noctiluca has reportedly taken refuge in the surviving Holy Theocracy of Noiryanaruse. Now Shin and company must set foot in the mysterious western nation of which even the United Kingdom and the Federacy are wary...

86: Book 10

86--EIGHTY SIX, Vol. 11: Dies Passionis

ANSWERS

What makes a Reaper? What hardships must an innocent child endure to become the vaunted champion of the Eighty-Six? A peek into the past will shed light on his truth. The path he walks is paved with bonds forged in love and broken by tragedy--the shattered fragments of stories untold, committed to memory through the iron will of the one who would shoulder their legacy.

86: Book 11

86--EIGHTY-SIX, Vol. 12: Holy Blue Bullet

As Lena and Shin take their first steps on Republic soil after what seemed like a lifetime, they find a country that still hasn't changed--one that cannot change. But their newest operation can't wait. After surviving battlefield after hellish battlefield, and seeing what they have to return to, Lena and Shin begrudgingly take their first steps into the darkness... But the ghosts of the dead gather to stand in their way, their eyes a cavernous silver...

86: Book 12

86--Eighty Six Alter, Vol. 1: The Reaper's Occasional Adolescence

THE PRICE OF PEACE

The Republic's evacuation resulted in massive casualties on both sides, and the fallout takes a toll on all survivors. As Shin ruminates on what it means to be a leader, Lena thinks of the homeland now lost to her forever. Frederica, too, is dismayed by her own powerlessness as the ill-fated final Empress of Giad. If her future is to change, she'll have to change first. Meanwhile, unrest is brewing within the Federacy, and a few disaffected squadrons, desperate to turn the tide of the war, reach for a dangerous miracle...

86 Alter: Book 1

They were in the midst of youth, even on the battlefield... Shin, Lena, and their friends experience brief moments of peace and happiness while facing certain death, enjoying a short break, plunging into battle once again, and setting foot for the first time in the frigid United Kingdom?sharing them with their comrades, friends, lovers, and family. Glimpse another side of 86--EIGHTY-SIX that will leave you wishing against all odds that more such moments will visit them again tomorrow.

Shadow of the Scorpion

Agent Cormac Series

Ian Cormac's Early Years!

Raised to adulthood during the end of the war between the human Polity and a vicious alien race, the Prador, Ian Cormac, is haunted by childhood memories of a sinister scorpion-shaped war drone and the burden of losses he doesn't remember. Cormac signs up with Earth Central Security and is sent out to help restore and maintain order on worlds devastated by the war.There he discovers that though the Prador remain as murderous as ever, they are not anywhere near as treacherous or dangerous as some of his fellow humans, some closer to him than he would like. Amidst the ruins left by wartime genocides, Cormac will discover in himself a cold capacity for violence and learn some horrible truths about his own past while trying to stay alive on his course of vengeance.

Polity Agent

Agent Cormac Series: Book 4

From 800 years in the future, a runcible gate is opened into the Polity and those coming through it have been sent specially to take the alien 'Maker' back to its home civilization in the Small Magellanic cloud. Once these refugees are safely through, the gate itself is rapidly shut down - because something alien is pursuing them. The gate is then dumped into a nearby sun.

From those refugees who get through, agent Cormac learns that the Maker civilization has been destroyed by pernicious virus known as the Jain technology. This, of course, raised questions: why was Dragon, a massive bioconstruct of the Makers, really sent to the Polity; why did a Jain node suddenly end up in the hands of someone who could do the most damage with it?

Meanwhile an entity called the Legate is distributing pernicious Jain nodes ...and a renegade attack ship, The King of Hearts, has encountered something very nasty outside the Polity itself.

Line War

Agent Cormac Series: Book 5

The Polity is under attack from melded AI entity controlling the lethal Jain technology, but the attack seems to have no coherence. When one of Erebus’s wormships kills millions on the world of Klurhammon, a high-tech agricultural world of no real tactical significance, Cormac is sent to investigate, though he is struggling to control an ability no human being should possess, and beginning to question the motives of his AI masters.

Further attacks and seemingly indiscriminate slaughter ensue, but only serve to bring some of the most dangerous individuals in the Polity into the war. Mr Crane, the indefatigable brass killing machine sets out for vengeance. Orlandine, a vastly-augmented haiman who herself controls Jain technology, seeks a weapon of appalling power and finds allies from an ancient war.

Meanwhile Mika, scientist and Dragon expert, is again kidnapped by that alien entity and dragged to the heart of things; to wake the makers of Jain technology from their five million year slumber.

But Erebus’s attacks are not indiscriminate, and could spell the end of the Polity...

A Talent for War

Alex Benedict: Book 1

Jack McDevitt

Christopher Sim changed mankind's history forever when he forged a rag-tag group of misfits into the weapon that broke the alien Ashiyyur. But now, one man believes Sim was a fraud, and Alex must follow the legend into the heart of the alien galaxy to confront a truth far stranger than any fiction.

Path of the Fury

Alicia DeVries: Book 1

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.

Aliens

Aliens Universe: Alien Quartet: Book 2

Alan Dean Foster

In the sequel to the 1979 film Alien, Ellen Ripley is persuaded to return to planet LV-426, where her crew encountered the hostile Alien creature. There they discovered hundreds of eggs, and just one alien slaughtered everyone but Ripley. A colony has been established there, but suddenly all contact with the settlers has been lost. This time she's accompanied by a unit of Colonial Marines, but even their firepower may not be enough for them to survive and learn the fate of the colony known as Hadley's Hope.

Aliens: Earth Hive

Aliens Universe: Series 2: Book 1

Steve Perry

Wilks was a space marine with a near-fatal flaw: he had a heart. Billie was a child, the only survivor of a far-flung colony outpost. Thrown together in the last hellish night of an alien invasion, Billie and Wilks helped each other get out alive. Thirteen years later Wilks is in prison, and Billie lives in a mental institution, the nightmare memories of the massacre at Rim seared into her mind.

Now the government has tapped Wilks to lead an expedition to the aliens' home planet to bring back a live alien. But the competition on Earth to develop the aliens as a new weapons system is brutal. When Wilks's team departs on their mission, a trained assassin trails them. And what follows is no less than guerrilla warfare on the aliens' planet - and alien conquest on Earth!

Aliens: Nightmare Asylum

Aliens Universe: Series 2: Book 2

Steve Perry

Wilks, Billie, and Bueller were the last survivors of a devastating assault on the aliens' home planet. But once their retum to the solar system made them refugees once more, fleeing Earth and its alien infestation in a desperate attempt to stay alive. Now, in an otherwise unmanned military transport, they hurtle through space. Destination: unknown.

Little do they know that the cargo they carry with them is a legacy of death that they will ultimately have to face. Nor do they know that they head toward a remote colony and military outpost. This pocket of humanity at the very edges of space is at the mercy of a general names Spears with an agenda all his own. Now Billie, Wilks, and Bueller face a new nightmare, and it is nothing they could ever have imagined: a gift of madness from an alien world, unbalanced mind, and the experiences of a mysterious pilot named Lieutenant Ellen Ripley.

Aliens: The Female War

Aliens Universe: Series 2: Book 3

S. D. Perry
Steve Perry

Billie only wanted what all children want -- the warmth and security of family, the human connectedness that comes from belonging. What she got was a nightmare without end.

Ripley is a leader of humanity's forces against a new invasion where aliens have overrun the Earth--and the human population has been abandoned to alien appetites.

Aliens: Genocide

Aliens Universe: Series 2: Book 4

David Bischoff

Their queen is dead and the hive mind has been left to flounder on its own. On a world bereft of its only guiding force a schism is taking place: two strains of alien, formerly united by one all-powerful mother, now divide their forces for a world-shattering, acid-drenched war.

On Earth, after a generation of rebuilding in the wake of alien infestation, athletes from every corner of the world are flocking to humanity's Goodwill Games. But some come with a dangerous new tool: a drug called Fire, distilled from the very essence of the aliens' body chemistry. The military wants it, Pharmaceutical kingpin Daniel Grant wants it. And the only place the essential ingredient can be found is on a world convulsed by alien holocaust.

Hellburner

Alliance-Union: Company Wars: Book 2

Lt. Ben Pollard thinks he's traded the perils of the Belt for security as an Earth-based computer jockey for United Defence Command. Then he's forced to perform a mission of mercy – and lands on an isolated, intrigue-riddled space station.

When Pollard finds himself stranded on the Sol II battle installation without his orders, I.D., and possessions, he discovers something equally disturbing. He's been named next-of-kin to a man he never wanted to even see again: Paul Dekker, a young pilot who attracts crises like dead flesh draws flies. The centerpiece of a top-secret war project, Dekker has just lost his entire crew in a mysterious freak accident and lost his mind to amnesia from an attempted suicide. Or attempted murder.

Suddenly two more faces from Dekker and Pollard's past are shanghaied to Sol II: their occasional lovers, renegade pilots Meg Kady and Sal Aboujib. Together they had once smashed the criminal cover-ups of a mining cartel. Now, they're all caught in a shadowy, deadly maze of power-mongering rivalries between UDC and Fleet Strategic Operations, the Senate and Peace Lobby, and the corporate lords of both Earth and Mars. In this subtle, dark contest with mysteries that deepen by the hour and rules that change without warning, Pollard, Kady, Aboujib and Dekker must survive kidnapping, sabotage, ambush, riots, kangaroo courts, conspiracy, and treason - only to become lab animals in the frontline of an endless war for humanity's soul. The two couples are being programmed to crew an experimental deathship no one has been able to control. And to escape the quagmire of manipulation, Pollard and his companions must master and wield the awesome power of – Hellburner.

Downbelow Station

Alliance-Union: Company Wars: Book 3

The Beyond started with the Stations orbiting the stars nearest Earth. The Great Circle the interstellar freighters traveled was long, but not unmanageable, and the early Stations were emotionally and politically dependent on Mother Earth. The Earth Company which ran this immense operation reaped incalculable profits and influenced the affairs of nations.

Then came Pell, the first station centered around a newly discovered living planet. The discovery of Pell's World forever altered the power balance of the Beyond. Earth was no longer the anchor which kept this vast empire from coming adrift, the one living mote in a sterile universe.

But Pell was just the first living planet. Then came Cyteen, and later others, and a new and frighteningly different society grew in the farther reaches of space. The importance of Earth faded and the Company reaped ever smaller profits as the economic focus of space turned outward. But the powerful Earth Fleet was sitll a presence in the Beyond, and Pell Station was to become the last stronghold in a titanic struggle between the vast, dynamic forces of the rebel Union and those who defended Earth's last, desperate grasp for the stars.

Finity's End

Alliance-Union: Company Wars: Book 7

With a truce declared between the major powers, war hero Captain James Robert Neihart returns to the Alliance station of Pell to reclaim one of the Merchanters' own. During the Company Wars, Finity's End had to leave a pregnant crew member on Pell and was unable to retrieve her orphaned son.

The Neiharts want their lost cousin back out of love, but also because the war has cost Finity's End a generation. No babies have been born, while half the crew – half the family – are dead, making the prodigal youth even more precious.

But Fletcher Neihart has left Pell for the planet Downbelow where, after a childhood spent in uncaring foster homes, he's found happiness working with the hisa – Downbelow's mystic, peaceful natives. He even has a beautiful girlfriend. The last thing he wants is to be dragged into space. He has no choice.

Fletcher is reunited with a home he's never seen. From having no family, he's now surrounded by kinfolk – all battle-scarred strangers more alien than the non-human hisa. Like Jeremy, the hero-worshipping twelve-year-old, JR, groomed to be a captain and growing into leadership, Madelaine, ship's attorney, and Fletcher's great-grandmother.

And the Neiharts must deal with a resentful hostage who bears their name and features, but knows nothing of their history, traditions or lives.

Meanwhile, Finity's End flies toward conflict and danger. For Captain Neihart is forging a treaty among the worlds, stations and Merchanters; and opponents will try ambush, sabotage, and murder to stop him. By journey's end, the hope for peace will depend on whether JR, Jeremy and the crew can uphold Merchanter honor; and whether Fletcher, guided by a gift from the hisa, can learn to trust... and find his true place in the universe.

The Faded Sun: Kesrith

Alliance-Union: The Faded Sun Trilogy: Book 1

This is the story of three people: Sten Duncan, a soldier of humanity; Niun, last warrior of the mri, humanity's enemies; and Melein, priestess-queen of the final fallen mri stronghold. It is the story of two mighty species fighting for a galaxy, humanity driving out from Earth, and the enigmatic regul struggling to hold their stars with mri mercenaries. It is a story of diplomacy and warfare, of conspiracy and betrayal, and of three flesh-and-blood people who found themselves thrown together in a life-and-death alliance.

The Faded Sun: Shon'jir

Alliance-Union: The Faded Sun Trilogy: Book 2

Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Robot Slaves

Sten Duncan had saved the lives of the last warrior and the last priestess-queen of mankind's enemies, the mri. He had come to understand their ways and to value their code of honor. When they planned their escape and he was ordered to trap them, Sten fled into space with them instead. Far across the cosmos was their forgotten homeworld. He could help them find it--and maybe there find the secret that had eluded the military masters of Terra.

Androne

Androne: Book 1

Dwain Worrell

In one terrifying event called the Ninety-Nine, all major military installations on earth were eviscerated. But by whom? Foreign powers, AIs, ETs? Every conceivable adversary was ruled out. Reeling from massive casualties and amid hundreds of conspiracy theories, humanity creates Andrones: bipedal android drones piloted remotely by soldiers who will never again need to be on the field of battle. Newly minted Androne pilot Sergeant Paxton Arés has now been deployed into a fight against an enemy no one understands or has ever seen.

Passing mostly uneventful days patrolling an unidentified desert, Paxton spends time communicating with his pregnant girlfriend back home and reflecting on his impending fatherhood. But as he is drawn deeper into military camaraderie and begins quickly rising up the ranks on the strength of his father's military legacy, Paxton starts to question the swirling rumors about the nature of the conflict. What he's encountered in the shifting dunes?something inexplicable, indomitable?fills him with the fear that whatever is out there is destined to win.

Whether it's curiosity, ambition, or a newfound paternal instinct, Paxton has a driving need to understand the dangerous truths of this strange, invisible war. And the choices he must make have the power to change everything.

Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar Galactica 2: Book 1

Jeffrey A. Carver

Based on the SCI FI Channel's Original Series:

For forty years, the Twelve Colonies of Man experienced peace, united since the war against the man-made Cylons. The Cylons, mechanical beings created to perform the manual labor civilization required, were gone forever... or so humanity thought.

But in those years, the Cylons developed new Cylons that looked and acted like humans--with one goal in mind: to destroy all humanity! When they suddenly attacked the Twelve Worlds, humanity's extinction seemed inevitable.

Only a single warship survived the massive attack: Battlestar Galactica, the oldest ship in the fleet, ready to be decommissioned and turned into a museum. Commander William Adama, himself set to retire, had but one course: to marshal the meager forces available, a ragtag crew of misfits and green recruits, to prevent their enemy from wiping out the last vestiges of the human race. But the Cylons, stronger, smarter, and driven to destroy their creators, may just be too powerful for them and all of humanity to survive.

The Cylons' Secret

Battlestar Galactica 2: Book 2

Craig Shaw Gardner

Sometimes no news is bad news.

It's been twenty years since the end of the Cylon War. The twelve human colony worlds are rebuilding, and the Cylons...the Cylons have been just too quiet. They are nowhere to be found. The robotic race that tried to obliterate their creators has gone to parts unknown in deep space.

The aftermath of the war has created a new, illegal profession: Scavenger. Tom Zarek is one, scouring the outer settlements for valuable Cylon technologies and artifacts and usually returning empty-handed. But now, he and the crew of the Cruiser Lightning have found the Omega Station, a scientific station shrouded in secrecy beyond the edge of charted space. This is it, the big score, except something is wrong... the base is still occupied, not by humans alone; by Cylons too!

The Battlestar Galactica, one of the oldest warships in the fleet, receives the Lightning's distress call, a cryptic one-word message: "Cylons." William Adama, newly promoted to second-in-command, is worried. Most of his crew are green, new recruits, not prepared for anything but the most routine missions. And, as Adama soon discovers, this mission is anything but routine. Omega is indeed full of Cylons, but also something much more disturbing.

Sagittarius is Bleeding

Battlestar Galactica 2: Book 3

Peter David

President Laura Roslin bears a heavy burden. Since becoming the president of the twelve colonies when the Cylons brutally attacked and destroyed all but aa small remmnant of humanity's billions, she has been the voice of civil authority, counterbalancing the military leadership of Commander Adama of the Battlestar Galactica. President Roslin has been a source of inspiration the the tens of thousands who survive on Galactica and the other colonial ships. They look to her for honesty, integrity, and courage. For fairness and an evenhanded rule. And most importantly, for the prophacy she has shared with them. Earth, the fabled home of the lost colony, can be found. She has seen this in a vision which has the power of truth.

Recently, though, her dreams have been darker, of a galaxy overrun by Cylons...is she having visions of an inevitable future? Or are these terrible dreams caused by powerful medication she's taking?

More dangerously, the Midguardians, radicals who believe that the end of humanity is coming soon, have learned of Roslin's dreams and taken them as a sign. Now, the Midguardians are prepared to act.

President Roslin faces the most important decision of her life, should she tell Commander Adama about the Midguardians, and risk being imprisoned again as a traitor, or dare she keep her secret, and possibly endanger the future of the entire fleet.

Unity

Battlestar Galactica 2: Book 4

Steven Harper

A prophecy is fulfilled when Peter Attis is rescued from the Cylons in order to save humanity with "the plague of the tongue." or so it seems...

While harvesting alge for conversion into food, the beleaguered human/refugee fleet is discovered by a small group of Cylon heavy raiders. A brief battle ends with the destruction of a Cylon heavy raider. A colonial issue escape pod found floating among the debrie reveals two survivors inside: Singer Peter Attis...and his captor, a Cylon Number Eight.

Soon after Peter's liberation, people begin babbling incoherently and dropping into comas. Unwittingly, Peter has been spreading a highly contagious, nerve-deteriorating Cylon biological weapon-and he just performed for half the fleet. As Dr Gaius Baltar begins work on a cure, word starts to spread that a fanatical sect believes that Peter is the religious leader who will save humanity and that this virus is their path to salvation. They are willing to do anything to keep Baltar's vaccine from being distributed.

While the fleet is in chaos, a larger Cylon force appears. A weakend humankind, now threatened on two fronts, may be unable to defend itself...

Infidel

Bel Dame Apocrypha: Book 2

Kameron Hurley

The only thing worse than war is revolution. Especially when you're already losing the war...

Nyx used to be a bel dame, a government-funded assassin with a talent for cutting off heads for cash. Now she's babysitting diplomats to make ends meet and longing for the days when killing was a lot more honorable.

When Nyx's former bel dame "sisters" lead a coup against the government that threatens to plunge the country into civil war, Nyx is tasked with bringing them in. The hunt takes Nyx and her inglorious team of mercenaries to one of the richest, most peaceful, and most contaminated places on the planet - a country wholly unprepared to host a battle waged by the world's deadliest assassins.

In a rotten nation of sweet-tongued politicians, giant bugs, and renegade shape shifters, Nyx will forge unlikely allies and rekindle old acquaintances. And the bodies she leaves scattered across the continent this time... may include her own.

Because no matter where you go or how far you run in this world, one thing is certain: the bloody bel dames will find you.

Rapture

Bel Dame Apocrypha: Book 3

Kameron Hurley

After years in exile, Nyxnissa so Dasheem is back in action in service to the bel dames, a sisterhood of elite government assassins tasked with eliminating deserters and traitors. The end of a centuries-long holy war between her country, Nasheen, and neighboring Chenja has flooded the streets of Nasheen with unemployed - and unemployable - soldiers whose frustrations have brought the nation to the brink of civil war.

Not everyone likes this tenuous and unpredictable "peace," however, and somebody has kidnapped a key politician whose death could trigger a bloody government takeover. With aliens in the sky and revolution on the ground, Nyx assembles a team of mad magicians, torturers,and mutant shape-shifters for an epic journey across a flesh-eating desert in search of a man she's not actually supposed to kill.

Trouble is, killing is the only thing Nyx is good at. And she already left this man to die...

An Oblique Approach

Belisarius Series: Book 1

David Drake
Eric Flint

Only three things stand between the Malwa and the conquest of Earth: Byzantium, the empire of Rome in the East; a crystal that urges mankind to fight; and Belisarius, general of the Byzantine Empire, and arguably the greatest commmander the Earth has ever known.

Masque of the Red Shift

Berserker

Fred Saberhagen

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in If, November 1965. The story can also be found in the anthologies World's Best Science Fiction: 1966, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr and Visions of Wonder (1996), edited by David G. Hartwell and Milton T. Wolf. It is included in the collection Berserker (1967).

Berserker

Berserker: Book 1

Fred Saberhagen

Long ago, in a distant part of the galaxy, two alien races met--and fought a war of mutual extinction. The sole legacy of that war was the weapon that ended it: the death machines, the BERSERKERS. Guided by self-aware computers more intelligent than any human, these world-sized battlecraft carved a swath of death through the galaxy--until they arrived at the outskirts of the fledgling Empire of Man.

These are the stories of the frail creatures who must meet this monstrous and implacable enemy--and who, by fighting it to a standstill, become the saviors of all living things.

Stories included:

Fortress Ship
Goodlife
In Temple of Mars
Mr. Jester
Masque of Red Shift
Patron of Arts
Peacemaker
Sign of the Wolf
Stone Place
Face of the Deep
What'T' and 'I' Did

The Ultimate Enemy

Berserker: Book 5

Fred Saberhagen

BERSERKERS

The death machines are capable of any treachery, able to assume any disguise, motivated only by their prime directive: to seek out and destroy life wherever it may hide.

MAN

The fragile life-form that hides within its puny frame a curiously unquenchable something... call it 'spirit'. This odd facet of an otherwise undistinguished example of the disease of life has been a source of deep annoyance to the berserkers since first the two forms met: no wonder then that for each the other is THE ULTIMATE ENEMY

Contents:

The Smile
Pressure
The Annihilation of Angkor Apeiron
Inhuman Error
Some Events at the Templar Radiant
Starsong
Smasher
The Game
Wings Out of Shadow

Bill the Galactic Hero

Harry Harrison

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.

Bill the Galactic Hero: Book 1

Harry Harrison

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.

Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Zombie Vampires

Bill the Galactic Hero: Book 4

Harry Harrison
Jack C. Haldeman II

When Bill is assigned as an MP on a prison ship, the crew revolts against the captain and brings vampires on board in an attempt to maroon the skipper…

Starship: Mutiny

Birthright Universe: Starship: Book 1

The starship Theodore Roosevelt is fighting on the far outskirts of a galactic war, its crew made up of retreads and raw recruits. A new first officer reports, Wilson Cole, a man with a reputation for exceeding his orders (but getting results). He's been banished to the Teddy R. for his actions, but once there he again ignores his orders....

This is the first of five novels about the starship Theodore Roosevelt. The next four will be, in order, Pirate, Mercenary, Rebel, and Flagship.

Starship: Pirate

Birthright Universe: Starship: Book 2

The date is 1967 of the Galactic Era, almost three thousand years from now. The Republic, created by the human race but not yet dominated by it, is in the midst of an all-out war with the Teroni Federation. After his latest exploit saved millions of lives but embarrassed his superiors, Captain Wilson Cole, a man with a reputation for exceeding orders but getting results, found himself the victim of the media feeding frenzy, a political scapegoat despite years of dedicated military service. Faced with a court martial, he was rescued by the loyal crew of his ship, the Theodore Roosevelt. Now branded mutineers, the crew of the Teddy R. has quit the Republic, never to return.

Seeking to find a new life for themselves, Wilson Cole and comrades remake the Teddy R. as a pirate ship and set sail for the lawless Inner Frontier. Here, powerful warlords, cut-throat pirates, and struggling colonies compete for survival in a game where you rarely get a second chance to learn the rules.

But military discipline is poor preparation for a life of pillaging and plundering, and Cole's principles naturally limit his targets. Seeking an education on the nature of piracy, Cole hunts more knowledgeable players. Enter the beautiful but deadly Valkyrie, Val for short, and the enigmatic alien fence known as David Copperfield. But hanging over everything is the fearsome alien pirate -- the Hammerhead Shark.

With Starship: Pirate, five-time Hugo winner Mike Resnick continues the story begun in his very first military SF. Will the galaxy ever be the same?

Starship: Mercenary

Birthright Universe: Starship: Book 3

The date is 1968 of the Galactic Era, almost three thousand years from now. The Republic, created by the human race but not yet dominated by it, is in the midst of an all-out war with the Teroni Federation. Captain Wilson Cole, a man with a reputation for exceeding orders but getting results, found himself the victim of a media feeding frenzy, a political scapegoat despite years of dedicated military service. Faced with a court martial, he was rescued by the loyal crew of his ship, the Theodore Roosevelt. Branded mutineers, the Teddy R. has quit the Republic, never to return.

Seeking to find a new life, Wilson Cole first remade the Teddy R. as a pirate ship plying the spaceways of the lawless Inner Frontier. But military discipline and honor were a poor match for a life of pillaging and plundering, and Cole's principles naturally limited his targets. Taking on a new role, the Teddy R. becomes a mercenary ship, hiring out to the highest bidder. Whether it's evacuating a hospital before war can reach it, freeing a client from an alien prison, or stopping a criminal cartel from extorting money from a terrified planet, the crew of the Teddy R. proves equal to the task. Along the way they form a partnership with the once human Platinum Duke, team up with a former enemy, and make the unique Singapore Station their headquarters.

But the life of a mercenary is not always predictable, and eventually circumstance pits Cole and the Teddy R. against his right-hand woman, the former Pirate Queen known as the Valkyrie. Soon the fragile trust that has grown between these two legends is put to the test as they find themselves on opposite sides of a job.

Starship: Rebel

Birthright Universe: Starship: Book 4

The date is 1968 of the Galactic Era, almost three thousand years from now. The Republic, dominated by the human race, is in the midst of an all-out war with the Teroni Federation.

Almost a year has passed since the events of Starship: Mercenary. Captain Wilson Cole now commands a fleet of almost fifty ships, and he has become the single greatest military force on the Inner Frontier.

With one exception. The Republic still comes and goes as it pleases, taking what it wants, conscripting men, and extorting taxes, even though the Frontier worlds receive nothing in exchange. And, of course, the government still wants Wilson Cole and the starship Theodore Roosevelt. He has no interest in confronting such an overwhelming force, and constantly steers clear of them.

Then an incident occurs that changes everything, and Cole declares war on the Republic. Outnumbered and always outgunned, his fleet is no match for the Republic's millions of military vessels, even after he forges alliances with the warlords he previously hunted down.

It's a hopeless cause... but that's just what Wilson Cole and the Teddy R. are best at.

Starship: Flagship

Birthright Universe: Starship: Book 5

The date is 1970 of the Galactic Era, almost three thousand years from now, and the Republic, created by the human race but not yet dominated by it, finds itself in an all-out war against the Teroni Federation, an alliance of races that resent Man's growing military and economic power.

The rebel starship, the Theodore Roosevelt, under the command of Wilson Cole, is preparing to lead Cole's ragtag armada into the Republic, even though he is outnumbered thousands to one. Cole is convinced that the government has become an arrogant and unfeeling political entity and must be overthrown.

The trick is to avoid armed conflict with the vast array of ships, numbering in the millions, in the Republic's Navy. For a time Cole's forces strike from cover and race off to safety, but he soon sees that is no way to conquer the mightiest political and military machine in the history of the galaxy. He realizes that he must reach Deluros VIII, the headquarters world of the Republic (and of the race of Man), in order to have any effect on the government at all—but Deluros VIII is the best-protected world in the Republic.

But a new threat looms on the horizon. Cole, the Valkyrie, David Copperfield, Sharon Blacksmith, Jacovic, and the rest of the crew of the Teddy R face their greatest challenge yet, and the outcome will determine the fate of the entire galaxy.

Bolo!

Bolo: Book 10

Controlled by their tireless electronic brains which were programmed to admit no possibility of defeat, the gigantic robot tanks known as Bolos were almost indestructible, and nearly unstoppable. Their artificial intelligences were designed to make them selflessly serve and protect humans throughout the galaxy and made each Bolo the epitome of the knight sans peur et sans reproche, and often far more noble than the humans who gave them their orders.

Now, David Weber, New York Times best-selling author of the Honor Harrington series, continues the history of the Bolo, in four short novels, one of them published here for the first time. One Bolo is driven over the edge by the very humans it is pledged to protect. Another Bolo must decide whether or not to disobey when it is given an order that constitutes genocide. A third must hunt one of its own kind whose robot brain is damaged and rescue two children which the deranged Bolo thinks it is protecting from a nonexistent enemy. And more, including as a bonus, David Weber's own authoritative technical history of the Bolo, all in a volume that will be irresistible both for David Weber's huge readership and Bolo fans everywhere.

The Secret Life of Bots

Bot 9: Book 1

Suzanne Palmer

This novelette originally appeared in Clarkesworld, #132, September 2017. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Twelve (2018), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 3 (2018), edited by Neil Clarke, The Year's Best Military & Adventure SF: Volume 4 (2018), edited by David Afsharirad, and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2018, edited by Rich Horton.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

Valiant Dust

Breaker of Empires: Book 1

Richard Baker

Sikander Singh North has always had it easy -- until he joined the crew of the Aquilan Commonwealth starship CSS Hector. As the ship's new gunnery officer and only Kashmiri, he must constantly prove himself better than his Aquilan crewmates, even if he has to use his fists. When the Hector is called to help with a planetary uprising, he'll have to earn his unit's respect, find who's arming the rebels, and deal with the headstrong daughter of the colonial ruler -- all while dodging bullets.

Sikander's military career is off to an explosive start -- but only if he and CSS Hector can survive his first mission.

Restless Lightning

Breaker of Empires: Book 2

Richard Baker

Lieutenant Sikander North has avoided an outright court martial and finds himself assigned to a remote outpost in the crumbling, alien Tzoru Empire-where the navy sends trouble-makers to be forgotten. When Sikander finds himself in the middle of an alien uprising, he, once again, must do the impossible: smuggle an alien ambassador off-world, break a siege, and fight the irrational prejudice of his superior officers. The odds are against his success, and his choices could mean disgrace-or redemption.

Scornful Stars

Breaker of Empires: Book 3

Richard Baker

Now a captain, Sikander Singh North commands the destroyer Decisive, assigned to Zerzura, a haven for piracy and the next playing-board in the Great Game. The Aquilan Commonwealth and the Empire of Dremark vie for the allegiance of local ruler Marid Pasha, a competition with stakes that reach far beyond the sector's pirate-infested limits.

Sikander must stop the pirate attacks while charting his course between the ambitions of Marid Pasha, a dubious alliance with a shipping magnate, and the inexperience of Decisive's crew... a situation that only grows more complicated when an old enemy returns.

Star Guard

Central Control: Book 2

Andre Norton

Worlds and cons away are the adventures of Kana Karr, Swordsman Third Class, who goes to the planet Fronn with Yorke Horde in the 5th millenium A.D.-Terran figuring. Earth, or Terra, under a despotic and all powerful Central Control has developed a system of professional fighting men, which it sends out for needed patrol duty in other solar systems. For his first assignment Kana, who is one of these soldiers, is sent out as part of a patrol to quell an uprising between two humanoid factions on forbidding Fronn. The adventures that follow are protracted and typical of Andre Norton's well developed sets of fantastic circumstances and they result in Kang's initiation to the coterie of Terrans who are breaking away from Central Control and seeking freedom to pioneer on their own on other planets.

The Cold Between

Central Corps: Book 1

Elizabeth Bonesteel

From debut author Elizabeth Bonesteel, The Cold Between is the start to a stellar military science fiction series that combines hints of mystery and romance with action and adventure in the tradition of Elizabeth Moon, Linnea Sinclair, and Lois McMaster Bujold.

When her crewmate, Danny, is murdered on the colony of Volhynia, Central Corps chief engineer, Commander Elena Shaw, is shocked to learn the main suspect is her lover, Treiko Zajec. She knows Trey is innocent--he was with her when Danny was killed. So who is the real killer and why are the cops framing an innocent man?

Retracing Danny's last hours, they discover that his death may be tied to a mystery from the past: the explosion of a Central Corps starship at a wormhole near Volhynia. For twenty-five years, the Central Gov has been lying about the tragedy, even willing to go to war with the outlaw PSI to protect their secrets.

With the authorities closing in, Elena and Trey head to the wormhole, certain they'll find answers on the other side. But the truth that awaits them is far more terrifying than they ever imagined... a conspiracy deep within Central Gov that threatens all of human civilization throughout the inhabited reaches of the galaxy--and beyond.

Remnants of Trust

Central Corps: Book 2

Elizabeth Bonesteel

Six weeks ago, Commander Elena Shaw and Captain Greg Foster were court-martialed for their role in an event Central Gov denies ever happened. Yet instead of a dishonorable discharge or time in a military prison, Shaw and Foster and are now back together on Galileo. As punishment, they've been assigned to patrol the nearly empty space of the Third Sector.

But their mundane mission quickly turns treacherous when the Galileo picks up a distress call: Exeter, a sister ship, is under attack from raiders. A PSI generation ship -- the same one that recently broke off negotiations with Foster -- is also in the sector and joins in the desperate battle that leaves ninety-seven of Exeter's crew dead.

An investigation of the disaster points to sabotage. And Exeter is only the beginning. When the PSI ship and Galileo suffer their own "accidents," it becomes clear that someone is willing to set off a war in the Third Sector to keep their secrets, and the clues point to the highest echelons of power... and deep into Shaw's past.

Breach of Containment

Central Corps: Book 3

Elizabeth Bonesteel

Space is full of the unknown... most of it ready to kill you.

When hostilities between factions threaten to explode into a shooting war on the moon of Yakutsk, the two major galactic military powers, Central Corps and PSI, send ships to defuse the situation. But when a strange artifact is discovered, events are set in motion that threaten the entire colonized galaxy--including former Central Corps Commander Elena Shaw.

Now an engineer on a commercial shipping vessel, Elena finds herself drawn into the conflict when she picks up the artifact on Yakutsk--and investigation of it uncovers ties to the massive, corrupt corporation Ellis Systems, whom she's opposed before. Her safety is further compromised by her former ties to Central Corps--Elena can't separate herself from her past life and her old ship, the CCSS Galileo.

Before Elena can pursue the artifact's purpose further, disaster strikes: all communication with the First Sector--including Earth--is lost. The reason becomes apparent when news reaches Elena of a battle fleet, intent on destruction, rapidly approaching Earth. And with communications at sublight levels, there is no way to warn the planet in time.

Armed with crucial intel from a shadowy source and the strange artifact, Elena may be the only one who can stop the fleet, and Ellis, and save Earth. But for this mission there will be no second chances--and no return.

The Depths of Time

Chronicles of Solace: Book 1

Roger MacBride Allen

Time is of the essence when you're stranded in the future....

Humanity is running out of time.

The settled universe is filled with terraformed worlds linked by timeshafts -- temporal wormholes in deep space. These timeshafts are the only way to travel the vast distances between the stars.

The Chronologic Patrol is charged with guarding the timeshaft wormholes and preventing time paradoxes at all costs. But one critical mission ends in disaster, turning Anton Koffield, captain of the Upholder, into a dark legend....

As ships carrying relief supplies to a crippled planet approach a timeshaft, they are mercilessly set upon by mysterious attackers -- their crews are murdered and the sanctity of time itself is at risk.

In response, Koffield is forced to do the unthinkable: he must stop the invasion by destroying the timeshaft. Marooned eighty years in the future, he lives as a cursed figure, the villain who killed a world.

And his odyssey through time has only just begun....

The Ocean of Years

Chronicles of Solace: Book 2

Roger MacBride Allen

Time Is Up

In a far-flung universe--where history is a timeshaft away--a manhunt begins to determine the future of a world....

Oskar DeSilvo was the founder of the planet Solace. As the director of its terraforming project, he literally made the world--but he s been dead for over a hundred years. Or so Anton Koffield thought. Now, as Solace slides into ecological collapse, Koffield discovers that DeSilvo may still somehow be alive--and that the secrets he holds could save not only Solace but all of humanity.

But Koffield has his own reasons to find DeSilvo. Once a decorated officer of the Chronologic Patrol, he now battles against all they stand for to find the man who nearly destroyed him. Driven by a ruthless sense of justice and honor, Koffield takes his crew back through a timeshaft wormhole to a time and a place none of them have ever seen: Earth of the next century. There the search begins. A quest not only to explore the past--but to free the future from the clutches of a genocidal madman....

The Shores of Tomorrow

Chronicles of Solace: Book 3

Roger MacBride Allen

On the verge of extinction, only the gravest imaginable crime against humanity can save it...

A bold new plan seeks to ignite a new Sunspot over Greenhouse, saving the habitat domes crucial to the survival of the Solacian people. But a secret clouds this symbol of much-needed hope: human space is contracting at a startling rate, threatening to wipe out all living worlds including Earth.

The only answer lies in the hands of the founder of the planet Solace: Oskar DeSilvo, seemingly returned from the dead to save the worlds his frauds had doomed to destruction. But as the work begins, agents of the Chronologic Patrol step in to prevent interference with the past even at the risk of dooming humanity.

Thwarted at every turn, DeSilvo and his onetime nemesis, Anton Koffield, propose one last wildly grandiose idea one final, desperate gamble. But if the only choice lies between madness and certain catastrophe is there any choice at all?

The Unknown Soldier

Cogal: Book 1

Sean Williams
Shane Dix

In the bubble of space known as the Cogal, seven sentient races co-exist uneasily. Peace is always short lived. Commander Megan Moroney, Intelligence Officer for the New Amran Republic, is delivering an AI of unknown powers to her superiors in HighFleet. Her last port of call is the penal colony on Longmire's Planet.

There, accompanied by the mysterious castaway, John Nine, a rebel cyborg and a powerful young mind-rider, Moroney will come to question everything she holds true. What is the relevence of a war fought three hundred years ago? And where should she place her allegiance, when even what it means to be human is cast into doubt? In the Cogal, the truth is never quite what it seems.

The Prodigal Sun is a re-imagined, re-written version of The Unknown Soldier – with the elements of the failed gaming world Cogal removed, and the characters and storyline set in a new universe. The Unknown Soldier was an Aurealis Best SF Novel nominee and a Ditmar Best Long Fiction nominee.

Colossus

Colossus: Book 1

D. F. Jones

Charles Forbin has dedicated the last ten years of his life to the construction of his own supercomputer, Colossus, rejecting romantic and social endeavours in order to create the United States' very first Artificially Intelligent defence system.

Colossus is a supercomputer capable of in-taking and analyzing data rapidly, allowing it to make real time decisions about the nation's defense.

But Colossus soon exceeds even Forbin's calculated expectations, learning to think independently of the Colossus Programming Office, processing data over one hundred times faster than Forbin and his team had originally anticipated.

The President hands off full control of the nation's missiles and other defense protocols to Colossus and makes the announcement to the world that he has ensured peace.

However, the USSR quickly announces that it too has a supercomputer, Guardian, with capabilities similar to that of Colossus.

Forbin is concerned when Colossus asks--asks--to communicate with Guardian. The computer he built shouldn't be able to ask at all...

Colossus and Guardian begin to communicate, quickly bypassing existing knowledge ... and the parameters placed on them by their creators. They are perfectly smart and totally in control. However, they lack human empathy and emotion, creating horrific scenarios.

Colossus and its Russian counterpart, Guardian, soon compromise US military secrecy, ultimately subjugating their creators with the threat of nuclear war.

And while Colossus has been specifically designed not to understand emotion - so as to make quicker and more logical decisions about America's safety - this is exactly the thing that makes him so lethal; Colossus does not experience human empathy and is incapable of understanding the moral ramifications of his decisions.

Having handed over total control of American defence missiles to Colossus, the President and Forbin must act quickly to shut down the unstable machine.

Will Forbin be able to take down the machine he's spent ten years building?

Will Colossus cause real damage before it's too late?

Find out in D.F. Jones's thrilling novel Colossus, which deals with the ongoing battle - both physical and philosophical - between man and machine, addresses the author's own apprehensive attitude towards our future. His message is still as poignant and moving today and when the novel was originally published in 1966.

Conquerors' Pride

Conquerors' Trilogy: Book 1

Timothy Zahn, Hugo Award-winning author of The New York Times best-selling Star Wars trilogy, blazes a spectacular new path across the sky in an epic original novel of star-spanning action adventure, mystery and intrigue.

A long era of peace and prosperity in the interstellar Commonwealth has suddenly come to an end. Four alien starships of unknown origin have attacked, without provocation, an eight-ship Peacemaker task force, utterly destroying it in six savage minutes. The authorities claim there were no survivors. But Lord Stewart Cavanaugh, a former member of Parliament, has learned through back channels that one man may have survived to be captured by the aliens: his son, Commander Pheylan Cavanaugh.

A large-scale invasion appears imminent, and the strictest security measures are in effect... measures that Lord Cavanaugh has no choice but to defy. He recruits Adam Quinn, who once flew with the elite Copperheads--fighter pilots whose minds are literally one with their machines--to rescue his son. Quinn assembles a crack force of Copperheads to steal out of the Commonwealth security zone and snatch Pheylan Cavanaugh from the conquerors. Depending on the outcome, Quinn and his men will retum home as heroes or as the galaxy's most despised traitors--if they come home at all.

Conquerors' Heritage

Conquerors' Trilogy: Book 2

In Conquerors' Pride, Timothy Zahn, Hugo Award-winning author of the New York Times bestselling Star Wars(r) trilogy, unfurled an epic tale of drama and courage as the interstallar Commonwealth faced savage invasion by alien starships of unknown origin. Now he probes deeply into the world of the invaders themselves in one of the most powerful evocations of an alien society ever created.

The Zhirrzh have won a temporary respite in their war with the barbarians. But the Human captive Pheylan Cavanaugh has escaped, and for that Thrr-gilag, the young Searcher, finds himself disgraced, his bond-engagement to a female of a rival clan imperilled. Soon he becomes a target of hidden and powerful forces seeking to remake Zhirrzh society in their own merciless image. His only hope is to prove that the overclan authorities are wrong: that it was not the Humans who started the war.

But time is short. The forces of the Zhirrzh are overextended and face swift retaliation. The Zhirrzh have learned to conquer death itself -- but even that awesome power will be no match for the devastating might of the Human Conqueror armadas. Thrr-gilag soon comes to realize that his people face a two-fold threat: destruction by Human technology. . . or destruction from within.

Conquerors' Legacy

Conquerors' Trilogy: Book 3

Hugo Award-winner and #1 New York Times bestselling author Timothy Zahn returns to complete his original, acclaimed SF trilogy.

As both humans and the alien Zhirrzh prepare for all-out galactic war, a handful of individuals from both sides are stunned to discover that the explosive catalyst for the impending battle is a misunderstanding both tragic and profound. Determined to avoid mutual extinction for both their races, this band now becomes the focus of the subtle and dangerous force whose goal it is to annihilate and destroy.

Shards of Honor

Cordelia Vorkosigan (The Vorkosigan Saga): Book 1

Lois McMaster Bujold

Shards of Honor is the novel in which Lois McMaster Bujold introduced the SF world to Barrayar and Aral Vorkosigan, Beta Colony and Cordelia Naismith. From this beginning the author has created a multi-generational saga spanning time as well as space. Bujold is generally recognized as the current exemplar of the character-based SF adventure story.

Barrayar

Cordelia Vorkosigan (The Vorkosigan Saga): Book 2

Lois McMaster Bujold

Cordelia Naismith, legendary ship commander in the Betan Expeditionary Force, a woman who beat the Barrayaran militarists at their own game, was never one to fulfill stereotypes. Having married the commander of the forces her side defeated in battle, she was ready to settle down to a quiet life devoted to raising little Vor lordlings, interrupted only by the occasional ceremonial appearances required of the Lady Vorkosigan.

But Cordelia had not paid sufficient attention to what an important Vor lord she had married; when the Emperor died, only her husband's reputation for honor stood between her adopted planet and the unspeakable horrors of a dynastic civil war fought by first-rate soldiers armed with up-to-the-minute technology. Aral Vorkosigan had little choice but to take up the burden of Regency -- as Cordelia had little choice but to support him in his decison. But neither of them realized the part Cordelia -- and her unborn son -- would play in Barrayar's bloody legacy.

Cyborg

Cyborg: Book 1

Martin Caidin

He was a wonder of scientific perfection-- but it was lonely as hell at the top. All the resources of NASA, the Pentagon, and Government Money put the pieces of Lt. Col. Steve Austin's shattered body back together again. He came out of it more perfect than human. Better than new. A deadly, unstoppable weapon. Now all he needed was to find some human emotion in the tangle of plastic, wire and atomic metal that was fused to the remains of his flesh. Basis for The Six Million Dollar Man.

Freedom

Daemon: Book 2

Daniel Suarez

The Daemon is in absolute control, using an expanded network of shadowy operatives to tear apart civilization and build it anew. Even as civil war breaks out in the American Midwest in a wave of nightmarish violence, former detective Pete Sebeck--the Daemon's most powerful, though reluctant, operative--must lead a small band of enlightened humans in a movement designed to protect the new world order.

But the private armies of global business are preparing to crush the Daemon once and for all. In a world of shattered loyalties, collapsing societies, and seemingly endless betrayal, the only thing worth fighting for may be nothing less than the freedom of all humankind.

Death's Head

Death Head: Book 1

David Gunn

Set in a chillingly realistic far-future world, and featuring a gritty antihero even more frightening than the evil empire he serves as soldier and assassin, Death's Head is sure to be one of the most talked-about novels of the year. David Gunn is loaded-and he shoots to kill.

At the top of the galactic pecking order is the United Free, a civilization of awe-inspiring technological prowess so far in advance of other space-faring powers as to seem untouchable gods. Most of the known universe has fallen under their inscrutable sway. The rest is squabbled over by two empires: one ruled with an iron fist by OctoV, a tyrant who appears to his followers as a teenage boy but is in reality something very different, the other administered by the Uplifted, bizarre machinelike intelligences, and their no-longer-quite-human servants, cyborgs known as the Enlightened.

Sven Tveskoeg, an ex-sergeant demoted for insubordination and sentenced to death, is a vicious killer with a stubborn streak of loyalty. Sven possesses a fierce if untutored intelligence and a genetic makeup that is 98.2 percent human and 1.8 percent... something else. Perhaps that "something else" explains how quickly he heals from even the worst injuries or how he can communicate telepathically with the ferox, fearsome alien savages whose natural fighting abilities regularly outperform the advanced technology of their human enemies. Perhaps it is these unique abilities that bring Sven to the attention of OctoV.

Drafted into the Death's Head, the elite enforcers of OctoV's imperial will, Sven is given a new lease on life. Armed with a SIG diabolo-an intelligent gun-and an illegal symbiont called a kyp, Sven is sent to a faraway planet, the latest battleground between the Uplifted and OctoV. There he finds himself in the midst of a military disaster, one that will take all his courage-and all his firepower-to survive.

But an even deadlier struggle is taking place, a struggle that will draw the attention of the United Free. Sven knows he is a pawn, and pawns have a bad habit of being sacrificed.

But Sven is nobody's sacrifice. And even a pawn can checkmate a king.

Maximum Offense

Death Head: Book 2

David Gunn

Sven Tveskoeg - antisocial, antihero, anti-you-name-it - is a one-man killing spree whose best friend is an intelligent handgun with a bad attitude and whose worst enemy is, well, just about everybody else. These qualities have earned Sven a lieutenant's commission in the Death's Head, the elite corps of assassins and enforcers whose purpose in life is to serve OctoV, a tyrant who is part machine, part boy, part god, and all evil. Sven's new assignment? Lead his ragtag band of Death's Head rejects to the artificial world of Hekati to find a missing citizen of the United Free, a vast empire that turns out to be a vicious den of backstabbing and betrayal where nothing and no one can be trusted. Looks like Sven is on a suicide mission. So what else is new?

Day of the Damned

Death Head: Book 3

David Gunn

Lieutenant Sven Tveskoeg is in disgrace. His victory on Hekati, and the emperor's favour, have turned his patron against him: General Indigo Jaxx wants Sven dead. Exiled to Wildeside, Sven waits for Jaxx's assassin. He hunts, he fieldstrips his weapons, he tries not to mind. At the age of 28, he's lived longer than he expected anyway. But then Sven finds himself offering to save the life of Jaxx's son. This means returning to Farlight, where he finds that the emperor is missing, his empire is collapsing, there are murderous riots in the capital and General Jaxx stands on the edge of ruin. All Sven has to do is nothing. But when has he ever done anything that sensible...

The devil-may-care, not quite 100 per cent human, mercenary soldier/killing machine known as Lieutenant Sven Tveskoeg and his like-minded team, the Aux, are back in this third explosive, non-stop action-filled adventure.

Into the Storm

Destroyermen: Book 1

Taylor Anderson

Pressed into service when World War II breaks out in the Pacific, the US Walker--a Great War-era destroyer--finds itself retreating from pursuing Japanese battleships. Its captain, Lieutenant Commander Matthew Patrick Reddy, desperately leads the Walker into a squall, hoping it will give them cover--only to emerge into an alternate world. A world where two species have evolved: the cat-like Lemurians and the reptilian Griks--and they are at war.

With its power and weaponry, the Walker's very existence could alter the balance of power. And for Reddy and his crew, who have the means to turn a primitive war into a genocidal Armageddon, one thing becomes clear. They must determine whose side they're on. Because whichever species they choose is the winner.

Pass of Fire

Destroyermen: Book 14

Taylor Anderson

After being transported to a strange alternate Earth, Matt Reddy and the crew of the USS Walker have learned desperate times call for desperate measures, in the return to the New York Times bestselling Destroyermen series.

Time is running out for the Grand Human and Lemurian Alliance. The longer they take to prepare for their confrontations with the reptilian Grik, the Holy Dominion, and the League of Tripoli, the stronger their enemies become. Ready or not, they have to move--or the price in blood will break them.

Matt Reddy and his battered old destroyer USS Walker lead the greatest army the humans and their Lemurian allies have ever assembled up the Zambezi toward the ancient Grik capital city. Standing against them is the largest, most dangerous force of Grik yet gathered.

On the far side of the world, General Shinya and his Army of the Sisters are finally prepared for their long-expected assault on the mysterious El Paso del Fuego. Not only is the dreaded Dominion ready and waiting for them; they've formed closer, more sinister ties with the fascist League of Tripoli.

Everything is on the line in both complex, grueling campaigns, and the Grand Alliance is stretched to its breaking point. Victory is the only option, whatever the cost, because there can be no second chances.

Winds of Wrath

Destroyermen: Book 15

Taylor Anderson

Matt Reddy and the crew of the USS Walker are positioned to push the line of battle to the breaking point on an alternate Earth, in the thrilling return to the New York Times bestselling Destroyermen series.

Matt Reddy and his sailors have fought, bled, and died for their Lemurian friends and other allies from across time, but their enemies are still operational. In Africa, the Grik General Esshk has escaped defeat to build a new army and new weapons, and is desperate enough to use them to destroy the world if he can't have it.

In South America, the NUS, General Shinya, and the Army of the Sisters have the evil Dominion on the ropes and are closing in on the seat of its blood-drenched power, but the twisted Don Hernan has struck a deal with the fascist League, and Victor Gravois is finally assembling the awesome fleet of modern ships he's always craved. If he's successful, the war will be lost.

Undermined by treachery on a stunning scale, Matt Reddy must still steam his battered old ship halfway around the world, scraping up what forces he can along the way, and confront the mightiest armada the world has ever seen in a fiery duel to the death.

Divergent

Divergent Trilogy: Book 1

Veronica Roth

In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue-Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is-she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles to determine who her friends really are-and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers a growing conflict that threatens to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves... or it might destroy her.

Debut author Veronica Roth bursts onto the literary scene with the first book in the Divergent series-dystopian thrillers filled with electrifying decisions, heartbreaking betrayals, stunning consequences, and unexpected romance.

Dragon and Soldier

Dragonback: Book 2

Dune: Dune World & The Prophet of Dune

Even though he's been on the run from the law for a while, young Jack Morgan never wanted a bodyguard. But that's what he got when a desperate alien named Draycos bonded with him for survival. When all is well, Draycos looks like nothing more than a tattoo on Jack's back. But when Jack's threatened, the K'da warrior appears in his true, dragonlike form.

Now, Jack's indebted to his new symbiotic friend for saving his life, and feels obligated to help Draycos fulfill his vow to discover who's behind the plot to eradicate his kind.

All they know for sure is that whoever annihilated the fleet of K'da refugee ships used mercenaries to do their dirty work. To investigate, Jack signs up with a merc outfit known for using teenagers to fill their ranks. But life in the military is far more unpleasant than Jack bargained for--and it turns out he's not the only new recruit who isn't what they appear to be

The Praxis

Dread Empire's Fall: Book 1

Walter Jon Williams

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 Sundering

Dread Empire's Fall: Book 2

Walter Jon Williams

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.

Conventions of War

Dread Empire's Fall: Book 3

Walter Jon Williams

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.

Dune Chronicles

Frank Herbert

Note: This Dune entry is for the serialized version from Analog magazine (Dec 1963, Jan, Feb 1964) which was printed in two parts as Dune World and The Prophet of Dune. The serial was later expanded and bound into a book which went on to win the Nebula (1965) and the Hugo (1966).

Option Lock

Eighth Doctor Adventures: Book 8

Justin Richards

On contemporary Earth, the Doctor and Sam discover an ancient secret society is trying to start a nuclear war. An optical mystery compounds their confusion and the mysterious US-owned Station Nine brings further problems for them to resolve.

Legacy of the Daleks

Eighth Doctor Adventures: Book 10

John Peel

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.

Empire

Empire: Book 1

The American Empire has grown too fast, and the fault lines at home are stressed to the breaking point. The war of words between Right and Left has collapsed into a shooting war, though most people just want to be left alone.

The battle rages between the high-technology weapons on one side, and militia foot-soldiers on the other, devastating the cities, and overrunning the countryside. But the vast majority, who only want the killing to stop, and the nation to return to more peaceful days, have technology, weapons and strategic geniuses of their own.

When the American dream shatters into violence, who can hold the people and the government together? And which side will you be on?

Orson Scott Card is a master storyteller, who has earned millions of fans and reams of praise for his previous science fiction and fantasy novels. Now he steps a little closer to the present day with this chilling look at a near future scenario of a new American Civil War.

Hidden Empire

Empire: Book 2

The war of words between right and left collapsed into a shooting war, and raged between the high-technology weapons on each side, devastating cities and overrunning the countryside.

At the close of Empire, political scientist and government adviser Averell Torrent had maneuvered himself into the presidency of the United States. And now that he has complete power at home, he plans to expand American imperial power around the world.

Opportunity comes quickly. There's a deadly new plague in Africa, and it is devastating the countryside and cities. President Torrent declares American solidarity with the victims, but places all of Africa in quarantine until a vaccine is found or the disease burns itself out. And he sends Captain Bartholomew Coleman, Cole to his friends, to run the relief operations and protect the American scientists working on identifying the virus. If Cole and his team can avoid dying of the plague, or being cut down by the weapons of fearful African nations, they might do some good. Or they might be out of the way for good.

March Upcountry

Empire of Man Series: Book 1

The Royal Brat is in Trouble

Roger Ramius Sergei Chiang MacClintock didn't understand.

He was young, handsome, athletic, an excellent dresser, and third in line for the Throne of Man...so why wouldn't anyone at Court trust him?

Why wouldn't even his own mother, the Empress, explain why they didn't trust him? Or why the very mention of his father's name was forbidden at Court? Or why his mother had decided to pack him off to a backwater planet aboard what was little more than a tramp freighter to represent her at a local political event better suited to a third assistant undersecretarv of state?

It probably wasn't too surprising that someone in his position should react by becoming spoiled, selfcentered and petulant. After all, what else did he have to do with his life?

But that was before a saboteur tried to blow up his transport. Then warships of the Empire of Man's worst rivals shot the crippled vessel out of space. Then Roger found himself shipwrecked on the planet Marduk, whose jungles were full of damnbeasts, killerpillars, carnivorous plants, torrential rain, and barbarian hordes with really bad dispositions. Now all Roger has to do is hike halfway around the entire planet, then capture a spaceport from the Bad Guys, somehow commandeer a starship, and then go home to Mother for explanations.

Fortunately, Roger has an ace in the hole: Bravo Company of Bronze Battalion of The Empress' Own Regiment. If anyone can get him off Marduk alive, it's the Bronze Barbarians.

Assuming that Prince Roger manages to grow up before he gets all of them killed.

March to the Sea

Empire of Man Series: Book 2

A Bad Neighborhood

"Always Faithful." That was the IMC motto, and the Marines of Bravo Company, Bronze Battalion, of the Empress' Own Regiment, lived by it...even if they did occasionally wonder why they bothered. After all, Prince Roger MacClintock, Tertiary Heir to the Throne of Man, was a real piece of work. A spoiled rotten, arrogant, whiny, terminally handsome, thoroughly useless young pain in the butt.

But that was before the Royal Brat and his body guards were marooned on Marduk by an assassination attempt. Before they found themselves facing 120° heat in jungles where it rained five or six hours a day...during the dry season. Before they had to march half way around the entire planet, through damnbeasts, Capetoads, killerpillars, and atul-grak. Before they encountered treacherous local potentates, barbarian migrations, and an ocean full of sea serpents that could swallow a topsail schooner whole.

Under the right circumstances, even the most spoiled brat can grow up fast, and it turns out that under his petulant, spoiled exterior, Prince Roger is a true MacClintock, a scion of the warrior dynasty which created the Empire of Man a thousand years before. The Marines assigned to guard him have discovered a new belief in him -- and in their motto -- and they're determined that they will get him off of Marduk aIive.

Of course, the planet has other ideas...

March to the Stars

Empire of Man Series: Book 3

Prince Roger MacClintock, Heir to the Throne of Man, was a spoiled rotten arrogant, thoroughly useless young pain in the butt.

But that was before the royal Brat and his Marine bodyguards had their starship sabotaged, and all were marooned on the enemy-occupied planet of Marduk. Before they had to march half way around the entire planet, through steaming jungles, damnbeasts, Capetoads, and killerpillars. Before they encountered treacherous local potentates, hostile barbarian armies numbering in the thousands, and an ocean full of creatures that are big, vicious and voracious.

Under the right circumstances, even the most spoiled brat can grow up fast. Now, Roger and his loyal troops have made it to the sea, and on the way, Roger has proven himself to be a true MacClintock and a born leader. Still, the sea has monsters big enough to swallow a ship - and across the water is an enemy spaceport, bristing with heavy artillery, against which Roger's team has only hand weapons with nearly-drained power packs. But neither Roger nor the Marines are about to give up, Marduk, do your worst!

We Few

Empire of Man Series: Book 4

Ender's Universe: Ender Wiggin

Prince Roger MacClintock was an heir to the galaxy's Throne of Man-and a self-obsessed spoiled young brat . . . until he and the Royal Marines sent to protect him were stranded on Marduk with only their feet to get them half way around the entire planet.

So far, they've crossed a continent, crossed a sea full of ship-eating monsters, taken over an enemy spaceport, and hijacked a starship. But they're not home-free yet, because home is no longer free.

In Roger's absence, a palace coup by enemies of the MacClintock family has seized control of the Empire. His mother the Empress is a captive in the palace and even in her own body, drugged so that her will is not her own. Roger's bother, the heir to the throne, is dead. And Roger himself has been branded an outlaw and traitor. Roger and his faithful band of human marines and native alien warriors have beaten the barbarian planet Marduk, and now they must re-conquer an interstellar empire.

But they aren't about to give up, and with the help of those on the throne planet who are still loyal to the Empress they will infiltrate (under cover of a restaurant specializing in exotic Mardukan dishes, no less), they will make anyone who gets in their way (such as local mobsters who make the mistake of kidnapping Roger's fiancé) very sorry that they did, and they will not rest until the rightful ruler has been restored.

Once again, a lot of power-hungry people are going to learn a hard lesson: You do not, ever, mess with a MacClintock!

A War of Gifts

Orson Scott Card offers a Christmas gift to his millions of fans with this short novel set during Ender's first years at the Battle School where it is forbidden to celebrate religious holidays.

The children come from many nations, many religions; while they are being trained for war, religious conflict between them is not on the curriculum. But Dink Meeker, one of the older students, doesn't see it that way. He thinks that giving gifts isn't exactly a religious observation, and on Sinterklaas Day he tucks a present into another student's shoe.

This small act of rebellion sets off a battle royal between the students and the staff, but some surprising alliances form when Ender comes up against a new student, Zeck Morgan. The War over Santa Claus will force everyone to make a choice.

Ender's Game

Ender's Universe: Ender Wiggin: Book 1

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.

Ender's Shadow

Ender's Universe: Ender's Shadow: Book 1

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....

Shadow of the Hegemon

Ender's Universe: Ender's Shadow: Book 2

The War is over, won by Ender Wiggin and his team of brilliant child-warriors. The enemy is destroyed, the human race is saved. Ender himself refuses to return to the planet, but his crew has gone home to their families, scattered across the globe. The battle school is no more.

But with the external threat gone, the Earth has become a battlefield once more. The children of the Battle School are more than heros they are potential weapons that can bring power to the countries that control them. One by one, all of Ender's Dragon Army are kidnapped. Only Bean escapes and he turns for help to Ender's brother Peter.

Peter Wiggin, Ender's older brother, has already been manipulating the politics of Earth from behind the scenes. With Bean's help, he will eventually rule the world.

Shadow Puppets

Ender's Universe: Ender's Shadow: Book 3

Bestselling author Orson Scott Card brings to life a new chapter in the saga of Ender's Earth.

Earth and its society has been changed irrevocably in the aftermath of Ender Wiggin's victory over the Formics--the unity enforced upon the warring nations by an alien enemy has shattered. Nations are rising again, seeking territory and influence, and most of all, seeking to control the skills and loyalty of the children from the Battle School.

But one person has a better idea. Peter Wiggin, Ender's older, more ruthless, brother, sees that any hope for the future of Earth lies in restoring a sense of unity and purpose. And he has an irresistible call on the loyalty of Earth's young warriors. With Bean at his side, the two will reshape our future.

Here is the continuing story of Bean and Petra, and the rest of Ender's Dragon Army, as they take their places in the new government of Earth.

Shadow of the Giant

Ender's Universe: Ender's Shadow: Book 4

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. 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. Then he was discovered by the recruiters for the Battle School.

For Earth was at war -- a terrible war with an inscrutable alien enemy. A war that humanity was near to losing. But the long distances of interstellar space has given hope to the defenders of Earth -- they had time to train military geniuses up from childhood, forging them into an irresistible force in the high-orbital facility called the Battle School. That story is told in two books, the beloved classic Ender's Game, and its parallel, Ender's Shadow.

Bean was the smallest student at the Battle School, but he became Ender Wiggins' right hand. Since then he has grown to be a power on Earth. He served the Hegemon as strategist and general in the terrible wars that followed Ender's defeat of the alien empire attacking Earth. Now he and his wife Petra yearn for a safe place to build a family -- something he has never known -- but there is nowhere on Earth that does not harbor his enemies -- old enemies from the days in Ender's Jeesh, new enemies from the wars on Earth. To find security, Bean and Petra must once again follow in Ender's footsteps. They must leave Earth behind, in the control of the Hegemon, and look to the stars.

Earth Afire

Ender's Universe: First Formic War: Book 2

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.

Earth Awakens

Ender's Universe: First Formic War: Book 3

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.

The Swarm

Ender's Universe: Second Formic War: Book 1

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?

The Hive

Ender's Universe: Second Formic War: Book 2

Jerry Pournelle
S. M. Stirling

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.

Mechanical Failure

Epic Failure: Book 1

Joe Zieja

A smooth-talking ex-sergeant, accustomed to an easygoing peacetime military, unexpectedly re-joins the fleet and finds soldiers preparing for the strangest thing -- war.

The Two Hundred Years' (And Counting) Peace is a time of tranquility that hasn't been seen since... well, never. Mankind in the Galactic Age had finally conquered war, so what was left for the military to do but drink and barbecue? That's the kind of military that Sergeant R. Wilson Rogers lived in before he left the fleet to become a smuggler.

But it turns out that smuggling is hard. Like getting-arrested-for-dealing-with-pirates-and-forced-back-into-service kind of hard. It doesn't seem so bad -- the military was a perpetual tiki party anyway -- but when Rogers returns after only a year away, something has changed. These are soldiers -- actual soldiers doing actual soldier things like preparing for a war that Rogers is sure doesn't exist. Rogers vows to put a stop to all this nonsense -- even if it means doing actual work.

Communication Failure

Epic Failure: Book 2

Joe Zieja

Captain Rogers, despite his best attempts to do otherwise, has become the acting admiral of the 331st Meridan fleet. His first task: worrying. A lot.

The rival Thelicosan fleet, under the influence of bad intelligence, a forbidden romance, and a communication officer with an eardrum injury, is about to break a two-hundred-year-old nonaggression pact. They have offered a vague, easily misinterpreted message: "We're invading." Rogers isn't sure, but he thinks that's probably bad.

War is hell, especially when you've forgotten how to fight one.

Stark's War

Ethan Stark: Book 1

Jack Campbell

The United States of America reigns over Earth as the last surviving superpower. To build a society free of American influence, foreign countries have inhabited the moon, taking advantage of the natural resources to earn their own riches. Now, the U.S. military has been ordered to wrest control of Earth's satellite from their rivals. Sergeant Ethan Stark must train his squadron to fight in an airless atmosphere at one-sixth normal gravity against a desperate enemy. Ensuring his team's survival means choosing between which orders to obey - and which to ignore.

Stark's Command

Ethan Stark: Book 2

Jack Campbell

United States military forces on the moon have overthrown the ranking officers and placed Sergeant Ethan Stark in command. Now, in addition to fighting a merciless enemy on the moon's surface, Stark must contend with the U.S. government's reaction to his mutiny...

Stark's Crusade

Ethan Stark: Book 3

Jack Campbell

When the American Lunar colony was threatened, he served his country in battle. But when high ranking officers betrayed him and his soldiers, he had only one choice—rebellion. Now Sergeant Ethan Stark is in charge of a rebel organization he never intended to create, and the United States has just joined forces with its former enemy to insure his destruction.

Stark has no intention of compromising his honor, even in the face of impossible odds. He and his soldiers have no desire to fight American forces, but they are willing to pay any price to defend the rights of the colonists they were sent to protect. Now Stark and his soldiers must fend off deadly aggression from their own country without igniting a full scale civil war.

Eve: The Empyrean Age

Eve: Book 1

Tony Gonzales

These are times that will test the bounds of the human spirit. A clone with no name or past awakens to a cruel existence, hunted mercilessly for crimes he may never know; yet he stands close to the pinnacle of power in New Eden. A disgraced ambassador is confronted by a mysterious woman who knows everything about him, and of the sinister plot against his government; his actions will one day unleash the vengeful wrath of an entire civilization. And among the downtrodden masses of a corporation-owned world, a man named Tibus Heth is about to launch a revolution that will change the course of history.

The confluence of these dark events will lead humanity towards a tragic destiny. The transcendence of man to the dream of immortality has bred a quest for power like none before it; empires spanning across thousands of stars will clash in the depths of space and on the worlds within. Those who stand before the tides of war, willingly or not, must face the fundamental choices that have been with man for tens of thousands of years, unchanged since the memory of Earth was lost.

This is EVE, The Empyrean Age. A test of our convictions and the will to survive.

Eve: The Burning Life

Eve: Book 2

Hjalti Danielsson

We all crave a purpose. A fire to spark our lives into action. It’s this burning life within that drives us to our destinies. But when it burns too deep, or goes unchecked, it can shatter innocent lives in its wake.

A vicious attack on a deep-space mining colony rains death and destruction on nearly all its inhabitants. Only a handful survive. Among the shattered survivors is a young man, hell-bent on an impossible revenge.

In another part of the universe, a wealthy agent of death finds her tenuous grip on sanity slipping, and is forced to leave everything she’s come to know and love. But her last chance at redemption lies in the last place she ever thought to look.

Their respective paths take them through the vast universe of EVE, to galactic empires built on faith, hedonism, discipline, and rebellion. Their fates plunge them into the darkest parts of this galaxy, to encounters with denizens of the chaotic and dangerous pirate kingdoms. And all the while, as each draws closer to what they seek, they begin to realize that the only stakes worth playing for are the ones from which they’ve run so far away. . . .

Eve: Templar One

Eve: Book 3

Tony Gonzales

"There will be neither compassion nor mercy;
Nor peace, nor solace
For those who bear witness to these Signs
And still do not believe."

Book of Reclaiming 25:10

New Eden: the celestial battleground of a catastrophic war that has claimed countless lives.

The immortal starship captains spearheading this epic conflict continue their unstoppable dominance, shaping the universe to their will and ensuring a bloody, everlasting stalemate.

But a powerful empire is on the verge of a breakthrough that could end the war and secure their rule over mankind forever. For deep in a prison reclamation camp, a secret program is underway... one that will unlock dangerous secrets of New Eden's past.

It all begins with inmate 487980-A... Templar One.

Prepare for DUST 514.

The Prince

Falkenberg's Legion

Military SF fans of the Falkenberg legion saga will need to be in fighting trim to lug home The Prince, by Jerry Pournelle and S.M. Sterling. This hefty compendium includes the four novels Falkenberg's Legion, Prince of Mercenaries, Go Tell the Spartans and Prince of Sparta.

West of Honor

Falkenberg's Legion: Book 5

Jerry Pournelle

John Christian Falkenberg, a young captain in the CoDominium marines, leads his troops to the planet Arrarat, where there's a violent rebellion.

Hunting Party

Familias Regnant: Book 1

After she is forced to resign her post in disgrace, Herris Serrano takes a job as ""captain"" of an interstellar luxury yacht and finds herself fighting a bunch of cutthroats, smugglers, and others.

Sporting Chance

Familias Regnant: Book 2

Spiriting home Prince Gerel, the first in line to the throne, in hopes of avoiding a scandal, yacht owner Lady Cecelia and Captain Heris Serano begin suspecting the sinister nature of Gerel's failing mental capacity.

Winning Colors

Familias Regnant: Book 3

Captaining a rich lady's interstellar pleasure yacht, former navy fleet officer Heris Serrano finds an opportunity to restore her tarnished reputation by intercepting mafia plans to invade the galaxy.

Once a Hero

Familias Regnant: Book 4

Despite her family's military history, Esme Suisa believes herself satisfied without the prospect of commanding her own ship, until she finds herself the senior surviving officer in the middle of a vital space battle.

Rules of Engagement

Familias Regnant: Book 5

Jeremy Seaman is overjoyed to be offered a trainee-ship by British Industrial Group, but unknown to him the corridors are stalked by a sex-crazed security man, an embittered saboteur, a deputation from the House of Commons, the Fraud Squad and a man from the RSPB.

Change of Command

Familias Regnant: Book 6

THEIR UNIVERSE IS FALLING APART!

Rejuvenants fear the backlash caused by bad drugs; they want to ensure that nothing interferes with their pursuit of long life -- or the profit that comes from promising it to others. Neighbor states fear the aggressive expansion of the Familias Regnant, fuelled by population growth and extended lifespan. Within the Regular Space Service, those who have received experimental rejuvenations fear they may have been given bad drugs on purpose. Esmay Suiza's family fears that her marriage to an offworlder will damage their position. Barin Serrano's family fears that his marriage to a Landbride of Altiplano will damage his career and their reputation.

Fear begets violent reactions -- from foreign governments, from great Families determined to maintain or increase their power, from internal rivalries in the Fleet -- and nothing escapes the resultant bloodbath unscathed. As Esmay and Barin struggle to reconcile their families, others have more cosmic struggles to win.

Against the Odds

Familias Regnant: Book 7

The worst has happened: Fleet is tearing itself apart. Some of the mutineers see injustice in the unequal spread of the rejuvenation drugs that offer virtual immortality to the rich; others are simply thirsty for power, or for blood. The Loyalists, meanwhile, fight desperately to preserve the rule of law in Familias Regnant space. But when Esmay Suiza-Serrano is unceremoniously booted out of Fleet, the apparent victim of Family politics, she has no idea of the whirlwind of conflict into which she is about to be drawn. As the noose tightens on galactic civilization, great battles will be fought and greater loves affirmed ...and old friends will meet their destinies.

Fantastic Voyage

Fantastic Voyage: Book 1

Isaac Asimov

A fabulous adventure into the last frontier of man!

Attention! This is the last message you will receive until your mission is completed. You have sixty minutes once miniaturization is complete. You must be out of Benes' body before then. If not, you will return to normal size and kill Benes regardless of the success of the surgery.

Four men and one woman reduced to a microscopic fraction of their original size, boarding a miniaturized atomic sub and being injected into a dying man's carotid artery. Passing through the heart, entering the inner ear where even the slightest sound would destroy them, battling relentlessly into the cranium.

Their objective... to reach a blood clot and destroy it with the piercing rays of a laser.

At stake... the fate of the entire world.

Uller Uprising

Federation Series: Book 1

H. Beam Piper

The four-armed reptilian natives of the planet Uller revolt against the chartered company from the Terran Federation which rules them.

Space Viking

Federation Series: Book 4

H. Beam Piper

After a galaxy-wide war had left the planetary federation in ruins, every surviving civilized world was on its own. And that was a perfect setup for the marauders from the far-out rim. Trask was one of those dreaded Space Vikings, a warrior spaceman with a crew and a ship that struck terror to a thousand worlds. But Trask had a special personal interest in sourging the stars - he wanted to draw upon himself the fire of a certain enemy - a renegade planet-wrecker with a yen for empire-building

The First Sister

First Sister: Book 1

Linden A. Lewis

First Sister has no name and no voice. As a priestess of the Sisterhood, she travels the stars alongside the soldiers of Earth and Mars—the same ones who own the rights to her body and soul. When her former captain abandons her, First Sister’s hopes for freedom are dashed when she is forced to stay on her ship with no friends, no power, and a new captain—Saito Ren—whom she knows nothing about. She is commanded to spy on Captain Ren by the Sisterhood, but soon discovers that working for the war effort is much harder when you’re falling in love.

Lito val Lucius climbed his way out of the slums to become an elite soldier of Venus but was defeated in combat by none other than Saito Ren, resulting in the disappearance of his partner, Hiro. When Lito learns that Hiro is both alive and a traitor to the cause, he now has a shot at redemption: track down and kill his former partner. But when he discovers recordings that Hiro secretly made, Lito’s own allegiances are put to the test. Ultimately, he must decide between following orders and following his heart.

With “a layered, action-filled plot and diverse characters” (Library Journal), The First Sister explores the power of technology, colonization, race, and gender andis perfect for fans of James S.A. Corey, Chuck Wendig, and Jay Posey.

The Forever War

Forever War: Book 1

Private William Mandella is a hero in spite of himself -- a reluctant conscript drafted into an elite military unit, and propelled through space and time to fight in a distant thousand-year conflict. He never wanted to go to war, but the leaders on Earth have drawn a line in the interstellar sand -- despite the fact that their fierce alien enemy is unknowable, unconquerable, and very far away. So Mandella will perform his duties without rancor and even rise up through the military's ranks... if he survives. But the true test of his mettle will come when he returns to Earth. Because of the time dilation caused by space travel the loyal soldier is aging months, while his home planet is aging centuries -- and the difference will prove the saying: you never can go home....

Forever Peace

Forever War: Book 2

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

In the year 2043, the Ngumi War rages. Limited nuclear strikes have been used on Atlanta and two enemy cities, but the war goes on, fought by 'soldierboys' -- indestructible war machines operated by remote control by soldiers hundreds of miles away.

Julian Class is one of these soldiers, and for him war is truly hell. The psychological strain of being jacked-in to his soldierboy -- and the genocidal results -- are becoming too much to bear. Now he and his companion, Dr Amelia Harding, have made a terrifying scientific discovery, which could literally take the universe back to square one. Except that for Julian, the discovery isn't so much terrifying as tempting....

Fearless

Fractal: Book 1

Allen Stroud

AD 2118. Humanity has colonised the Moon, Mars, Ceres and Europa. Captain Ellisa Shann commands Khidr, a search and rescue ship with a crew of twenty-five, tasked to assist the vast commercial freighters that supply the different solar system colonies.

Shann has no legs and has taken to life in zero-g partly as a result. She is a talented tactician who has a tendency to take too much on her own shoulders. Now, while on a regular six-month patrol through the solar system, Khidr picks up a distress call from the freighter Hercules...

Resilient

Fractal: Book 2

Allen Stroud

AD 2118. Humanity has colonised the Moon, Mars, Ceres and Europa. The partnership of corporations and governments has energized the space programme for one hundred years.

That partnership is shattered when a terrorist attack destroys the world's biggest solar array in Atacama, Chile, altering the global economic balance.

On Mars, at Phobos Station, Doctor Emerson Drake arrives, responding to an emergency call to assist a shuttle of wounded miners, but when those miners turn out to be insurgents, Drake realises he is trapped and fighting to survive.

In deep space, Captain Ellisa Shann has passed her limits. Now, the last survivors of the Khidr have to choose whether to try to get home on the captured ship, Gallowglass, or stay to observe the strange gravity anomaly that swallowed up the remains of their vessel.

On Earth, in an undisclosed location, Natalie Holder finally has an opportunity to break free from her confinement, where she has been experimented on, multiple times. Her consciousness is transmitted to Phobos Station, just as insurgents take over the facility.

Holder and Drake form an alliance but are separated. Drake is captured and taken to the insurgent leader -- Rocher -- a clone of the stowaway who caused the munity on Captain Shann's Khidr.

Fractalverse: Book 1

Christopher Paolini

Kira Navárez dreamed of life on new worlds.

Now she's awakened a nightmare.

During a routine survey mission on an uncolonized planet, Kira finds an alien relic. At first she's delighted, but elation turns to terror when the ancient dust around her begins to move.

As war erupts among the stars, Kira is launched into a galaxy-spanning odyssey of discovery and transformation. First contact isn't at all what she imagined, and events push her to the very limits of what it means to be human.

While Kira faces her own horrors, Earth and its colonies stand upon the brink of annihilation. Now, Kira might be humanity's greatest and final hope...

Terms of Enlistment

Frontlines: Book 1

The year is 2108, and the North American Commonwealth is bursting at the seams. For welfare rats like Andrew Grayson, there are only two ways out of the crime-ridden and filthy welfare tenements, where you're restricted to two thousand calories of badly flavored soy every day:

You can hope to win the lottery and draw a ticket on a colony ship settling off-world, or you can join the service.

With the colony lottery a pipe dream, Andrew chooses to enlist in the armed forces for a shot at real food, a retirement bonus, and maybe a ticket off Earth. But as he starts a career of supposed privilege, he soon learns that the good food and decent health care come at a steep price... and that the settled galaxy holds far greater dangers than military bureaucrats or the gangs that rule the slums.

The debut novel from Marko Kloos, Terms of Enlistment is a new addition to the great military sci-fi tradition of Robert Heinlein, Joe Haldeman, and John Scalzi.

Lines of Departure

Frontlines: Book 2

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.

Angles of Attack

Frontlines: Book 3

The alien forces known as the Lankies are gathering on the solar system's edge, consolidating their conquest of Mars and setting their sights on Earth. The far-off colony of New Svalbard, cut off from the rest of the galaxy by the Lanky blockade, teeters on the verge of starvation and collapse. The forces of the two Earth alliances have won minor skirmishes but are in danger of losing the war. For battle-weary staff sergeant Andrew Grayson and the ragged forces of the North American Commonwealth, the fight for survival is entering a catastrophic new phase.

Forging an uneasy alliance with their Sino-Russian enemies, the NAC launches a hybrid task force on a long shot: a stealth mission to breach the Lanky blockade and reestablish supply lines with Earth. Plunging into combat against a merciless alien species that outguns, outmaneuvers, and outfights them at every turn, Andrew and his fellow troopers could end up cornered on their home turf, with no way out and no hope for reinforcement. And this time, the struggle for humanity's future can only end in either victory or annihilation.

Chains of Command

Frontlines: Book 4

The assault on Earth was thwarted by the destruction of the aliens' seed ship, but with Mars still under Lanky control, survivors work frantically to rebuild fighting capacity and shore up planetary defenses. Platoon sergeant Andrew Grayson must crash-course train new volunteers--all while dulling his searing memories of battle with alcohol and meds.

Knowing Earth's uneasy respite won't last, the North American Commonwealth and its Sino-Russian allies hurtle toward two dangerous options: hit the Lanky forces on Mars or go after deserters who stole a fleet of invaluable warships critical to winning the war. Assigned to a small special ops recon mission to scout out the renegades' stronghold on a distant moon, Grayson and his wife, dropship pilot Halley, again find themselves headed for the crucible of combat--and a shattering new campaign in the war for humanity's future.

Fields of Fire

Frontlines: Book 5

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.

Points of Impact

Frontlines: Book 6

Humankind may have won the battle, but a new threat looms larger than ever before...

Earth's armed forces have stopped the Lanky advance and chased their ships out of the solar system, but for CDC officer Andrew Grayson, the war feels anything but won. On Mars, the grinding duty of flushing out the twenty-meter-tall alien invaders from their burrows underground is wearing down troops and equipment at an alarming rate. And for the remaining extrasolar colonies, the threat of a Lanky attack is ever present.

Earth's game changer? New advanced ships and weapons, designed to hunt and kill Lankies and place humanity's militaries on equal footing with their formidable foes. Andrew and his wife, Halley, both now burdened with command responsibilities and in charge of more lives than just their own, are once again in humanity's vanguard as they prepare for this new phase in the war. But the Lankies have their own agenda... and in war, the enemy doesn't usually wait until you are prepared. As Andrew is once again plunged into the chaos and violence of war with an unyielding species, he is forced to confront the toll this endless conflict is taking on them all, and the high price of survival... at any cost.

The Nano Flower

Greg Mandel Trilogy: Book 3

Peter F. Hamilton

Peter F. Hamilton is one the rising stars of science fiction in the nineties. His epic space adventure, The Reality Dysfunction, was a major international bestseller, while his near future thrillers, Mindstar Rising and A Quantum Murder, introduced an intriguing new hero in the character of Greg Mandel, a freelance operative whose telepathic abilities give him a crucial edge in the high tech world of the twenty-first century. Now Mandel returns in a spectacular new adventure that blows open the possibilities of the next century.

Julia Evans: billionairess, owner of Event Horizon, for fifteen years undisputed power behind the world's economic renaissance. And in trouble. With her computer-genius husband missing and rival companies suddenly claiming to have acquired a technology impossibly superior to anything on Earth, Julia has no time to notice an anonymously delivered flower. But this flower has genes millions of years in advance of terrestrial DNA.

Is it a cryptic alien message or a poignant farewell from her husband? Only Greg Mandel can discover its origin, but he is not alone in his desperate search. A vicious mercenary killer, a jade merchant, and a high-priced courtesan all have a part to play. It was never going to be easy, but as Greg and Julia discover, simply being first in the race isn't nearly good enough as the Nano Flower starts to bloom....

Babel-17

Gregg Press Science Fiction Series: Book 25

Samuel R. Delany

Babel-17, winner of the Nebula Award for best novel of the year, is a fascinating tale of a famous poet bent on deciphering a secret language that is the key to the enemy's deadly force, a task that requires she travel with a splendidly improbable crew to the site of the next attack.

For the first time, Babel-17 is published as the author intended with the short novel Empire Star, the tale of Comet Jo, a simple-minded teen thrust into a complex galaxy when he's entrusted to carry a vital message to a distant world. Spellbinding and smart, both novels are testimony to Delany's vast and singular talent.

The Iron Dream

Gregg Press Science Fiction Series: Book 59

Norman Spinrad

"IF WAGNER WROTE SCIENCE FICTION THIS IS THE WAY HE WOULD DO IT." -- Harry Harrison

Renowned science fiction writer Adolf Hitler's Hugo Award winning novel!

Ferric Jaggar mounted the platform. A swastika of flame twenty feet high stood out in glory against the night sky behind him, bathing him in heroic firelight, flashing highlights off the brightwork of his gleaming black leather uniform, setting his powerful eyes ablaze. "I hold in my hand the Great Truncheon of Held. I dedicate myself to the repurification of all Heldon with blood and iron, and to the extension of the dominion of True Humanity over the face of the entire Earth! Never will we rest until the last mutant gene is swept from the face of the planet!"

Set in a post-nuclear holocaust world, a novel which traces the rise to power of one Feric Jaggar, an exile among mutants and mongrels to absolute rule in the Fatherland of Truemen.

With an afterword by James Sallis.

After the Crown

Hail Bristol: Indranan War: Book 2

K. B. Wagers

Former gunrunner-turned-Empress Hail Bristol was dragged back to her home planet to fill her rightful position in the palace. With her sisters and parents murdered, the Indranan empire is on the brink of war. Hail must quickly make alliances with nearby worlds if she has any hope of surviving her rule.

When peace talks turn violent and Hail realizes she's been betrayed, she must rely on her old gunrunning ways to get out of trouble. With help from an old boss and some surprising new allies, she must risk everything to save her world.

First Strike

Halo: Book 3

Eric S. Nylund

Reach fell, and when hope seemed lost, humanity stood face-to-face with the possible extinction of all life in the galaxy and lived to tell the tale.

But that was just one epic battle, and the war rages on...

The Covenant shows no mercy as they continue to assault every human world they can find, but in their way lies humanity's great champion, Spartan-117, the Master Chief. Together with his AI companion Cortana and the last remaining Spartans, the fight continues on two fronts.

One takes a crew of Spartans to the charred surface of Reach, the only planet they've ever known as home. But beneath the surface, Dr. Halsey has discovered an ancient secret... one that could alter the course of the war.

Meanwhile, Master Chief and Cortana head towards a gathering of Covenant warships because the UNSC's worst nightmare has come true: the Covenant has discovered the location of Earth and is forming a massive fleet to destroy it... and all who oppose the will of the Prophets.

Hammer's Slammers

Hammer's Slammers: Book 1

When a planetary government faces threats from guerrillas, insurgents or terrorists, the men they hire are Hammer's Slammers—known throughout the galaxy for their cold, ruthless ferocity, their ability to defeat overwhelming forces, and their willingness to go up against impossible odds.

Table of contents:

Intro: Mercenaries and Military Virtue by Jerry Pournelle
But Loyal to His Own
The Butcher's Bill
Under the Hammer
Cultural Conflict
Caught in the Crossfire (Caught in the Crossfire)
Hangman
Standing Down
Interludes: Supertanks, The Church of the Lord's Universe, Powerguns, Backdrop to Chaos, The Bonding Authority, and Table of Organization and Equipment, Hammer's Regiment (The Tank Lords, as Appendix) The Baen (1987) edition adds The Tank Lords

Counting the Cost

Hammer's Slammers: Book 3

The hottest science fiction mercenaries of the decade are back, so why count the cost? The other guy is going to pay for it! Hammer's Slammers must win a two-front war while maintaining the civilian power structure against hordes of religious fanatics.

The Warrior

Hammer's Slammers: Book 5

Colonel Alois Hammer, Luke Broglie, Tess Kuykendall, and Slick Des Grieux, cogs in a killing machine, find themselves at the center of a potential bloodbath.

Space Cadet

Heinlein Juveniles: Book 2

This is the seminal novel of a young man's education as a member of an elite, paternalistic non-military organization of leaders dedicated to preserving human civilization, the Solar Patrol, a provocative parallel to Heinlein's famous later novel, Starship Troopers (which is about the military).

Only the best and brightest--the strongest and the most courageous--ever manage to become Space Cadets, at the Space Academy. They are in training to be come part of the elite guard of the solar system, accepting missions others fear, taking risks no others dare, and upholding the peace of the solar system for the benefit of all.

But before Matt Dodson can earn his rightful place in the ranks, his mettle is to be tested in the most severe and extraordinary ways--ways that change him forever, from the midwestern American boy into a man of the Solar Patrol.

Between Planets

Heinlein Juveniles: Book 5

Don Harvey was attending school on Earth when his parents suddenly and urgently called him home to Mars. He had been skeptical about the talk of interplanetary war breaking out if Mars and Venus followed through on their threats to declare independence from Earth, but he was wrong. War broke out, and he was stuck on Venus, with no way of getting home.

Then there was the ring that an old family friend had given him just before he had left Earth. Shortly afterward, the friend had been questioned by Earth's secret police and had died-from "heart failure," they claimed. When Earth troops landed on Venus and started looking for Don and that mysterious ring, he realized that he was trapped in the center of a war between worlds that could change the fate of the Solar System forever!

Starship Troopers

Heinlein Juveniles: Book 13

House of Steel: The Honorverse Companion

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.

Hell Divers

Hell Divers: Book 1

Nicholas Sansbury Smith

More than two centuries after World War III poisoned the planet, the final bastion of humanity lives on massive airships circling the globe in search for a habitable area to call home. Aging and outdated, most of the ships plummeted back to earth long ago. The only thing keeping the two surviving lifeboats in the sky are Hell Divers: men and women who risk their lives by diving to the surface to scavenge for parts the ships desperately need.

When one of the remaining airships is damaged in an electrical storm, a Hell Diver team is deployed to a hostile zone called Hades. But there's something down there that's far worse than the mutated creatures discovered on dives in the past--something that threatens the fragile future of humanity.

Honor Harrington

The ultimate guide and companion to the New York Times best-selling Honor Harrington series.

A new short Honorverse novel, plus a compendium of tech, specs, and history to accompany the blockbuster series.

An all-new David Weber Honorverse short novel, I Will Build a House of Steel, chronicling the early days of the Manticoran Star Kingdom and the reign of King Roger.

Have you ever finished the latest Honor Harrington novel from David Weber and wished you could linger in Weber's Honorverse just a bit longer? Now you can with this treasure trove of tech, specs, and insights on David Weber's mega best-selling Honor Harrington series. Orbital characteristics of key planets, regimental order of the Royal Navy, backstory on the history and drama of the Star Kingdom's birth and early days--you'll find it all here, thoughtfully arranged by the Bureau 9 Weber research group, and overseen by David Weber himself.

On Basilisk Station

Honor Harrington: Book 1

The Basilisk System was a place to sweep incompetents, fools, and failures under the rug . . . or to punish officers with enemies in high places.

Commander Honor Harrington has enemies, and she's about to make more of them--because the people out to get her have made one mistake: They've made her mad.

The Honor of the Queen

Honor Harrington: Book 2

On the planet Grayson to participate in diplomatic talks between the Kingdom of Manticore and the Republic of Haven, Honor Harrington discovers that she is stuck on a fiercely patriarchal, misogynist planet.

The Short Victorious War

Honor Harrington: Book 3

Banking on a short, victorious war to replenish their depleted treasury, the ruling class of the People's Republic of Haven do not count on coming up against Captain Honor Harrington and the Royal Manticoran Navy.

Field of Dishonor

Honor Harrington: Book 4

After boldly defeating the People's Republic of Haven, the Royal Manticoran Navy stands victorious, but a new political crisis and an old enemy once vanquished bring a new challenge for Honor Harrington.

Flag in Exile

Honor Harrington: Book 5

Struggling to deal with her lover's murder and a forced retirement, Captain Honor Harrington assumes the role of Steadholder on the planet Grayson, but a threatening uprising calls her back into duty as head of the Grayson Navy.

Honor Among Enemies

Honor Harrington: Book 6

Offered a chance to recover her commission as an officer in the Royal Manticoran Navy, Captain Honor Harrington must assume command of a ""squadron"" of jury-rigged armed merchantmen to stop the pirates who are plundering the Star Kingdom's commercial trade.

In Enemy Hands

Honor Harrington: Book 7

Outnumbered and outgunned, Honor Harrington has just two options: see the people under her command slaughtered in hopeless battle or surrender them--and herself--to the Peeps.

Echoes of Honor

Honor Harrington: Book 8

For eight years, Commodore Honor Harrington was in the forefront of the battle between the Star Kingdom of Manticore and the powerful People's Republic of Haven. Then she was captured and publicly executed. But Honor is far from dead, what's more, she's going home and taking her people with her.

Ashes of Victory

Honor Harrington: Book 9

Proclaimed a dead woman by the People's Republic of Haven, Honor Harrington has escaped her prison with half a million others and will tip the balance in favor of the Allies.

War of Honor

Honor Harrington: Book 10

No one wanted another war. Thomas Theisman didn't. Baron High Ridge didn't. His Imperial Majesty Gustav didn't. Honor Harrington didn't. The Andermani Emperor has plans for Silesia. And the Prime Minister of Manticore is happy with the war he has. Unfortunately, what they want doesn't matter.

At All Costs

Honor Harrington: Book 11

What price victory?

The war with the Republic of Haven has resumed . . . disastrously for the Star Kingdom of Manticore.

Admiral Lady Dame Honor Harrington, Steadholder and Duchess Harrington, the single victorious Allied commander of the opening phase of the new war, has been recalled from the Sidemore System to command Eighth Fleet. Everyone knows Eighth Fleet is the Alliance's primary offensive command, which makes it the natural assignment for the woman the media calls "the Salamander."

But what most of the public DOESN'T know is that not only are the Star Kingdom and its Allies badly outnumbered by the Republic's new fleet, but that the odds are going to get steadily worse. Eighth Fleet's job is to somehow prevent those odds from crushing the Alliance before the Star Kingdom can regain its strategic balance. It's a job which won't be done cheaply.

Honor Harrington must meet her formidable responsibilities with inferior forces even as she copes with tumultuous changes in her personal and public life. The alternative to victory is total defeat, yet this time the COST of victory will be agonizingly high.

Mission of Honor

Honor Harrington: Book 12

The Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Republic of Haven have been enemies for Honor Harrington's entire life, and she has paid a price for the victories she's achieved in that conflict. And now the unstoppable juggernaut of the mighty Solarian League is on a collision course with Manticore. The millions who have already died may have been only a foretaste of the billions of casualties just over the horizon, and Honor sees it coming.

She's prepared to do anything, risk anything, to stop it, and she has a plan that may finally bring an end to the Havenite Wars and give even the Solarian League pause. But there are things not even Honor knows about. There are forces in play, hidden enemies in motion, all converging on the Star Kingdom of Manticore to crush the very life out of it, and Honor's worst nightmares fall short of the oncoming reality.

But Manticore's enemies may not have thought of everything after all. Because if everything Honor Harrington loves is going down to destruction, it won't be going alone.

A Rising Thunder

Honor Harrington: Book 13

Chris Kennedy
Thomas A. Mays

Peril and strife strike on a double front for Honor Harrington and company. After a brutal attack on the Manticoran home system, Honor Harrington and the Star Kingdom she serves battle back against a new, technologically powerful, and utterly nefarious enemy. And as if that weren't task enough, Honor must also face down a centuries-old nemesis in the crumbling, but still mighty, Solarian League.

The war between the People's Republic of Haven and the Star Kingdom is finally won and peace established, but grave danger looms -- for there is a plan well on its way to completion designed to enslave the entire human species. Behind that plan lies the shadowy organization known as the Mesan Alignment.

Task number one for Honor is to defend against another devastating Mesan strike -- a strike that may well spell the doom of the Star Kingdom in one fell blow. It is time to shut down and secure the wormhole network that is the source of the Star Kingdom's wealth and power -- but also its greatest vulnerability. Yet this is an act that the Earth-based Solarian League inevitably will take as a declaration of war.

The thunder of battle rolls as the Solarian League directs its massive power against the Star Kingdom. And once again, Honor Harrington is thrust into a desperate battle that she must win if she is to survive to take the fight to the real enemy of galactic freedom -- the insidious puppetmasters of war who lurk behind the Mesan Alignment!

The High Ground

Imperials: Book 1

Melinda M. Snodgrass

The Emperor's daughter Mercedes is the first woman ever admitted to The High Ground, the elite training academy of the Solar League's Star Command, and she must graduate if she is to have any hope of taking the throne. Her classmate Tracy has more modest goals -- to defy his humble beginnings and rise to the rank of captain. But in a system rocked by political division, where women are governed by their husbands and fathers, the poor are kept in their place by a rigid class system, and the alien races have been conquered and subjugated, there are many who want them to fail.

A civil war is coming, and the political machinations of those who yearn for power threaten the young cadets. In a time of intrigue, class conflict, and alien invasion, they will be tested as they never thought possible...

In Evil Times

Imperials: Book 2

Melinda M. Snodgrass

Thracius "Tracy" Belmanor and the Infanta Mercedes de Arango have graduated from The High Ground and have become officers in the Orden de la Estrella. Tracy's posting aboard a battleship leads him to further doubt the intentions of the Solar League, as he and his comrades are required to "assimilate" the settlers of a Hidden World.

Meanwhile, Mercedes' own posting -- and her difficult marriage to Beauregard "Boho" Cullen, made to assure her succession of the throne -- divides her loyalties. In a society where most humans and all aliens are second-class citizens, the two young officers will have difficult choices to make...

The Mutineer's Daughter

In Revolution Born: Book 1

What would it take for you to discard everything you believed in and give up your sacred honor? What would it take to make you rise up and fight when all the odds are against you?

Chief Warrant Officer Benjamin "Benno" Sanchez has devoted over 20 years of his life to the Alliance of Liberated Systems' Navy, defending his colony world from the continued encroachment of the Terran Union. His young daughter has been virtually orphaned for years, but his time away is coming to an end. His debts are paid, their lives and prospects have been secured, and he will soon achieve his dreams of freedom and a better life for his child.

On Adelaide, fourteen-year-old Mio Sanchez chafes at the limitations placed upon her. With her father away and her mother long since passed, she struggles with an indifferent foster family, too young, too poor, too female to be taken seriously. She yearns to leave her simple life and join her father in the Alliance Navy... or be anywhere but Adelaide.

Now, with all-out war underway, Benno's devotion and sacrifice have been betrayed--Adelaide has been invaded, and his Mio is under threat by the implacable Terran forces. And the aristocrats of the Alliance plan to do... nothing.

Benno must now make a choice: Honor his oath and leave his daughter's fate to chance... Or do the unthinkable and rise up in mutiny against his own.

And on Adelaide, Mio must also make a choice: Keep her head down and survive... Or fight against the invaders and endure hardships, horrors, and dangers far beyond what a "just a girl" is prepared for.

Sacrifices must be made... but how far will a father and daughter go to be reunited?

Infinite Stars

Infinite Stars: Book 1

Bryan Thomas Schmidt

The seductive thrill of uncharted worlds, of distant galaxies... and the unknown threats that lurk in the vastness of the cosmos. From Foundation to Lensman, Star Wars to Guardians of the Galaxy, space opera continues to exert its magnetic pull on us all. INFINITE STARS This is the definitive collection of original short stories by many of today's finest authors, writing brand new adventures set in their most famous series. Herein lie canonical tales of the Honorverse, the Lost Fleet, Dune, Vatta's War, Ender Wiggin, the Legion of the Damned, the Imperium, and more. Also included are past masterpieces by authors whose works defined the genre, including a Miles Vorkosigan adventure, a story from the author of the Dragonriders of Pern, and a rare tale co-authored by the screenwriter for The Empire Strikes Back. Nebula and Hugo Award winners, New York Times bestsellers, and Science Fiction Grand Masters--these authors take us to the farthest regions of space.

Table of Contents:

Editor's Note and Acknowledgements - essay by Bryan Thomas Schmidt
Space Opera: An Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
Renegat - novella by Orson Scott Card
The Waters of Kanly - novelette by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
The Good Shepherd - short story by William C. Dietz
The Game of Rat and Dragon - (1955) - short story by Cordwainer Smith
The Borders of Infinity - (1987) - novella by Lois McMaster Bujold
All in a Day's Work - short story by Elizabeth Moon
Last Day of Training - short story by Dave Bara
The Wages of Honor - novelette by Catherine Asaro
Binti - (2015) - novella by Nnedi Okorafor
Reflex - (1982) - short story by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
How to Be a Barbarian in the Late 25th Century - short story by Jean Johnson
Stark and the Star Kings - (2005) - novelette by Leigh Brackett and Edmond Hamilton
Imperium Imposter - short story by Jody Lynn Nye
Region Five - short story by Linda Nagata
Night Passage - novelette by Alastair Reynolds
Duel on Syrtis - (1951) - short story by Poul Anderson
Twilight World - (2013) - novelette by A. C. Crispin
Twenty Excellent Reasons - short story by Bennett R. Coles
The Ship Who Sang - (1961) - novelette by Anne McCaffrey
Taste of Ashes - novella by Charles E. Gannon
The Iron Star - (1987) - novelette by Robert Silverberg
Cadet Cruise - (2016) - short fiction by David Drake
Shore Patrol - short story by Jack Campbell
Our Sacred Honor - novelette by David Weber

Infinity Wars

Infinities: Book 6

Jonathan Strahan

CONFLICT IS ETERNAL

We have always fought. War is the furnace that forges new technologies and pushes humanity ever onward. We are the children of a battle that began with fists and sticks, and ended on the brink of atomic Armageddon. Beyond here lies another war, infinite in scope and scale.

But who will fight the wars of tomorrow? Join Elizabeth Bear, Indrapramit Das, Aliette de Bodard, Garth Nix and many, many more in an exploration of the furthest extremes of military science fiction.

Table of Contents:

Introduction, Jonathan Strahan
Evening of the Span of Their Days, Carrie Vaughn
The Last Broadcasts, An Owomoyela
Faceless Soldiers, Patchwork Ship, Caroline M Yoachim
Dear Sarah, Nancy Kress
The Moon is Not a Battlefield, Indrapramit Das
Perfect Gun, Elizabeth Bear
Oracle, Dominica Phettaplace
In Everlasting Wisdom, Aliette deBodard
Command and Control, David D. Levine
Conversations with an Armory, Garth Nix
Overburden, Genevieve Valentine
Heavies, Rich Larson
Weather Girl, E.J. Swift
Mines, Eleanor Arnason
ZeroS, Peter Watts

Code of Conduct

Jani Kilian: Book 1

Kristine Smith

Captain Jani Killian had been Evan Van Reuter's lover eighteen years ago, when a Commonwealth diplomatic corps, sent to establish peaceful relations with the alien idomeni, took sides in a civil war. Jani was presumed killed in the ensuing bloodbath, and Evan went on to become the Commonwealth's Interior Minister. But Jani survived as well more or less. Doctors gave her a new face and patched her broken body together with illegally obtained idomeni genetic materials. They healed her of everything but her memory of the desperate actions she had taken -- sure to result in summary execution should Commonwealth authorities discover her existence.

Which makes it unwise to refuse Evan's request for help in solving the mystery of his wife's death. There is no shortage of suspects, and the trail draws Jani back into the trauma of Rauta Shiraa and secrets long buried there, secrets someone has killed to protect. If she isn't careful, she'll wind up the next victim -- assuming her own body doesn't kill her first. For after eighteen years, her rebuilt body is failing. Jani is dying. Or is she being reborn?

Orphanage

Jason Wander: Book 1

Robert Buettner

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

Scardown

Jenny Casey: Book 2

Elizabeth Bear

The year is 2062, and after years on the run, Jenny Casey is back in the Canadian armed forces. Those who were once her enemies are now her allies, and at fifty, she's been handpicked for the most important mission of her life-a mission for which her artificially reconstructed body is perfectly suited. With the earth capable of sustaining life for just another century, Jenny-as pilot of the starship Montreal-must discover brave new worlds. And with time running out, she must succeed where others have failed.

Now Jenny is caught in a desperate battle where old resentments become bitter betrayals and justice takes the cruelest forms of vengeance. With the help of a brilliant AI, an ex—crime lord, and the man she loves, Jenny may just get her chance to save the world. If it doesn't come to an end first…

Worldwired

Jenny Casey: Book 3

Elizabeth Bear

Give Canada's Master Warrant Officer Jenny Casey an inch and she'll take a galaxy. That's just the kind of person a world on the brink of destruction needs. The year is 2063, and Earth has been brutalized. An asteroid flung at Toronto by the PanChinese government has killed tens of millions and left the equivalent of a nuclear explosion in its wake. Humanity must find another option....

Perched above the devastation in the starship Montreal, Jenny is still in the thick of the fray. Plugged into the worldwire, connected to a brilliant AI, her mind can be everywhere and anywhere at once. But it's focused on the mysterious alien beings right outside her ship. Are they there to help-or destroy? With Earth a breeding ground for treason and betrayal as governments struggle to assign blame, Jenny holds the fate of humankind in her artificially reconstructed hand...

Moving Target

Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Cecil Castellucci
Jason Fry

Princess Leia returns for an all-new adventure.

Set between Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi, Princess Leia must lead a ragtag group of rebels on a treacherous decoy mission against the evil Galactic Empire.

Before the Awakening

Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Greg Rucka

Star Wars: Before the Awakening is an anthology book that focuses on the lives of Rey, Finn, and Poe before the events of the Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

An Exchange of Hostages

Jurisdiction: Book 1

Susan R. Matthews

A promising young surgeon, Andrej Koscuisko has come, with great reluctance, to study at a military orientation center adrift in black space. Against his will, he will train here to serve as a "Ship's Inquisitor" -- a vocation that runs counter to his deepest moral convictions.

During his tenure, Andrej will earn the devotion of his personal slave. He will gain the grudging respect of the Station Administration. He will make a deadly enemy of his fellow student. He will learn a frightening truth about himself. And ultimately, he will be forced to sacrifice all that he holds dear...

Mutineer

Kris Longknife: Book 1

Kris Longknife is a daughter of privilege, born to money and power. Her father is the prime minister of her home planet, her mother the consummate politician's wife. She's been raised only to be beautiful and marry well. But the heritage of the military Longknifes courses through Kris' blood - and, against her parents' objections, she enlists in the Marines.

She has a lot to live up to and a lot to prove in the long-running struggle among her powerful family, a highly defensive - and offensive - Earth, and the hundreds of warring colonies. Then an ill-conceived attack brings the war close to home, putting Kris' life on the line. Now she has only one choice: certain death on the front lines of rim space - or mutiny.

Deserter

Kris Longknife: Book 2

Kris Longknife had no choice about growing up rich and pampered. When she did have a choice, she joined the Marines. But now, a friend needs help halfway across the galaxy - and with a military heritage coursing through her blood, it's time for Kris Longknife to be a hero. Kris boards the next ship to Turantic, the last place her friend was seen alive. But there's more to the rescue than meets the eye.

Turantic is not only the most twisted hellhole in the galaxy, but it's also under quarantine because of a deadly plague. And after a sudden, suspicious loss of communication with the outside world, Kris realizes the length some enemies will go to for a life-threatening bait-and-trap. But she is willing to go even further - and deeper into Turantic's secrets - to survive.

Defiant

Kris Longknife: Book 3

Born into a family of wealth and political power, Kris Longknife turned her back on high society and followed a different family tradition by joining the Marines. But now she finds herself relieved of duty. She's gotten in the way of someone's agenda - to bring down her father, the Prime Minister of Wardhaven.

Now, with the fleet off on a propaganda mission, Wardhaven is left vulnerable to enemy warships that establish orbit around the planet demanding surrender. With the remnants of the fleet ordered to stand down, Kris declares herself Commander-in-Chief and plans a desperate gambit to defend her world.

Commandeering every spaceworthy vessel she can get her hands on and recruiting every able-bodied person willing to risk their life, Kris leads the most important mission of her career - and it may be her last.

Resolute

Kris Longknife: Book 4

Kris Longknife is back - and ready for battle.

Kris has been given her first independent command in the very remote system of Chance, an assignment that's as much exile as promotion. But Kris isn't on the job long when she captures pirates hiding the location of an uncharted and unpopulated planet of miraculous technology.

Audacious

Kris Longknife: Book 5

You can't keep a good woman down-Kris Longknife returns.

Once again Kris finds herself caught in the crosshairs of unknown enemies who want her dead. Factions, both legitimate and underground, vie for control of the planet New Eden. And someone is taking advantage of the chaos to unleash a personal vendetta against Kris.

Undaunted

Kris Longknife: Book 7

Kris Longknife encounters some peaceful aliens who have come to warn humanity of an unidentifiable force that is roaming the galaxy, obliterating everything in its path-a path now leading directly toward the human worlds.

Furious

Kris Longknife: Book 10

Having used unorthodox methods to save a world--and every sentient being on it--Lieutenant Commander Kris Longknife is wanted across the galaxy for crimes against humanity. For her own safety, she's been assigned to a backwater planet where her Fast Patrol Squadron 127 enforces immigration control and smuggler interdiction.

But Kris is a Longknife, and nothing can stop her from getting back to the center of things--not when all hell is breaking loose. Now she's on the run, hunted by both military and civilian authorities--and since the civilian authorities happen to be her immediate family, Kris soon finds herself homeless, broke, and on trial for her life on an alien world...

Defender

Kris Longknife: Book 11

Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Vol. 1: Dawn

Kris Longknife is back in the good graces of the brass--and to demonstrate that, they've promoted her to Admiral. Now her mission is to find the home base of the space pirates who are plaguing the fringes of the galaxy.

But no mission is ever simple when your name is Longknife. And this time the complications range from the military to the personal, as Kris finds herself--reluctantly--having to make some command decisions about her future...

Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Book 1

Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Vol. 2: Ambition

"The Golden Brat" Reinhard von Lohengramm, a military prodigy and admiral of the Galactic Empire, has ambitions beyond protecting the borders or even defeating the Empire's enemies. He seeks to overthrow the old order and become a truly absolute--yet benevolent--dictator. His rival, the humble Yang Wen-li of the Free Planets Alliance, wishes to preserve democracy even if he must sacrifice his political ideals to defeat the Empire. Their political and military battles play out over a galactic chessboard in an epic saga fifteen centuries in the making!

Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Book 2

Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Vol. 3: Endurance

In the thirty-sixth century humanity has conquered the galaxy and colonized countless star systems. The Galactic Empire, modeled along Prussian lines, and the democratic Free Planets Alliance are at war, and the fate of every human being in the universe hangs in the balance. This classic Japanese space opera, adapted into a legendary anime, is finally available in English for the first time.

After a coup d'etat erupts in the Free Planets Alliance, military strategist Yang Wen-li is ordered to use his tactical wizardry put down the rebellion, but the ringleader holding the capital is someone he had once trusted deeply. Meanwhile in the Empire, Reinhard will soon face a new trial as in the wake of the Emperor's death he stands amidst an intensifying power struggle among the aristocracy. The unbeatable magician and the unstoppable genius: the decisions these heroes make will send shockwaves across the galaxy.

Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Book 3

Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Vol. 4: Stratagem

It's the master tactician of the ruthless Galactic Empire versus the Free Planets Alliance in Japan's greatest space opera epic!

In the thirty-sixth century, humanity has conquered the galaxy and colonized countless star systems. The Galactic Empire, modeled along Prussian lines, and the democratic Free Planets Alliance are at war, and the fate of every human being in the universe hangs in the balance. This classic Japanese space opera, adapted into a legendary anime, is finally available in English for the first time.

A grand scheme for retaking Iserlohn is delivered to Reinhard, who with renewed determination seeks to become ruler of the galaxy and to fulfill the oath he made with a dear, departed friend. But what are the aims of Phezzan, the third force at work behind the scenes? Meanwhile, no sooner is Yang breathing a sigh of relief when Julian returns from his first combat mission than he is summoned to an inquest and departs for the capital of the alliance. As if waiting for this opportunity to strike, however, the imperial military's fortress appears right at the gates of Iserlohn. The battle between two gigantic fortresses begins!

Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Book 4

Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Vol. 5: Mobilization

It's the Galactic Empire versus the Free Planets Alliance in Japan's greatest space opera epic!

Remnants of the high nobility, manipulated by the "third power" of Phezzan, abduct the seven-year-old emperor and, with the cooperation of the Free Planets Alliance, declare the establishment of a traditional imperial government. Reinhard, however, has turned the tables by making a secret pact with Phezzan's high officials and plans a grand invasion of the alliance by way of the Phezzan Corridor. So begins an epic battle between Yang--who, despite surmising Reinhard's true intentions, must defend Iserlohn--and the Imperial Navy's peerless fighter, von Reuentahl.

Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Book 5

Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Vol. 6: Flight

It's the Galactic Empire versus the Free Planets Alliance in Japan's greatest space opera epic!

Imperial forces have captured the Phezzan Dominion and draw ever closer to the Free Planets Alliance capital of Heinessen. Yang hurriedly abandons Iserlohn Fortress and heads for the capital to protect countless civilians. Taking out Reinhard is the alliance's only path to victory. Despite the empire's superior numbers, Yang continues to outwit its most resourceful generals via tactical wizardry. Reinhard, on the other hand, seeing through Yang's devices, opts for all-out war. And so, the "invincible" and "undefeated" once again clash swords. Who will emerge victorious?

Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Book 6

Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Vol. 7: Tempest

It's the Galactic Empire versus the Free Planets Alliance in Japan's greatest space opera epic!

After donning the emperor's crown, Reinhard becomes aware of an assassination plot against him. Knowing that the Church of Terra has its scheming hands in all places, he deploys his troops to the church's sacred homeland of Terra. Meanwhile, Yang's leisurely retirement is tempered by the surveillance networks from both sides watching his every move. And when he is one day visited by a group of men dressed in black, the galaxy, too, relinquishes peace to become embroiled in upheaval once again.

Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Book 7

Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Vol. 8: Desolation

It's the Galactic Empire versus the Free Planets Alliance in Japan's greatest space opera epic!

Reinhard, under his Golden Lion banner, is setting out to bend history and the universe to his will. Meanwhile, with no flag of their own to raise, Yang and his compatriots have escaped the murderous hands of the Free Planets Alliance's government and dubbed themselves the "Irregulars." Yang receives word that an Imperial fleet is closing in on the capital of Heinessen, and in a daring move, recaptures Iserlohn Fortress. In the meantime, Reinhard's invasion of the Free Planets Alliance proceeds steadily apace. Standing in the path of the Imperial fleet is a fleet of FPA Navy vessels commanded by the elderly Admiral Bucock. An old lion roars out a life-or-death challenge, and a young lion answers it--the final battle of the Free Planets Alliance now begins!

Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Book 8

Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Vol. 9: Upheaval

It's the master tactician of the ruthless Galactic Empire versus the Free Planets Alliance in Japan's greatest space opera epic!

After utterly defeating the Free Planets Alliance, Kaiser Reinhard has brought 99 percent of inhabited space under his control. Still, dissatisfaction and unease coil within his breast, for the galaxy's last remaining sliver of territory is defended by none other than Yang Wen-li. Seeking decisive battle, the Imperial Navy moves to attack Iserlohn Fortress, but due to Yang's unexpected plan, the battle has already begun before Reinhard arrives. The Yang Fleet must overcome an enormous difference in force strength--while at the same time, a trap laid by the Church of Terra is closing in around Yang...

Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Book 9

Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Vol. 10: Sunset

It's the master tactician of the ruthless Galactic Empire versus the Free Planets Alliance in Japan's greatest space opera epic!

The irregulars of the Iserlohn Republic, still loyal to the ideals of their former leader Yang Wen-li, rally around Yang's successor Julian as he strives to live up to his inherited responsibilities. Meanwhile, in the empire, Kaiser Reinhard survives an attempt on his life only to be confronted with the devastating sins of his past when he learns the true identity of his would-be assassin. Despite rumors of treason on the part of Neue Land governor-general Oskar von Reuentahl, the kaiser pays a personal visit to that territory, where an even greater shock lies in store.

Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Book 10

Dune: The Butlerian Jihad

It's the master tactician of the ruthless Galactic Empire versus the Free Planets Alliance in Japan's greatest space opera epic!

Having taken his devoted confidant Hildegard von Lohengramm as his empress, Kaiser Reinhard awaits the birth of his heir. Much remains to trouble him, from the ongoing campaign of terror by Church of Terra diehards to the machinations of an erstwhile landesherr, and there are ominous signs that his own condition may be graver than anyone suspects. Nevertheless, it seems that peace has finally come to the New Galactic Empire. Meanwhile, in the Iserlohn Republic, Julian Mintz, successor to Yang the Magician, resolves to begin the first and final battle fought on the republic's terms--the world-shaking conclusion to the Legend of the Galactic Heroes.

Legends of Dune: Book 1

Kevin J. Anderson
Brian Herbert

Frank Herbert’s Dune series is one of the great creations of imaginative literature, science fiction’s answer to The Lord of the Rings.

Decades after Herbert’s original novels, the Dune saga was continued by Frank Herbert’s son, Brian Herbert, in collaboration with Kevin J. Anderson. Working from Frank Herbert’s own notes, the acclaimed authors reveal the chapter of the Dune saga most eagerly anticipated by readers: the Butlerian Jihad.

Throughout the Dune novels, Frank Herbert frequently referred to the war in which humans wrested their freedom from “thinking machines.” In Dune: The Butlerian Jihad, Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson bring to life the story of that war, a tale previously seen only in tantalizing hints and clues. Finally, we see how Serena Butler’s passionate grief ignites the struggle that will liberate humans from their machine masters; here is the amazing tale of the Zensunni Wanderers, who escape bondage to flee to the desert world where they will declare themselves the Free Men of Dune. And here is the backward, nearly forgotten planet of Arrakis, where traders have discovered the remarkable properties of the spice melange....

Legion of the Damned

Legion of the Damned: Book 1

William C. Dietz

In the future, the terminally ill can prolong life by surrendering their consciousness to a cybernetic life form that is then recruited into the notorious Legion of the Damned, an elite fighting unit charged with protecting humanity.

Triplanetary

Lensman Series: Book 1

E. E. "Doc" Smith

Cosmic Conflict

In Triplanetary, battle is joined for the control of the universe. The Arisians, benevolent humanoids who have declared themselves Guardians of Civilization, war with the Eddoreans, shapeless, malevolent beings, hungry for power at any price. They fight on both physical and mental levels, wielding weaponry of inconceivable destructiveness.

And their battleground is a tiny planet in a remote galaxy: Earth. The swamping of Atlantis, the fall of Rome, the wars that rack the world and blaze through space - all may seem historical accidents to the men involved, but each in reality is a move in a savage universe-wide power struggle...

Triplanetary is the first volume in the famous Lensman series of novels, an epic saga of galactic adventures on the same magnificent scale as Isaac Asimov's classic FOUNDATION trilogy.

Grey Lensman

Lensman Series: Book 4

E. E. "Doc" Smith

Lensman Kimball Kinnison has attained the goal which every Lensman seeks, and so few attain, that of Unattached Lensman, a Lensman who is accountable to no one anywhere, completely independent, completely free.

Further, he is learning how to fully use his lens. This knowledge is crucial, because as he works his way up through the ranks of the enemy the problems are growing more and more complex and dangerous. Coming face-to-face, and mind-to-mind, with the multi-tentacled scaley creature in his corpse-littered domain, Kimball Kinnison must use everything he has learned to defeat the beast or die trying.

Linesman

Linesman: Book 1

S. K. Dunstall

The lines. No ship can traverse the void without them. Only linesmen can work with them. But only Ean Lambert hears their song. And everyone thinks he's crazy...

Most slum kids never go far, certainly not becoming a level-ten linesman like Ean. Even if he's part of a small, and unethical, cartel, and the other linesmen disdain his self-taught methods, he's certified and working.

Then a mysterious alien ship is discovered at the edges of the galaxy. Each of the major galactic powers is desperate to be the first to uncover the ship's secrets, but all they've learned is that it has the familiar lines of energy--and a defense system that, once triggered, annihilates everything in a 200 kilometer radius.

The vessel threatens any linesman who dares to approach it, except Ean. His unique talents may be the key to understanding this alarming new force--and reconfiguring the relationship between humans and the ships that serve them, forever.

To Honor You Call Us

Man of War: Book 1

H. Paul Honsinger

The Terran Union is engaged in a vast interstellar war against the Krag, ruthless aliens intent on exterminating humankind. In 2315, the wily Max Robichaux is given command of the USS Cumberland, a destroyer with state-of-the-art capabilities but a combat record so bad, she's known as the "Cumberland Gap."

Capt. Robichaux's first mission: to take his warship to the Free Corridor, where the Krag have secretly been buying strategic materials, and to seize or destroy any ships carrying enemy cargo. Far from the fleet and under enforced radio silence, Max relies only on his determination and guile... and the support and friendship of his chief medical officer, the brilliant Dr. Sahin.

Because even as he deals with the ship's onboard problems and the stress of carrying out her risky assignment, Max and the doctor discover that the Cumberland and her misfit crew are all that stands in the way of a deadly Krag attack that threatens to end the war--and humanity--once and for all.

A far-future story in the tradition of "ships of wood, men of iron" novels, To Honor You Call Us and the Man of War series combines the adventure of exploration, the excitement of war, and the dangers of the unknown through the eyes of a ship and her crew.

For Honor We Stand

Man of War: Book 2

H. Paul Honsinger

In 2315, the Earth Union is losing a thirty-year-long war with the Krag Hegemony.

Having encountered the Krag before, Space Commander Max Robicheaux now faces daunting challenges aboard the USS Cumberland: the dangers from the enemy without... and clashes with crew and superiors within.

Meanwhile, Doctor Sahin receives a coded message summoning him to a secret meeting that aims to forge an alliance that could change the balance of power in Known Space. But first, he must circumvent the fighter ships and heavily armed troops of the traitorous emir bent on killing him before he reaches the negotiating table.

Both men must call upon their developing skills and growing friendship to bear the burden of carrying between the Krag Hegemony and the Earth Union a fateful ultimatum and the shocking answer--an answer that could spell eternal slavery, or even extinction, for all humankind.

Brothers in Valor

Man of War: Book 3

H. Paul Honsinger

Sometimes Captain Max Robichaux fights by the book--and sometimes he throws the book away. This makes him one of the Union Space Navy's rising stars. It's also what has kept him and his green crew alive... thus far.

When Max and his ship--the twenty-fourth-century space destroyer USS Cumberland--are boxed in by eight enemy battleships, the odds are against them at a million to one. It takes all their skill and guts just to escape...and surviving won't get easier. Sent on a covert mission behind enemy lines, Max and his crew are poised to strike a blow so hard that, if successful, it could turn the tide of the war. But if they fail, it will cost them their lives... and the lives of every human in the galaxy.

Treasure Planet

Man-Kzin Wars

Hal Colebatch
Jessica Q. Fox

A stand-alone novel in the best-selling Man-Kzin War anthology series created by multiple New York Times best seller Larry Niven. A young man and his Kzin friend seek technological bounty on a forbidden planet while in a race with Kzin space pirates willing to kidnap and kill to make the treasure their own.

A thrilling stand-alone novel addition to the long-running, popular Man-Kzin Wars series created by New York Times multiple best seller, Larry Niven.

"Ah, the wealth o' the treasure planet be beyond the dreams of Man or the hopes o' Kzin!"

On Wunderland, a generation after Liberation, memories of the bloody kzin conquest and Occupation have faded, and men and kzin live largely in peace. But the fabulous treasure of the kzin pirates, hidden on a distant world, remains a magnet for freebooters. Young Peter Cartwright and his kzinrett friend Marthar receive information and map from a most unlikely source and soon themselves fighting the most ruthless pirates in Known Space for an unimaginable prize.

The Man-Kzin Wars

Man-Kzin Wars: Book 1

Larry Niven
Poul Anderson
Dean Ing

You've been tempted by short stories about them, and mention of them as something in the distant past in novels like Ringworld. Now, here's the first a series of collected stories by various authors on the Man-Kzin Wars!

All of them.

This book opens with a short story by Larry Niven about the very first encounter of peaceful humans with the warlike kzinti - and how even peaceful people can create a weapon.

The second novella-length story is by master SF wordsmith Poul Anderson, who lends his unmistakeable style to a story about what happens when the kzinti get hyperdrive.

Dean Ings finishes the collection with another novella about what happens when a human gets hunted by armed kzinti in a wilderness - and it's not what you expect.

Contents:

1 - Introduction (The Man-Kzin Wars) - essay by Larry Niven
5 - The Warriors - [Known Space] - (1966) - shortstory by Larry Niven
27 - Iron - [Man-Kzin Wars] - novella by Poul Anderson
179 - Cathouse - [Man-Kzin Wars] - (1988) - novella by Dean Ing

Man-Kzin Wars II

Man-Kzin Wars: Book 2

Larry Niven
Jerry Pournelle
S. M. Stirling
Dean Ing

Born and bred to hunting, they had never encountered a species they couldn't treat as prey - until they met the canny pseudo-pacifists from Planet Earth. They nearly overwhelmed humanity on first contact, but fast as you can say "Ghengis Khan" or "Alexander the Great" the seemingly harmless monkey boys were all over the pussycats like ugly on an ape, with space fleets and strategic thinking that left the Warrior Race quite dazzled.

But that was then and this is now.

The pain of lost battles has faded and the Kzinti are back, spoiling for a fight, Larry Niven's Known Space is again aflame with war.

Contents:

vii - Introduction (The Man-Kzin Wars II) - essay by Larry Niven
3 - Briar Patch - [Man-Kzin Wars] - novella by Dean Ing
136 - The Children's Hour - [Man-Kzin Wars] - novella by Jerry Pournelle and S. M. Stirling

Man-Kzin Wars III

Man-Kzin Wars: Book 3

The Mind Slavers are back--and only the cat-like Kzinti can save mankind now. This volume includes all-new tales of Larry Niven's Known Space--including one by Niven himself. Another blockbuster in the ongoing chronicle of humanity's greatest war.

Contents:

3 - Madness Has Its Place - [Man-Kzin Wars] - (1990) - novelette by Larry Niven
37 - The Asteroid Queen - [Man-Kzin Wars] - novella by Jerry Pournelle and S. M. Stirling
169 - Inconstant Star - [Man-Kzin Wars] - novella by Poul Anderson

Man-Kzin Wars IV

Man-Kzin Wars: Book 4

Larry Niven
Jerry Pournelle
S. M. Stirling
Thomas T. Thomas

Contents:

vii - Introduction: Man-Kzin Wars IV - essay by Larry Niven
1 - The Survivor - [Man-Kzin Wars] - (1991) - novel by Donald Kingsbury
245 - The Man Who Would Be Kzin - [Man-Kzin Wars] - (1991) - novella by Greg Bear and S. M. Stirling

Man-Kzin Wars V

Man-Kzin Wars: Book 5

After losing three significant battles to the humans, the Kzin begin to wonder if their combative diplomatic style is working and decide to reevaluate their strategy.

Contents:

7 - In the Hall of the Mountain King - [Man-Kzin Wars] - novel by Jerry Pournelle and S. M. Stirling
205 - Hey Diddle Diddle - [Man-Kzin Wars] - novella by Thomas T. Thomas

Man-Kzin Wars VI

Man-Kzin Wars: Book 6

After two unpleasant defeats at the hands of the humans from Earth, the Kzin have decided a change of strategy is in order. Not scream and leap, but the more subtle feint and pounce.

Contents:

3 - The Heroic Myth of Lieutenant Nora Argamentine - [Man-Kzin Wars] - novel by Donald Kingsbury
257 - The Trojan Cat - [Man-Kzin Wars] - novella by Mark O. Martin and Gregory Benford

Man-Kzin Wars VII

Man-Kzin Wars: Book 7

Man-Kzin Wars VIII: Choosing Names

Bruno is pilot of a starship which is actually a gigantic weapon that may end the war with the Kzin with one swift stroke. But now three shiploads of Kzin are closing in on him and his lady....

Contents:

1 - The Colonel's Tiger - [Man-Kzin Wars] - novella by Hal Colebatch
79 - A Darker Geometry - [Man-Kzin Wars] - novel by Mark O. Martin and Gregory Benford
309 - Prisoner of War - [Man-Kzin Wars] - novelette by Paul Chafe

Man-Kzin Wars: Book 8

The Kzin had learned of the existence of human-occupied space, a find that promised new technologies for the race, and new wealth for the fierce Kzin Warriors in the form of land, slaves... and food. Kzin had sent ships to probe the Solar System, expecting no danger from mere weed-eating apes. But the Warrior Race had underestimated monkey ingenuity, and the ships were destroyed by "peaceful" technology that the humans had hurriedly changed into weaponry.The surviving Kzin have been caged and are being studied. "For you, the war is over", the monkey-boys have told the Kzin. Incomprehensible to the Kzin, for whom no war is ever over. The humans are sure that the huge warcats cannot escape their prison. But there is something the humans do not realize. One of the Kzin is a telepath....

Contents:

1 - Choosing Names - [Man-Kzin Wars] - (1998) - shortstory by Larry Niven
17 - Telepath's Dance - [Man-Kzin Wars] - (1998) - novella by Hal Colebatch
129 - Galley Slave - [Man-Kzin Wars] - (1996) - novelette by Jean Lamb
159 - Jotok - [Man-Kzin Wars] - (1998) - novelette by Paul Chafe
197 - Slowboat Nightmare - [Man-Kzin Wars] - (1998) - novella by Warren W. James

Man-Kzin Wars IX

Man-Kzin Wars: Book 9

Man-Kzin Wars X: The Wunder War

New weapons, new strategies and new leaders - the Kzin (warcats supreme) are on the march again and those contemptible humans had better watch out. Once again, it's howling time in Known Space.

Contents:

1 - Pele - [Man-Kzin Wars] - (2001) - novella by Poul Anderson
97 - His Sergeant's Honor - [Man-Kzin Wars] - novella by Hal Colebatch
177 - Windows of the Soul - [Man-Kzin Wars] - novella by Paul Chafe
269 - Fly-By-Night - [Man-Kzin Wars] - (2000) - novella by Larry Niven

Man-Kzin Wars: Book 10

Hal Colebatch

The first colonists from Earth named the planet Wunderland. Generations later, the felinoid invaders called Kzin came and turned it into a hell for humans. Touched on in other accounts of the Man-Kzin wars, here is the decades long saga of Wunderland.

Contents:

1 - One War for Wunderland - [Man-Kzin Wars] - (2003) - novel by Hal Colebatch
147 - The Corporal in the Caves - [Man-Kzin Wars] - (2003) - novelette by Hal Colebatch
181 - Music Box - [Man-Kzin Wars] - (2003) - novelette by Hal Colebatch
299 - Peter Robinson - [Man-Kzin Wars] - (2003) - novelette by Hal Colebatch

Man-Kzin Wars XI

Man-Kzin Wars: Book 11

Larry Niven
Matthew J. Harrington
Hal Colebatch
Paul Chafe

The Kzin were the mightiest warriors in the galaxy, which they were wasting no time in conquering, one star system at a time. Then those feline lords of creation ran into those ridiculous weed-eating pacifistic apes who called themselves "humans." And the catlike Kzin found they had their collective tail caught in a meat grinder. When the mighty Kzin moved in to take over the monkey-infested worlds, they got clobbered. The humans, with their underhanded monkey cunning, turned communications equipment and space drives into weapons that cut the dauntless Kzin heroes into ribbons. And then those underhanded humans gained a faster-than-light drive, and no amount of screaming and leaping could keep the Kzin from losing their first war in centuries of successful conquest. But you can't keep a good warcat down, and the Kzin have by no means given up. New weapons, new strategies, and new leaders: Here they come again and those monkey-boys from Earth had better watch their backs. Once again, it's howling time in Known Space!

Contents:

1 - Three at Table - [Man-Kzin Wars] - novelette by Hal Colebatch
43 - Grossgeister Swamp - [Man-Kzin Wars] - novella by Hal Colebatch
121 - Catspaws - [Man-Kzin Wars] - novella by Hal Colebatch
269 - Teacher's Pet - [Man-Kzin Wars] - novelette by Matthew Joseph Harrington
317 - War and Peace - [Man-Kzin Wars] - novelette by Matthew Joseph Harrington
353 - The Hunting Park - [Man-Kzin Wars] - shortstory by Larry Niven

Man-Kzin Wars XII

Man-Kzin Wars: Book 12

The Kzin, formerly invincible conquerors of all they encountered, had a hard time dealing with their ignominious defeat by the leaf-eating humans. Some secretly hatched schemes for a rematch, others concentrated on gathering power within the kzin hierarchy, and some shamefully cooperated with the contemptible humans, though often for hidden motives. In war and in uneasy peace, Kzin and Humans continue their adventures.

Contents:

1 - Echoes of Distant Guns - [Man-Kzin Wars] - (2009) - shortfiction by Matthew Joseph Harrington
15 - Aquila Advenio - [Man-Kzin Wars] - (2009) - shortfiction by Matthew Joseph Harrington and Hal Colebatch
131 - The Trooper and the Triangle - [Man-Kzin Wars] - (2009) - shortfiction by Hal Colebatch
149 - String - [Man-Kzin Wars] - (2009) - shortfiction by Hal Colebatch and Matthew Joseph Harrington
197 - Peace and Freedom - [Man-Kzin Wars] - (2009) - shortfiction by Matthew Joseph Harrington
227 - Independent - [Man-Kzin Wars] - (2009) - shortfiction by Paul Chafe

Man-Kzin Wars XIII

Man-Kzin Wars: Book 13

Charles E. Gannon
Jane Lindskold
Hal Colebatch
Alex Hernandez
David Bartell
Larry Niven

The perennially best-selling series set in Larry Niven's Man-Kzin universe continues with entry #13 including hard-hitting and thought-inducing tales from a host of talented contributors. The cat-like alien Kzin, formerly invincible conquerors of all they encountered, must learn to compromise with humans if they wish to survive and prosper once again as a species.

Larry Niven's bestselling Man-Kzin series continues! The kzin, formerly invincible conquerors of all they encountered, had a hard time dealing with their ignominious defeat by the leaf-eating humans. Some secretly hatched schemes for a rematch, others concentrated on gathering power within the kzin hierarchy, and some shamefully cooperated with the contemptible humans, though often for hidden motives. In war and in uneasy peace, kzin and humans continue their adventures with a masterful addition to the Man-Kzin Wars shared universe created by multiple New York Times best-seller, incomparable tale-spinner, and Nebula- and five-time Hugo-Award-winner, Larry Niven.

Contents:

Misunderstanding - [Man-Kzin Wars] - novelette by Hal Colebatch and Jessica Q. Fox
Two Types of Teeth - [Man-Kzin Wars] - novella by Jane Lindskold
Pick of the Litter - [Man-Kzin Wars] - novel by Charles E. Gannon
Tomcat Tactics - [Man-Kzin Wars] - novella by Charles E. Gannon
At the Gates - [Man-Kzin Wars] - novelette by Alex Hernandez
Zeno's Roulette - [Man-Kzin Wars] - novelette by David Bartell
Bound for the Promised Land - [Man-Kzin Wars] - short story by Alex Hernandez

Man-Kzin Wars XIV

Man-Kzin Wars: Book 14

Merlin (Alastair Reynolds)

The perennially best-selling series set in Larry Niven's Man-Kzin universe continues with entry #14 including hard-hitting and thought-inducing tales from a host of talented contributors Hal Colebatch, Matthew Joseph Harrington, Alex Hernandez, Jessica Q. Fox, and more. The catlike alien Kzin, formerly invincible conquerors of all they encountered, must learn to compromise with humans if they wish to survive and prosper once again as a species.

Contents:

A Man Named Saul - [Man-Kzin Wars] - shortfiction by Hal Colebatch and Jessica Q. Fox
Heritage - [Man-Kzin Wars] - shortfiction by Matthew Joseph Harrington
The Marmalade Problem - [Man-Kzin Wars] - shortfiction by Hal Colebatch
Leftovers - [Man-Kzin Wars] - shortfiction by Matthew Joseph Harrington
The White Column - [Man-Kzin Wars] - shortfiction by Hal Colebatch
Deadly Knowledge - [Man-Kzin Wars] - shortfiction by Hal Colebatch
Lions on the Beach - [Man-Kzin Wars] - shortfiction by Alex Hernandez

The Zap Gun

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 10

Philip K. Dick

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.

Architects of Memory

Memory War: Book 1

Karen Osborne

Terminally ill salvage pilot Ash Jackson lost everything in the war with the alien Vai, but she'll be damned if she loses her future. Her plan: to buy, beg, or lie her way out of corporate indenture and find a cure. When her crew salvages a genocidal weapon from a ravaged starship above a dead colony, Ash uncovers a conspiracy of corporate intrigue and betrayal that threatens to turn her into a living weapon.

The Iron Tactician

Alastair Reynolds

This is a brand new stand-alone deep space adventure from Alastair Reynolds, featuring the author's long-running character Merlin, who has previously appeared in "Merlin's Gun" (2000), "Hideaway" (2000), and "Minla's Flowers" (2007).

When Merlin encounters the derelict hulk of an old swallowship drifting in the middle of nowhere, he can't resist investigating. He soon finds himself involved in a situation that proves far more complex than he ever anticipated.

MJ-12: Shadows

MJ-12: Majestic-12: Book 2

Michael J. Martinez

It's 1949, and the Cold War is heating up across the world. For the United States, the key to winning might be Variants -- once ordinary US citizens, now imbued with strange paranormal abilities and corralled into covert service by the government's top secret MAJESTIC-12 program.

Some Variants are testing the murky international waters in Syria, while others are back at home, fighting to stay ahead of a political power struggle in Washington. And back at Area 51, the operation's headquarters, the next wave of recruits is anxiously awaiting their first mission. All the while, dangerous figures flit among the shadows and it's unclear whether they are threatening to expose the Variants for what they are... or to completely destroy them. Are they working for the Soviet Union, or something far worse?

Crux

Nexus 5: Book 2

Ramez Naam

Six months have passed since the release of Nexus 5. The world is a different, more dangerous place.

In the USA, the freedom fighters of the Post-Human Liberation Front use Nexus to turn men and women into human time bombs aimed at the President and his allies.

The first blows in the war between human and posthuman have been struck.

Into the Black

Odyssey One: Book 1

Evan Currie

Beyond the confines of our small world, far from the glow of our star, lies a galaxy and universe much larger and more varied than anyone on Earth can possibly imagine. For the new NAC spacecraft Odyssey and her crew, the unimaginable facets of this untouched world are about to become reality.

The Odyssey's maiden voyage is an epic adventure destined to make history. Captain Eric Weston and his crew, pushing past the boundaries of security, encounter horrors, wonders, monsters, and people, all of which will test their resolve, challenge their abilities, and put in sharp relief what is necessary to be a hero.

A first-rate military science fiction epic that combines old-school space opera and modern storytelling, Into the Black: Odyssey One is a riveting, exhilarating adventure with vivid details, rich mythology, and relentless pacing that will leave you breathlessly awaiting book two.

Out of the Black

Odyssey One: Book 4

Evan Currie

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.

Old Man's War

Old Man's War: Book 1

John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wife's grave. Then he joined the army.

The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce-and aliens willing to fight for them are common. The universe, it turns out, is a hostile place.

So: we fight. To defend Earth (a target for our new enemies, should we let them get close enough) and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has gone on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding.

Earth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanity's resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force, which shields the home planet from too much knowledge of the situation. What's known to everybody is that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They don't want young people they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You'll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You'll serve your time at the front. And if you survive, you'll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets.

John Perry is taking that deal. He has only the vaguest idea what to expect. Because the actual fight, light-years from home, is far, far harder than he can imagine-and what he will become is far stranger.

The Ghost Brigades

Old Man's War: Book 2

The Ghost Brigades are the Special Forces of the Colonial Defense Forces, elite troops created from the DNA of the dead and turned into the perfect soldiers for the CDF's toughest operations. They're young, they're fast and strong, and they're totally without normal human qualms.

The universe is a dangerous place for humanity—and it's about to become far more dangerous. Three races that humans have clashed with before have allied to halt our expansion into space. Their linchpin: the turncoat military scientist Charles Boutin, who knows the CDF's biggest military secrets. To prevail, the CDF must find out why Boutin did what he did.

Jared Dirac is the only human who can provide answers -- a superhuman hybrid, created from Boutin's DNA, Jared's brain should be able to access Boutin's electronic memories. But when the memory transplant appears to fail, Jared is given to the Ghost Brigades.

At first, Jared is a perfect soldier, but as Boutin's memories slowly surface, Jared begins to intuit the reason's for Boutin's betrayal. As Jared desperately hunts for his "father," he must also come to grips with his own choices. Time is running out: The alliance is preparing its offensive, and some of them plan worse things than humanity's mere military defeat...

The Last Colony

Old Man's War: Book 3

Retired from his fighting days, John Perry is now village ombudsman for a human colony on distant Huckleberry. With his wife, former Special Forces warrior Jane Sagan, he farms several acres, adjudicates local disputes, and enjoys watching his adopted daughter grow up.That is, until his and Jane's past reaches out to bring them back into the game--as leaders of a new human colony, to be peopled by settlers from all the major human worlds, for a deep political purpose that will put Perry and Sagan back in the thick of interstellar politics, betrayal, and war.

Zoe's Tale

Old Man's War: Book 4

How do you tell your part in the biggest tale in history?

I ask because it's what I have to do. I'm Zoe Boutin Perry: A colonist stranded on a deadly pioneer world. Holy icon to a race of aliens. A player (and a pawn) in a interstellar chess match to save humanity, or to see it fall. Witness to history. Friend. Daughter. Human. Seventeen years old.

Everyone on Earth knows the tale I am part of. But you don't know my tale: How I did what I did - how I did what I had to do - not just to stay alive but to keep you alive, too. All of you. I'm going to tell it to you now, the only way I know how: not straight but true, the whole thing, to try to make you feel what I felt: the joy and terror and uncertainty, panic and wonder, despair and hope. Everything that happened, bringing us to Earth, and Earth out of its captivity. All through my eyes.

It's a story you know. But you don't know it all.

The Human Division

Old Man's War: Book 5

Following the events of The Last Colony, John Scalzi tells the story of the fight to maintain the unity of the human race.

The people of Earth now know that the human Colonial Union has kept them ignorant of the dangerous universe around them. For generations the CU had defended humanity against hostile aliens, deliberately keeping Earth an ignorant backwater and a source of military recruits. Now the CU's secrets are known to all. Other alien races have come on the scene and formed a new alliance--an alliance against the Colonial Union. And they've invited the people of Earth to join them. For a shaken and betrayed Earth, the choice isn't obvious or easy.

The End of All Things

Old Man's War: Book 6

Humans expanded into space... only to find a universe populated with multiple alien species bent on their destruction. Thus was the Colonial Union formed, to help protect us from a hostile universe. The Colonial Union used the Earth and its excess population for colonists and soldiers. It was a good arrangement... for the Colonial Union. Then the Earth said: no more.

Now the Colonial Union is living on borrowed time - a couple of decades at most, before the ranks of the Colonial Defense Forces are depleted and the struggling human colonies are vulnerable to the alien species who have been waiting for the first sign of weakness, to drive humanity to ruin. And there's another problem: A group, lurking in the darkness of space, playing human and alien against each other - and against their own kind - for their own unknown reasons.

In this collapsing universe, CDF Lieutenant Harry Wilson and the Colonial Union diplomats he works with race against the clock to discover who is behind attacks on the Union and on alien races, to seek peace with a suspicious, angry Earth, and keep humanity's union intact... or else risk oblivion, and extinction - and the end of all things.

Table of Contents:

The Life of the Mind - novella
This Hollow Union - novella
Can Long Endure - novella
To Stand or Fall - novella
An Alternate "The Life of the Mind": Deleted and Alternate Scenes - novella

One Second After

One Second After: Book 1

William R. Forstchen

New York Times best selling author William R. Forstchen now brings us a story which can be all too terrifyingly real... a story in which one man struggles to save his family and his small North Carolina town after America loses a war, in one second, a war that will send America back to the Dark Ages... A war based upon a weapon, an Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP). A weapon that may already be in the hands of our enemies.

Months before publication, One Second After has already been cited on the floor of Congress as a book all Americans should read, a book already being discussed in the corridors of the Pentagon as a truly realistic look at a weapon and its awesome power to destroy the entire United States, literally within one second. It is a weapon that the Wall Street Journal warns could shatter America. In the tradition of On the Beach, Fail Safe and Testament, this book, set in a typical American town, is a dire warning of what might be our future... and our end.

Out of the Dark

Out of the Dark: Book 1

David Weber
Chris Kennedy

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...

Into the Light

Out of the Dark: Book 2

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.

Sungrazer

Outriders: Book 2

Jay Posey

In a new Cold War between Earth and the colonies on Mars, when devastating weapons go missing, there's only one team you can call--the Outriders. A crack force of highly specialised super-soldiers, their clone bodies are near-immortal.

When a fully-autonomous vessel with orbital strike capabilities goes missing, it's up to the Outriders to track the untrackable. But when the trail leads them to the influential Martian People's Collective Republic, the operation gets a lot more complicated...

Fortune's Pawn

Paradox: Book 1

Rachel Bach

Devi Morris isn't your average mercenary. She has plans. Big ones. And a ton of ambition. It's a combination that's going to get her killed one day - but not just yet.

That is, until she just gets a job on a tiny trade ship with a nasty reputation for surprises. The Glorious Fool isn't misnamed: it likes to get into trouble, so much so that one year of security work under its captain is equal to five years everywhere else. With odds like that, Devi knows she's found the perfect way to get the jump on the next part of her Plan. But the Fool doesn't give up its secrets without a fight, and one year on this ship might be more than even Devi can handle.

Honor's Knight

Paradox: Book 2

Rachel Bach

Devi Morris has a lot of problems. And not the fun, easy-to-shoot kind either.

After a mysterious attack left her short several memories and one partner, she's determined to keep her head down, do her job, and get on with her life. But even though Devi's not actually looking for it -- trouble keeps finding her. She sees things no one else can, the black stain on her hands is growing, and she is entangled with the cook she's supposed to hate.

But when a deadly crisis exposes far more of the truth than she bargained for, Devi discovers there's worse fates than being shot, and sometimes the only people you can trust are the ones who want you dead.

Heaven's Queen

Paradox: Book 3

Rachel Bach

From the moment she took a job on Captain Caldswell's doomed ship, Devi Morris' life has been one disaster after another: government conspiracies, two alien races out for her blood, an incurable virus that's eating her alive.

Now, with the captain missing and everyone -- even her own government -- determined to hunt her down, things are going from bad to impossible. The sensible plan would be to hide and wait for things to blow over, but Devi's never been one to shy from a fight, and she's getting mighty sick of running.

It's time to put this crisis on her terms and do what she knows is right. But with all human life hanging on her actions, the price of taking a stand might be more than she can pay.

Phule's Company

Phule's Company: Book 1

Robert Lynn Asprin

Meet the soldiers of Phule's company; the few, the proud, the stupid and the inept. These soldiers do more damage before nine in the morning than most people are capable of doing in an entire year. And since fate has a perverse sense of humour they are also mankind's last hope.

Phule's Paradise

Phule's Company: Book 2

Robert Lynn Asprin

Captain Willard Phule must lead his group of unlikely interstellar armed forces on a mission to protect The Fat Chance, an intergalactic casino, from a criminal takeover.

Jack Four

Polity

This high-octane adventure is set in the same world as Neal Asher's acclaimed Polity universe. It's a thrilling, fast-paced standalone novel, perfect for fans of Alastair Reynolds and Stephen Baxter.

Created to die-determined to live...

Jack Four-one of twenty human clones-has been created to be sold. His purchasers are the alien prador and they only want him for their experimentation program. But there is something different about Jack. No clone should possess the knowledge that's been loaded into his mind. And no normal citizen of humanity's Polity worlds would have this information.

The prador's king has been mutated by the Spatterjay virus into a creature even more monstrous than the prador themselves. And his children, the King's Guard, have undergone similar changes. They were infected by the virus during the last humans-versus-prador war, now lapsed into an uneasy truce. But the prador are always looking for new weapons - and their experimentation program might give them the edge they seek.

Suzeal trades human slaves out of the Stratogaster Space Station, re-engineering them to serve the prador. She thinks the rewards are worth the risks, but all that is about to change. The Station was once a zoo, containing monsters from across known space. All the monsters now dwell on the planet below, but they aren't as contained as they seem. And a vengeful clone may be the worst danger of all.

Prador Moon

Polity: Book 1

Neal Asher takes on first contact, Polity style.

This original novel recounts the first contact between the aggressive Prador aliens, and the Polity Collective as it is forced to retool its society to a war footing. The overwhelming brute force of the Prador dreadnaughts causes several worlds and space stations to be overrun. Prador Moon follows the initial Polity defeats, to the first draws, and culminates in what might be the first Polity victory, told from the point of view of two unlikely heroes.

A Hymn Before Battle

Posleen War / Legacy of the Aldenata: Book 1

John Ringo

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.

The Quantum War

Quantum Evolution: Book 3

Derek Künsken

The Union-Congregate war rages onward and the Union's premier fighter pilots, the Homo Eridanus, start encountering deadly resistance from strange pilots on the Congregate side. Among wreckage, they find that new Congregate pilots aren't human, but Homo quantus, with strange wiring and AI connections.

At the same time, the Puppets come to the Union with offers of an alliance for a dangerous price: the rescue of the geneticist Antonio Del Casal who is a captive at Venus, with over a hundred Homo quantus.

The only one who might be able to break through the Congregate defences at Venus is a con man who has given up his profession.

With the Lightnings

RCN Series: Book 1

Daniel Leary is a lieutenant in the Cinnabar Navy with no money and no prospects. Adele Mundy is a scholar whose family was massacred by the government of Cinnabar. In a few hours, diplomacy is going to fail on the planet Kostroma. Daniel, Adele, and the scratch crew they gather aren't much to stand in the way of a powerful invasion fleet, but just possibly they're enough.

Lt. Leary, Commanding

RCN Series: Book 2

The Far Side of the Stars

Lieutenant Daniel Leary of the Republic of Cinnabar Navy commands the corvette Princess Cecile; his friend Signals Officer Adele Mundy has the latest in spy apparatus and the skill to prowl the most tightly guarded database. All they lack are enemies, and fate is about to supply that need in abundance!

A hostage uses the Princess Cecile to regain his freedom-and his throne!

An ally intrigues with enemies of Cinnabar-knowing the plot can only be safeguarded by destroying the Princess Cecile!

A pirate chief joins in a cutthroat battle with a rival-and the Princess Cecile is a pawn!

RCN Series: Book 3

While the Republic of Cinnabar is at peace with the Alliance, warriors like Lt. Daniel Leary and Signals Officer Adele Mundy must find other work--like escorting a pair of wealthy nobles on an expedition to the back of beyond!

The Princess Cecile, the corvette in which they carved their reputations in letters of fire, has been sold as a private yacht, but she still has her guns, her missiles, and her veteran crew. Daniel and Adele will need all of those things as they face winged dragons, an Alliance auxiliary cruiser, jealous lovers, and a mysterious oracle which really does foresee the future.

That won't be enough, though, when they penetrate a secret Alliance base and find a hostile fleet ready for a war that will sweep Cinnabar out of a strategically crucial arm of the galaxy. Preventing that will involve skill, courage, and more luck than a sane man could even pray for; and it will require a space battle on a scale that a tiny corvette like the Princess Cecile has no business being involved in. But she'll be in the middle of it anyway, because Daniel, Adele, and their Cinnabar crew would never turn their backs on a fight!

The Way to Glory

RCN Series: Book 4

Violence racks Cinnabar. The fleets of the tyrannical Alliance are on the move, and at home class riots threaten to rip apart not only society but the Republic of Cinnabar Navy. Lt. Daniel Leary has earned promotion, but the needs of the Republic and the RCN require that he serve under an officer whose paranoia has already led him to execute crewmen out of hand.

Signals Officer Adele Mundy has repeatedly proved her skills and loyalty as Cinnabar's most accomplished intelligence agent, but now elements within the Republic want to draw her into a conspiracy like the one that led to her parent's massacre. Leary and Mundy battle their way from riot-torn streets to spies in an outlying base and an anarchic planet where violence is the only law, but if they succeed at every stage, one test still remains: a space battle against an overwhelming Alliance force.

Even for Daniel Leary it will be a difficult fight to win... and almost impossible to survive.

Some Golden Harbor

RCN Series: Book 5

The tyrannical Alliance continues its war against the Republic of Cinnabar, and Daniel Leary, newly promoted to Commander, and his crew have a new mission: Stop Dunbar’s World from falling to an invasion by the planet Pellegrino. Nataniel Arruns, son of the dictator of Pellegrino, has landed with a large contingent, intending to set himself up as the ruling warlord, with the planet’s population becoming workers—serfs—of the Pellegrinian overlords. And Dunbar’s world has no more than their local police force to oppose him.

Leary again commands the corvette Princess Cecile, but on this mission her missile tubes are empty. Only one man is in a position to aid Leary, but the rich and powerful would rather see him fail than succeed in stopping the invasion. Leary must somehow overcome a large entrenched force on an island defended by powerful plasma cannon and shipkilling missiles and backed up by a heavily armed warship in orbit, all while commanding only a small and virtually unarmed spacecraft.

But Leary again has the help of Signals Officer Adele Mundy, who can make computer networks do the apparently impossible. Leary, Mundy and the crew of the Princess Cecile have gone up against impossible odds before . . . and their opponents in those victorious missions are still wondering just what hit them.

When the Tide Rises

RCN Series: Book 6

When the Republic of Cinnabar doesn't have enough battleships to deal with all the crises in its war with the Alliance, it sends the next best thing: Commander Daniel Leary and his friend, the spy Adele Mundy. This time they're off to help the Bagarian cluster in its rebellion against the Alliance, but they'll quickly find that the worst threats to the rebels are the treacherous politicians.

Leary and Mundy use electronic espionage, sub-machine guns, and shipkilling missiles to outwit political rivals, put down mutiny, and capture an Alliance fortress. When all else fails, they'll strike for the heart of the Alliance--and then throw their tiny corvette into a major fleet action.

A cascade of non-stop action as vivid as only David Drake can write it!

In the Stormy Red Sky

RCN Series: Book 7

Daniel Leary is Cinnabar's most successful space captain; his friend, Lady Adele Mundy, is its most efficient spy—but they've got their hands full this time as they face:

A Cinnabar Senator furious at losing an election—and still powerful enough to make her anger deadly.

The boy ruler of a star cluster who thinks he's a god—and who can sign the death warrants of even Cinnabar officials if a mad whimsy tells him to.

A world of slaves and escaped slaves, where the most savage beasts in the jungle used to be human.

An enemy base that could shrug off attack by powerful battlefleets—but which must fall to a single cruiser if Cinnabar is to survive.

From palace to reeking jungle, from gunfights in grimy hangars to the flagship's bridge during a sprawling space battle, Leary and Mundy are in the thick of it again. Watch the galaxy explode — IN THE STORMY RED SKY!

What Distant Deeps

RCN Series: Book 8

NO REST FOR THE WEARY

Captain Daniel Leary and his friend, the spy Adele Mundy, have been in the front lines of Cinnabar's struggle against the totalitarian Alliance. Now these galactic superpowers have signed a peace of mutual exhaustion--

But the jackals are moving in!

The Republic of Cinnabar was on the verge of collapse under the weight of taxes, casualties, and war's disruption of trade. That the Alliance of Free Stars was in even worse condition helped only because it has made peace possible.

Years of war have been hard on Daniel and harder still on Adele, whose life outside information-gathering is a tightrope between despair and deadly violence. Their masters in the RCN and the Republic's intelligence service have sent them to the fringes of human space to relax away from danger.

But the barbarians of the outer reaches have their own plans, plans which will bring down both Cinnabar and the Alliance. The enemies of peace include traitors, giant reptiles, and barbarian pirates whose ships can outsail even Daniel Leary's splendid corvette, the Princess Cecile.

Unless Daniel, Adele, and their unlikely allies succeed, galactic civilization will disintegrate into blood and chaos.

So they will succeed—or they'll die trying!

Fireships

Reaches: Book 3

Fending off a Federation attempt to take over her ship, intergalactic pirate captain Sarah Blythe vows to make the Federation President pay for her cargo losses and plans to join the Venus rebellion.

To Change the Past

Reality Benders: Book 10

Michael Atamanov

Space is a dangerous place. Here, you're either a predator or soon to fall prey to a ruthless neighbor. And if you aren't tough enough to make it on your own, you'll need the backing of a formidable power to keep you safe from bigger fish.

Earth used to have such protection -- the great Geckho race. But unfortunately, the Geckho fell to an enemy onslaught, leaving planet Earth to fend for itself. And now, Earth humanity has precious little time to prove to their galactic neighbors that they are not to be trifled with.

Thankfully though, they have not only the mighty Army of Earth and a capable space fleet, but also something unique of which no other race can boast -- Gnat and his ancient cruiser, which can travel instantly to any point in the Universe, breaking all conventional strictures and laws of war.

Red Rising

Red Rising: Book 1

Pierce Brown

"I live for the dream that my children will be born free," she says. "That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them."

"I live for you," I say sadly.

Eo kisses my cheek. "Then you must live for more."

Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in a color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations. Yet he spends his life willingly, knowing that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children.

But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and lush wilds spread across the planet. Darrow -- and Reds like him -- are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class.

Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the Legendary Institue, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity's overlords struggle for the power. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society's ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies... even if it means he has to become one of them to do so.

Golden Son

Red Rising: Book 2

Pierce Brown

As a Red, Darrow grew up working the mines deep beneath the surface of Mars, enduring backbreaking labor while dreaming of the better future he is building for his decendents. But the Society he faithfully served was built on lies. Darrow's kind have betrayed and denied by their elitist masters, the Golds -- and their only path to liberation is revolution. And so Darrow sacrifices himself in the name for greater good for which Eo, his true love and inspiration , laid down her own life. He becomes a Gold, infiltrating their privileged realm so that he can destroy it from within.

A lamb among wolves in a cruel world, Darrow find friendship, respect, and even love -- but also the wrath of powerful rivals. To wage and win the war that will change humankind's destiny, Darrow must must confront the treachery arrayed against him, overcome his all-too-human desire for retribution -- and strive not for violent revolt but a hopeful rebirth. Though the road ahead if fraught with danger and deciet, Darrow must choose to follow Eo's principles of love and justice to free his people.

He must live for more.

Morning Star

Red Rising: Book 3

Pierce Brown

Red Rising thrilled readers and announced the presence of a talented new author. Golden Son changed the game and took the story of Darrow to the next level. Now comes the exhilarating conclusion to the Red Rising Trilogy: Morning Star.

Darrow would have lived in peace, but his enemies brought him war. The Gold overlords demanded his obedience, hanged his wife, and enslaved his people. But Darrow is determined to fight back. Risking everything to transform himself and breach Gold society, Darrow has battled to survive the cutthroat rivalries that breed Society's mightiest warriors, climbed the ranks, and waited patiently to unleash the revolution that will tear the hierarchy apart from within.

Finally, the time has come.

But devotion to honor and hunger for vengeance run deep on both sides. Darrow and his comrades-in-arms face powerful enemies without scruple or mercy. Among them are some Darrow once considered friends. To win, Darrow will need to inspire those shackled in darkness, break their chains, unmake the world their cruel masters have built, and claim a destiny too long denied--and too glorious to surrender.

Nightingale

Revelation Space

Alastair Reynolds

This novella originally appeared in the collection Galactic North (2006). It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection (2007), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Off Armageddon Reef

Safehold: Book 1

Humanity pushed its way to the stars - and encountered the Gbaba, a ruthless alien race that nearly wiped us out.

Earth and her colonies are now smoldering ruins, and the few survivors have fled to distant, Earth-like Safehold, to try to rebuild. But the Gbaba can detect the emissions of an industrial civilization, so the human rulers of Safehold have taken extraordinary measures: with mind control and hidden high technology, they've built a religion in which every Safeholdian believes, a religion designed to keep Safehold society medieval forever.

800 years pass. In a hidden chamber on Safehold, an android from the far human past awakens. This "rebirth" was set in motion centuries before, by a faction that opposed shackling humanity with a concocted religion. Via automated recordings, "Nimue" - or, rather, the android with the memories of Lieutenant Commander Nimue Alban - is told her fate: she will emerge into Safeholdian society, suitably disguised, and begin the process of provoking the technological progress which the Church of God Awaiting has worked for centuries to prevent.

Nothing about this will be easy. To better deal with a medieval society, "Nimue" takes a new gender and a new name, "Merlin." His formidable powers and access to caches of hidden high technology will need to be carefully concealed. And he'll need to find a base of operations, a Safeholdian country that's just a little more freewheeling, a little less orthodox, a little more open to the new.

And thus Merlin comes to Charis, a mid-sized kingdom with a talent for naval warfare. He plans to make the acquaintance of King Haarahld and Crown Prince Cayleb, and maybe, just maybe, kick off a new era of invention. Which is bound to draw the attention of the Church... and, inevitably, lead to war.

It's going to be a long, long process. And it's going to be the can't-miss SF epic of the decade.

By Schism Rent Asunder

Safehold: Book 2

Midst Toil and Tribulation

The world has changed. The mercantile kingdom of Charis has prevailed over the alliance designed to exterminate it. Armed with better sailing vessels, better guns and better devices of all sorts, Charis faced the combined navies of the rest of the world at Darcos Sound and Armageddon Reef, and broke them. Despite the implacable hostility of the Church of God Awaiting, Charis still stands, still free, still tolerant, still an island of innovation in a world in which the Church has worked for centuries to keep humanity locked at a medieval level of existence.

But the powerful men who run the Church aren't going to take their defeat lying down. Charis may control the world's seas, but it barely has an army worthy of the name. And as King Cayleb knows, far too much of the kingdom's recent good fortune is due to the secret manipulations of the being that calls himself Merlin-a being that, the world must not find out too soon, is more than human. A being on whose shoulders rests the last chance for humanity's freedom.

Now, as Charis and its archbishop make the rift with Mother Church explicit, the storm gathers. Schism has come to the world of Safehold. Nothing will ever be the same.

Safehold: Book 6

WAR AND FAMINE

Once the Church of God Awaiting dominated all the kingdoms of Safehold. Then, after centuries of stasis, the island kingdom of Charis began to defy the edicts of Mother Church-egged on, some say, by the mysterious warrior-monk Merlin Athrawes, who enjoys the Charisian royal family's absolute trust.

What vanishingly few people know is that Merlin is the cybernetic avatar of a young woman a thousand years dead, felled in the war in which aliens destroyed Earth...and that since awakening, his task has been to restart the history of the long-hidden human race.

Now, reeling from the wars and intrigues that have cascaded from Charis's declaration of independence, the Republic of Siddermark slides into chaos. The Church has engineered a rebellion, and Siddermark's all-important harvest is at risk. King Cayleb and Queen Sharleyan struggle to stabilize their ally, which will mean sending troops-but, even more importantly, preventing famine. For mass starvation in Safehold's breadbasket is a threat even more ominous than civil war...

Like a Mighty Army

Safehold: Book 7

For centuries, the world of Safehold, last redoubt of the human race, lay under the unchallenged rule of the Church of God Awaiting. The Church permitted nothing new-no new inventions, no new understandings of the world.

What no one knew was that the Church was an elaborate fraud-a high-tech system established by a rebel faction of Safehold's founders, meant to keep humanity hidden from the powerful alien race that had destroyed old Earth.

Then awoke Merlyn Athrawes, cybernetic avatar of a warrior a thousand years dead, felled in the war in which Earth was lost. Monk, warrior, counselor to princes and kings, Merlyn has one purpose: to restart the history of the too-long-hidden human race.

And now the fight is thoroughly underway. The island empire of Charis has declared its independence from the Church, and with Merlyn's help has vaulted forward into a new age of steam-powered efficiency. Fending off the wounded Church, Charis has drawn more and more of the countries of Safehold to the cause of independence and self-determination. But at a heavy cost in bloodshed and loss-a cost felt by nobody more keenly that Merlyn Athrawes.

The wounded Church is regrouping. Its armies and resources are vast. The fight for humanity's future isn't over, and won't be over soon...

Midshipman's Hope

Seafort Saga: Book 1

A hideous accident kills the senior officer of UNS Hibernia, leaving a terrified young officer with the daunting taskof saving 300 colonists and crew aboard a damaged ship, on a 17-month gauntlet to reach Hope Nation. With no chance of rescue, Nicholas Seafort must overcome despair and exhaution, malfunctions and mutiny, in the name of duty.

Challenger's Hope

Seafort Saga: Book 2

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.

Prisoner's Hope

Seafort Saga: Book 3

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.

Fisherman's Hope

Seafort Saga: Book 4

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.

Voices of Hope

Seafort Saga: Book 5

In the fourth book in the popular Seafort Saga, the world-renowned Nicholas Seafort is called from his retirement from the U.N. Navy to defend the indigent "trannies" of New York City from an inhuman plan.

Return Engagement

Settling Accounts: Book 1

Harry Turtledove's remarkable alternative history novels brilliantly remind us of how fragile the thread of time can be, and offer us a world of "what if." Drawing on a magnificent cast of characters that includes soldiers, generals, lovers, spies, and demagogues, Turtledove returns to an epic tale that only he could tell-the story of a North American continent, separated into two bitterly opposed nations, that stands on the verge of exploding once again.

In 1914 they called it The Great War, and few could imagine anything worse. For nearly three decades a peace forged in blood and fatigue has held sway in North America. Now, Japan dominates the Pacific, the Russian Tsar rules Alaska, and England, under Winston Churchill, chafes for a return to its former glory. But behind the façade of world order, America is a bomb waiting to go off. Jake Featherston, the megalomaniacal leader of the Confederate States of America, is just the man to light the fuse.

In the White House in Philadelphia, Socialist President Al Smith is a living symbol of hope for a nation that has been through the fires of war and the flood tides of depression. In the South, Featherston and his ruling Freedom Party have put down a Negro rebellion with a bloody fist and have interned them in concentration camps. Now they are determined to crush their Northern neighbor at any cost.

Featherston's planes attack Philadelphia without warning. The U.S.A. lashes back blindly at Charleston. And a terrible second coming is at hand. When the CSA blitzkrieg is launched, the U.S.A. is caught flat-footed. Before long, the gray Army reaches Lake Erie. But in its wake the war machine is spinning a vortex of destruction, betrayal, and fury that no one, not even Jake Featherston himself, can control.

Now, President Smith faces a Herculean task, while an obscure assistant secretary of war named Roosevelt rises in his ranks. For the U.S.A., the darkest days still lay ahead. Across the globe, a new era of war has just begun. And in the hands of the incomparable Harry Turtledove, readers are treated to a masterful vision of what might have been. An enduring portrait of history, nations, and human nature in its many manifestations, Return Engagement is a monumental journey into the second half of the twentieth century.

Drive to the East

Settling Accounts: Book 2

Harry Turtledove-the master of alternate history-has recast the tumultuous twentieth century and created an epic that is powerful, bold, and as convincing as it is provocative. In Drive to the East he continues his saga of warfare that has divided a nation and now threatens the entire world.

In 1914, the First World War ignited a brutal conflict in North America, with the United States finally defeating the Confederate States. In 1917, The Great War ended and an era of simmering hatred began, fueled by the despotism of a few and the sacrifice of many. Now it's 1942. The USA and CSA are locked in a tangle of jagged, blood-soaked battle lines, modern weaponry, desperate strategies, and the kind of violence that only the damned could conjure up-for their enemies and themselves.

In Richmond, Confederate president and dictator Jake Featherston is shocked by what his own aircraft have done in Philadelphia-killing U.S. president Al Smith in a barrage of bombs. Featherston presses ahead with a secret plan carried out on the dusty plains of Texas, where a so-called detention camp hides a far more evil purpose.

As the untested U.S. vice president takes over for Smith, the United States face a furious thrust by the Confederate army, pressing inexorably into Pennsylvania. But with the industrial heartland under siege, Canada in revolt, and U.S. naval ships fighting against the Japanese in the Sandwich Islands, the most dangerous place in the world may be overlooked.

The Grapple

Settling Accounts: Book 3

It is 1943, the third summer of the new war between the Confederate States of America and the United States, a war that will turn on the deeds of ordinary soldiers, extraordinary heroes, and a colorful cast of spies, politicians, rebels, and everyday citizens. The CSA president, Jake Featherston, seems to have greatly miscalculated the North's resilience. But as new demonic tools of killing are unleashed, secret wars are unfolding. The U.S. government in Philadelphia has proof that the tyrannical Featherston is murdering African Americans by the tens of thousands in a Texas gulag called Determination. And the leaders of both sides know full well that the world's next great power will not be the one with the biggest army but the nation that wins the race against nature and science-and smashes open the power of the atom.

In at the Death

Settling Accounts: Book 4