Search Worlds Without End

A collection of original, epic science fiction stories by some of today's best writers - for fans who want a little less science and a lot more action - and edited by two-time Hugo Award winner John Joseph Adams.

Inspired by movies like The Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Wars, this anthology features brand-new stories from some of science fiction's best authors including Dan Abnett, Jack Campbell, Linda Nagata, Seanan McGuire, Alan Dean Foster, Charlie Jane Anders, Kameron Hurley, and many others.

Table of Contents:

• A Temporary Embarrassment in Spacetime - Charlie Jane Anders
• Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance - Tobias S. Buckell
• The Deckhand, the Nova Blade, and the Thrice-Sung Texts - Becky Chambers
• The Sighted Watchmaker - Vylar Kaftan
• Infinite Love Engine - Joseph Allen Hill
• Unfamiliar Gods - Adam-Troy Castro, with Judi B. Castro
• Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World - Caroline M. Yoachim
• Our Specialty is Xenogeology - Alan Dean Foster
• Golden Ring - Karl Schroeder
• Tomorrow When We See the Sun - A. Merc Rustad
• Bring the Kids and Revisit the Past at the Traveling Retro Funfair! - Seanan McGuire
• The Dragon that Flew Out of the Sun - Aliette De Bodard
• Diamond and the World Breaker - Linda Nagata
• The Chameleon's Gloves - Yoon Ha Lee
• The Universe, Sung in Stars - Kat Howard
• Wakening Ouroboros - Jack Campbell
• Warped Passages - Kameron Hurley
• The Frost Giant's Data - Dan Abnett

When evidence of an advanced civilization is discovered by SETI astronomers, an expedition into the far reaches of the galaxy is planned and an eclectic team of scientists is chosen to make the trip. But because the origin of the alien signals is thousands of light-years away, the crew will age only a few years while millennia pass on Earth. And though they are ready to face the ramifications of such a voyage, none of the starfarers are prepared for what awaits them at the outer edge of the cosmos--or back at the planet they once called home.

Fifty men and women set out in the twenty-third century from Earth aboard an interstellar craft to travel to a planet some thirty light-years away. The ship will approach the speed of light and so (as Einstein predicted) subjective time on board will slow and so the journey of several decades will be of much shorter duration for the crew. But the ship's deceleration system is irreparably damaged when it hits a cloud of interstellar dust and acceleration continues toward light speed, tau zero. Soon the ship is speeding through galaxies and eons are passing on board the ship in the blink of an eye ...

In the immeasurable past a mysterious alien race known as The Others left mankind a challenging legacy, a 'gate' to the unexplored reaches of the stars. Humanity has utilized the gate to painstakingly colonize the Phoebus star system but has left the rest of the galaxy unexplored. In the midst of turbulent political upheaval on Earth, the exploratory ship Emissary leaves through the gate on a voyage of discovery. When the Emissary returns ahead of schedule the Social Welfare Party on Earth impounds the ship and imprisons its crew - and forbids all future space exploration. Dan Broderson, an entrepreneur and adventurer, commandeers a commercial spaceship from his own company and travels to Earth to find the Emissary. He locates the ship, confounds its captors and rescues some of the explorers, including the first alien to visit the solar system. But Broderson has to flee through the gate unprepared, to become a wanderer among the stars in search of The Others. They alone have the knowledge that will enable his ship to return home.

A mythic tale of space travelers marooned on a planet engulfed in the flames of war and of the immortal hero who endeavors to save them in the name of love.

In a far-future era, death is virtually no more, banished except in the case of severe, violent trauma, enabling mankind to spend what were once entire lifetimes exploring the farthest reaches of the vast universe. When the interstellar vessel Meteor is dispatched to investigate a distant orb circling a giant red sun, an error in calculations sends the ship crashing into a different world altogether, casting its surviving crew into the heart of a savage, planetwide war of primitive alien tribes. With no means of escape and hostiles on every side, the situation appears hopeless for Captain Felip Argens. But for the mission's true leader--crewman, adventurer, and ship's bard Hugh Valland--impossible is not an option. If necessary, he will alter destiny to end the terrible conflict and bring his men safely back home, even if it takes decades, or centuries, or longer--for a remarkable love patiently awaits Valland's return to Earth. It is she who sustains him, who inspires his actions, his courage, his song, with a love that is a miracle, a memory, a tragedy, and a dream.

One of the most thoughtful and lyrical works by the incomparable Poul Anderson--winner of seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards over the course of his acclaimed career--World without Stars is a thrilling deep-space adventure and a magnificent feat of world building by a luminary of science fiction's golden age.

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities: A Collection of Space Futures (2017), edited by Ed Finn, Joey Eschrich and Juliet Ulman. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection (2018), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 3 (2018), edited by Neil Clarke.

A starship hurtles through the emptiness of space. Its destination-unknown. Its purpose-a mystery.

Now, one man wakes up. Ripped from a dream of a new home-a new planet and the woman he was meant to love in his arms-he finds himself wet, naked, and freezing to death. The dark halls are full of monsters but trusting other survivors he meets might be the greater danger.

All he has are questions-- Who is he? Where are they going? What happened to the dream of a new life? What happened to Hull 03?

All will be answered, if he can survive the ship.

HULL ZERO THREE is an edge-of-your-seat thrill ride through the darkest reaches of space.

Watching HMS Eclipse through the geosynch spaceport window, Officer James Dunne, a newly minted graduate of the Royal Interstellar Service Academy, thinks his first assignment will be routine... an easy going excursion on an aging deep-space cruiser, heading into the Dark, on a mission to explore the farthest reaches of known space.

James had always wanted to be a part of the romantic final frontier. Now, he thought, his lifelong dream was about to come true.

In fact, he was about to begin the greatest challenge, and worst nightmare, of his already-too-short service career!

Although repeatedly warned "not to rock the boat", it soon becomes obvious that it is too late for the young Officer!

He is drafted into the First Contact Team where he realizes two things: (1) that his contribution to the Interstellar Space Service might easily turn out to be that of a 'replaceable warm body' and (2) that disrespecting junior officers, like Dunne himself, often suffer 'unfortunate' and sometimes fatal 'accidents' out in the Dark.

Dunne's survival will depend on his ability to separate power from perversion while enduring the corruption and control of others!

An odyssey of discovery, from a shattered society through the solar system with a handful of men and women who ride a cold, hurtling ball of ice to the shaky promise of a distant, unknowable future.

Life might emerge under the most unlikely conditions... or in the last extremity.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Author of the Nebula Award winning Timescape, Benford's first collection of short stories demonstrates the extraordinary range of his imagination. The stories contained within are a perfect introduction to the work of one of our greatest SF novelists and thinkers.

Table of Contents:

• Blood on Glass - (1986) - poem
• In Alien Flesh - (1978) - novelette
• Time Shards - (1979) - shortstory
• Redeemer - (1979) - shortstory
• Snatching the Bot - (1977) - shortfiction
• Relativistic Effects - (1982) - novelette
• Nooncoming - (1978) - shortstory
• To the Storming Gulf - (1985) - novella
• White Creatures - (1975) - shortstory
• Me/Days - (1984) - shortstory
• Of Space/Time and the River - (1985) - novelette
• Exposures - (1981) - shortstory
• Time's Rub - (1984) - shortstory
• Doing Lennon - (1975) - shortstory
• Afterword (In Alien Flesh) - (1986) - essay

This short story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January-February 2016. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection (2017), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Monument is a science fiction novel about destructive tourism -- a serious subject, but as usual with Biggle, handled in a lighter vein, and at times frankly humorous. A classic science fiction novel from the author of ALL THE COLORS OF DARKNESS.

WHEN THE SUN EXPLODES...

All life will end. No one will survive the blow-up; except the men and women who crowed into a few starships and fly away into space while there is still time, to look for a new home in the infinite void, a new planet on which to settle.

Jorn, unskilled, unemployed, seemingly a reject from society, finds that he has what it takes to become one of he brave survivors, blasting off in hastily built ships that have never flown before. Jorn and his companions begin a long search, threatened by repeated disasters and despair, but ultimately leading through to an unexpected climax for which one one is prepared...

Leaving behind a world on the brink of destruction, man came to the Red planet and found the Martians waiting, dreamlike. Seeking the promise of a new beginning, man brought with him his oldest fears and his deepest desires. Man conquered Mars?and in that instant, Mars conquered him. The strange new world with its ancient, dying race and vast, red-gold deserts cast a spell on him, settled into his dreams, and changed him forever. Here are the captivating chronicles of man and Mars?the modern classic by the peerless Ray Bradbury.

The Enginemen once pushed the Bigships through the Nada Continuum, using the power of their minds to propel the ships at faster-than-light speeds. Now the Kielor Vincicoff gates, which twist space and bring distant planets closer, have made both the men and their ships redundant.

Contains the novel and the following stories (other editions may vary):

• The Girl Who Died for Art and Lived
• The Phoenix Experiment
• Big Trouble Upstairs
• The Star of Epsilon
• The Time-Lapsed Man
• The Pineal Zen Equation
• The Art of Acceptance
• Elegy Perpetuum

Former pilot and planetary pioneer Jonathan James is tempted out of retirement by an offer he can't refuse. It means going back to the one place he vowed never to return to: Arcturus Seven. A Closed Planet; a hothouse world where every plant and animal is hell-bent on killing and consuming you; the place that cost him the life of the only woman he has ever truly loved.

Jonathan knows the wealthy tycoon seeking to recruit him cannot be trusted, but he has no choice. If he doesn't do it, someone else will, and Arcturus Seven has a secret, one which must never be disclosed, so Jonathan accepts the mission even though it means facing memories he has spent years denying.

On Arcturus VII is a fabulous slice of planetary romance from award-winning author Eric Brown. A sparkling tale of intrigue, adventure, and romance; traditional in style but wholly contemporary in its delivery.

When a young tug pilot's career is ruined by a collision in Earth orbit he has no choice but to accept a commission to fly an eccentric ship builder to a planet far from the trade routes. When they discover alien ruins on the planet and the hulk of a missing generation ship they are thrown into the centre of a conspiracy that reaches back centuries.

Meanwhile on earth a young Indian police officer is trying to track down a serial killer little suspecting that the killer is linked to what is happening on a planet light years away and that her own past holds the key to everything that is happening. Eric Brown has written a novel that brings together an extraordinary imagination, rare sensitivity to character and a love of Eastern philosphy. A key novel from one of the UK's favourite SF writers.

Starduster Yes, I'm Max Andrews. I'm one of the guys who fought and bled and worked to get to Mars. I figure what I gave up in those early years gave me the right to pilot the next big jump. I've lied and stolen for that right. I'd have killed, too, but I didn't have top. Instead, I let a woman give her life so I could have my chance, my door to space. You think I'd stop at anything, now? I'll be on that rocket, blasting away on America's biggest adventure, the hop out into the stars themselves Only Fred Brown could have written this deeply moving science fiction novel about one man's epic, life-long struggle to open mankind's pathway to the star

Captain Aruzel Kidron, privateer, has made his reputation raiding alien vessels and colonies in his converted trader, "Magpie". His arch rival is Nomelet of the Calethar, who represents the greatest threat to his ambitions in space.

Among six hundred thousand stars visited by man, sixty thousand have planets hospitable to life, six thousand have developed life and six hundred have been settled, or seeded, with humanity. A vast vessel, known simply as Ship, travels an endless route, checking in with all the settled planets, observing, offering help where it can as some flourish, some falter but all change and evolve. Unexpectedly, Ship has developed feelings and intelligence and it struggles with human-like emotions as it sees the many ways that man can evolve or devolve when left to his own devices with the one eternal constant--change.

Table of Contents:

• Through Darkest Adolescence with Lois McMaster Bujold, or, Thank You, But I Already Have a Life - (1996) - essay by Lillian Stewart Carl
• Adventure of the Lady on the Embankment - (1996) - novelette
• Barter - (1985) - shortstory
• Garage Sale - (1987) - shortstory
• The Hole Truth - (1986) - shortstory
• Dreamweaver's Dilemma - (1996) - novelette
• The Mountains of Mourning - (1989) - novella
• My First Novel - (1996) - essay
• Beyond Genre Barriers - (1996) - essay
• The Unsung Collaborator - (1996) - essay
• Allegories of Change: The "New" Biotech in the Eye of Science Fiction - (1989) - essay
• Biolog - (1996) - essay
• Awards - (1996) - essay
• American Bibliography - (1996) - essay
• Answers - (1996) - essay
• Miles Naismith Vorkosigan: His Universe and Times - (1996) - essay with Michael Bernardi
• Timelines (Dreamweaver's Dilemma) - (1996) - interior artwork by Suford Lewis
• Towards a Genealogy of Lord Miles Vorkosigan and Other Persons of Interest - (1996) - essay by Suford Lewis
• A Pronunciation Guide to Names and Places - (1996) - essay by Suford Lewis

A stand-alone science fiction novella from the award-winning, bestselling, critically-acclaimed author of the Wayfarer series.

At the turn of the twenty-second century, scientists make a breakthrough in human spaceflight. Through a revolutionary method known as somaforming, astronauts can survive in hostile environments off Earth using synthetic biological supplementations. They can produce antifreeze in subzero temperatures, absorb radiation and convert it for food, and conveniently adjust to the pull of different gravitational forces. With the fragility of the body no longer a limiting factor, human beings are at last able to journey to neighboring exoplanets long known to harbor life.

A team of these explorers, Ariadne O'Neill and her three crewmates, are hard at work in a planetary system fifteen light-years from Sol, on a mission to ecologically survey four habitable worlds. But as Ariadne shifts through both form and time, the culture back on Earth has also been transformed. Faced with the possibility of returning to a planet that has forgotten those who have left, Ariadne begins to chronicle the story of the wonders and dangers of her mission, in the hope that someone back home might still be listening.

Time is running out for the passengers and crew of the tourist-cruiser "Selene", incarcerated in a sea of choking lunar dust. On the surface, her rescuers find their resources stretched to the limit by the pitiless and unpredictable conditions of a totally alien environment.

Nebula winning and Hugo nominated novella.

In leading an expedition through the many-layered Jovian atmosphere in the hydrogen balloon craft Kon-Tiki, Captain Howard Falcon discovers a world where bioluminescent air plankton produce brilliant atmospheric sea-fire, predatory manta-ray creatures dominate the skies, and enormous jellyfish-like beings grow to be over a mile across.

This story was originally published in the December 1971 issue of Playboy and has been reprinted many times. It is incuded in the collections The Wind from the Sun (1972), The Sentinel (1983) and The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2000). It is half of the Tor Double A Meeting with Medusa / Green Mars (1988). It can be found in numerous anthologies. Among them Nebula Award Stories Eight (1973), edited by Isaac Asimov, Best SF: 1971 (1972) edited by Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss, The Best Science Fiction of the Year (1972) edited by Terry Carr, The Arbor House Treasury of Science Fiction Masterpieces (1983), edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg and The SFWA Grand Masters, Volume 2 (2000), edited by Frederik Pohl.

Two hundred years after landing on the Moon, mankind has moved further out into the solar system. With permanent settlements now established on the Moon, Venus, and Mars, the inhabitants of these colonies have formed a political alliance called the Federation.

On the Moon, a government agent from Earth is tracking a suspected spy at a prominent observatory. His mission is complicated by the rise in tensions between Earth's government and the Federation over access to rare heavy metals. As the agent finds himself locked in a battle for life and death on the eerie, lunar landscape, the larger conflict explodes across space, leaving mankind's future in doubt.

First published in 1955, this suspense-filled space opera by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inductee was a significant forerunner of television hits like Star Trek and The Expanse.

Roy Malcolm has always been fascinated by space travel. And when he wins a voyage to the Inner Space Station as a game show prize, he's sure it's the trip of a lifetime. Before long, Roy is taken in by the young crew-and shares their adventures and lives.

One of Arthur C. Clarke's earliest novels, Islands in the Sky is particularly noteworthy for its description of geostationary communications satellites. While this technology was nonexistent during the writing of this book, it later became commonplace-and Clarke is credited with the first practical descriptions of such technology. This book is compelling not just as a fictional tale, but as an example of the prescient power of Clarke's vision.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1972) - essay by J. B. Priestley
• Foreword - (1972) - essay
• The Nine Billion Names of God - (1953) - shortstory
• An Ape About the House - (1962) - shortstory
• Green Fingers - (1956) - shortstory
• Trouble with the Natives - (1951) - shortstory
• Into the Comet - (1960) - shortstory
• No Morning After - (1954) - shortstory
• "If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth..." - (1951) - shortstory
• Who's There? - (1958) - shortstory
• All the Time in the World - (1952) - shortstory
• Hide and Seek - (1949) - shortstory
• Robin Hood, F.R.S. - (1956) - shortstory
• The Fires Within - (1947) - shortstory
• The Forgotten Enemy - (1948) - shortstory
• The Reluctant Orchid - (1956) - shortstory
• Encounter at Dawn - (1953) - shortstory
• Security Check - (1956) - shortstory
• Feathered Friend - (1957) - shortstory
• The Sentinel - (1951) - shortstory

From the grandmaster of science fiction, a dozen memorable tales filled with wonder and imagination.

Contents:

• 5 - Preface (Reach for Tomorrow) - (1956) - essay
• 11 - Rescue Party - (1946) - novelette
• 43 - A Walk in the Dark - (1950) - shortstory
• 55 - The Forgotten Enemy - (1948) - shortstory
• 63 - Technical Error - (1946) - shortstory
• 83 - The Parasite - (1953) - shortstory
• 97 - The Fires Within - (1947) - shortstory
• 108 - The Awakening - (1942) - shortstory
• 114 - Trouble with the Natives - (1951) - shortstory
• 129 - The Curse - (1946) - shortstory
• 132 - Time's Arrow - (1950) - shortstory
• 149 - Jupiter Five - (1953) - novelette
• 184 - The Possessed - (1953) - shortstory

A century into the future, technology has solved most of the problems that have plagued our time. However, a new problem is on the horizon-one greater than humanity has ever faced. A massive asteroid is racing toward the earth, and its impact could destroy all life on the planet.

Immediately after the asteroid-named "Kali" after the Hindu goddess of chaos and destruction-is discovered, the world's greatest scientists begin their search for a way to prevent disaster. In the meantime, Captain Robert Singh, aboard the starship Goliath, may be the only person who can stop the asteroid. But this heroic role may demand the ultimate sacrifice.

The Other Side of the Sky presents a glimpse of our future: a future where reality is no longer contained in earthly dimensions, where man has learned to exist with the knowledge that he is not alone in the universe. These stories of other planets and galactic adventures show Arthur C. Clarke at the peak of his powers: sometimes disturbing, always intriguing.

Contents:

• 7 - Bibliographical Note (The Other Side of the Sky) - (1958) - essay
• 11 - The Nine Billion Names of God - (1953) - shortstory
• 17 - Refugee - (1955) - shortstory
• 28 - Special Delivery - [The Other Side of the Sky] - (1957) - shortstory
• 31 - Feathered Friend - [The Other Side of the Sky] - (1957) - shortstory
• 33 - Take a Deep Breath - [The Other Side of the Sky] - (1957) - shortstory
• 36 - Freedom of Space - [The Other Side of the Sky] - (1957) - shortstory
• 39 - Passer-By - [The Other Side of the Sky] - (1957) - shortstory
• 42 - The Call of the Stars - [The Other Side of the Sky] - (1957) - shortstory
• 45 - The Wall of Darkness - (1949) - shortstory
• 61 - Security Check - (1956) - shortstory
• 65 - No Morning After - (1954) - shortstory
• 71 - The Starting Line - [Venture to the Moon] - (1956) - shortstory
• 74 - Robin Hood, F.R.S. - [Venture to the Moon] - (1956) - shortstory
• 78 - Green Fingers - [Venture to the Moon] - (1956) - shortstory
• 82 - All That Glitters - [Venture to the Moon] - (1956) - shortstory
• 85 - Watch This Space - [Venture to the Moon] - (1956) - shortstory
• 89 - A Question of Residence - [Venture to the Moon] - (1956) - shortstory
• 94 - Publicity Campaign - (1953) - shortstory
• 98 - All the Time in the World - (1952) - shortstory
• 109 - Cosmic Casanova - (1958) - shortstory
• 115 - The Star - (1955) - shortstory
• 121 - Out of the Sun - (1958) - shortstory
• 128 - Transience - (1949) - shortstory
• 133 - The Songs of Distant Earth - (1958) - novelette

Lynesse is the lowly Fourth Daughter of the queen, and always getting in the way.

But a demon is terrorizing the land, and now she's an adult (albeit barely) with responsibilities (she tells herself). Although she still gets in the way, she understands that the only way to save her people is to invoke the pact between her family and the Elder sorcerer who has inhabited the local tower for as long as her people have lived here (though none in living memory has approached it).

But Elder Nyr isn't a sorcerer, and he is forbidden to help, and his knowledge of science tells him the threat cannot possibly be a demon...

A canonical, riveting work from the patron saint of Cuban science fiction that is reminiscent of Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey and now available to an English readership for the first time.

A morally profound chamber piece, Agustín de Rojas' A Legend of the Future takes place inside a damaged spaceship following the failure of a mission to Titan, one of Saturn's moons. The journey back to Earth forces the crew members to face their innermost fears. This mesmerizing novel is a science fiction roman à clef about the intense pressures--economic, ideological, psychological--inside Communist Cuba.

Table of Contents:

• Of Doubts and Dreams - essay
• Prismatica - (1977) - novelette
• Corona - (1967) - shortstory
• Empire Star - (1966) - novel
• Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones - (1968) - novelette
• Omegahelm - (1981) - shortstory
• Ruins - (1968) - shortstory
• We, in Some Strange Power's Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line - (1968) - novella

Hugo Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Worlds of Tomorrow, February 1967. The story can also be found in the anthologies SF 12 (1968), edtied by Judith Merril, Alpha 5 (1974), edited by Robert Silverberg, The Arbor House Treasury of Great Science Fiction Short Novels (1980), edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg, and Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction (1994), edited by Gardner Dozois. It is included in the collections Driftglass (1971), Driftglass/Starshards (1993) and Aye, and Gomorrah: And Other Stories (2003). It is half of Tor Double #4: Tango Charley and Foxtrot Remeo/The Star Pit (1989).

Fourteen strangers came to Delmak-O. Thirteen of them were transferred by the usual authorities. One got there by praying. But once they arrived on that planet whose very atmosphere seemed to induce paranoia and psychosis, the newcomers found that even prayer was useless. For on Delmak-O, God is either absent or intent on destroying His creations.

Also published as A Maze of Death.

Sturgeon Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in the anthology Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better World (2014), edited by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer. The story is also included in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection (2015), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Imaginarium 4: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing (2016), edited by Sandra Kasturi and Jerome Stueart, and was collected in Overclocked: More Stories of the Future Present (2016).

Read this story for free at boingboing.

This novel tells the story of America's race to Mars and the web of passionate conflict it weaves among the astronauts and their wives -- and between Russia and the United States, the contestants in this deadly race.

For the six lucky scientists selected by the Destination Mars! corporation, a one-way ticket to Mars--in exchange for a lifetime of research--was an absolute no-brainer. The incredible opportunity was clearly worth even the most absurdly tedious screening process. Perhaps worth following the strange protocols in a nonsensical handbook written by an eccentric billionaire. Possibly even worth their constant surveillance, the video of which is carefully edited into a ratings-bonanza back on Earth.

But it turns out that after a while even scientists can get bored of science. Tempers begin to fray; unsanctioned affairs blossom. When perfectly good equipment begins to fail, the Marsonauts are faced with a possibility that their training just cannot explain.

The Age of Death ended countless millennia ago. No longer burdened by limited lifespans, the immortal humans who populate inhabited space now have the luxury to travel vast distances effortlessly and to tinker with the intricate mechanics of spacetime. But one such experiment in quantum physics has had a catastrophic and unanticipated result, creating an enormous, rapidly expanding vacuum -- a region of new physics -- with the frightening potential to devour countless inhabited solar systems.

Tchicaya abandoned his homeworld four thousand years ago to travel the universe, freely choosing, as have others of his bent, to endure the hardships of distance and loneliness for the sake of knowledge and experience. Aboard the Rindler, a starship trawling the border of the allconsuming novo-vacuum, he feels his endless life has new purpose. For the Rindler is the center for the scientific study the phenomenon -- a common ground for Preservationists and Yielders alike, those working to halt and destroy the encroaching worlds-eater ... and those determinedto investigate its marvels while allowing its growth to continue unchecked. Tchicaya has allied himself firmly with the latter camp.

The passing decades -- and inevitable expansion of the void -- widen the great rift between the two factions, intensifying what was once simply ideological differences into something more angry, explosive, and dangerous. And the arrival of Tchicaya's fiery first love, Mariama, and her immediate embracing of the Preservationist cause, intensifies an inner turmoil he has been struggling with since his distant childhood.

But everything onboard the Rindler -- and, ultimately, in the inhabited universe itself-is on the cusp of further cataclysmic change, as the Yielders' explorations threaten to transform discord into violent action and potential xenocide. For new evidence suggests that something unthinkable is developing at an astounding rate deep within the mysterious, 600-light-years-wide void -- something neither Tchicaya and his compatriots nor Mariama and hers could ever have imagined possible: life.

In the deepest canyon in the inhabited worlds, giant mantas soar through the air and leave patterned structures behind. A team of sapiologists seek to prove that these delicate filaments are true language, not just bee's dance. But time has run out, and their reckoning is upon them. Will they prove that their research is valid, or will they be scattered to the corners of the galaxy?

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

The Carver family are out in space, traveling to new worlds to check them out for colonization. But, when Mr. Carver has an accident, and remains out of commission for the trip, his sons, Jon and Jak, step up and take over their trip. The boys use their different talents to make their journey a successful one!

In the days of the great sailing ships, in the mid-twenty-first century, when magnetic sails drew cargo and passengers alike to every corner of the solar system, sailors had the highest status of all spacemen, and the crew of the luxury liner the River of Stars, the highest among all sailors.

But development of the Farnsworth fusion drive doomed the sailing ships, and now the River of Stars is the last of its kind, retrofitted with engines, her mast vestigial, her sails unraised for years. An ungainly hybrid, she operates in the late years of the century as a mere tramp freighter among the outer planets, and her crew is a motley group of misfits. Stepan Gorgas is the escapist executive officer who becomes captain. Ramakrishnan Bhatterji is the chief engineer who disdains him. Eugenie Satterwaithe, once a captain herself, is third officer and, for form's sake, sailing master.

When an unlikely and catastrophic engine failure strikes the River, Bhatterji is confident he can effect repairs with heroic engineering, but Satterwaithe and the other sailors among the crew plot to save her with a glorious last gasp for the old ways, mesmerized by a vision of arriving at Jupiter proudly under sail. The story of their doom has the power, the poetry, and the inevitability of a Greek tragedy.

In the mid twenty-first century, mankind has reached a point in its technological advances to enable colonization of the far reaches of the universe. DARK STAR is a futuristic scout ship traveling far in advance of colony ships. Armed with Exponential Thermosteller Bombs, it prowls the darkest reaches of space on a mission to seek out and destroy unstable planets ahead of the colonist.

But there is one obstacle that its crew members did not count on -- one of the ship's thinking and talking bombs is lodged in the bay, threatening to destroy the entire ship and crew!

In the distant future, a police marshal stationed at a remote mining colony on the Jupiter moon of Io uncovers a drug-smuggling conspiracy, and gets no help from the populace when he later finds himself marked for murder.

Marshal W.T. O'Niel is assigned to a mining colony on Io, one of Jupiter's moons. During his tenure miners are dying - usually violently. When the marshal investigates, he discovers the one thing all the deaths have in common is a lethal amphetamine-type drug, which allows the miners to work continuously for days at a time until they become "burned out" and expire. O'Niel follows the trail of the dealers, which leads to the man overseeing the colony. Now O'Niel must watch his back at every turn, as those who seek to protect their income begin targeting him...

Nearing the end of a long mission exploring deep space, the spacecraft USS Palomino is returning to Earth.

The Palomino crew discover a black hole in space with a spaceship nearby, somehow defying the hole's massive gravitational pull. The ship is identified as the long-lost USS Cygnus.

The Palomino crew cautiously boards the Cygnus and soon encounter the ship's commander, Dr. Hans Reinhardt, a brilliant scientist. Aided by a crew of faceless, black-robed android drones and his sinister-looking robot Maximilian, Reinhardt explains that he has lived all alone on the Cygnus for years.

The rest of the Palomino crew grow suspicious of the faceless drones' human-like behaviour: the crew had been lobotomized and "reprogrammed" by Reinhardt to serve him. When this is discovered, Reinhardt takes Kate prisoner, ordering his sentry robots to take her to the ship's hospital bay to be lobotomized.

Just as the process begins, Holland rescues Kate. Fearing the situation is escalating dangerously, Booth attempts to escape alone in the Palomino. Reinhardt orders the craft shot down. A meteor storm then destroys the starboard generator. Without its null-gravity bubble, the Cygnus starts to break apart under the black hole's huge gravitational forces.

Reinhardt and the Palomino survivors separately plan their escape aboard a small probe ship. The crew of the Palamino reach the probe ship, only to discover the controls locked onto a flightpath that takes them into the black hole, which takes them through a surreal hell back to Earth.

On a distant planet, not too different from Earth, there stands a mechanized city with no visible inhabitants. Obviously of a highly developed civilization, the question is, who built it, where are they. and what can humans learn from them?

This novella originally appeared in Clarkesworld, Issue 137, February 2018. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Four (2019), edited by Neil Clarke.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld Magazine.

Arguably the first work of science fiction in English, Francis Godwin's The Man in the Moone was published in 1638, pseudonymously and posthumously.

The novel, which tells the story of Domingo Gonsales, a Spaniard who flies to the moon by geese power and encounters an advanced lunar civilization of Christians who live in a Utopian state.

The work had an enormous impact on the European imagination for centuries after its initial publication, due to its discussion of advanced ideas about astronomy and cosmology. The novel is an important example of both popular fiction and scientific speculation.

This novelette originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, August 1954 and was reprinted in Lightspeed, July 2011. It appeared in a large number of anthologies over the years, including:

• The Best Science Fiction Stories and Novels: 1955. edited by T. E. Dikty
• The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One (1970), edited by Robert Silverberg
• Modern Science Fiction (1974), edited by Norman Spinrad
• The Road to Science Fiction 3: From Heinlein to Here (1979), edited by James Gunn
• The Great SF Stories 16 (1954) (1987), edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg
• The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF (1994), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
• The World Turned Upside Down (2005), edited by Eric Flint, Jim Baen and David Drake

The story takes place entirely aboard an Emergency Dispatch Ship (EDS) headed for the frontier planet Woden with a load of desperately needed medical supplies. The pilot, Barton, discovers a stowaway: an eighteen-year-old girl. By law, all EDS stowaways are to be jettisoned because EDS vessels carry no more fuel than is absolutely necessary to land safely at their destination.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Reactions (from Wikipedia, it's best to read this after reading the story)

Critic Gary Westfahl has said that because the proposition depends upon systems that were built without enough margin for error, the story is good physics, but lousy engineering. He said that he himself was an engineer and he was so frustrated with the book, he said these words: "To hell with it, the book was not worth my time. Very poor Engineering."

Writer Cory Doctorow has made a similar argument, noting that the constraints under which the characters operate are decided by the writers, and not therefore the "inescapable laws of physics". He argues that the decision of the writer to give the vessel no margin of safety and a marginal fuel supply focuses reader attention on the "need" for tough decisions in time of crisis and away from the responsibility for proper planning to ensure safety in the first place. Doctorow sees this as an example of moral hazard.

Writer Don Sakers' short story "The Cold Solution" (Analog, July 1991), which debunks the premise, received the 1992 Analog Analytical Laboratory award as the readers' favorite Analog short story of 1991.

In 1999 Richard Harter wrote a detailed analysis of the story online, with special attention to the possible negligence of those who designed the situation such that dilemmas like this could occur, and how this paralleled similar concerns involving industrial safety legislation.

Change or die: the only options available on the Durallium Company-owned planet GP. The planet's deadly virus had killed most of the original colonists - and changed the rest irrevocably. Centuries after the colony had lost touch with the rest of humanity, the Company returned to exploit GP, and its forces found themselves fighting for their lives. Afraid of spreading the virus, the Company had left its remaining employees in place, afraid and isolated from the natives.

Then anthropologist Marghe Taishan arrived on GP, sent to test a new vaccine against the virus. As she risked death to uncover the natives' biological secret, she found that she, too, was changing, and realized that not only had she found a home on GP - she herself carried the seeds of its destruction...

In the space of a few years, Joe Haldeman has come to be recognized as one of the best writers of science fiction of our time. Mindbridge, a novel at once traditional in ist plot and a daring new departure in its structure, is certain to add to this reputation.

Jacque LeFavre live in the formidable world of the future. A pioneer in interstellar colonization, he is the co-discoverer of a creature that acts as a psychic link... allowing one person to sense directly the thoughts and emotions of another. But he learns the terrible price fo this power when his partner suddenly dies.

Older, disillusioned, he is one of a team that confronts the L'vrai, a race of angelic beauty but with a callous disregard for life. They are expanding through the universe and view humankind as a removable obstacle. LeFavre's assignment: establsih a telepathic link with a L'vrai leader and find an alternative to the interstellar war that threatens the extinction of one of the two races.

It meant little to young Robert Fairlie, a serious and dedicated philologist, that in this year 1966 the United States and Soviet Russia were contentious about the Moon. He had little interest in the first two rocket landings on the moon, and the bases that the two nations had built there. He knew nothing at all of the shattering discovery that the Americans had made there.

For what had been found was of such explosive potentialities that it had to be kept top-secret--the discovery that space had already been conquered long ago by races who had once spanned the stars. So that men who had expected to spend decades in reaching the nearest planet, found suddenly in their hands the way to the wider universe.

Fairlie, drawn unexpectedly because of his special knowledge into this greatest of secrets, finds that a guarded New Mexico rocket-base is only the first step of the way. That way leads out amid the unexplored stars to the lost heartworld of those space-conquerors of long ago. And it leads Fairlie and others into the appalling reality of stellar space still haunted by the past cosmic struggle whose scale in space and time dwarfs the rivalries of tiny Earth's quarreling nations.

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.

A century after the Martian war of independence, a group of kids are sent to Earth as delegates from Mars, but when they return home, they are caught between the two worlds, unable to reconcile the beauty and culture of Mars with their experiences on Earth.

This genre-bending novel is set on Earth in the wake of a second civil war... not between two factions in one nation, but two factions in one solar system: Mars and Earth. In an attempt to repair increasing tensions, the colonies of Mars send a group of young people to live on Earth to help reconcile humanity. But the group finds itself with no real home, no friends, and fractured allegiances as they struggle to find a sense of community and identity, trapped between two worlds.

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

Top Israeli scientist, Arnie Klein, "defects" to Denmark in order to protect his discovery, the secret of simple, economic space travel by use of the "Daleth effect". He wishes to develop the idea without it falling into the hands of the military, since it also has potential as a weapon. But he is forced to reveal his secret to the world when the Daleth effect unit is fitted to a submarine which is sent into space to rescue two stranded Soviet cosmonauts.

Klein and his friends are then subjected to all kinds of international pressure from people wanting the secret.

Contains:

• One Step from Earth
• Pressure
• No War or Battle's Sound
• Wife to the Lord
• Waiting Place
• The Life Preservers
• From Fanatiscism or for Reward
• Heavy Duty
• A Tale of the Ending

2032. The human race has established colonies on Mars. For years Dr. Alwyn Stafford researched its biggest mystery: Did life evolve on the Red Planet? The answer, except for simple, long-dead microorganisms, was no.

Now retired, Stafford stubbornly continues his quest. Rumors say he's been going farther than ever before into the Martian deserts.

Then he goes out and doesn't return. As the search for him grow, it becomes apparent that the old man found something that will forever change humanity's place in the cosmos...

The planet had fallen off the map. When Karl Altman's spaceship crashed, he had only one question: "HOW THE HELL DO I GET OUT OF HERE?" Rock-hard sci-fi adventure. No-one here gets out alive. When his spaceship crashes on an unknown and forgotten planet, scientist Karl Altman discovers himself hunted by an ancient race. The descendants of a Viking race have reverted to a savage culture of sacrifice, pillage and violence. When Karl falls in love with an outcast girl, he has only one goal: escape. But escape is a distant dream on this nightmare planet.

Lazarus Long, member of a select group bred for generations to live far beyond normal human lifespans, helps his kind escape persecution after word leaks out and angry crowds accuse them of withholding the "secret" of longevity. Lazarus and his companions set out on an interstellar journey and face many trials and strange cultures, like a futuristic Odysseus and his crew, before returning to Earth.

Project Moonbase contains the screenplay for the now classic sf film, plus eleven finished teleplays and two story outlines for a projected television show, The World Beyond. In addition to original tales (the story outlines "Home Sweet Home" and "The Tourist") Project Moonbase also contains teleplay adaptations of such RAH classics as "Delilah and the Space Rigger," "And He Built a Crooked House" and much more.

Contents:

• Project Moonbase
• Ring Around the Moon
• Space Jockey
• The Black Pits of Luna
• The Long Watch
• Ordeal in Space
• Delilah and the Space Rigger
• Life-Line
• Requiem
• And He Built a Crooked House--
• We Also Walk Dogs
• Misfit
• Home Sweet Home (story outline)
• The Tourist (story outline)

THE GREEN HILLS OF EARTH is a collection of short stories from one of the masters of science fiction who has held readers spellbound for over thirty years.

First published in 1951, this collection includes:

• "Delilah and the Space-Rigger"
• "Space-Jockey"
• "The Long Watch"
• "Gentlemen Be Seated"
• "The Black Pits of Luna"
• "It's Great to Be Back"
• "We Also Walk Dogs"
• "Ordeal in Space"
• "The Green Hills of Earth"
• "Logic of Empire"

Retro Hugo-winning Novella

D. D. Harriman is a billionaire with a dream: the dream of Space for All Mankind. The method? Anything that works. Maybe, in fact, Harriman goes too far.

But he will give us the stars....

Published in the anthology A Treasury of Great Science Fiction, Volume Two and in the collections The Man Who Sold the Moon, The Past Through Tomorrow, and The Robert Heinlein Omnibus.

D. D. Harriman is a billionaire with a dream: the dream of Space for All Mankind. The method? Anything that works. Maybe, in fact, Harriman goes too far.

But he will give us the stars....

Table of Contents:

• Preface (The Man Who Sold the Moon) - (1950) - essay
• Introduction (The Man Who Sold the Moon) - (1950) - essay by John W. Campbell, Jr.
• Life-Line - [Future History] - (1939) - short story
• 'Let There Be Light' - [Future History] - short story (variant of Let There Be Light 1940) [as by Robert Heinlein ]
• The Roads Must Roll - [Future History] - (1940) - novelette
• Blow-Ups Happen - [Future History] - (1940) - novella (variant of Blowups Happen) [as by Robert Heinlein ]
• The Man Who Sold the Moon - [D. D. Harriman] - (1950) - novella
• Requiem - [D. D. Harriman] - (1940) - short story

For the first time, all 21 stories, novellas and novels forming Heinlein's monumental Future History are collected together here in paperback. The great achievement of this meticulous architct-of-the-future's life work lies in his unique gift to a hopeful mankind---our sturggles and our history are glorified by this extension into the far future.

• "Life-Line", 1939; a month before "Misfit"
• "Misfit", 1939
• "The Roads Must Roll", 1940
• "Requiem", 1940
• "'If This Goes On—'", 1940
• "Coventry", 1940
• "Blowups Happen", 1940
• "Universe", 1941
• "Methuselah's Children", 1941; extended and published as a novel, 1958
• "Logic of Empire", 1941
• "'—We Also Walk Dogs'", 1941
• "Space Jockey", 1947
• "'It's Great to Be Back!'", 1947
• "The Green Hills of Earth", 1947
• "Ordeal in Space", 1948
• "The Long Watch", 1948
• "Gentlemen, Be Seated!", 1948
• "The Black Pits of Luna", 1948
• "Delilah and the Space Rigger", 1949
• "The Man Who Sold the Moon", 1950
• "The Menace From Earth", 1957
• "Searchlight", 1962

This novelette was combined with its sequel, "Common Sense", to form "Orphans of the Sky" in 1963.

The gigantic, cylindrical generation ship Vanguard, originally destined for "Far Centaurus", is cruising without guidance through the interstellar medium as a result of a long-ago mutiny that killed most of the officers. Over time, the descendants of the surviving loyal crew have forgotten the purpose and nature of their ship and lapsed into a pre-technological culture marked by superstition. They come to believe the "Ship" is the entire universe, so that "To move the ship" is considered an oxymoron, and references to the Ship's "voyage" are interpreted as religious metaphor. They are ruled by an oligarchy of "officers" and "scientists". Most crew members are simple illiterate farmers, seldom or never venturing to the "upper decks" where the "muties" (an abbreviation of "mutants" or "mutineers") dwell. Among the crew, all identifiable mutants are killed at birth.

It first appeared in the May, 1941 Issue of Astounding Science Fiction, available on Internet Archives.

Thirty-seven miners disappear without a trace within a Titanium mine, Hellweg's Keep, deep within Zeta One, a moon orbiting the planet, Terra. When FBI agent Kendra Omen arrives via the spaceship Marietta, strange phenomenon begins to manifest... suicides, shadows a shade darker than the shadows they move within, disembodied whispers, and Kendra would swear she catches a glimpse of her own deceased daughter walking the dimly lit halls of Hellweg enterprises. But that's impossible. Isn't it?

As evidence of occult practices at the mine emerges, Kendra realizes the answers they seek, and hopefully the thirty-seven miners, will only be found underground in the claustrophobic labyrinth of shafts and natural caverns within Hellweg's Keep.

Technologically enhanced superspy Peter Caswell has been dispatched on a top-secret assignment unlike any he's ever faced. A spaceship that vanished years ago has been found, along with the bodies of its murdered crew -- save one. Peter's mission is to find the missing crew member, who fled through what appears to be a tear in the fabric of space. Beyond this mysterious doorway lies an even more confounding reality: a world that seems to be Earth's twin.

Peter discovers that this mirrored world is indeed different from his home, and far more dangerous. Cut off from all support, and with only days to complete his operation, Peter must track his quarry alone on an alien world. But he's unprepared for what awaits on the planet's surface, where his skills will be put to the ultimate test -- and everything he knows about the universe will be challenged in ways he never could have imagined.

Includes the complete bonus novella The Dire Earth, a prequel to the bestselling sci-fi adventure The Darwin Elevator.

In an age of space exploration, we search to find ourselves.

In four years, aerospace giant Prime Space will put the first humans on Mars. Helen Kane, Yoshihiro Tanaka, and Sergei Kuznetsov must prove they're the crew for the historic voyage by spending seventeen months in the most realistic simulation ever created. Constantly observed by Prime Space's team of "Obbers," Helen, Yoshi, and Sergei must appear ever in control. But as their surreal pantomime progresses, each soon realizes that the complications of inner space are no less fraught than those of outer space. The borders between what is real and unreal begin to blur, and each astronaut is forced to confront demons past and present, even as they struggle to navigate their increasingly claustrophobic quarters--and each other.

Astonishingly imaginative, tenderly comedic, and unerringly wise, The Wanderers explores the differences between those who go and those who stay, telling a story about the desire behind all exploration: the longing for discovery and the great search to understand the human heart.

A planetary system, consisting of a star and five planets, is travelling through our galaxy and will pass close to Earth. The four largest planets are gaseous, but the fifth, named Achilles, appears capable of supporting life. Two rival expeditions - one Anglo-American and one Russian - set out to land on Achilles and explore its mysteries. But almost from the moment of their arrival things begin to go terribly wrong... and when they return to Earth, something not human will be coming back with them.

Set in an uncertain, strife-torn future when the first starships of man are traveling across the galaxy--but not without extracting a terrible price from their crews.

The novel's thought-provoking opening line, "Space is deep, Man is small and Time is his relentless enemy," powerfully captures the challenges facing the brave men and women of these vessels--people who must give up their former lives to explore space as entire generations and whole societies come and go on Earth, while those aboard remain essentially untouched by the passage of time in a vessel traveling at nearly the speed of light.

This immersing, remarkably ruthless drama begins when Alan Corday, a naively unseasoned but brialliant young engineer, is shanghaied from the spaceport at New Chicago and taken aboard the "Hound of Heaven"--bound for the stars.

Commanded by a distantly mysterious but charismatic leader by the name of Captain Jocelyn, the "Hound" traverses teh galaxy in an effort to keep a lifeline between Earth and the first colonies in other star systems. But in the time span of a few crossings, conditions on Earth grow gradually worse and more dangerous, while those aboard are increasingly treated as outcasts and a threat to the powers that control the planet.

Against his will, Corday is mercilessly driven by Jocelyn to use his untested intellect and abilities to serve the ship and the beleaguered space colonies. But as events unfold among the turbulent reaches of the galaxy, and during the perilous returns to Earth, Corday discovers a startling truth about his destiny that will give a whole new meaning to man's place in the stars.

A solitary ship captain, drifting through time.

Nia Imani is a woman out of place. Traveling through the stars condenses decades into mere months for her, though the years continue to march steadily onward for everyone she has ever known. Her friends and lovers have aged past her. She lives only for the next paycheck, until the day she meets a mysterious boy, fallen from the sky.

A mute child, burdened with unimaginable power.

The scarred boy does not speak, his only form of communication the haunting music he plays on an old wooden flute. Captured by his songs and otherworldly nature, Nia decides to take the boy in to live amongst her crew. Soon, these two outsiders discover in each other the things they lack. For him, a home, a place of love and safety. For her, an anchor to the world outside of herself. For both of them, a family. But Nia is not the only one who wants the boy.

A millennia-old woman, poised to burn down the future.

Fumiko Nakajima designed the ships that allowed humanity to flee a dying Earth. One thousand years later, she now regrets what she has done in the name of progress. When chance brings Fumiko, Nia, and the child together, she recognizes the potential of his gifts, and what will happen if the ruling powers discover him. So she sends the pair to the distant corners of space to hide them as she crafts a plan to redeem her old mistakes.

But time is running out. The past hungers for the boy, and when it catches up, it threatens to tear this makeshift family apart.

A disturbing science fiction story about a seemingly routine scientific mission to Jupiter that is threatened by the interpersonal relationships of its crew.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Orphaned as a boy, raised in the Czech countryside by his doting grandparents, Jakub Procházka has risen from small-time scientist to become the country's first astronaut. When a dangerous solo mission to Venus offers him both the chance at heroism he's dreamt of, and a way to atone for his father's sins as a Communist informer, he ventures boldly into the vast unknown. But in so doing, he leaves behind his devoted wife, Lenka, whose love, he realizes too late, he has sacrificed on the altar of his ambitions.

Alone in Deep Space, Jakub discovers a possibly imaginary giant alien spider, who becomes his unlikely companion. Over philosophical conversations about the nature of love, life and death, and the deliciousness of bacon, the pair form an intense and emotional bond. Will it be enough to see Jakub through a clash with secret Russian rivals and return him safely to Earth for a second chance with Lenka?

THE END OF EARTH WILL NOT BE THE END OF US

From acclaimed filmmaker Christopher Nolan, this is the chronicle of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage. At stake are the fate of a planet... Earth... and the future of the human race.

2199. Deep-space exploration is a reality and teleportation is routine. But this time something has gone very, very wrong. Seventeen-year-old Jessica Mathers wakes up in a lander that's crashed onto the surface of Carver 1061c, a desolate, post-extinction planet fourteen light-years from Earth. The planet she was supposed to be viewing from a ship orbiting far above.

The corridors of the empty lander are covered in bloody hand prints; the machines are silent and dark. And outside, in the alien dirt, there are fresh graves carefully marked with names she doesn't recognize. Now Jessica must unravel the mystery of the destruction all around her--and the questionable intentions of a familiar stranger.

An enthralling sci fi thriller about a mission into deep space that begins with a lethal explosion that leaves the survivors questioning the loyalty of the crew.

They left Earth to save humanity. They'll have to save themselves first.

It is the eve of Earth's environmental collapse. A single ship carries humanity's last hope: eighty elite graduates of a competitive program, who will give birth to a generation of children in deep space. But halfway to a distant but livable planet, a lethal bomb kills three of the crew and knocks The Phoenix off course. Asuka, the only surviving witness, is an immediate suspect.

As the mystery unfolds on the ship, poignant flashbacks reveal how Asuka came to be picked for the mission. Despite struggling through training back on Earth, she was chosen to represent Japan, a country she only partly knows as a half-Japanese girl raised in America. But estranged from her mother back home, The Phoenix is all she has left.

With the crew turning on each other, Asuka is determined to find the culprit before they all lose faith in the mission?or worse, the bomber strikes again.

Something Was Very Wrong, Out There Among The Stars... The interstellar transport had touched down on six other colony worlds - and all six had been devoid of human life. Where was everybody? It was almost as if humankind, when separated by cosmic distances from Mother Earth, could not survive.

This short story originally appeared in Subterranean, Summer 2014. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection (2015), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collection Last Plane to Heaven: The Final Collection (2014).

Read the full story for free at Subterranean.

Despite increasing restrictions on the freedoms of women on Earth, Valerie Black is spearheading the first all-female mission to a planet in the Goldilocks Zone, where conditions are just right for human habitation.

It's humanity's last hope for survival, and Naomi, Valerie's surrogate daughter and the ship's botanist, has been waiting her whole life for an opportunity like this - to step out of Valerie's shadow and really make a difference.

But when things start going wrong on the ship, Naomi begins to suspect that someone on board is concealing a terrible secret - and realizes time for life on Earth may be running out faster than they feared...

By the middle of the 21st century, humanity has finally landed men on Mars-only to watch helplessly as the first two missions end in catastrophe and death.

With resources running out, a third-and perhaps final-mission to Mars is hastily mounted, with a crew of four men and two women. But from the moment of their arrival on Mars, everything begins to go wrong. The fuel tanks that were to have supplied their return trip are found corroded and empty. Their supplies are running out and their life support systems are beginning to fail. And any rescue mission won't reach them for months, or even years-if at all.

The crew's only hope for survival lies in a desperate plan: an agonizing trek halfway across the surface of Mars to a ship designed to carry only half their number. Torn by conflict and dissent, and troubled by secrets that endanger them all, they must embark on an ordeal that will test them to the limits of endurance.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Clockwork Phoenix 5 (2016), edited by Mike Allen. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection (2017), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2017, edited by Rich Horton.

Six of these tales are set in the author's signature world of the Ekumen, a world made familiar in her award-winning novel The Left Hand of Darkness. The title story was hailed by Publisher's Weekly as "remarkable... a standout." Paradises Lost is a mesmerizing novella of space exploration and the pursuit of happiness. These stories explore complex social interactions, troublesome issues of gender and sex, and the meaning of transformation, religion, and history.

Contents:

• Coming of Age in Karhide by Sov Thade Tage em Ereb, of Rer, in Karhide, on Gethen
• The Matter of Seggri
• Unchosen Love
• Mountain Ways
• Solitude
• Old Music and the Slave Women
• The Birthday of the World
• Paradises Lost

A collection of stories.

FABULOUS VOYAGER...

Fritz Leiber, America's finest fantasist, is the winner of six Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards. In this award winning new collection you can be transported to a shadowy alternate reality where Germany won the Second World War; watch a man play dice with the devil; sail in the farthest realms of dark imagining, or observe a war being fought back and forth across time on a shuttle of shifting and uncertain reality...

These are tales of humour and horror, invention and enchantment, conjuring us into the incomparable universe of Fritz Leiber, a fabulous voyager in the incandescent world of his own imagining.

Table of Contents:

• Ship of Shadows - (1969) - novella
• Catch That Zeppelin! - (1975) - shortstory
• Gonna Roll the Bones - (1967) - novelette
• Ill Met in Lankhmar - (1970) - novella
• Belsen Express - (1975) - shortstory
• The Big Time - (1958) - novel

In the near future, humankind has founded colonies on Mars and the inner planets as well as under the oceans, populating them via by direct genetic manipulation, changing us to suit the environment. The haves are those who are "ecomods" (genetically modified) or "surgenmods" (surgically modified); the have-nots are the "typics"--those who haven't undergone modification. The typics are forced to live in walled-off, filthy, and run-down areas, held away from the wealthier surgenmods, while the ecomods have formed communities based around their own archetypes-insular societies all, each with their own particular customs.

There's a greater wall, as well. Someone or something has put a sphere of exclusion around the inner solar system, an unseen barrier that allows no living being to pass beyond AU 3.0. For all humankind knows, this SunWall has existed for only the last half century, when the first manned expeditions attempted to reach Jupiter, or perhaps it existed for aeons, long before humans ever dreamed of flight.

Sofia is an ecomod, but not from a standard 'race' that anyone recognizes. She claims to have pierced the SunWall and lived. Against increasingly stubborn resistance, Sofia and the group of misfits who gather around her attempt to uncover the secret of the SunWall and release humankind from its imprisonment.

A six-man crew crash-lands on Eden, fourth planet from another sun. The men find a strange world that grows ever stranger, and everywhere there are images of death. The crew's attempt to communicate with this civilization leads to violence and to a cruel truth-cruel precisely because it is so human.

Who's testing whom? When Kris Kelvin arrives at the planet Solaris to study the ocean that covers its surface, he is forced to confront a painful, hitherto unconscious memory embodied in the living physical likeness of a long-dead lover. Others examining the planet, Kelvin learns, are plagued with their own repressed and newly corporeal memories. Scientists speculate that the Solaris ocean may be a massive brain that creates these incarnate memories, its purpose in doing so unknown.

The first of Lem's novels to be published in America and now considered a classic, SOLARIS raises a question: Can we truly understand the universe around us without first understanding what lies within?

Lem himself, who read English fluently, repeatedly voiced his disappointment about the Kilmartin-Cox translation of the French translation, and it has generally been considered second-rate. In 2011, the first direct Polish-to-English translation by Bill Johnston was released as an audiobook narrated by Alessandro Juliani, and then as an e-book.

The space programme has finally lost its novelty, and a jaded public hardly notices another moon launch. Skilful PR men preserve the illusion that the missions have become routine. But astronaut Richard Martin can tell a different story. Of panic in deep space, of crewmen pushed beyond breaking point, of official indifference towards his own shattered life. Martin is effectively put under wraps - until the pilot of a moon capsule, loaded with nuclear weaponry goes beserk and a nightmare develops, threatening to engulf the world - a nightmare that only Martin could end.

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

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

Originally published in 1980 as The Best of Walter M. Miller, then republished in 2000 as Dark Benediction.

Walter M. Miller, Jr. is best remembered as the author of A Canticle for Leibowitz, universally recognized as one of the greatest novels of modern SF. But as well as writing that deeply felt and eloquent book, he produced many shorter works of fiction of stunning originality and power.

His profound interest in religion and his innate literary gifts combined in the production of such works as "The Darfstellar", for which he won a Hugo in 1955, "Conditionally Human", "I, Dreamer" and "The Big Hunger", all of which are included in this brilliant and essential collection.

Table of Contents:

• You Triflin' Skunk! - (1965) - shortstory
• The Will - (1954) - shortstory
• Anybody Else Like Me? - (1952) - novelette
• Crucifixus Etiam - (1953) - shortstory
• I, Dreamer - (1953) - shortstory
• Dumb Waiter - (1952) - novelette
• Blood Bank - (1952) - novella
• Big Joe and the Nth Generation - (1952) - shortstory
• The Big Hunger - (1952) - shortstory
• Conditionally Human - (1952) - novella
• The Darfsteller - (1955) - novella
• Dark Benediction - (1951) - novella
• The Lineman - (1957) - novella
• Vengeance for Nikolai - (1957) - novelette

You can't militarize space. This one rule has led to decades of peaceful development of space programs worldwide. However, increasing resource scarcity and a changing climate on Earth's surface is causing some interested parties to militarize, namely India, the North American Union, and the Sinese Federation.

The discovery of a strange artifact by Dr. Alayna Wong precipitates a crisis. What appears to be a hitherto undiscovered comet is soon revealed to be an alien structure on a cometary trajectory toward the sun. Now there is a race between countries to see who can study and control the artifact dubbed the "Solar Express" before it perhaps destroys itself.

Leading the way for the North American Union is Alayna's friend, Captain Christopher Tavoian, one of the first shuttle pilots to be trained for combat in space. But, as the alien craft gets closer to its destination, it begins to alter the surface of the sun in strange new ways, ways that could lead Alayna to revolutionary discoveries-provided Chris can prevent war from breaking out as he navigates among the escalating tensions between nations.

Solar Express is a thrilling, new, hard science fiction novel from New York Times bestselling author L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

After Catherine Wells's ship experiences a deadly incident in deep space and loses contact with NASA, the entire world believes her dead. Miraculously -- and mysteriously -- she survived, but with little memory of what happened. Her reentry after a decade away is a turbulent one: her husband has moved on with another woman and the young daughter she left behind has grown into a teenager she barely recognizes.

Catherine, too, is different. The long years alone changed her, and as she readjusts to being home, sometimes she feels disconnected and even, at times, deep rage toward her family and colleagues. There are periods of time she can't account for, too, and she begins waking up in increasingly strange and worrisome locations, like restricted areas of NASA. Suddenly she's questioning everything that happened up in space: how her crewmates died, how she survived, and now, what's happening to her back on Earth.

When an Earth-like planet is discovered, a team of six teens, along with three veteran astronauts, embark on a twenty-year trip to set up a planet for human colonization--but find that space is more deadly than they ever could have imagined.

Have you ever hoped you could leave everything behind?
Have you ever dreamt of a better world?
Can a dream sustain a lifetime?

A century ago, an astronomer discovered an Earth-like planet orbiting a nearby star. She predicted that one day humans would travel there to build a utopia. Today, ten astronauts are leaving everything behind to find it. Four are veterans of the twentieth century's space-race.

And six are teenagers who've trained for this mission most of their lives.

It will take the team twenty-three years to reach Terra-Two. Twenty-three years locked in close quarters. Twenty-three years with no one to rely on but each other. Twenty-three years with no rescue possible, should something go wrong.

And something always goes wrong.

Humanity is returning to the moon, but this time the mission is Japanese, and in private hands for commercial purposes. The year is 2025 and Otaba General Construction—a firm that has built structures to survive the Antarctic and the Sahara—has received its most daunting challenge yet. Sennosuke Touenji, the chairman of one of the world's largest leisure conglomerates, wants a moon base fit for civilian use, and he wants his granddaughter Tae to be his eyes and ears on the harsh lunar surface. Tae and Otaba engineer Aomine head to the moon where adventure, trouble, and perhaps romance await.

In the twenty-third century pioneers have escaped the crowded earth for life in self-sustaining orbital colonies. One of the colonies, Rotor, has broken away from the solar system to create its own renegade utopia around an unknown red star two light-years from Earth: a star named Nemesis.

Now a fifteen-year-old Rotorian girl has learned of the dire threat that nemesis poses to Earth's people--but she is prevented from warning them. Soon she will realize that Nemesis endangers Rotor as well. And so it will be up to her alone to save both Earth and Rotor as--drawn inexorably by Nemesis, the death star--they hurtle toward certain disaster.

This collection of four famous science fiction tales masterfully exemplifies author Isaac Asimov's ability to create quickly a believable human milieu in the midst of alien circumstances. Each of the long stores also shows his considerable skill in fully fleshing out a speculative scientific or social possibility.

Table of Contents

• The Martian Way - (1952) - novella by Isaac Asimov
• Youth - (1952) - novelette by Isaac Asimov
• The Deep - (1952) - novelette by Isaac Asimov
• Sucker Bait - (1954) - novella by Isaac Asimov

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, March-April 2017. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection (2018), edited by Gardner Dozois.

After eleven years in space, the Argo landed on the dangerous, unknown planet Lucifer. The crew faced an untamed world of huge, carnivorous birds with wolverine heads and flashing black teeth; furred, ten-foot-tall men; and red-skinned, man-eating pygmies. They fought for mere survival. But their duty was to colonize and populate the planet ... with four men and only two women!

As Christopher and Clarice Wayville pilot the relativistic spacecraft Valkyrie toward the inhabited fourth world of Alpha Centauria A, they prepare for the first contact with an intelligent and benign marsupial species. But upon arrival, Chistopher becomes haunted by memories of his own death on the same planet.

An expedition from Earth to Mars discovers a deserted city, the remains of an advanced civilization that died out 50,000 years before. The human scientists recover books and documents left behind, and are puzzled by their contents. Without the Martian equivalent of the Rosetta Stone, how will they ever be able to translate the language of this lost civilization?

Originally published in the February 1957 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, this story was later collected in Federation and anthologized in Prologue to Analog, edited by John W. Campbell, Jr., Great Science Fiction Stories About Mars, edited by T. E. Dikty, Apeman, Spaceman: Anthropological Science Fiction, edited by Leon E. Stover and Harry Harrison, Mars, We Love You: Tales of Mars, Men, and Martians, edited by Jane Hipolito and Willis E. McNelly, Where Do We Go from Here?, edited by Isaac Asimov, and The World Turned Upside Down, edited by Eric Flint, Jim Baen, and David Drake.

Read this story for free at the Gutenberg Library link above.

The discovery of another habitable world might spell salvation to the three bitterly competing power blocs of the resource-starved 21st century; but when their representatives arrive on Jem, with its multiple intelligent species, they discover instead the perfect situation into which to export their rivalries. Subtitled, with savage irony, 'The Making of a Utopia', Jem is one of Frederik Pohl's most powerful novels.

Locus Award winning and Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, March 1972. The story can also be found in the anthologies Best Science Fiction for 1972, edited by Frederik Pohl, The 1973 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, Analog 9 (1973), edited by Ben Bova, The World Treasury of Science Fiction (1989), edited by David G. Hartwell and The SFWA Grand Masters, Volume Three (2001), edited by Frederik Pohl. It is included in the collections The Gold at the Starbow's End (1972) and Platinum Pohl: The Collected Best Stories (2005).

Wan-To was the oldest and must powerful intelligence in the universe, a being who played with star systems as a child plays with marbles. Matter occupied so tiny a part of his vast awareness that humans were utterly beneath his notice.

The colonists of Newmanhome first suffered the effects of Wan-To's games when their planet's stars began to shift, the climate began to cool down, and the colony was forced into a desperate struggle to survive.

Viktor Sorricaine was determined to discover what force had suddenly sent his world hurtling toward the ends of the universe. And the answer was something beyond the scope of his imagination -- even if he lived for 4000 years...

Some centuries from now, the exploration and exploitation of the Solar System is in full swing. On the cold edge of the system, Bella Lind, captain of the huge commercial spacecraft Rockhopper IV, helps fuel this new gold rush by attaching mass-driver motors to organic-rich water-ice comets to move them back to the inner worlds. Her crew are tough, blue-collar miners, engineers and demolition experts. Around Saturn, something inexplicable happens: one of the moons leaves its orbit and accelerates out of the Solar System. The icy mantle peels away to reveal that it was never a moon in the first place, just a parked spacecraft, millions of years old, that has now decided to move on. Rockhopper IV, trapped in the pull, is hurled across time and space into the deep, distant future, arriving in a vast, alien-constructed chamber. And the crew are not alone, for each chamber contains an alien culture dragged into this cosmic menagerie at the end of time. The crew of the Rockhopper IV know a lot about blowing up comets, but not much about first contact with ultra-advanced aliens.

They have two things to worry about: can they (and their new alien allies) negotiate their way through each harrying contact? And can they assimilate the avalanche of knowledge about their own future - including all the glittering, dangerous technologies that are now theirs for the taking - without destroying themselves in the process?

Golden Age SF meets Golden Age Crime from the author of Swiftly, New Model Army, and Yellow Blue Tibia-an innovative literary voice working at the height of his powers

Jack Glass is the murderer-we know this from the start. Yet as this extraordinary novel tells the story of three murders committed by Glass, the reader will be surprised to find out that it was Glass who was the killer and how he did it. And by the end of the book our sympathies for the killer are fully engaged. Riffing on the tropes of crime fiction (the country house murder, the locked room mystery) and imbued with the feel of golden age SF, this is another bravura performance from Roberts. Whatever games he plays with the genre, whatever questions he asks of the reader, Roberts never loses sight of the need to entertain.

This novel has some wonderfully gruesome moments, is built around three gripping HowDunnits, and comes with liberal doses of sly humor. Roberts invites us to have fun and tricks us into thinking about both crime and SF via a beautifully structured novel set in a society whose depiction challenges notions of crime, punishment, power, and freedom.

AURORA tells the incredible story of our first voyage beyond the solar system.

Our voyage from Earth began generations ago.

Now, we approach our destination.

A new home.

AURORA.

On the North Pole of Pluto there stands an enigma: a huge circle of standing blocks of ice, built on the pattern of Earth's Stonehenge--but ten times the size, standing alone at the farthest reaches of the Solar System. What is it? Who came there to build it?

In Kim Stanley Robinson's Icehenge,the secret lies, perhaps, in the chaotic decades of the Martian Revolution, in the lost memories of those who have lived for centuries.

In 3229 A.D., human civilization is scattered among the planets, moons, and asteroids of the solar system. Billions of lives depend on the technology derived from the breakthroughs of the greatest physicist of the age, Arthur Holywelkin. But in the last years of his life, Holywelkin devoted himself to building a strange, beautiful, and complex musical instrument that he called The Orchestra.

Johannes Wright has earned the honor of becoming the Ninth Master of Holywelkin's Orchestra. Follow him on his Grand Tour of the Solar System, as he journeys down the gravity well toward the sun, impelled by a destiny he can scarcely understand, and is pursued by mysterious foes who will tell him anything except the reason for their enmity.

With playfulness and ingenuity in the tradition of Douglas Adams, the Cuban science fiction master Yoss delivers a space opera of intergalactic proportions with Super Extra Grande, the winner of the 20th annual UPC Science Fiction Award in 2011.

Set in a distant future, after the invention of faster-than-light space travel has propelled a still-immature mankind into the far corners of the Milky Way, the novel features creatures of immense variety--amoebas that cover entire worlds, sensual females that feed on substances from their males' reproductive systems, talking reptiles, and other creations drawn from the classics of Cuban and international science fiction--all of which serve as colleagues, fellow adventurers, sex partners, teachers, or members of the military high command in the Galactic Community governing this part of the universe. Our protagonist, Jan Amos Sangan Dongo, has a special role in this otherworldly menagerie: He is a veterinarian who specializes in treating enormous animals across the galaxy. When a colonial conflict threatens the fragile peace between the Galaxy's seven intelligent species, Dr. Sangan must embark on a daring mission to enter a gigantic creature and find two swallowed ambassadors--who also happen to be his competing love interests.

Coupling his own extensive studies in (earthly) biology with his vast curiosity and wild imagination, Yoss brings us a rare specimen in the richly parodic tradition of Cuban science fiction.

Twenty years after the discovery of artificial wormholes launches Earth space exploration to unforeseeable heights, Starplex Director Keith Lansing investigates a mysterious vessel that soon threatens the station with intergalactic war.

Discovery is superseding understanding. And when an unknown vessel — with no windows, no seams, and no visible means of propulsion — arrives through a new wormhole, an already battle-scarred Starplex could be the starting point of a new interstellar war . . .

Sturgeon Award nominated novella.

In the novella Gypsy, a few visionary scientists, chosen and nurtured by an eccentric billionaire undertake humankind's most expansive adventure--a generations-long voyage to a distant planet.

The story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, November-December 2015. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 1 (2016), edited by Neil Clarke, The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Third Annual Collection (2016), edited by Gardner Dozois, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2016, edited by Paula Guran, and The Final Frontier (2018), edited by Neil Clarke. It is included in the colledtion Gypsy Plus (2015).

In this cold war tale, America takes on the project of catching up with the Russians (400 hours in space in comparison to our 50 by 1962) by landing men on the moon - without knowing how to bring them back home again.

The chronicle of adventures of the survey ship Sarafand as it journeys through space exploring and mapping newly-discovered planets. The mission brings them into contact with man startling life-forms and menacing aliens. On one world the Sarafand sends out six survey modules and seven return one of them is a shape-changing malevolent alien - but which? On another planet they discover a humanoid civilisation which can move around in time. Suddenly the Sarafand investigators are marooned millions of years in the past. Finally the Sarafand and its crew are stranded in a distant galaxy where everything - including them - is shrinking inexorably to zero size

In the future, interstellar travel to alien worlds will be too expensive for most ordinary people. It certainly is for Marvin, a college student who wants to take a really good vacation. And so he signs up for what he can afford, a mindswap, in which your consciousness is swapped into the body of an alien lifeform. But Marvin is unlucky, and finds himself in the body of an interstellar criminal, a body that he has to vacate fast. But that criminal consciousness has stolen Marvin's earthly body, and Marvin has to find a body on the black market.

Travel from world to world with Marvin, each one crazier than the last, as he keeps finding far from ideal bodies in awful situations, just to stay alive.

Scattered throughout the globe of human-occupied space is evidence of a civilisation that bestrode the galaxy before humanity was born. Now, a strange device has been discovered that shows the details of that great civilisation. The details include a star map and hints that the High Ones are not extinct after all. The map beckons, and humans, being what they are, will follow. To the next great step in human destiny - or ultimate disaster.

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....

Two reporters looking for a story in the outer reaches of the Solar System come upon a derelict spaceship. Inside, they find the only inhabitant, a beautiful young woman who has been imprisoned for a thousand years in suspended animation, suspended but aware for the whole time. Together they set off on a grand adventure across the vastness of space and time in a search for a race known as the Cosmic Engineers on a mission to save the universe. Originally published as a short novel in Astounding Stories in 1939 and later expanded in this 1950 version, Cosmic Engineers shows the scope and imagination of one of science fictions true masters, Clifford Simak.

Originally serialized in Astounding Science Fiction in 1939.

The Planet beckoned them from space--and closed round them like a venus Fly Trap!

Captain Mike Ross finds himself leading an interplanetary expedition to an anonymous planet that welcomes them with a homing beam and then seals shut around them. Their ship is sealed against them and they are hurled into a wholly inhospitable desert.

Assailed by strange perils and even stranger temptations, the little group stumbled towards its destiny--Mike Ross, the pilot, Sara Foster, the big game hunter, blind George Smith, and the odious Friar Tuck. Before them was a legend made flesh, around them were creatures of myth and mystery, close behind them stalked Nemesis. The doll, the little wooden painted doll, was to be their salvation. Or their damnation, for each might choose, and find, his own Nirvana.

After a thousand years in space, the earth vessel lands on a remote planet capable of supporting human life. Inside the explorer ship an almost inaudible hum fills the silence; computer lights blink softly, signaling the awakening of the cryogenically preserved crew.

But only one crew member awakens from his artificial sleep. A systems malfunction has killed the others. Carter Horton is alone.

Horton learns almost immediately that the planet is inhabited by a bizarre creature who calls himself Carnivore. And the creature addresses him in English, the language he had learned from an earlier traveler who called himself Shakespeare. Now, Shakespeare is dead, and Horton soon learns that he and Carnivore, too, face certain peril unless they can get away from this strange planet.

Leaving is no simple affair. Carnivore, and before him, Shakespeare, had come to the planet via an inner-space tunnel, one of many such tunnels that exist throughout the galaxy. But this tunnel has broken down and works only one way--the wrong way--and there is no exit. And Horton's explorer ship is a thousand years obsolete--incapable of returning them to civilization.

The creature called Carnivore and the earthman, Horton, are marooned on a planet of mysterious ruins bespeaking a catastrophic end to a once-grand civilization. The portentous signs they begin to encounter intimate some dire, ominous happening will soon befall them--unless they can repair the inner-space tunnel and leave Shakespeare's Planet.

A telepath inadvertently acquires a powerful alien consciousness and must run for his life to escape corporate assassins and hate-filled mobs in this enthralling science fiction masterwork

Space travel has been abandoned in the twenty-second century. It is deemed too dangerous, expensive, and inconvenient--and now the all-powerful Fishhook company holds the monopoly on interstellar exploration for commercial gain. Their secret is the use of "parries," human beings with the remarkable telepathic ability to expand their minds throughout the universe. On what should have been a routine assignment, however, loyal Fishhook employee Shepherd Blaine is inadvertently implanted with a copy of an alien consciousness, becoming something more than human. Now he's a company pariah, forced to flee the safe confines of the Fishhook complex. But the world he escapes into is not a safe sanctuary; Its people have been taught to hate and fear his parapsychological gift--and there is nowhere on Earth, or elsewhere, for Shepherd Blaine to hide.

A Hugo Award nominee, Time Is the Simplest Thing showcases the enormous talents of one of the true greats of twentieth-century science fiction. This richly imagined tale of prejudice, corporate greed, oppression, and, ultimately, transcendence stands tall among Simak's most enduring works.

This novella was first published in Asimov's Science Fiction, May/June 2023.

Read the full story for free here.

Houston, we have a problem...

Life is fragile. The difference between success and failure can come down to nothing - the thread of a screw, the flick of a switch - and when it goes wrong, you fix it. Or someone dies.

Mission Critical takes us from our world, across the Solar System, and out into deep space to tell the stories of people who had to do the impossible.

And do it fast.

Table of Contents:

• "When Things Go Wrong" - essay by Jonathan Strahan
• "This is Not the Way Home" - novelette by Greg Egan
• "Rescue Party" [Xuya Universe] - novelette by Aliette de Bodard
• "Devil in the Dust" - short story by Linda Nagata
• "Hanging Gardens" - short story by Gregory Feeley
• "The One Who Was There" - short story by John Barnes
• "By the Warmth of Their Calculus" - novelette by Tobias S. Buckell
• "Mutata Superesse" - short story by Jason Fischer and Sean Williams
• "The Empty Gun" - short story by Yoon Ha Lee
• "Genesong" - novelette by Peter F. Hamilton
• "Something in the Air" - novelette by Carolyn Ives Gilman
• "Lost in Splendour" - short story by John Meaney
• "The Agreement" - short story by Dominica Phetteplace
• "The Fires of Prometheus" - short story by Allen M. Steele
• "Ice Breakers" - short story by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• "Cyclopterus" - short story by Peter Watts

Stranded on an alien planet, light years from home, wandering from blistering heat to searing cold, Nils Kruger was not a happy man. So when he met another being - even though it wasn't human - things seemed to be looking up. The alien might be helpless, or it might be dangerous, but one thing was for sure - they stood a better chance for survival if they worked together. But as the two creatures overcame their mutual suspicion, as they worked together, as the language barrier was broken down, Nils came to a terrifying conclusion - this alien was more intelligent than a human. And to it, Nils was the alien.

Well know as the author of Mission of Gravity, Cycle of Time, Close to Critical and for his many other extraordinarily realistic creations of extra-terrestrials, it is remarkable that Hal Clement's novelettes have never appeared in book form before.

Here are three of the best - each dealing with a different aspect of communication with creatures so alien to mankind that the first thing to do is throw speech out the window!

What happens next is strictly up to the ingenuity of writers like Mr. Clement, who visualizes a lively time for mankind among his counterparts from other planets.

The four men had been scrutinized, watched, investigated, and intensively trained for more than a year. They were the best men to be found for that first, all-important flight to the Moon--the pioneer manned rocket that would give either the East or the West control over the Earth. Yet when the race started, Adam Crag found that he had a saboteur among his crew... a traitor! Such a man could give the Reds possession of Luna, and thereby dominate the world it circled. Any one of the other three could be the hidden enemy, and if he didn't discover the agent soon--even while they were roaring on rocket jets through outer space--then Adam Crag, his expedition, and his country would be destroyed!

In the 21st century, in light of recent terraforming efforts, a team of astronauts is dispatched to Mars to determine whether it is capable of sustaining human life. But when the mission commander orders the crew to evacuate the damaged ship, it becomes a fight for survival on the planet's surface. And if the commander leaves the crew to their fate, all of humanity will suffer the consequences....

It is the sixties -- the 2060s -- and things on Earth are looking grim. Firewood is $7 a stick. Macy's is a giant coal storage bin. Energy laws have outlawed elevators, and skyscrapers stand empty. The U.S. is a second-rate power run by the Mafia and the Teamsters. Space travel is illegal. Worst of all, a new Ice Age is on the way.

What the world needs is a hero. A man rich enough to build his own spaceship. Brave enough to fly it. Crazy enough to want to save the world. Lucky enough to succeed.

And here he comes...

Terminal by Lavie Tidhar is an emotionally wrenching science fiction story about people, who, either having nothing to lose or having a deep desire to go into space, travel to Mars via cheap, one-person, one-way vehicles dubbed jalopies. During the trip, those in the swarm communicate with each other, their words relayed to those left behind.

This story is included in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 11 (2017), edited by Jonathan Strahan, The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 2 (2017), edited by Neil Clarke, The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection (2017), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction (2018), edited Irene Gallo.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Was his spaceship haunted - or only booby-trapped?

This novel was expanded from a novella published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1960. It is half on Ace Double D-479 (1960).

Radiance is a decopunk pulp SF alt-history space opera mystery set in a Hollywood - and solar system - very different from our own.

Severin Unck's father is a famous director of Gothic romances in an alternate 1986 in which talking movies are still a daring innovation due to the patent-hoarding Edison family. Rebelling against her father's films of passion, intrigue, and spirits from beyond, Severin starts making documentaries, traveling through space and investigating the levitator cults of Neptune and the lawless saloons of Mars. For this is not our solar system, but one drawn from classic science fiction in which all the planets are inhabited and we travel through space on beautiful rockets. Severin is a realist in a fantastic universe.

But her latest film, which investigates the disappearance of a diving colony on a watery Venus populated by island-sized alien creatures, will be her last. Though her crew limps home to earth and her story is preserved by the colony's last survivor, Severin will never return.

Radiance is a solar system-spanning story of love, exploration, family, loss, quantum physics, and silent film.

It takes a certain type to crew a ship that drops you seven years at a time into the Deep. Kite-class cargo ships like Menkalinan get burned-out veterans, techs who've been warned off-planet, medics who weren't much good on the ground. The Gliese-D run isn't quite the end of the line, but it's getting there. No cachet, no rewards, no future; their trading posts get Kites full of cargo that the crew never ask questions about, because if it's headed for Gliese-D, it's probably something nobody wanted.

A year into the Deep, Amadis Reyes wakes up. Menkalinan is sounding the alarm; something's wrong. The rest of the crew are dead.

That's not even what's wrong.

Anthologized in Paula Guran's The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2015.

Centaurus is the destination of the space ship, The Hope of Man. It has been traveling through space for almost twenty years, and still has nine years of flight remaining before Centaurus will be reached. For many on board the craft, Earth has become a vague memory, while for others it is a mere dot in the vast starry reaches of space. Restlessness is evident everywhere; the people want to return to a place they know is inhabited - not continue to an unknown where life is uncertain. Mutiny seems inevitable. Captain Lesbee (the ship's main officer) knows that mutiny breeds mutiny, but what is more significant is his knowledge of Earth's possible obliteration. The one hope is Centaurus. Now more than ever, there can be no turning back. Order has to be maintained even at the price of human life.

After reaching Centaurus and finding it unsuitable to live on, The Hope of Man heads towards the next destination, the Alta system; because the ship at this time is unable to attain light speed it takes decades to travel there. Upon arriving in the system, after mutiny and treachery, The Hope of Man is now captained by Browne, a descendant of the ship's original First Officer. The Hope of Man starts to orbit Alta III in search of a new planet to settle on, but again they find it already inhabited and come under attack from the occupants. During this time we see a struggle for power by various groups. Control changes quickly from one character to another until the arrival of the ship's owner, Avil Hewitt. The novel concludes with Hewitt in charge and the ship finding many planets to inhabit.

Created and adapted from 3 short stories to form a novel. The 3 short stores used were:

• Centaurus II 1947
• Rogue Ship 1950
• The Expendables 1963

Van Vogt's was first to coin the term fixup for this approach.

An all-time classic space saga, The Voyage of the Space Beagle is one of the pinnacles of Golden Age SF, an influence on generations of stories. An episodic novel filled with surprises and provocative ideas, this is the story of a great exploration ship sent out into the unknown reaches of space on a long mission of discovery. They encounter several terrifying alien species, including the Ix, who lay their eggs in human bodies, which then devour the humans from within when they hatch. This is one of the most entertaining and gripping stories in all of classic SF.

A society matron underwrites the interstellar tour of an Earth opera company, performing Beethoven, Mozart and Rossini for bewildered human and alien audiences on a kaleidoscopic range of planets. But intrigue and secret agendas complicate what was already a doubtful enterprise, and the matron's feckless nephew finds that the simple country girl he plans to marry is far more mysterious than she seems.

This is Jack Vance at his funniest, rolling out a rollicking picaresque tale where the belly laughs play a perfect duet with the grandmaster's sly observations on the absurdities of life, love and librettos.

Hugo Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1977. The story can also be found in the anthologies The 1978 Annual World's Best SF (1978), edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Seventh Annual Collection (1978), edited by Gardner Dozois, The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: 23rd Series (1980), edited by Edward L. Ferman and Explorers: SF Adventures to Far Horizons (2000) edited by Gardner Dozois. It is included in the collections The Persistence of Vision (1978) and The John Varley Reader (2004).

Genetic engineering, sex changes, arcane pleasures, computer technology, and communication beyond the five senses are among the topics treated in nine stories by an acclaimed new science-fiction writer.

Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Algis Budrys
• The Phantom of Kansas - (1976) - novelette
• Air Raid - (1977) - shortstory
• Retrograde Summer - (1975) - novelette
• The Black Hole Passes - (1975) - novelette
• In the Hall of the Martian Kings - (1976) - novella
• In the Bowl - (1975) - novelette
• Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance - (1976) - novelette
• Overdrawn at the Memory Bank - (1976) - novelette
• The Persistence of Vision - (1978) - novella

Commander Maryam "May" Knox awakes from a medically induced coma alone, adrift in space on a rapidly failing ship, with little to no memory of who she is or why she's there.

Slowly, she pieces together that she's the captain of the ship, Hawking II; that she was bound for Europa--one of Jupiter's moons--on a research mission; and that she's the only survivor of either an accident--or worse, a deliberate massacre--that has decimated her entire crew. With resources running low, and her physical strength severely compromised, May must rely on someone back home to help her. The problem is: everyone thinks she's dead.

Back on Earth, it's been weeks since Hawking II has communicated with NASA, and Dr. Stephen Knox is on bereavement leave to deal with the apparent death of his estranged wife, whose decision to participate in the Europa mission strained their marriage past the point of no return. But when he gets word that NASA has received a transmission from May, Stephen comes rushing to her aid.

What he doesn't know is that not everyone wants May to make it back alive. Even more terrifying: she might not be alone on that ship.

The richest and most depraved man on Earth takes a wild space journey to distant worlds, learning about the purpose of human life along the way.

Contents:

• 1 - A Martian Odyssey - [Tweel - 1] - (1934) - novelette
• 28 - Valley of Dreams - [Tweel - 2] - (1934) - novelette
• 54 - The Adaptive Ultimate - (1935) - novelette
• 79 - The Mad Moon - (1935) - novelette
• 103 - The Worlds of If - [Professor Manderpootz] - (1935) - short story
• 120 - The Ideal - [Professor Manderpootz] - (1935) - short story
• 143 - The Point of View - [Professor Manderpootz] - (1936) - short story
• 160 - Pygmalion's Spectacles - (1935) - short story
• 181 - Parasite Planet - [Ham Hammond] - (1935) - novelette
• 211 - The Lotus Eaters - [Ham Hammond] - (1935) - novelette
• 241 - The Planet of Doubt - [Ham Hammond] - (1935) - novelette
• 271 - The Circle of Zero - (1936) - short story

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.

Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there.

After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he's alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.

Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old "human error" are much more likely to kill him first.

But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills—and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit—he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

Kate Wilhelm is at the top of her form in Juniper Time, her first science fiction novel since she won the Hugo Award for Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang.

Juniper Time is a panoramic and hauntingly beautiful novel of the survival of hunamkind and nature. Drought has devastated the western United States and the people migrate eastward to settle in squalid concentration camps called "Newtowns." One woman, Jean Brighton, flees in the opposite direction. A linguist who can decode secret messages and make sense of alien languages, Jean has found governmental pressure on her university work untenable, and she heads for the only place she knows she will be safe - her grandfather's new-deserted house in the Pacific Northwest.

Yet her survival does not come from her own devices alone, for she receives the help of Indians who have stayed to reclaim the land that was once theirs. Through them and the mysteries of their world, Jean masters the art of survival, not only in the desolate Northwest but also in the white man's world she must return to someday.

Rich in feeling and insight, Juniper Time ranks among Kate Wilhelm's most compelling novels.

Astronaut Ben is lost - a million miles from Earth! His last message: "Strange life forms here... we're under attack...!"

Jeff sets off to rescue him, but soon his own crippled starship is caught in the same eerie web of a monstrous creature from outer space!

THREE CLASSIC SCI-FI NOVELLAS IN ONE VOLUME--from a Hugo and Nebula award-winning author

In Terra Incognita, Connie Willisexplores themes of love and mortality whilebrilliantly illuminating the human condition through biting satire.

Uncharted Territory
Findriddy and Carson are explorers, dispatched to a distant planet to survey its canyons, ridges, and scrub-covered hills. Teamed with a profit-hungry indigenous guide of indeterminate gender and an enthusiastic newcomer whose specialty is mating customs, the group battles hostile terrain as they set out for unexplored regions. Along the way, they face dangers, discover treasures, and soon find themselves in an alien territory of another kind: exploring the paths and precipices of sex--and love.

Remake
In the Hollywood of the future, live-action movies are a thing of the past. Old films are computerized and ruthlessly dissected, actors digitally ripped from one film and thrust into another. Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe in A Star Is Born? No problem. Hate the ending? Change it with the stroke of a key. Technology makes anything possible. But a starry-eyed young woman wants only one thing: to dance on the big screen. With a little magic and a lot of luck, she just may get her happy ending.

D.A.
Theodora Baumgarten is baffled and furious: Why was she selected to be part of a highly competitive interstellar cadet program? After all, she never even applied. But that hasn't stopped the powers that be from whisking her onto a spaceship bound for the prestigious Academy. With her protests ignored, Theodora takes matters into her own hands, aided by her hacker best friend, to escape the Academy and return to Earth--only to uncover a conspiracy that runs deeper than she could have imagined.

Planetary surveyors Fin and Carson battle hostile terrain, bureaucratic red tape, and renegade "planet crashers" in this latest novella by the talented author of Doomsday Book. Willis continues to demonstrate her endless versatility in this archly written satire, which is both a love story and a shameless expose of the dark side of political correctness.

In "One Against the Moon" Donald A. Wollheim spins a tale about a stowaway, on the first rocket to the moon! Trapped in an underground cavern of the moon, Robin Carew faced possible death-alone! Starvation was postponed only briefly. He had the two rabbits and a monkey that had accompanied him in the untested atomic rocket not designed for human passengers. Rescue was unlikely. No one had discovered him hidden within the rocket before the blast-off. He could rely only on himself. From the moment this latter-day Robinson Crusoe discovers edible plants within the lightless cavern, hope of survival grows in him. An underground river leads him to other caverns, where he encounters weird creatures and another being one who speaks in an incomprehensible language. Thus begins a series of remarkable adventures, climaxed by the arrival of a second rocket that brings both danger and good fortune.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, September 2015. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 1 (2016), edited by Neil Clarke, and Cosmic Powers: The Saga Anthology of Far-Away Galaxies (2017), edited by John Joseph Adams. The story is included in the collection Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World and Other Stories (2016).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Table of Contents:

• The Giftie Gie Us - (1981) - novelette
• The Dreamsender - (1980) - novelette
• The Energy Crisis of 2215 - (1981) - shortstory
• Return to the Fold - (1984) - novelette
• The Shadows of Evening - (1983) - shortstory
• Not Always to the Strong - novelette
• The Challenge - novelette
• The Cassandra - (1983) - shortstory
• Dragon Pax - (1982) - novelette
• Job Inaction - (1981) - novelette
• Teamwork - (1984) - shortstory
• The Final Report on the Lifeline Experiment - (1983) - novelette
• Cascade Point - (1983) - novella
• Afterword - essay

Alpha Centauri or Die!

Robot alert - stop that starship!

Legend of Lost Earth

Only traitors talk of Terra.

"Come find what you have lost..."

Heeding this cryptic message from deep space, the crew of the starship Restoration journeys from Earth to a distant planet, hoping to find humanity's lost genetic diversity. But with the human race on the verge of extinction from the twin horrors of plague and a mysterious scourge of dark matter, how can an alien world harbor any remedies for Earth's declining populations?

Worse, the Restoration arrives depleted: its captain is dead, its crew demoralized--except for an indomitable old woman whose power and wealth give her the privilege of naming the new captain. Anton Prados, a young, untested officer, will now preside over humanity's first contact with an alien race. An alien race that, improbably, looks exactly like humans. Only, the Dassa possess highly unusual breeding habits--and a reproductive process that seems to be the nullification of all that is human. And they think much the same about humanity…

Determined to be on the first rocket flight form the moon to Mars, stowaway Chuck Svensen endangers the experiment by hiding on board the Eros. His worst fears are realized when he discovers that his presence means less food and fuel for the rest of the crew. And when the Eros crash-lands on the strange Red Planet, Chuck takes it upon himself to bring the ship safely back to the moon. From his first encounter with the menacing rodent-like Marian creatures, to the startling climax in the weird catacombs of a ruined civilization, here is science-fiction at its bizarre best.

Never make a date with a martian - the end result might surprise you.

The strangest of all worlds. Worlds where gigantic centipedes and grotesque parasites abound. Worlds where Martians transmit their messages by touch. Worlds where the first spacewoman breaks down the barriers and produces the first truly inter=planetary child.

Star Hunter

Somewhere on the jungle world of Jumala hid a man whose mind had been reconditioned with another's brain pattern. There was a fabulous reward out for him - and so began an other-worldly game of hide-and-seek, between a man who did not know his own powers and an interstellar safari that sought something no man had a right to find.

The Beast Master

Left homeless by the war that reduced Terra to a radioactive cinder, Hosteen Storm - Navaho commando and master of beasts - is drawn to the planet Arzor, to kill a man he has never met. On that dangerous frontier world, aliens and human colonists share the land in an uneasy truce. But something is upsetting the balance, and Storm is caught in the middle. He had thought the war was over - but was it?

At the beginning of the 22nd century, Earth colonies were established on Mars and Venus. But the ultimate dream - to travel to the stars - was still an impossibility. A few enlightened men believed that the Vorsters and the Harmonists could solve this seemingly insurmountable problem, if they could only forget their differences and work together.

H. G. Wells' 1901 science fiction novel, "The First Men in the Moon", is the story of an impoverished businessman, Mr. Bedford, who retreats to the countryside for some rest from the weary of modern life and to try his hand at authoring a play. While there he meets an eccentric scientist, Dr. Cavor, who is developing a new material, 'cavorite', which is designed to shield off gravity. When it is discovered that the material works and can be practically fashioned into a spaceship, the two undertake a mission to the moon. There they discover that the moon is inhabited by a sinister alien civilization, whom the call "the Selenites".

Fashioned as a criticism against imperialism, "The First Men in the Moon" draws upon a theme common to Wells' work, that of the impact of technology on society and the challenges that humans face in the modern world.

They find a hauntingly beautiful planet, MC6, capable of supporting human life. But the planet does not surrender its secrets. Fighting time, the team desperately explores clusters of strange geometric structures scattered around MC6, slowly discovering traces of an advanced civilization.

Then the head of the Probe teams finds a key, turns it and is sucked screaming into a black hole where he encounters an intelligence radically different from any other encountered before or since.

Gildoran was an Explorer. Despite the number of planets found and tied into the Transmitter network that enabled everyone else to travel instantly from planet to planet, his home was his Ship, and the only people he could count on were her crew. For Explorers traveled through space to find new planets, and their years were decades or centuries to anyone not on the Ship. As they found and struggled to survive on unknown worlds, the rest of the Galaxy moved on, so when they returned to "civilization" anything could have happened, and the world they left was not the one to which they returned--even if it was on the same planet.

The luxury space yacht Polaris carried an elite group of the wealthy and curious thousands of light-years from Earth to witness a spectacular stellar phenomenon. It never returned. The search party sent to investigate found the Polaris empty and adrift in space, the fate of its pilot and passengers a mystery.

Sixty years later, prominent antiquities dealer Alex Benedict is determined to find the truth about Polaris-no matter how far he must travel across the stars, no matter the risk.

Thousands of years after an entire colony mysteriously disappears, antiquities dealer Alex Benedict comes into possession of a cup that seems to be from the Seeker, one of the colony's ships. Investigating the provenance of the cup, Alex and his assistant Chase follow a deadly trail to the Seeker-strangely adrift in a system barren of habitable worlds. But their discovery raises more questions than it answers, drawing Alex and Chase into the very heart of danger.

A crew of spaceship Nostromo is suddenly woken up from a cryogenic sleep because of mysterious signals coming from an unknown planet and received by a ship computer. The astronauts land on the planet surface and go to investigate an alien spaceship where one of them is attacked by an alien which fasten itself on his face. When the crew returns to their ship and abandon the planet, nobody forefeels that the real horror will begin very soon...

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.

Merchanter Cargo Chief Marie Hawkins has never forgiven the crime, nor sought justice. Only vengeance. And, for 23 years, the Hawkins's clan ship, Sprite, has lived with her vendetta – and with her son, Tom, the boy sired in the violent assault.

Marie's attacker, Austin Bowe, is captain of the Corinthian. When both ships dock at Mariner Station, Marie vanishes and Tom searches for his mother... only to find himself trapped on Austin's ship with a half-brother he never knew he had and a crew fanatically loyal to Bowe. Now as the Corinthian flees the pursuing Sprite and a raider guns after both, the lives on board the two Merchanter ships are in the hands of Tom Hawkins. To save them all, Tom must trust his sworn enemy...

His father.

A power-driven young woman has just one chance to secure the status she craves and regain priceless lost artifacts prized by her people. She must free their thief from a prison planet from which no one has ever returned.

Ingray and her charge will return to her home world to find their planet in political turmoil, at the heart of an escalating intergalactic conflict. Together, they must make a new plan to salvage Ingray's future, her family, and her world, before they are lost to her for good.

It is 1965 and Ginny Eckhardt is a science fiction writer. She's been published in the big science fiction magazines and is friends with many of the popular science fiction authors of the day. Her husband, Walden, has just been selected by NASA as one of the New Nineteen Apollo astronauts... which means Ginny will be a member of the Astronaut Wives Club. Although the realities of spaceflight fascinate Ginny, her genders bars her from the United State space programme. Her science fiction offers little in the way of consolation--but perhaps there is something she can do about that... Covering the years 1965 to 1972, when Walden Eckhardt lifts-off aboard Apollo 15 as the mission's lunar module pilot, this is Ginny's life: wife, science fiction writer, astronaut wife... because that is ALL THAT OUTER SPACE ALLOWS.

This novella originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, April-May 2015. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Third Annual Collection (2016), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Written almost a century before the daring flights of the astronauts, Jules Verne's prophetic novel of man's race to the stars is a classic adventure tale enlivened by broad satire and scientific acumen.

When the members of the elite Baltimore Gun Club find themselves lacking any urgent assignments at the close of the Civil War, their president, Impey Barbicane, proposes that they build a gun big enough to launch a rocket to the moon. But when Barbicane's adversary places a huge wager that the project will fail and a daring volunteer elevates the mission to a "manned" flight, one man's dream turns into an international space race.

After being fired out of the giant Columbiad space gun, the bullet-shaped projectile along with its three passengers, Barbicane, Nicholl and Michel Ardan, begins the five-day trip to the moon.

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

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

The victim of a cruel experiment, Commander Spock renounces the USS Enterprise, becomes the Messiah of the planet Kyros, and launches a holy war on the rest of the world.

The USS Enterprise visits the planet Kyros to observe the population and test a new telepathic implant. The people living on the planet traditionally cover their faces, so the implant devices allow the crewmembers to mentally link with a member of the populace, accessing both their memories and instincts - which will allow the crew to walk around the planet freely.

But something goes wrong when Ensign Sara George becomes sexually promiscuous. Following an away mission to the planet, Spock refuses to return to the ship and declares himself to be the messiah of the planet. He threatens to destroy some important crystals on the planet which are needed by the ship.

Captain Kirk and the crew must retrieve Spock, obtain the critically-important crystals, and get the ship away before deadly radiation destroys them all.

The initial fan reaction to Spock, Messiah! was poor, and sales were lower than expected following the earlier success of James Blish's Spock Must Die!. The review in Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Review magazine suggested that the plot was far-fetched, and described it as "Spocks-ploitation". Issues with the book include racism, where Uhura is called "a black" and Sulu "the oriental". Daily Kos reviewer Lisa Evans described Spock, Messiah! as the "single worst Star Trek story I have ever read, either fan or pro."

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

Dr. Katalya Tremaine is a brilliant scientist, but behind her logical facade lies an irrational loathing: she hates Vulcans. So when she is paired with Spock on a mission to the planet Arachne, she deduces that the planet isn't big enough for both of them. It is a tense situation, made worse when the other members of the team are killed by insectoid natives. Spock and Tremaine are stranded alone on the planet - and utterly dependent on each other for survival.

CAPTAIN'S LOG, 6454.4

Due to a series of freak ion storms, the Neutral Zone separating the Federation from the Romulan Empire will soon shift - and the planet Arachnae will fall entirely within Romulan space. Our mission: seek out intelligent life there and, if it exists, offer full Federation protection.

To help us complete the necessary surveys, Dr. Katalya Tremain was assigned to the USS Enterprise. She is the Federation's foremost expert on the exobiology of this region - and, as I have just discovered, has a fanatical hatred of any and all things Vulcan... including my first officer.

I have logged an official protest with Starfleet Command. Her behavior towards Mr. Spock is not only a disgrace to both her uniform and the Federation but also threatens the success of our mission... a threat we cannot afford when the fate of an entire civilization may rest upon our actions in the coming hours.

Captain's Log, Stardate 6532.1

While investigating rumors of renewed activity by the Klingon Empire within the Galactic Core, the Enterprise made contact with a shuttlecraft from the USS Rickover, a starship presumed lost with all hands over 20 years ago. The lone occupant of that shuttlecraft - Thomas Clayton, once my roommate at Starfleet Academy, now the self-proclaimed chosen son and favored prophet of a deity he calls Ay-nab. I had planned on disregarding Clayton entirely - until control of our engines was seized by an as-yet-unexplained outside force... a force, Clayton insists, that is now taking us to meet his god.

On an urgent mission of mercy to a dying colony, the USS Enterprise is diverted from its course by Enowil, an unpredictable exile in charge of a world gone mad. With a Klingon and a Romulan warship already under his control, Enowil puts Kirk and his crew through an agonizing, dangerous test of wits while the colonists of Epsilon Delta 4 await evacuation - or certain death.

CAPTAIN'S LOG, STARDATE 6191.8

I am faced with one of the most difficult decisions of my career. Three days ago, the Enterprise was ordered to proceed at maximum warp to Epsilon Delta 4, where 700 colonists are slowly dying of radiation poisoning. Our journey there was interrupted when Enowil, an eccentric being of unbelievable power, seized control of the ship, as well as one Klingon and one Romulan star cruiser. Offering anything in his power to give as a reward, he has asked all of us for help in solving what he refers to as a "private matter." I've seen evidence of his power: it's incredible. If I decline, if I take the ship and leave, both the Romulans and the Klingons have a chance to obtain what could be an unstoppable weapon... and change the galactic balance of power. But if I stay, I am surely condemning the 700 colonists on Epsilon Delta 4 to a slow and painful death...

Chatalia... a fantastic artificial world, inhabited by furry winged creatures with awesome powers. Here Kirk, Spock and their Enterprise mates, trapped, face terrifying death. And if by some miracle they escape, they will confront the roving killers of the Klingon Empire!

As Captain Kirk and members of his landing party are held prisoner aboard the alien planetoid, the Enterprise - ensnared in a trap - loses power and begins to descend on a collision course with the planetoid.

Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise face a foe of incredible power and intelligence - a nightmare image from humanity's past.

Captain's log, stardate 7505.6. This is being recorded by Science Officer Spock, temporarily in command.

The Enterprise is currently in orbit around an alien "starship" (actually an artificial planetoid approximately 217.352 kilometers in diameter) of unknown origin, aboard which Captain Kirk and a landing party of four are stranded. They are currently detained in a prison cell, awaiting interrogation.

Far more immediate is the condition of the Enterprise. The ship has been 'snared' by wires apparently composed of the same material as the alien craft (a substance harder than any known to Federation science) -- wires which are draining off our power reserves at an alarming rate. We appear to have the choice of remaining on board the Enterprise (and crashing to the surface of the planetoid once our power is gone), or joining the Captain inside the alien spacecraft. A fascinating dilemma.

VOYAGE TO HEARTLAND

Heartland... a mysterious planet populated by a small but terrifying race of demonic beings.

Heartland... where Captain Kirk falls in love with a beautiful, mysterious woman with a fatal secret.

Heartland... where Kirk, Spock, and the rest of the Enterprise crew will be challenged by an awesome disembodied intelligence, more powerful than any other force in the universe!

While on shore leave at Starbase 13, Captain Kirk and his officers meet the renowned senseo-artist Gilla Dupree, a pale and fragile woman desperately seeking her lost father, Jacob Kell. When Kirk learns that Kell was last seen on Heartland, a planet that was quarantined after one hundred colonists went mad, he decides to help Gilla retrieve her father, while removing him to enforce the quarantine. The crew of the Enterprise discovers that the native inhabitants of Heartland, the demonic-looking Danons, constructed a massive god-like super-computer called the Great Machine to help win an ancient war.

However, as this ancient race nears extinction, the Great Machine becomes desperate to find someone to take the place of the Danons. Most humanoids go insane when they encounter the machine - Jacob Kell was one of the very few who were strong enough to act as the Great Machine's instrument. Gilla, who is dying from a massive and untreatable tumor, refuses to abandon her father to this fate. She gives her last days to take his place so that he may live. Kirk attempts a rescue but barely escapes with his life. He is forced to recommend a continuation of the quarantine to Starfleet while a woman he loves dies on the planet below him.

The Enterprise is ordered to the planet Perry, which was the destination of a group of colonists three hundred years ago. They arrive to find an utterly peaceful society, where no one is able to even think of violence. However, there are a few people, known as Immunes, who are resistant to the complete peace, and they capture Captain Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, and Kelly Davis, a Doctor temporarily on board the Enterprise as she recovers from an explosion in a transporter room. On board the Enterprise, Scotty is faced with more trouble from a Klingon Commander named Korol, who has sworn a blood oath to kill Kirk.

SHIP'S LOG, LIEUTENANT COMMANDER MONTGOMERY SCOTT RECORDING, STARDATE 6845.3

The situation on board the Enterprise is now critical. That strange "disease" accidentally brought back from Perry's Planet by the landing party has made it impossible for us to even think about committing an act of violence: as long as the Klingons continue their sporadic firing, we are helpless, unable to leave orbit or use the transporter and still maintain our shields at the necessary level. For now, we can only maintain a defensive posture - and before too long, the ship's failing dilithium crystals will prevent even that. Because we have been unable to contact Captain Kirk or the rest of the landing party for several hours, I've held off taking any action, but our position is deteriorating rapidly. In short, we are running out of options.

On a routine mission in deep space, Captain James Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise discover a lost city, drifting in space, more than 20 years from the nearest Human colony.

Its inhabitants are human, but so isolated that they are unable to grasp the existence of other worlds besides their own. Outsiders must be demons. Earth is a place that exists only in legend, in the tales of their ancestors. But time is running out for this forgotten civilization... their world is being pulled straight towards the center of a galactic whirlpool, two orbiting black holes in space.

Can Kirk convince them to trust him, before their world is destroyed forever?

The U.S.S. Enterprise undertakes a highly sensitive mission, ferrying ambassadors from across the Federation to controversial peace talks. One by one, the opponents of the proposed détente with the Romulans are murdered - victims of a mysterious Angel of Death. And the killer may be an Enterprise crew member - maybe even Captain James T. Kirk...

CAPTAIN KIRK IS DEAD. LONG LIVE CAPTAIN KIRK.

Spock, Doctor McCoy and the other crewmen of the Starship Enterprise experience a stunning double-shock. The first, painful blow is Captain Kirk's tragic death. Then, Captain Kirk's miraculous rebirth reveals the most awesome force the Enterprise has ever encountered. Spock is forced into a desperate gamble for Kirk's human soul against Omne - the ultrahuman emperor of life beyond life, and death beyond hell.

Omne, a genius megalomaniac who seeks immortality, has discovered a way to create a perfect duplicate of a sentient creature. As part of a plot against the Federation, he lures the Enterprise to his highly-protected planet, where Captain Kirk is apparently killed while breaking the Prime Directive. When Spock returns to the planet to confront Omne about Kirk's death, he is met with not one but two living, breathing Kirks - the original and a very convincing duplicate. Aided by the unnamed Romulan Commander from "The Enterprise Incident", Spock and the two Kirks attempt to shut down Omne and protect the balance of power.

With the Romulans approaching the boundaries of Federation space and the Klingons threatening to break the Organian peace treaty, Captain Kirk and his crew face a new peril in the person of Omne, the powerful and twisted creator of the Phoenix process.

sequel to The Price of the Phoenix

Star Trek: The New Voyages was an anthology of novellas released by Bantam Books, edited by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath. It included a foreword by Gene Roddenberry and introductions to the stories by members of the original series cast.

Although published professionally under copyright, the stories contained in the anthology were all written by fans. The Acknowledgments also contained an address for manuscripts and feedback to be sent, with the intention of further volumes being produced.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword (Star Trek: The New Voyages) - (1976) - essay by Gene Roddenberry
• Introduction: The Once and Future Voyages - (1976) - essay by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath
• Introduction to Ni Var - (1976) - essay by Leonard Nimoy
• Ni Var - (1976) - shortfiction by Claire Gabriel
• Introduction to Intersection Point - (1976) - essay by James Doohan
• Intersection Point - (1976) - shortfiction by Juanita Coulson
• Introduction to The Enchanted Pool - (1976) - essay by Nichelle Nichols
• The Enchanted Pool - (1976) - shortfiction by Marcia Ericson
• Introduction to Visit to a Weird Planet Revisited - (1976) - essay by Majel Barrett Roddenberry
• Visit to a Weird Planet Revisited - (1976) - shortfiction by Ruth Berman
• Introduction to The Face on the Barroom Floor - (1976) - essay by George Takei
• The Face on the Barroom Floor - (1976) - shortfiction by Eleanor Arnason and Ruth Berman
• Introduction to The Hunting - (1976) - essay by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath
• The Hunting - (1976) - shortfiction by Doris Beetem
• Introduction to The Winged Dreamers - (1976) - essay by DeForest Kelley
• The Winged Dreamers - (1976) - shortfiction by Jennifer Guttridge
• Introduction to Mind-Sifter - (1976) - essay by William Shatner
• Mind-Sifter - (1976) - shortfiction by Shirley S. Maiewski
• Sonnet from the Vulcan: Omicron Ceti Three - (1976) - poem by Shirley Meech

The men and women of the Starship Enterprise return in this dazzling volume of ten electrifying adventures set in deep space. Featuring the unforgettable characters created by Gene Roddenberry, each one of these extraordinary tales captures the beauty and courage of the fearless quest into uncharted realms - where others venture only in their boldest dreams.

Based on the blockbuster films and the legendary television show, these ten original Star Trek stories boldly go where no one has gone before.

Table of Contents:

• Editors' Preface: The Once and Future Voyages 2 - The Camelot Connection - (1978) - essay by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath
• Introduction (Star Trek: The New Voyages 2) - (1978) - essay by Jesco von Puttkamer
• Editors' Introduction to "Surprise!" - (1978) - essay by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath
• Surprise! - (1978) - novelette by Nichelle Nichols and Myrna Culbreath and Sondra Marshak
• Editors' Introduction to "Snake Pit!" - (1978) - essay by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath
• Snake Pit! - (1978) - shortstory by Connie Faddis
• Editors' Introduction to "The Patient Parasites" - (1978) - essay by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath
• The Patient Parasites - (1978) - novelette by Russell Bates
• Editors' Introduction to "In the Maze" - (1978) - essay by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath
• In the Maze - (1978) - novelette by Jennifer Guttridge
• Editors' Introduction to "Cave-in" - (1978) - essay by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath
• Cave-in - (1978) - poem by Jane Peyton
• Editors' Introduction to "Marginal Existence" - (1978) - essay by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath
• Marginal Existence - (1978) - shortstory by Connie Faddis
• Editors' Introduction to "The Procrustean Petard" - (1978) - essay by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath
• The Procrustean Petard - (1978) - novelette by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath
• Editors' Introduction to "The Sleeping God" - (1978) - essay by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath
• The Sleeping God - (1978) - novelette by Jesco von Puttkamer
• Editors' Introduction to "Elegy for Charlie" - (1978) - essay by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath
• Elegy for Charlie - (1978) - poem by Antonia Vallario
• Editors' Introduction to "Soliloquy" - (1978) - essay by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath
• Postscript: "Gentlepersons" - The Vulcan Connection - (1978) - essay by Marguerite B. Thompson
• Soliloquy - (1978) - poem by Marguerite B. Thompson
• Epilogue (Star Trek: The New Voyages 2) - (1978) - essay by Nichelle Nichols

Living on a chicken farm in backwater America, forced to help his older brother run an illegal drug operation, Tom was going nowhere fast. Then an extraterrestial ship crashed on his farm, and he managed to save one alien from the wreck - Mica, a cadet of the multi-species Federation.

Communicating largely through pictures, the two form an odd friendship and Tom decides to become a Federation cadet -- a test case to see if humans could ever be considered for membership. As the lone human among the alien race, Tom's survival was not assured. And if he fell prey to fear and prejudice, Earth would be condemned to eternal quarantine.

Plucked from Appalachian poverty by the Interstellar Federation of Sapients, trained as a diplomatic cadet on their artificial planet Karst, Tom Red-Clay has grown up in the galaxy. Now, in the stunning sequel to BECOMING ALIEN, Tom must return to Earth on a secret mission for the Federation. His marching orders: "Three goals, two obligatory, one optional: research japan, go to dinner with two humans, find a wife."

Set down in Berkeley, California, a world indeed no less strange to him than Karst, Tom must decipher the intrigues of humans and aliens alike - with the fate of Earth itself riding on his every move.

Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets. The stakes are high: no less than the first claim to entire worlds. If he declines the honor, he'll be switched off, and they'll try again with someone else. If he accepts, he becomes a prime target. There are at least three other countries trying to get their own probes launched first, and they play dirty. The safest place for Bob is in space, heading away from Earth at top speed. Or so he thinks. Because the universe is full of nasties, and trespassers make them mad - very mad.

In this first collaboration by science fiction masters Larry Niven (Ringworld) and Gregory Benford (Timescape), the limits of wonder are redrawn once again as a human expedition to another star system is jeopardized by an encounter with an astonishingly immense artifact in interstellar space: a bowl-shaped structure half-englobing a star, with a habitable area equivalent to many millions of Earths...and it's on a direct path heading for the same system as the human ship.

A landing party is sent to investigate the Bowl, but when the explorers are separated--one group captured by the gigantic structure's alien inhabitants, the other pursued across its strange and dangerous landscape--the mystery of the Bowl's origins and purpose propel the human voyagers toward discoveries that will transform their understanding of their place in the universe.

Audacious astronauts encounter bizarre, sometimes deadly life forms, and strange, exotic, cosmic phenomena, including miniature black holes, dense fields of interstellar plasma, powerful gravity-emitters, and spectacularly massive space-based, alien-built labyrinths. Tasked with exploring this brave, new, highly dangerous world, they must also deal with their own personal triumphs and conflicts.

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.

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.

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.

Hero or Killer?

In a startling future that's coming closer every year, Chet Kinsman is an astronaut ace who has done everything in space--including committying the first murder. It's a secret he can never escape, not even on the Moon, where he's head of the first U.S. lunar colony.

But suddenly, a series of shocking yet strangely inevitable circumstances forces Kinsman to confront his hidden past and decide Earth's destiny. In a desperate countdown to nuclear annihilation, Kinsman struggles against a deadly paradox: if he rescues the world, he may end up destroying himself.Hero or Killer?

In a startling future that's coming closer every year, Chet Kinsman is an astronaut ace who has done everything in space---including committing the first murder. It's a secret he can never escape, not even on the Moon, where he's head of the first U.S. lunar colony.

But suddenly, a series of shocking yet strangely inevitable circumstances forces Kinsman to confront his hidden past and decide Earth's destiny. In a desperate countdown to nuclear annihilation, Kinsman struggles against a deadly paradox: if he rescues the world, he may end up destroying himself.

All Kinsman wanted was the moon...

It was the threshold to space and the stars, to new industries, new worlds, and a new destiny for mankind. It was vital that the United States establish a Moon colony - and Chet Kinsman was determined to lead it.

But the opposition was fierce, well-financed, and politically powerfull. To fight and win, Kinsman would have to use - to betray and perhaps destroy - the woman he loved, his oldest friend, and - if it came to that - himself.

A stirring novel of character and human confilic as well as adventurous technology, Kinsman brings to vivid life the near-future epic of the newest and widest frontier of all.

A harrowing tale of brinkmanship--on Earth & on the Moon!

You are thrust into the terrifying world of the future in this chilling novel about people and politics in the year 1999. The Earth's population has soared to eight billion. The two major powers are on the brink of nuclear war as they vie for control of the planet's dwindling supply of natural resources.

Meanwhile, a few hundred kilometers above the Earth's surface, on their respective moon colonies, the United States and Soviet Russia feverishly race to complete networks of ABM satellites to protect themselves from missile attack.

Each side knows that if it can complete its own satellite ABM network before the other side does, the decades-long nuclear stalemate of terror will be broken. A decisive advantage would be obtained. A preemptive nuclear strike could be hurled at the enemy, with the ABM satellites blunting the inevitable counterstrike.

Two men are deeply involved in this potential holocaust: the heads of the American and Russian colonies. Fortunately, for the sake of humanity, they are both idealistic men of good will, determined to work together to establish a world in which co-existence is possible.

The book begins by announcing the death of Chris Godfrey and his three fellow astronauts after a fire and apparent break-up of their spacecraft as it approaches the orbit of Neptune as observed from Earth. The crew have however survived but are stranded as their hypothermia equipment is irreparably damaged.

Published in the U. S. by Washburn Books under the title of Neptune One Missing.

Long out of print, the science fiction masterpiece by Hugo Award winning writer James Blish

Originally published as four volumes nearly fifty years ago, Cities in Flight brings together the famed "Okie novels" of science fiction master James Blish. Named after the migrant workers of America's Dust Bowl, these novels convey Blish's "history of the future," a brilliant and bleak look at a world where cities roam the Galaxy looking for work and a sustainable way of life.

In the first novel, They Shall Have Stars, man has thoroughly explored the Solar System, yet the dream of going even further seems to have died in all but one man. His battle to realize his dream results in two momentous discoveries -- anti-gravity and the secret of immortality. In A Life for the Stars, it is centuries later and antigravity generations have enabled whole cities to lift off the surface of the earth to become galactic wanderers. In Earthman, Come Home, the nomadic cities revert to barbarism and marauding rogue cities begin to pose a threat to all civilized worlds. An armada of renegade cities attempts to destroy Earth, their ancient birthplace. In the final novel, A Clash of Cymbols (The Triumph of Time), history repeats itself as the cities once again journey back in to space making a terrifying discovery which could destroy the entire Universe. A serious and haunting vision of our world and its limits, Cities in Flight marks the return to print of one of science fiction's masterpieces.

Also published as Year 2018!

2018 AD. The time of the Cold Peace, worse even than the Cold War. The bureaucratic regimes that rule from Washington and Moscow are indistinguishable in their passion for total repression. But in the West, a few dedicated individuals still struggle to find a way out of the trap of human history. Behind the screen of official research their desperate project is nearing completion...

A CITY LAUNCHES ITSELF INTO THE GALAXY!

The noise was horrifying. He had never heard anything even a fraction as loud, but there could be no doubt about what it was: the city's spindizzies were sounding the alert.

Then the whole city seemed to be rocking heavily, like a ship in a storm. At one instant, the street ended in nothing but sky; at the next, he was staring at a wall of sheared earth, its rim looming cliff-like, fifty feet or more above the new margin of the city; then the blank sky was back again...

The novel incorporates a novelette of the same name, first published in 1953.

Historia Galactica, Vol. MXLIII

Centuries ago, after the fall of Western civilization, when Earth's resources were consumed, entire cities cut loose from the home planet to roam the Universe.

Earth, the sleepy capital of the Universe, was deserted - a garden planet. It was known only as a legend in many corners of space - a green myth floating untold millions of light years away.

Then, as foretold by cyclic theories of sociahistorians, colonies of flying cities reverted to the laws of the jungle - to barbarity, cruelty - naked force! These outlaw cities banded together to march on Earth - and obliterate the birthplace and last stronghold of universal culture!

The only hope for the universe lay in two men - one young and vigorous, the other over one thousand years old!

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.

NASA discovered the alien ship lurking in the asteroid belt in the 1960s. They kept the Target under intense surveillance for decades, letting the public believe they were exploring the solar system, while they worked feverishly to refine the technology needed to reach it.

The ship itself remained silent, drifting.

Dr. Jane Holloway is content documenting nearly-extinct languages and had never contemplated becoming an astronaut. But when NASA recruits her to join a team of military scientists for an expedition to the Target, it's an adventure she can't refuse.

The ship isn't vacant, as they presumed.

A disembodied voice rumbles inside Jane's head, "You are home."

Jane fights the growing doubts of her colleagues as she attempts to decipher what the alien wants from her. As the derelict ship devolves into chaos and the crew gets cut off from their escape route, Jane must decide if she can trust the alien's help to survive.

In defiance of NASA, Jane Holloway, the linguist of the Providence expedition, commandeers the alien ship that her crew explored. She sets off to return that ship's marooned navigator to his home world, determined to discover who was behind the genocide that destroyed his original crew.

But when she gets there, she finds his world devastated by the same plague. The remaining members of his race, uniquely gifted at navigating the stars, are stranded across the galaxy. And someone, it seems, doesn't want those lost navigators to be found.

As Jane unravels the mystery of the plague and works to ensure the survival of Ei'Brai's race, she discovers that the life of every sentient being in the galaxy may be in jeopardy... and the clock is ticking.

Hundreds of years in the future, after the collapse of the Western world, young Menelaus Illation Montrose grows up in what was once Texas as a gunslinging duelist for hire. But Montrose is also a mathematical genius—and a romantic who dreams of a future in which humanity rises from the ashes to take its place among the stars.

The chance to help usher in that future comes when Montrose is recruited for a manned interstellar mission to investigate an artifact of alien origin. Known as the Monument, the artifact is inscribed with data so complex, only a posthuman mind can decipher it. So Montrose does the unthinkable: he injects himself with a dangerous biochemical drug designed to boost his already formidable intellect to superhuman intelligence. It drives him mad.

Nearly two centuries later, his sanity restored, Montrose is awakened from cryo-suspension with no memory of his posthuman actions, to find Earth transformed in strange and disturbing ways, and learns that the Monument still carries a secret he must decode—one that will define humanity’s true future in the universe.

Coyote marks a dramatic new turn in the career of Allen Steele, Hugo Award-winning author of Chronospace. Epic in scope, passionate in its conviction, and set against a backdrop of plausible events, it tells the brilliant story of Earth's first interstellar colonists-and the mysterious planet that becomes their home.

The crime of the century begins without a hitch. On July 5th, 2070, as it's about to be launched, the starship Alabama is hijacked-by her captain and crew. In defiance of the repressive government of The United Republic of Earth, they replace her handpicked passengers with political dissidents and their families. These become Earth's first pioneers in the exploration of space. Captain R.E. Lee, their leader. Colonel Gill Reese, the soldier sent to stop Lee. Les Gilles, the senior communications officer, a victim of a mistake that will threaten the entire mission. Crewman Eric Gunther, who has his own agenda for being aboard. His daughter, Wendy, a teenager who will grow up too quickly.

Jorge and Rita Montero, ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances. And their son Carlos, who will become a hero in spite of himself. After almost two-and-a-half centuries in cold sleep, they will awaken above their destination: a habitable world named Coyote. A planet that will test their strength, their beliefs, and their very humanity. In Coyote, Allen Steele delivers a grand novel of galactic adventure-a tale of life on the newest of frontiers.

Contents:

• Jay Score
• Mechanistria
• Symbiotica
• Mesmerica

At first Killashandra Ree's ambitions to become a Crystal Singer, get rich, and forget her past, were going just as she had hoped. But after she grew wealthy, a devastating storm turned her claim to useless rock. In short order she was broke, she had crystal sickness so bad she thought she was going to die, and the only way she could be true to the man she loved was to leave him....

Journey Across the Sea of Space

They named her Souther Cross and launched her on the road whose end they would never see. Months afterward shw was moving at half the speed of light; if there was to be enough reaction mass for deceleration and maneuver, the blast must be terminated. And so the long silence came. For four and half centuries the ship would fall.

They manned her by turns, and dreamed other ships and launched them, and saw how a few of the shortest journeys ended. Then they died.

After ten generations, the Souther Cross was not quite halfway to her own goal, though she was the farthest from Earth of any human work...

The planet was called Pyrrus...a strange place where all the beasts, plants and natural elements were designed for one specific purpose: to destroy man.

The settlers there were supermen...twice as strong as ordinary men and with milli-second reflexes. They had to be. For their business was murder...

It was up to Jason dinAlt, interplanetary gambler, to discover why Pyrrus had become so hostile during man's brief habitation...

Finalist, Asimov's Annual Readers' Poll

Mae, chief linguist on the Ivoire, heads a diplomatic mission to Ukhanda. Her handling of relations with the Quurzod lead to a battle that causes the Ivoire's anacapa drive to malfunction, stranding the ship in foldspace. Mae can't remember what she did wrong on the mission: all she knows is that she's one of the few survivors. If she doesn't recall it, she won't be able to prevent another disaster when the Ivoire escapes foldspace. If the Ivoire escapes foldspace. Because what no one talks about -- and everyone fears -- is that the Ivoire is becalmed... forever.

This standalone novella first appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction in April-May 2011. It has been collected in The Diving Bundle.

Winner, Asimov's Annual Readers' Poll

The Fleet. In Boss' time, a thing of legend. Long before Boss and her crew found their first Dignity Vessel, long before the Room of Lost Souls claimed its first life, the Fleet used its advanced technology to explore the galaxy. But even in its heyday that technology sometimes malfunctioned. And occasionally, that malfunction exacted an unfathomable price.

This novella first appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction in October-November 2010. In a slightly modified form, it is contained in its entirety within the novel City of Ruins. It has been collected in The Diving Bundle.

Winner, Asimov's Annual Readers' Poll

Boss dives derelict space vessels, for money, yes, but more for their historical value. So, when Boss uncovers the find of a lifetime, she enlists the best divers she can convince to help her pursue it -- off the grid and under the Empire's radar. But the more they discover, the less they realize they know -- and the more it will cost them all.

This novella first appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction in December 2005. In a slightly modified form, it is contained in its entirety within the novel Diving Into The Wreck. The story is included in the anthology The Final Frontier (2018), edited by Neil Clarke. It has been collected in Recovering Apollo 8 and Other Stories and The Diving Bundle.

Finalist, Asimov's Annual Readers' Poll

The Fleet. In Boss' time, a thing of legend. Long before Boss and her crew found their first Dignity Vessel, long before the Room of Lost Souls claimed its first life, the Fleet used its advanced technology to explore the galaxy. But even in its heyday that technology sometimes malfunctioned. And occasionally, that malfunction exacted an unfathomable price.

This novella first appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction in October-November 2013. In a slightly modified form, it is contained in its entirety within the novel Skirmishes.

When the captain and senior crew abandon the Renegat, linguist Raina Serpell assumes command. She needs to get the ship and remaining crew home.

As the ship comes under attack from the planet below, Raina must first figure out how to operate the ship's firepower. Harder still, she must battle her own past to become captain in more than just name alone.

This novella was originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction, September-October 2019.

Asimov Readers Choice Award Finalist Novella

Maelstrom: The Final Voyage of the Gabriella

by Nedda Ferguson-Lithe

Recreating the last days of a lost ship proved a difficult writing challenge for me. I had already chosen an older form of storytelling as my medium, because I believed - and still believe - that this form suits my purposes best.

But I also need to maintain my journalistic standards, for my sake as well as the sake of the story. Many others have told tales of lost ships over hundreds of years, and those storytellers have all chosen to fictionalize certain parts of the narrative, if not the entire story.

My training will not allow me to do that.

Besides, that's not why I wrote this. I wrote this to find answers, sometimes to questions I hadn't even realized that I had. My need to know comes from a personal place. I lost my father on the Gabriella. I needed to know what, exactly, happened to him. I did not learn that. Not exactly.

But I learned more than I had known before.

I have spent years researching, interviewing, and organizing the information into something that resembles a narrative. We will never know what those final days were like for the crew of the Gabriella, but we have enough information to make an educated guess.

Which is what this is.

This novella was first published in the September-October 2020 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction. Read it for free at the publisher's website.

Finalist, Asimov's Annual Readers' Poll

Stealth tech: a lost science everyone wants to reclaim. The woman who helped Boss dive the Dignity Vessel, known then as Squishy, claims a long and storied history with stealth tech. Her research into the lost science caused deaths before, and she failed to prevent them during that fateful dive. Now, she vows to find a way to destroy the technology once and for all.

This novella first appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction in October-November 2010. In a slightly modified form, it is contained in its entirety within the novel Boneyards. It has been collected in The Diving Bundle.

Starbase Kappa. The Room of Lost Souls. An abandoned space station with different names but one certainty: People die there. Still, a soldier can't argue with orders, no matter how bad a place's reputation. Enterran Empire Operations Commander Elissa Trekov's most famous relative died there, so she thinks she knows the Room better than the rest of her team. But when strangers turn up on the so-called abandoned station -- strangers who seem to know a lot more about its function than they pretend -- she realizes the Room's legendary history only scratches the surface of the dangers lurking within.

This novella, in a slightly modified form, is contained in its entirety within the novel Skirmishes. It has been collected in The Diving Bundle.

Winner, Asimov's Annual Readers' Poll

The Fleet. In Boss' time, a thing of legend. Long before Boss and her crew found their first Dignity Vessel, long before the Room of Lost Souls claimed its first life, the Fleet used its advanced technology to explore the galaxy. But even in its heyday that technology sometimes malfunctioned. And occasionally, that malfunction exacted an unfathomable price.

This standalone novella first appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction in August 2013. It has been collected in Warrior Women, edited by Paula Guran.

Winner, Asimov's Annual Readers' Poll

Boss remembers the Room. It haunts her. Her mother died there. Now, a client wants her to go back. She wants Boss to help her uncover the Room's mysteries. But the truths she discovers might destroy everything Boss holds sacred.

This novella first appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction in April-May 2008. In a slightly modified form, it is contained in its entirety within the novel Diving Into The Wreck. It has been collected in The Diving Bundle.

Finalist, Asimov's Annual Readers' Poll

The Spires of Denon doesn't involve Boss or her crew. Instead, this standalone novella follows Meklos Verr, hired to guard an archeological dig near the mysterious Spires of Denon. There Verr encounters the prickly Gabrielle Reese who heads the dig, and he meets some cave divers who aren't quite what they seem. Verr knows that someone wants to harm the dig, but he isn't sure if the attack will come from outside the tall mountain range or from the group of archeologists within. Verr must figure out the threat before it destroys him, his crew, and the beautiful Spires of Denon.

This novella first appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction in April-May 2009. It has been collected in The Ninth Science Fiction Megapack.

Boss loves to dive historical ships, derelict spacecraft found adrift in the blackness between the stars. Sometimes she salvages for money, but mostly she's an active historian. She wants to know about the past--to experience it firsthand. Once she's dived the ship, she'll either leave it for others to find or file a claim so that she can bring tourists to dive it as well. It's a good life for a tough loner, with more interest in artifacts than people.

Then one day, Boss finds the claim of a lifetime: an enormous spacecraft, incredibly old, and apparently Earth-made. It's impossible for something so old, built in the days before Faster Than Light travel, to have journeyed this far from Earth. It shouldn't be here. It can't be here. And yet, it is. Boss's curiosity is up, and she's determined to investigate. She hires a group of divers to explore the wreck with her, the best team she can assemble. But some secrets are best kept hidden, and the past won t give up its treasures without exacting a price in blood.

What Boss finds could rewrite history, cost lives, and start an intergalactic war.

This novel includes, in slightly modified form, the complete text of the novellas Diving Into The Wreck and The Room of Lost Souls.

Boss, a loner, loved to dive derelict spacecraft adrift in the blackness of space...

But one day, she found a ship that would change everything-an ancient Dignity Vessel-and aboard the ship, the mysterious and dangerous Stealth Tech. Now, years after discovering that first ship, Boss has put together a large company that finds Dignity Vessels and finds "loose" stealth technology.

Following a hunch, Boss and her team come to investigate the city of Vaycehn, where fourteen archeologists have died exploring the endless caves below the city. Mysterious "death holes" explode into the city itself for no apparent reason, and Boss believes stealth tech is involved. As Boss searches for the answer to the mystery of the death holes, she will uncover the answer to her Dignity Vessel quest as well-and one more thing, something so important that it will change her life-and the universe-forever.

This novel includes, in slightly modified form, the complete text of the novella Becoming One With The Ghosts.

Searching for ancient technology to help her friends find answers to the mystery of their own past, Boss ventures into a place filled with evidence of an ancient space battle, one the Dignity Vessels lost.

Meanwhile, the Enterran Empire keeps accidentally killing its scientists in a quest for ancient stealth tech. Boss's most difficult friend, Squishy, has had enough. She sneaks into the Empire and destroys its primary stealth tech research base. But an old lover thwarts her escape, and now Squishy needs Boss's help.

Boss, who is a fugitive in the Empire. Boss, who knows how to make a Dignity Vessel work. Boss, who knows that Dignity Vessels house the very technology that the Empire is searching for.

Should Boss take a Dignity Vessel to rescue Squishy and risk losing everything to the Empire? Or should Boss continue on her mission for her other friends and let Squishy suffer her own fate?

Filled with battles old and new, scientific dilemmas, and questions about the ethics of friendship, Boneyards looks at the influence of our past on our present and the risks we all take when we meddle in other people's lives.

This novel includes, in slightly modified form, the complete text of the novella Stealth.

The answers Captain Jonathon "Coop" Cooper and the crew of the Ivoire seek lie in the Boneyards. But they must wait for Boss and her team to dive it, explore the wrecks, and piece together what happened in that faraway place.

Boss loves the challenge. Thousands of ships, centuries of history, all play to her strengths. In her absence, she trusts Coop to defend the Nine Planets Alliance against the Enterran Empire.

But an encounter from Coop's recent past shows up to haunt him, an encounter he never told Boss about, an encounter that could threaten her future, his life, and the fragile peace between the Alliance and the Empire.

This novel includes, in slightly modified form, the complete text of the novellas Strangers at the Room of Lost Souls and Encounter on Starbase Kappa.

Fleet sector bases close as the Fleet moves on. Everyone knows and expects it. But still, the announcement that Sector Base E-2 will close -- although still thirty years in the future -- breeds a mood of tension and anxiety.

So, when Rajivk Agwu finds two pairs of shoes on a trail near Fiskett Falls, but no sign of their occupants, his already heightened senses warn of danger.

Those on the base fare no better. Bristol Iannazzi, working on the notoriously delicate anacapa drive for a runabout, also notices something strange, something out of place, something dangerous...

Asimov's Reader's Choice Award-nominated Novella

A graveyard of spaceships, abandoned by the mysterious Fleet thousands of years earlier. Boss calls it "The Boneyard." She needs the ships inside to expand her work for Lost Souls Corporation. Yash Zarlengo thinks the Boneyard will help her discover if the Fleet still exists.

Boss and Yash, while exploring the Boneyard, discover a small ship with a powerful and dangerous problem: The ship's active anacapa drive.

To escape the Boneyard, Boss must deal with the drive. Which means she'll have to dive the ship on limited time and under extremely dangerous conditions. And she can't go alone.

This short novel of 42,677 words was originally published in its entirety in the April/May 2017 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction. Read this story for free at Asimov's Science Fiction.

Leaving Boss behind to continue diving the Boneyard, Ivoire Engineer Yash Zarlengo returns to the Lost Souls Corporation's headquarters to analyze the data from the runabout they discovered there.

Convinced that the experience in the Boneyard proves the Fleet still exists, Yash buries herself in her work, interested in little else.

Ivoire Captain Jonathan "Coop" Cooper notices Yash's growing obsession with finding the Fleet and joins her in her search.

For the first time in six years, the crew of the Ivoire feels real hope. Coop and Yash know all too well the dangers hope can pose. But this time their hope might just lead them somewhere no one expected.

Parts of this novel appeared in different forms as the novella Dix (Asimov's March-April 2018) and the novelette Lieutenant Tightass (Asimov's July-August 2018).

As a young recruit, brilliant engineer Nadim Crowe accidentally destroys an entire Boneyard full of ships. Now, decades later, he ends up on the crew of the Renegat, the only ship in the Fleet ever sent on a mission backwards to investigate an ancient Boneyard.

Something invaded that Boneyard and the Fleet wants to know what. Or who.

The Renegat: The only ship the Fleet dares risk. The Renegat: A ship of misfits and screw-ups sent on an impossible mission. All alone in deep space.

Parts of this novel appeared in different forms as the novellas The Rescue of the Renegat (Asimov's January-February 2018) and Joyride (Asimov's November-December 2018).

A race against time.

Weeks after Boss' injury from the runabout dive, she continues the mission to salvage Fleet wrecks for the Lost Souls Corporation But Boss feels like she lost something after that fateful dive. Until something happens in the Boneyard to catch her attention. Something that sparks her interest with an intensity she thought she had lost.

Now, Boss must assemble a team - her old team - to dive this new discovery. But Boss worries that someone knows her plans. That the Boneyard might prove more sentient than she knows. She feels the clock ticking - and she worries time will run out once and for all.

Boss' team leader Squishy, who had a mysterious past involving military intelligence, enlisted others to help her destroy stealth tech in the novel Boneyards. But exactly what happened to those teams remained a mystery - until now.

Ten people signed up to help Squishy in her fateful mission. Only five returned.

Paired up in teams of two, they set out across the Enterran Empire to infiltrate and sabotage the Empire's bases which were being used to back up their stealth tech research.

But what exactly happened on those bases? Who survived? Squishy's Teams provides the answers to those burning questions and reveals twists to the ongoing saga no one sees coming.

The author strongly encourages reading Boneyards before picking up Squishy's Teams.

On the run.

After fleeing pursuers from two different missions, Boss and Coop reconvene at the Lost Souls Corporation headquarters. Both share exciting but troublesome news. And a whole lot of questions.

But before they begin to even scratch the surface of the new information, they face threats from all quarters. And when an old adversary of Coop's gets involved, Boss questions who to trust to survive and find some long-awaited answers.

In a moving story of sacrifice and triumph, human scientists establish a relationship with intelligent lifeforms--the cheela--living on Dragon's Egg, a neutron star where one Earth hour is equivalent to hundreds of their years. The cheela culturally evolve from savagery to the discovery of science, and for a brief time, men are their diligent teachers . . .

Hunters of Dune and the concluding volume, Sandworms of Dune, bring together the great story lines and beloved characters in Frank Herbert's classic Dune universe, ranging from the time of the Butlerian Jihad to the original Dune series and beyond. Based directly on Frank Herbert's final outline, which lay hidden in a safe-deposit box for a decade, these two volumes will finally answer the urgent questions Dune fans have been debating for two decades.

At the end of Chapterhouse: Dune--Frank Herbert's final novel--a ship carrying the ghola of Duncan Idaho, Sheeana (a young woman who can control sandworms), and a crew of various refugees escapes into the uncharted galaxy, fleeing from the monstrous Honored Matres, dark counterparts to the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood. The nearly invincible Honored Matres have swarmed into the known universe, driven from their home by a terrifying, mysterious Enemy. As designed by the creative genius of Frank Herbert, the primary story of Hunters and Sandworms is the exotic odyssey of Duncan's no-ship as it is forced to elude the diabolical traps set by the ferocious, unknown Enemy. To strengthen their forces, the fugitives have used genetic technology from Scytale, the last Tleilaxu Master, to revive key figures from Dune's past-including Paul Muad'Dib and his beloved Chani, Lady Jessica, Stilgar, Thufir Hawat, and even Dr. Wellington Yueh. Each of these characters will use their special talents to meet the challenges thrown at them.

Failure is unthinkable--not only is their survival at stake, but they hold the fate of the entire human race in their hands.

With Children of the Mind, Card returns to the story of Ender Wiggin: hero of the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Enders Game, the original Speaker for the Dead, and the hated Xenocide who murdered an entire planet. Now his adopted world, Lusitania, is threatened by the same planet-destroying weapon that he himself used so many thousands of years before.

Enders oldest friend, Jane, the computer intelligence that has evolved with him over 3000 years, is about to be killed by the Starways Congress, which has finally discovered her existence and fears her control of the galaxy-wide interlocked network of computers and ansibles.Jane can save the three sentient races of Lusitaniathe Pequeninos, the Hive Queens daughters, and the human colony. She has learned how to move ships outside the universe, and then instantly back to a different world, abolishing the light-speed limit. But it takes all the processing power available to her, and the Starways Congress is shutting down the Net world by world.

Ender’s Shadow explores the stars in this all-new novel...

At the end of Shadow of the Giant, Bean flees to the stars with three of his children--the three who share the engineered genes that gave him both hyper-intelligence and a short, cruel physical life. The time dilation granted by the speed of their travel gives Earth’s scientists generations to seek a cure, to no avail. In time, they are forgotten--a fading ansible signal speaking of events lost to Earth’s history. But the Delphikis are about to make a discovery that will let them save themselves, and perhaps all of humanity in days to come.

For there in space before them lies a derelict Formic colony ship. Aboard it, they will find both death and wonders--the life support that is failing on their own ship, room to grow, and labs in which to explore their own genetic anomaly and the mysterious disease that killed the ship’s colony.

Mal wins an old map in a card game. Ancient and written in impenetrable symbols, the former owner insists it's worthless. Yet River Tam can read it, and says it leads to one of the Arks, legendary ships that brought humans from Earth-that-was to the 'Verse. The salvage potential alone is staggering. But the closer they get to the ancient ship, the more agitated River becomes. She says something is waiting inside, something powerful, and very angry...

The Forge of God described the destruction of Earth itself by self-replicating robots, Von Neumann machines designed to use the planet's mass to create more robotic creatures and spread throughout the Galaxy. Only a few humans have survived, aided by a mysterious alien race known only as “The Benefactors”, who arrived at Earth too late.

Now the small group of human survivors is determined to track down the criminal race who launched the planet killers. Humanity is given a starship by The Benefactors, and driven only by revenge they set out to find the unknown beings who are responsible for the destruction of Earth, and many other worlds.

Dorothy Yoshida, an astronomer and telepath, joins the archaelogical team exploring the mysterious ruins of a nearly dead planet that shows some signs of returning to life.

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...

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.

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.

The pendarvis decision had declared the Fuzzies to be intelligent beings - guaranteed them protection and security. But just how much were those assurances worth?

The friendship between human Jack Holloway and the small, golden-furred creatures of the planet Zarathustra has a profound impact on both Holloway and the Fuzzies.

Here is the compelling story of the launching of Prometheus -- Earth's first true spaceship -- and of the men who made it happen.

Dirk Alexson:
Chronicler of the greatest space adventure of all time, he was chosen to immortalize the incredible story of the men and their heroic mission.

Sir Robert Derwent:
Direct-General of Interplanetary -- London Headquarters for the international space-flight project -- he was the man who got the mission off the ground and into the pages of history.

Professor Maxton:
The world's leading atomic engineer, he designed the huge ship's drive units and he waited with the rest of the world to see if the project would be a success.

Speculate for a moment on the enormous challenge to archaeology when interplanetary travel is possible... and relics are found of a race extinct for half a million years! A race that was so far in advance of ours that they held the secret of life restoration! What happens when a member of that race is brought back after 500,000 years of death...

Spencer Chambers wants to make the solar system his own personal Empire. A trillionaire and industrialist he owns the ships that can carry humanity to freedom and plenty in the untapped riches of the solar system. In return he wants to charge exorbitant prices making it so that he will end up owning every planet and asteroid. Gregory Manning has a different idea. He sees a solar system open to everyone. Only one man's vision for the future of humanity can come true: slavery or freedom. Gregory Manning has an ace up his sleeve--a scientific ace.

Unexpectedly the starship Stellaris hurtled off the earth and into the farthest reaches of space. If only that was the only problem! No star maps, killer aliens and a ship that was only partially built.

Note: A fix up of all 3 Kim Rendell stories: "The Disciplinary Circuit", "The Boomerang Circuit" and "The Manless Worlds".

The accidentals were human... but not human enough for Earth. Humans had abolished nearly every disease, deformity, and defect; but there were still a few that couldn't be fixed by surgery or cures. Those people who couldn't be cured or repaired to reflect the perfection of the rest of the populace just didn't belong. They were called accidentals. Their home was an asteroid called Handicap Haven--the residents called it the Junkpile. But there were those among the accidentals who longed for something better--a greater sense of freedom, and the vast reaches of space seemed to hold promise of that. So against the wishes of the Solar Committee, the Junkpile was piloted out of the solar system, toward the Centauri cluster. The only question remaining was whether or not the renegade asteroid could reach its new home before the long arm of the committee could reach out and stop them.

A young man finds that his old science teacher and benefactor, Professor Colson, is in contact with another world. The information the Professor is receiving has made him rich, but has also made him a powerful enemy who will stop at nothing to discover the Professor's secret and use it for his own ends.

The Moon Hoax: or, A Discovery that the Moon Has a Vast Population of Human Beings.

"The Great Moon Hoax" refers to a series of six articles that were published in The Sun, a New York newspaper, beginning on August 25, 1835, about the supposed discovery of life and even civilization on the Moon. They were later collected into the book The Moon Hoax. The discoveries were falsely attributed to Sir John Herschel, one of the best-known astronomers of his time.

The story was advertised on August 21, 1835, as an upcoming feature allegedly reprinted from The Edinburgh Courant. The first in a series of six was published four days later on August 25.

The articles described fantastic animals on the Moon, including bison, goats, unicorns, bipedal tail-less beavers and bat-like winged humanoids ("Vespertilio-homo") who built temples. There were trees, oceans and beaches. These discoveries were supposedly made with "an immense telescope of an entirely new principle."

The author of the narrative was ostensibly Dr. Andrew Grant, the travelling companion and amanuensis of Sir John Herschel, but Grant was fictitious.

Eventually, the authors announced that the observations had been terminated by the destruction of the telescope, by means of the Sun causing the lens to act as a "burning glass," setting fire to the observatory.

A Voyage to the Moon: With Some Account of the Manners and Customs, Science and Philosophy of the People of Morosofia, and Other Lunarians.

Joseph Atterley of New York, finding himself in the doldrums after the death of his wife, resolves in 1822 to undertake a sea voyage to the Far East on one of his father's merchant ships. In the Indian Ocean the ship is caught by a mighty cyclone and driven ashore somewhere in the Burmese Empire. Mistaking the Americans for their enemies the British, the Burmese take Atterley and the crew captive. Atterley is eventually placed under rather loose house arrest, which allows him to meet and befriend a reclusive Indian Brahman who lives in the nearby hills. One day the Brahman reveals an astonishing secret: he knows how to build a machine to fly to the moon, and has already been there and back twice.

Originally appeared in Ace Double D-103 (1955).

The operating principle was random selection: positions of public power were decided by a sophisticated lottery. Everyone had a chance, everyone could live in hope that they would be chosen to be the boss, the Quizmaster. But with the power came the game - the assassination game - which everyone could watch on TV. Would the new man be good enough to avoid his chosen killer? Which made for fascinating and exciting viewing, compelling enough to distract the public's attention while the Big Five industrial complexes run the world, the solar system and the people, unnoticed and completely unopposed. Then, in 2203, with the choice of a member of a maverick cult as Quizmaster, the system developed a little hitch...

Iter Lunare; Or, A Voyage to the Moon, Containing Some Considerations on the Nature of That Planet, the Possibility of Getting Thither, with Other Pleasant Conceits About the Inhabitants, Their Manners, and Customs.

Originally published in 1703, Iter Lunaire is one of the first books to discuss the real possibility of exploring space, the methods of doing so and what might be found there.

Taking Cyrano De Bergerac's classic "Comic History" Voyage to the Moon (1657) and Francis Godwin's novel The Man in the Moone (1638) as jump-off points, author Russen discusses the pros and cons of the French writer's fanciful methods of space travel... and adds some of his own, including what may be the most unusual method of traveling to the Moon ever suggested. Along the way, Russen anticipates such modern scientific developments as the germ theory of disease and hyperlinked reference books.

Given that the suns of Draco stretch almost sixteen light years from end to end, it stands to reason that the cost of transportation is the most important factor of the 32nd century. And since Illyrion is the element most needed for space travel, Lorq von Ray is plenty willing to fly through the core of a recently imploded sun in order to obtain seven tons of it. The potential for profit is so great that Lorq has little difficulty cobbling together an alluring crew that includes a gypsy musician and a moon-obsessed scholar interested in the ancient art of writing a novel.

What the crew doesn't know, though, is that Lorq's quest is actually fueled by a private revenge so consuming that he'll stop at nothing to achieve it.

In the grandest manner of speculative fiction, Nova is a wise and witty classic that casts a fascinating new light on some of humanity's oldest truths and enduring myths.

Sir Julius Vogel Award-winning and Aurealis and Ditmar-nominated Novella

She took her helmet off.
That's where it starts; that's where it ends.
That's all there is.

Tanja Morgenstein, daughter of a wealthy industrialist and a geochemist, is dead from exposure to Titan's lethal, chilled atmosphere, and Guerline Scarfe must determine why.

Anu, red giant companion-star to Bel and Ea, was relentlessly approaching Ishtar-scorching the land, forcing the barbarians of the North ever southward away from the inferno. Fire Time was fast confronting the planet; civil war broke out as the Tassui led their forces against the army of the Gathering in a desperate struggle for survival.

The Gathering anxiously awaited help from the human colony in Primavera. Jill Conway and other colonists like her hoped to save the civilization of Ishtar and they relied on the Navy of the Federation of Earth to do so. But now the Federation was engaged in its own war with Naqsa, an interstellar war that seemingly had no end. And no end meant no help for Ishtar....

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.

Gunrunner-turned-Empress Hail Bristol was dragged back to her home planet to take her rightful place in the palace. Her sisters and parents have been murdered, and the Indranan Empire is reeling from both treasonous plots and foreign invasion.

Now, on the run from enemies on all fronts, Hail prepares to fight a full-scale war for her throne and her people, even as she struggles with the immense weight of the legacy thrust upon her. With the aid of a motley crew of allies old and new, she must return home to face off with the same powerful enemies who killed her family and aim to destroy everything and everyone she loves. Untangling a legacy of lies and restoring peace to Indrana will require an empress's wrath and a gunrunner's justice.

This debut novel from preeminent science-fiction writer Ursula LeGuin introduces her brilliant Hainish series, set in a galaxy seeded by the planet Hain with a variety of humanoid species, including that of Earth. Over the centuries, the Hainish colonies have evolved into physically and culturally unique peoples, joined by a League of All Worlds.

Earth-scientist Rocannon has been leading an ethnological survey on a remote world populated by three native races: the cavern-dwelling Gdemiar, the elvish Fiia, and the warrior clan, Liuar. But when the technologically primitive planet is suddenly invaded by a fleet of ships from the stars, rebels against the League of All Worlds, Rocannon is the only survey member left alive. Marooned among alien peoples, he leads the battle to free this newly discovered world and finds that legends grow around him as he fights.

They called themselves the Galileo Club -- not a bad name for a group of space-minded young men who had high hopes of putting one of their homemade rocket ships in orbit.

But it wasn't until they teamed up with Doc Cargraves that their impossible dream became an incredible reality. Suddenly the three Earthbound youths and their mentor were hurtling through space, heading for the barren wasteland of the Moon. Or so they thought.

They were totally unaware that the dark crater shadows concealed a threat beyond their wildest imaginings . . . a threat from which only a mircale could save them!

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.

The rollicking adventures of the Stone Family on a tour of the Solar System. It all statred when the twins, Castor and Pollux Stone, decided that life on the Lunar colony was too dull and decided to buy their own spaceship and go into business for themselves. Their father thought that was a fine, idea, except that he and Grandma Hazel bought the spaceship and the whole Stone Family were on their way out into the far reaches of the Solar System, with stops on Mars(where the twins got a lesson in the interplanetary economics of bicycles and the adorable little critters called flatcats who, it turned out, bred like rabbits; or perhaps, Tribbles....), out to the asteroids, where Mrs. Stone, an M.D., was needed to treat a dangerous outbreak of disease, even further out, to Titan and beyond.

Unforgettable Heinlein characters on an unforgettable adventure.

The stars were closed to Max Jones. To get into space you either needed connections, a membership in the arcane Guild, or a whole lot more money than Max, the son of a widowed, poor mother, was every going to have. What Max doeshave going for him are his uncle's prized astrogation manuals-book on star navigation that Max literally commits to memory word for word, equation for equation. When Max's mother decides to remarry a bullying oaf, Max takes to the road, only to discover that his uncle Chet's manuals, and Max's near complete memorization of them, is a ticket to the stars. But serving on a spaceship is no easy task. Duty is everything, and a mistake can mean you and all aboard are lost forever. Max loves every minute of his new life, and he steadily grows in the trust of his superior officers, and seems to be on course for a command track position. But then disaster strikes, and it's going to take every trick Max ever learned from his tough life and his uncle's manuals to save himself and the ship from a doom beyond extinction itself.

From the First Golden Age of Heinlein, this is the so-called juvenile (written, Heinlein always claims, just as much for adults) that started them all and made Heinlein a legend for multiple generations of readers.

Travel to other planets is a reality, and with overpopulation stretching the resources of Earth, the necessity to find habitable worlds is growing ever more urgent. With no time to wait years for communication between slower-than-light spaceships and home, the Long Range Foundation explores an unlikely solution--human telepathy.

Identical twins Tom and Pat are enlisted to be the human radios that will keep the ships in contact with Earth, but one of them has to stay behind while the other explores the depths of space.This is one of Heinlein's triumphs.

SKYJACKED!

One minute Kip Russell is walking around his own backyard, testing out an old space suit and dreaming about going to the moon - the next he is the captive of a space pirate and on his way to the very place he had been dreaming of. At first, the events are so unreal he thinks he might be having a nightmare... but when he discovers other prisoners aboard the spaceship he knows the ordeal is all too real. Kip and his fellow abductees, the daughter of a world-renowned scientist and a beautiful creature from an alien planet, have been skyjacked by a monstrous extraterrestrial who is flying them to the moon on a journey toward a fate worse than death....

A classic tale from the Grandmaster of Science Fiction.

Podkayne Fries, born and raised on Mars, has just one ambition: to earn her wings as a starship pilot and rise through the ranks to command deep-space explorations. The opportunity to travel aboard the Tricorn- on an interstellar journey to Venus and Earth in the company of her diplomat uncle-is a dream come true.

Poddy's idea of diplomacy is keeping the peace with her troublesome brother, Clark, but she's about to learn some things about war and peace. Because her uncle is the Ambassador from Mars to the Three Planets Conference, which makes him-and his niece and nephew-potential targets for any radicals looking to sabotage the negotiations between three worlds.

A planet orbiting binary suns, Helliconia has a Great Year spanning three millennia of Earth time: cultures are born in spring, flourish in summer, then die with the onset of the generations-long winter.

Helliconia is emerging from its centuries-long winter. The tribes of the equatorial continent emerge from their hiding places and are again able to dispute possession of the planet with the ferocious phagors. In Oldorando, love, trade and coinage are being redisovered,

This is the first volume of the Helliconia Trilogy -- a monumental saga that goes beyond anything yet created by this master among today's imaginative writers.

Set more than four thousand years in the future, Summertide introduces a galaxy widely populated by humans and a variety of intelligent aliens, all of whom live in the shadow of the vanished race known only as the Builders. Nothing is known about the Builders, but the gigantic artifacts they have left behind - many of them still hardly understood - dominate the areas of space in which they are found. One such is the double-planet system of Opal and Quake - the former covered in water, the latter in desert - connected by a Builder device called the Umbilical. It is to this system that a variety of humans and aliens come, ostensibly to witness Summertide - the annual tidal wave which sweeps across Opal.

For millennia, humankind and the other intelligent races had studied the bizarre and unfathomable constructs of the legendary beings known as Builders. But for all that study, they were still no closer to figuring out who - or what - the Builders had been, or where they had gone. Then, on the world called Quake, in the midst of the violent planetary upheaval that was Summertide, a small group of humans and aliens witnessed the culmination of all those years of watching and waiting: the planet Quake opened up, and something came out - and it looked as if, at long last, the discovery of the Builders themselves was at hand.

All her life, Darya Lang had dreamed of finding the Builders, whose artifacts she had single-handedly catalogued for the rest of the universe. Troubleshooter and adventurer Hans Rebka had his own dreams of unraveling the mystery of those artifacts. To Louis Nenda and the Cecropian Atvar H'sial, the Builder artifacts represented a once-in-a-lifetime shot at untold wealth. And close behind them came the others: Councilor Julius Graces, who did not trust anyone to make first contact unassisted; the slavesJ'merlia and Kallik, who craved only a reunion with their masters; and the embodied computer E.C. Tally, charged with finding out just what the rest were up to.

The trail that began at Quake led to unexpected Builder artifacts full of traps for the unwary and answers for those who knew how to ask the questions. But the biggest question of all would remain an enigma, while their search unleashed the greatest threat to civilization ever imagined...

The Zardalu were the greatest menace ever known to the worlds of the spiral arm, enslaving entire races and exterminating others, guided by an unswerving belief in their own supremacy. Then their slaves rose up against them, and for eleven thousand years the Zardalu had been extinct and the spiral arm had known a kind of peace.

But now the Zardalu were back...

The search for the Builders, the legendary alien race whose unfathomable constructs continued to perplex scholars and explorers alike, had led Builder expert Darya Lang, adventurer Hans Rebka, and treasure hunters Louis Nenda and Atvar H'sial to an unknown Builder artifact far outside the spiral arm. There they found the Zardalu - just a few who had been trapped in stasis all those millennia, held there for purposes known only to the Builders. And in the struggle that ensued the Zardalu had been set loose, transported by Builder technology to to galactic parts unknown - free to ravage any world and any race within their grasp.

The only chance to eliminate the Zardalu threat was to find them and wipe them out before they had time to breed back up to strength and once again threaten civilized beings everywhere. The problem was that no one believed the story. Only Darya Land and her companions had actually seen the aliens - and no evidence existed to support their claims. And so the course seemed clear: get a ship themselves and search out the Zardalu.

But the way would not be easy. Even once they managed to locate the Zardalu, they still had the Builders to deal with. For the closer they got to their quarry, the more clear it became that the Zardalu and their world were closely entwined with the fate - and the plans - of the Builders themselves.

Humans first reached out to the stars travelling at a painfully slow sublight crawl - then they found the Bose network, which allowed ships to jump instantaneously from one node in the galactic arm to another. Once in the Network they found the Artifacts: enigmatic structures, millions of years old, left by a vanished race. Incomprehensible to both human ad non-human minds, the Artifacts seemingly defy natural law.

Now, after millions of years, a new Artifact has appeared - and previously discovered Artifacts are showing strange changes in their inexplicable activities. When a motley crew of human and alien scientists and adventurers set out to examine still more Artifacts, they should have considered the fat that some changes are more dangerous than others...

The basic story is set in the nineteenth century, where a man asks his friends if they want to see something he has been working on and they all end up taking a trip to Venus, where there are different societies depending on if you live on the sun side or the no-sun side of the planet, where all you need as a human to survive is a fur coat and a pistol, and the people have tapped into the higher powers of the brain for communication.

This work takes its readers on a thrilling journey to the planets and moons of our solar system, including Mars and Saturn before heading, at several times the speed of light, to Alpa Centauri, where they explore an Eden-like planet.

Fourteen years have passed since he was framed for theft to cover up an imperial atrocity, and disgraced military officer Thracius "Tracy" Belmanor has built a new life for himself. Living under an assumed name as the captain of a small trading vessel crewed primarily by aliens, he and his crew engage in both legal and illegal deals just under the radar of the Solar League authorities.

At the other end of the social hierarchy, Princess Mercedes de Arango has her own problems -- the major one being the lack of an heir. Meanwhile her philandering husband Boho Cullen has ably proved the problem isn't him. With rumors of a coup swirling around the throne, Mercedes makes the desperate decision to undertake a military campaign and gain her people's allegiance through a victory. But when things go badly wrong and her future lies in the hands of the man she betrayed, Tracy has a choice to make -- can he ever forgive her?

The Solar League, humanity's empire, has existed since mankind reached for the stars. While the humans considered it the pinnacle of human achievement, for the subjugated alien races it seemed only to endorse humanity's worst impulses. But the worst of humanity pales in comparison to an alien onslaught that is on the verge of bringing mankind down into death and subjugation.

Thracius "Tracy" Belmanor helps lead the Solar League's desperate defense against this new alien threat while the Empress of the Solar League, Mercedes, tries to keep the League from tearing apart.

However, neither is prepared for the questions that need to be answered to save mankind and all of the human and non-human citizens of the League. Is humanity redeemable? Can the League reform into something better?

Tracy and Mercedes must ask these questions of themselves and then decide the future of humanity while facing betrayals, ambition, and secrets that may bring about a dark age for the galaxy.

The explorers were equipped for strange and menacing animals. But not for the highly moral--if bloodthirsty--things of that world!

This short story appears in the collection, Men, Martians and Machines, by Eric Frank Russell (1953)

Originally appeared in Astounding Science-Fiction, January 1942 available free on Internet Archives.

The explorers had run into the machine civilization gone mad on Mechanistria, but this planet seemed safe. Not a machine anywhere, just jungles. And with their weapons, they didn't have to fear anything --

This short story appears in the collections:

• Men, Martians and Machines, by Eric Frank Russell (1953)
• The Great Science Fiction Stories Volume 5 1943, edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg (1981)
• Adventures in Time and Space, edited by Raymond J. Healy, J. Francis McComas (1978)

This novelette originally appeared in Astounding Science-Fiction, October 1943 available free on Internet Archives.

There will undoubtedly be a time when tomorrow's bureaucrats will wish to question such dangerous survivals...

This story originally appeared in the November 1958 issue of Fantastic Universe,

It is also contained in the Frank Herbert collections "The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert" and "Eye".

In the far future, humankind has made contact with numerous other species: Gowachin, Laclac, Wreaves, Pan Spechi, Taprisiots, and Caleban, and has helped to form the ConSentiency to govern among the species. After suffering under a tyrannous pure democracy, the sentients of the galaxy find the need for a Bureau of Sabotage (BuSab) to slow the wheels of government, thereby preventing it from legislating recklessly. BuSab is allowed to sabotage and harass the governmental, administrative, and economic powers in the ConSentiency. Private citizens must not be harassed, and vital functions of society are also exempt.

Jorj X. McKie is a born troublemaker who has become one of BuSab's best agents. Drafted for the impossible task of establishing meaningful communication with an utterly alien entity who defies understanding, McKie finds himself racing against time to prevent a mad billionairess from wiping out all life in the ConSentiency.

Generations of a tormented human-alien people, caged on a toxic planet, conditioned by constant hunger and war-this is the Dosadi Experiment, and it has succeeded too well. For the Dosadi have bred for Vengeance as well as cunning, and they have learned how to pass through the shimmering God Wall to exact their dreadful revenge on the Universe that created them.

Kangaroo isn't your typical spy. Sure, he has extensive agency training, access to bleeding-edge technology, and a ready supply of clever (to him) quips and retorts. But what sets him apart is "the pocket." It's a portal that opens into an empty, seemingly infinite, parallel universe, and Kangaroo is the only person in the world who can use it. But he's pretty sure the agency only keeps him around to exploit his superpower.

After he bungles yet another mission, Kangaroo gets sent away on a mandatory "vacation:" an interplanetary cruise to Mars. While he tries to make the most of his exile, two passengers are found dead, and Kangaroo has to risk blowing his cover. It turns out he isn't the only spy on the ship--and he's just starting to unravel a massive conspiracy which threatens the entire Solar System.

Now, Kangaroo has to stop a disaster which would shatter the delicate peace that's existed between Earth and Mars ever since the brutal Martian Independence War. A new interplanetary conflict would be devastating for both sides. Millions of lives are at stake.

Weren't vacations supposed to be relaxing?

Captain Pausert thought his luck had finally turned-but he did not yet realize it was a turn for the worse. On second thought, make that a turn for the disastrous! Pausert thought he had made good with his battered starship, successfully selling off odd-ball cargoes no one else could sell. And then he made the mistake of freeing three slave children from their masters (who were suspiciously eager to part with them). No good deed goes unpunished, and those harmless-looking young ladies were just trying to be helpful, but those three adorable little girls quickly made Pausert the mortal enemy of his fiancée, his home planet, the Empire, warlike Sirians, psychopathic Uldanians, the dread pirate chieftain Laes Yango-and even the Worm World, the darkest threat to mankind in all of space. And all because those harmless-looking little girls were in fact three of the notorious and universally feared Witches of Karres.

After a five year sabbatical following the tragic death of his wife and fellow agent Alysha, Keon Rause returns to the distant colony world of Magenta to resume service with the Magentan Intelligence Service. With him he brings an artificial recreation of his wife's personality, a simulacrum built from every digital trace she left behind. She has been constructed with one purpose - to discover the truth behind her own death - but Keon's relationship with her has grown into something more, something frighteningly dependent, something that verges on love.

Cashing in old favours, Keon uses his return to the Service to take on a series of cases that allow him and the artificial Alysha to piece together his wife's last days. His investigations lead him inexorably along the same paths Alysha followed five years earlier, to a sinister and deadly group with an unhealthy fascination for the unknowable alien Masters; but as the wider world of Magenta is threatened with an imminent crisis, Keon finds himself in a dilemma: do his duty and stand with his team to expose a villainous crime, or sacrifice them all for the truth about his wife?

Inspector Keon has finally got over the death of his wife Alysha in a terrorist attack five years ago. The illegal AI copy of her - Liss - that he created to help him mourn has vanished, presumed destroyed. His life is back on track. But a deadly shooting in a police-guarded room in a high-security hospital threatens to ruin everything. Who got past the defences? Why did they kill the seemingly unimportant military officer who had been in a coma for weeks? And why did the scanners pick up the deceased man the next day on the other side of the planet, seemingly alive and well?

As Keon digs into the mysteries he begins to realise that the death was connected to a mysterious object, potentially alien, discovered buried in ice under the north pole. Someone has worked out what is hidden there, and what its discovery will mean for mankind. Someone who is willing to kill.

And another player has entered the game. Someone who seems to know more about Keon than is possible.

Someone who might be using Liss's information against him.

Or who might be Alysha, back from the dead.

Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1965. The story can also be found in the anthologies Nebula Award Stories 1965 (1966), edited by Damon Knight, World's Best Science Fiction: 1966, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr, Twenty Years of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (1970), edited by Edward L. Ferman and Robert P. Mills, A Science Fiction Argosy (1972), edited by Damon Knight, and Explorers: SF Adventures to Far Horizons (2000), edited by Gardner Dozois. It is included in the collections All the Myriad Ways (1971), Inconstant Moon (1973), Tales of Known Space (1975), Playgrounds of the Mind (1991), and The Best of Larry Niven (2010).

Hugo Award winning short story. It originally appeared in If, October 1966. The story can also be found in the anthologies Where Do We Go from Here? (1971), and The Hugo Winners, Volume 2: (1963-70), both edited by Isaac Asimov, The Arbor House Treasury of Modern Science Fiction (1980), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Robert Silverberg, and Worlds of If: A Retrospective Anthology (1986), Joseph D. Olander, Martin Harry Greenberg and Frederik Pohl. It is included in the collections Neutron Star (1968), Crashlander and The Best of Larry Niven (2010).

One of Niven's most beloved characters, Beowulf Shaeffer, is forced to take a dangerous mission to explore a neutron star. The last group who went there never came back alive, but Shaeffer faces life imprisonment if he doesn't take the job. Will he determine the mysterious force that turned the prior crew to hamburger before he suffers a similar fate?

Hugo Award winner "Neutron Star" and seven other groundbreaking stories and novellas by the author of RINGWORLD. Well-known Niven characters -- including Beowulf Schaeffer, Sigmund Ausfaller, Nessus and other alien Puppeteers, the ferocious Kzinti -- appear in these pages. As Tom Clancy says, "The scope of Larry Niven's work is so vast that only a writer of supreme talent could disguise the fact as well as he can."

Contents:

• Neutron Star
• A Relic of the Empire
• At the Core
• The Soft Weapon
• Flatlander
• The Ethics of Madness
• The Handicapped
• Grendel

Fleet of Worlds marks Larry Niven's first full novel-length collaboration within his Known Space universe, the playground he created for his bestselling Ringworld series. Teaming up with fellow SF writer Edward M. Lerner, Fleet of Worlds takes a closer look at the Human-Puppeteer (Citizens) relations and the events leading up to Niven's first Ringworld novel.

Kirsten Quinn-Kovacs is among the best and brightest of her people. She gratefully serves the gentle race that rescued her ancestors from a dying starship, gave them a world, and nurtures them still. If only the Citizens knew where Kirsten's people came from....

A chain reaction of supernovae at the galaxy's core has unleashed a wave of lethal radiation that will sterilize the galaxy. The Citizens flee, taking their planets, the Fleet of Worlds, with them.

Someone must scout ahead, and Kirsten and her crew eagerly volunteer. Under the guiding eye of Nessus, their Citizen mentor, they explore for any possible dangers in the Fleet's path--and uncover long-hidden truths that will shake the foundations of worlds.

For too long, the Puppeteers have controlled the fate of worlds. Now Sigmund is pulling the strings...

Covert agent Sigmund Ausfaller is Earth's secret weapon, humanity's best defense against all conspiracies, real and potential - and imaginary - of foes both human and alien. Who better than a brilliant paranoid to expose the devious plots of others?

He may finally have met his match in Nessus, representative of the secretive Puppeteers, the elder race who wield vastly superior technologies. Nessus schemes in the shadows with Earth's traitors and adversaries, even after the race he represents abruptly vanishes from Known Space.

As a paranoid, Sigmund had always known things would end horribly for him. Only the when, where, how, why, and by whom of it all had eluded him. That fog has begun to lift...

But even Sigmund has never imagined how far his investigations will take him - or that his destiny is entwined with the fates of worlds.

Worlds closer to the galatic core than Known Space are --or were-- home to intelligent speciers. Some learned of the core explosion in time to flee. Destroyer of Worlds opens in 2670, ten years after Juggler of Worlds closes; with refugee species fleeing in an armada of ramscoops in the direction of the Fleet of Worlds. The onrushing aliens are recognized as a threat; they have left in their trail a host of desolated worlds: some raided for supplies, some attacked to eliminate competition, and some for pure xenophobia.

Only the Puppeteers might have the resources to confront this threat--but the Puppeteers are philosophical cowards... they don't confront anyone. They need sepoys to investigate the situation and take action for them. The source of the sepoys? Their newly independent former slave world, New Terra.

Fleeing the supernova chain reaction at the galactic core, the cowardly Puppeteers of the Fleet of Worlds have--just barely--survived. They've stumbled from one crisis to the next: The rebellion of their human slaves. The relentless questing of the species of Known Space. The spectacular rise of the starfish-like Gw'oth. The onslaught of the genocidal Pak.

Catastrophe looms again as past crises return--and converge. Who can possibly save the Fleet of Worlds from its greatest peril yet?

Louis Wu? Trapped in the Wunderland civil war, all he wants is to go home--but the only possible escape will plunge him into unknowable danger.

Ol't'ro? The Gw'oth ensemble mind fled across the stars to establish a colony world free from tyranny. But some problems cannot be left behind, and other problems--like the Fleet of Worlds itself--are racing straight at them.

Achilles? Despite past disgrace, the charismatic Puppeteer politician knows he is destined for greatness. He will do anything to seize power--and to take his revenge on everyone who ever stood in his way.

Nessus? The insane Puppeteer scout is out of ideas, out of resources, with only desperation left to guide him.

Their hopes and fears, dreams and ambitions are about to collide. And the winner takes... worlds.

For decades, the spacefaring species of Known Space have battled over the largest artifact -- and grandest prize -- in the galaxy: the all-but-limitless resources and technology of the Ringworld. But without warning, the Ringworld has vanished, leaving behind three rival war fleets.

Something must justify the blood and treasure that have been spent. If the fallen civilization of the Ringworld can no longer be despoiled of its secrets, the Puppeteers will be forced to surrender theirs. Everyone knows that the Puppeteers are cowards.

But the crises converging upon the trillion Puppeteers of the Fleet of Worlds go far beyond even the onrushing armadas:

Adventurer Louis Wu and the exiled Puppeteer known only as Hindmost, marooned together for more than a decade, escaped from the Ringworld before it disappeared. And throughout those years, as he studied Ringworld technology, Hindmost has plotted to reclaim his power...

Ol't'ro, the Gw'oth ensemble mind -- and the Fleet of Worlds' unsuspected puppet master for a century -- is deviously brilliant. And increasingly unbalanced ...

Proteus, the artificial intelligence on which, in desperation, the Puppeteers rely to manage their defenses, is outgrowing its programming -- and the supposed constraints on its initiative...

Sigmund Ausfaller, paranoid and disgraced hero of the lost human colony of New Terra, knows that something threatens his adopted home world -- and that it must be stopped...

Achilles, the megalomaniac Puppeteer -- twice banished, and twice rehabilitated -- sees the Fleet of Worlds' existential crisis as a new opportunity to reclaim supreme power. Whatever the risks...

One way or another, the fabled race of Puppeteers may have come to the end of their days.

Pierson's puppeteers, strange, three-legged, two-headed aliens, have discovered an immense structure in a hitherto unexplored part of the universe. Frightened of meeting the builders of such a structure, the puppeteers set about assembling a team consisting of two humans, a puppeteer and a kzin, an alien not unlike an eight-foot-tall, red-furred cat, to explore it. The artefact is a vast circular ribbon of matter, some 180 million miles across, with a sun at its centre - the Ringworld. But the expedition goes disastrously wrong when the ship crashlands and its motley crew faces a trek across thousands of miles of the Ringworld's surface.

The sequel to "Ringworld". Louis Wu, Speaker-to-Animals, and the Hindmost return to Ringworld. Their aim is to prevent cataclysm. In the process, they find themselves learning Ringworld's incredible secrets.

A Finalist for the 2014 Hugo Award for Best Novelette. Thirty years ago, Elma York led the expedition that paved the way to life on Mars. For years she's been longing to go back up there, to once more explore the stars. But there are few opportunities for an aging astronaut, even the famous Lady Astronaut of Mars. When her chance finally comes, it may be too late. Elma must decide whether to stay with her sickening husband in what will surely be the final years of his life, or to have her final adventure and plunge deeper into the well of space.

Read this story online for free at Tor.com.

A meteor decimates the U.S. government and paves the way for a climate cataclysm that will eventually render the earth inhospitable to humanity. This looming threat calls for a radically accelerated timeline in the earth's efforts to colonize space, as well as an unprecedented opportunity for a much larger share of humanity to take part.

One of these new entrants in the space race is Elma York, whose experience as a WASP pilot and mathematician earns her a place in the International Aerospace Coalition's attempts to put man on the moon. But with so many skilled and experienced women pilots and scientists involved with the program, it doesn't take long before Elma begins to wonder why they can't go into space, too -- aside from some pesky barriers like thousands of years of history and a host of expectations about the proper place of the fairer sex. And yet, Elma's drive to become the first Lady Astronaut is so strong that even the most dearly held conventions may not stand a chance.

Lieutenant Peter Cochrane of the Quantar Royal Navy believes he has his future clearly mapped out. It begins with his new assignment as an officer on Her Majesty's Spaceship Starbound, a Lightship bound for deep space voyages of exploration.

But everything changes when Peter is summoned to the office of his father, Grand Admiral Nathan Cochrane, and given devastating news: the death of a loved one. In a distant solar system, a mysterious and unprovoked attack upon Lightship Impulse resulted in the deaths of Peter's former girlfriend and many of her shipmates.

Now Peter's plans are torn asunder as he is transferred to a Unified Space Navy ship under foreign command, en route to an unexpected destination, and surrounded almost entirely by strangers. To top it off, his superiors have given him secret orders that might force him to become a mutineer.

The crisis at hand becomes a gateway to something much more when the ship's Historian leads Peter and his shipmates into a galaxy of the unknown - of ancient technologies, age-old rivalries, new cultures, and unexpected romance. It's an overwhelming responsibility for Peter, and one false step could plunge humanity into an apocalyptic interstellar war...

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.

Ill luck made Roger Torraway the subject of the Man Plus Programe, but it was deliberate biological engineering which turned him into a monster -- a machine perfectly adapted to survive on Mars. For according to computer predictions, Mars is humankind's only alternative to extinction. But beneath his monstrous exterior, Torraway still carries a man's capacity for suffering.

The year is 2010. More than a century of ecological damage, industrial and technological expansion, and unchecked population growth has left the Earth on the brink of devastation. But as the world's governments turn inward, one man dares to gamble on a bolder, brighter future. That man--Reid Malenfant--has a very different solution to the problems plaguing the planet: the exploration and colonization of space.

Battling national sabotage and international outcry, Malenfant's bootstrap company builds a spacecraft, plots its course, and trains the genetically enhanced Sheena 5 for her one-way journey. As apocalyptic riots sweep the globe, Malenfant launches the rocket. But Sheena has plans of her own. And even as she sets them in motion, the situation on Earth grows more desperate and violent.

Now Malenfant--together with a brilliant but disturbed mathematician, a child prodigy, and his ex-wife--must gamble the very existence of time and space on a single desperate throw of the dice. The odds are a trillion to one against him...

Or are they?

Anguished by hyper-lucidity, a disemboded science fiction writer taps out the letters "LENA THOMAS" and instantly finds himself "warped" to the female astronaut's domane of the 40th century. Lena and the writer's subconscious then develop a strange intimacy while they attempt to explore a mysterious "black galaxy." But theirs is a fleeting and rarified relationship, constantly hounded by greedy, homicidal bureaucrats committed to the expansion of bureaus and tormented by the idea of fragmentation.

A two-man mission to Venus fails and is aborted. When it returns, the Captain is missing and the other astronaut, Harry M. Evans, is unable to explain what has happened. Or, conversely, he has too many explications. His journal of the expedition -- compiled in the mental institution to which NASA has embarrassedly committed him -- offers contradictory stories: he murdered the Captain, mad Venusian invaders murdered the Captain, the Captain vanished, no one was murdered and the Captain has returned in Evans' guise....

As the explanations pyramid and as the supervising psychiatrist's increasingly desperate efforts to get a straight story fail, it becomes apparent that Evans's madness and his inability to explain what happened are expressions of humanity's incompetence at the enormity of space exploration.

Contents:

• 9 - The Moon Is Hell! - novel by John W. Campbell, Jr.
• 147 - The Elder Gods - (1973) - novella by John W. Campbell, Jr. and Arthur J. Burks

What would intelligent life-forms on another planet look like? Would they walk upright? Would they wear clothes? Or would they be hulking creatures on six legs that wallow in their own excrement?

Upon first contact with the Utod -- intelligent, pacifist beings who feel no pain -- mankind instantly views these aliens as animals because of their unhygienic customs. This leads to the slaughter, capture and dissection of the Utod. But when one explorer recognizes the intelligence behind their habits, he must reevaluate what it actually means to be "intelligent."

With a New Introduction from the Author!

The god Ptath is flung into the far future by a deadly rival and given the mind of a 20th century man. Stranded in this alien world, he must fight to regain his powers before the rival goddess sends the world spinning into chaos and darkness.

In less than a century, 50 percent of the human race fled the aged and autocratic Terra, settling wherever they could establish a world of their own choosing. The following centuries result in hundreds of independent new civilizations--too independent for an ambitious Terran government out to conquer an empire.

After several years' absence and the loss of his memory, Andrew Blake returns to earth only to find himself accused of being a werewolf.

For a profit -- and adventure -- Barlennan would sail thousands of miles across uncharted waters, into regions where gravity itself played strange tricks. He would dare the perils of strange tribes and stranger creatures -- even dicker with those strange aliens from beyond the skies, though the concept of another world was unknown to the inhabitants of the disk-shaped planet of Mesklin.

But in spite of the incredible technology of the strangers and without regard for their enormous size, Barlennan had the notion of turning the deal to an unsuspected advantage for himself . . . all in all a considerable enterprise for a being very much resembling a fifteen-inch caterpillar!

The Tenebrans are intelligent, but primitive by human standards. Yet scientists from Earth have found ways to train and educate some of the Tenebrans. This training becomes crucial when two beings—a young girl from Earth and the son of an alien diplomat—are marooned in a bathyscape that is headed toward the surface of the planet, where neither can hope to survive.

Dying isn't any fun... but at least it's a living.

Mickey7 is an Expendable: a disposable employee on a human expedition sent to colonize the ice world Niflheim. Whenever there's a mission that's too dangerous--even suicidal--the crew turns to Mickey. After one iteration dies, a new body is regenerated with most of his memories intact. After six deaths, Mickey7 understands the terms of his deal... and why it was the only colonial position unfilled when he took it.

On a fairly routine scouting mission, Mickey7 goes missing and is presumed dead. By the time he returns to the colony base, surprisingly helped back by native life, Mickey7's fate has been sealed. There's a new clone, Mickey8, reporting for Expendable duties. The idea of duplicate Expendables is universally loathed, and if caught, they will likely be thrown into the recycler for protein.

Mickey7 must keep his double a secret from the rest of the colony. Meanwhile, life on Niflheim is getting worse. The atmosphere is unsuitable for humans, food is in short supply, and terraforming is going poorly. The native species are growing curious about their new neighbors, and that curiosity has Commander Marshall very afraid. Ultimately, the survival of both lifeforms will come down to Mickey7.

That is, if he can just keep from dying for good.

Aboard Null Boundary, a giant starship thousands of years old, four survivors of an ancient alien war are making a desperate journey: Lot, son of a fiery prophet and carrier of an insidious virus that spreads a cultlike religious mania among those it infects; Urban, Lot's boyhood friend from the city of Silk, and a man in search of challenge and adventure; Clemantine, cast adrift when her world was destroyed, and yearning for revenge; and Nikko, sometimes a living man, but always the ship's disembodied mind.

They are bound for unknown territory. Ahead of them loom vast, lightless clouds of dust and gas where stars are born, and where the alien Chenzeme are believed to live. The Chenzeme are an enigmatic race whose automated warships have ravaged the living worlds of the galaxy's Orion arm for millions of years. But why? Null Boundary's crew is driven to find out--though in their quest to discover the source of the Chenzeme, they must also explore the terrible truth of their own past, the meaning of revenge, and the price each one of them is willing to pay for survival. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Deception Well is a world on the edge, home to an isolated remnant surviving at the farthest reach of human expansion. All across the frontier, other worlds have succumbed to the relentless attacks of robotic alien warships, while hundreds of light years away, the core of human civilization--those star systems closest to Earth, known as the Hallowed Vasties--have all fallen to ruins. Powerful telescopes can see only dust and debris where once there were orbital mega-structures so huge they eclipsed the light of their parent stars.

No one knows for sure what caused the Hallowed Vasties to fail, but a hardened adventurer named Urban intends to find out. He has the resources to do it. He commands a captive alien starship fully capable of facing the dangers that lie beyond Deception Well.

With a ship's company of explorers and scientists, Urban is embarking on a voyage of re-discovery. They will be the first in centuries to confront the hazards of an inverted frontier as they venture back along the path of human migration. Their goal: to unravel the mystery of the Hallowed Vasties and to discover what monstrous life might have grown up among the ruins.

Paula Benacerraf is appointed to oversee the dismantling of the Shuttle fleet after another disaster. Instead, she listens to the scientist, Rosenberg, who wants to explore the life Cassini discovers on Titan. Humans are hurled to the edge of the Solar System. To the edge, also, of sanity.

The universe of Neverness is intriguingly complex. filled with extraordinary beings. There are the Alaloi, who have chosen to return to the Neanderthal state ... the Order of Pilots which reworks the laws of time and physics to catapult its members through dense regions of 'thickspace' ... the Solid State Entity, a vast brain made up of moon-sized biocomputers... and the leldra, a legendary race of aliens that seeded the galaxy aeons ago with its DNA and so began the evolutionary cycle.

Against this rich backdrop unfolds the story of young, headstrong Mallory Ringess, a novitiate of the Order of Pilots. Against all odds he has penetrated the Solid State Entity - and made a stunning discovery. A discovery that could unlock the secret of immortality hidden among the Alaloi....

In 2088, humankind is at last ready to explore beyond Earth's solar system. But one uncertainty remains: Where do we go?

Astrophysicist Reggie Straifer has an idea. He's discovered an anomalous star that appears to defy the laws of physics, and proposes the creation of a deep-space mission to find out whether the star is a weird natural phenomenon, or something manufactured.

The journey will take eons. In order to maintain the genetic talent of the original crew, humankind's greatest ambition--to explore the furthest reaches of the galaxy--is undertaken by clones. But a clone is not a perfect copy, and each new generation has its own quirks, desires, and neuroses. As the centuries fly by, the society living aboard the nine ships (designated Convoy Seven) changes and evolves, but their mission remains the same: to reach Reggie's mysterious star and explore its origins--and implications.

A mosaic novel of discovery, Noumenon--in a series of vignettes--examines the dedication, adventure, growth, and fear of having your entire world consist of nine ships in the vacuum of space. The men and women, and even the AI, must learn to work and live together in harmony, as their original DNA is continuously replicated and they are born again and again into a thousand new lives. With the stars their home and the unknown their destination, they are on a voyage of many lifetimes--an odyssey to understand what lies beyond the limits of human knowledge and imagination.

The mind-expanding journey that began with Noumenon and Noumenon Infinity continues in this wondrous mosaic tale of deep space exploration, adventure, and humanity that blends the awe, science, and speculative imagination of Arthur C. Clarke, Neal Stephenson, and Octavia Butler.

Deep in the heart of an alien mountain range, I.C.C. has lain dormant, its ships silent, for eons. Now, after one hundred thousand years, the AI is awakening. Someone is roaming the convoy's halls?someone that isn't human.

This planet, Noumenon?created by the megastructure known as the Web?is too young and brutal to have evolved intelligent life. Its surface is bombarded by unusual meteors. Crystal trees abruptly and violently arise from its bedrock. Its solar system is surrounded by a frightening space-time anomaly. So where did these visitors come from? What do they want? And do the people of Earth, whose ancestors launched Convoy Seven, know they are here?

I.C.C. reaches out to the descendants of its convoy crew to help decipher this primordial riddle. Noumenon was created and seeded by ancient aliens, and clearly their plans for it are unfinished. Together, the AI, the new lifeforms who have awakened it, and the humans will embark on an epic adventure of discovery billions of years in the making.

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.

The consequences of Earth's exploration of the Galaxy come home to roost when the Drasin track a human ship back to Earth. Mounting a desperate defense, the crew of the NAC spacecraft Odyssey, their allies, and the people of Earth face an overwhelming force of invading alien ships wielding terrible power. Doomed from the start, but with nowhere to retreat, Captain Eric Weston commits his ship to the defense of the human race even as the human outposts in Sol system fall one by one before the unrelenting Drasin onslaught.

A first-rate military science fiction epic that combines old-school space opera and modern storytelling, Homeworld: Odyssey One, the third installment of the Odyssey One series, brings the riveting, exhilarating, hard-pressed action to Earth, with devastating consequences.

Battle-weary after a desperate fight to save Earth from the Drasin alien onslaught, Confederation Captain Eric Weston is tasked with a perilous new mission. He and the crew of the Odysseus must hunt down those who unleashed the hellish attack on his homeworld and that of Earth's Priminae allies.

But the situation turns dire when they catch sight of a ship belonging to the mysterious beings who orchestrate the fearsome Drasin's depredations. This powerful Empire, it seems, has two primary aims: to conquer new worlds and settle old scores. Weston's ultimate objective: keep humanity from becoming collateral damage as the Drasin war expands to engulf the galaxy.

Defy the inevitable. Such is the stance of Confederation captain Eric Weston and the crew of the starship Odysseus, patrolling the outer limits of Priminae space, anticipating the Empire's next attacks. Connected with the Terran FTL tech -- the transition drive -- humanity might stand a chance against the overwhelming forces. Until the entire planetary system goes dark.

Outnumbered and outgunned, the Odysseus arrives to find the Empire securing critical intelligence from Priminae ships -- data that could prove disastrous in the wrong hands.

As the Odysseus enters the fray, the ship's systems exhibit increasingly chaotic glitches, while haunting apparitions stalk the crew. As they struggle to control their own ship -- and their sanity -- against the tide of battle, how can they hope to grasp victory when the Odysseus itself appears to be coming to life?

A mysterious entity may be the key to a starship's survival--or a terrifying new threat--as the Odyssey One series continues...

The Empire has set its sights on its next target: human Terrans. As effective allies of the Priminae, the denizens of Earth have proven themselves enemies to the Empire, and now the Imperial forces know more about the Terran home world than ever before.

The battle for the planet's survival will see the Odysseus first into the breach. But more perils loom for Commodore Eric Weston and his comrades. They're at odds with the political conflicts dividing Earth's government and challenged by the mysterious presence haunting their vessel--its intentions unclear, and the extent of its powers unknown.

As the Empire brings the battle home, the crew of the Odysseus will need to determine whether this entity will support them in their fight for survival, or prove to be another dangerous foe.

There's no turning back... and the only way forward may be a pathway to doom.

Sixteen all-new stories by science fiction's top talents, collected by bestselling author George R. R. Martin and multiple-award-winning editor Gardner Dozois

From pulp adventures such as Edgar Rice Burroughs's Carson of Venus to classic short stories such as Ray Bradbury's "The Long Rain" to visionary novels such as C. S. Lewis's Perelandra, the planet Venus has loomed almost as large in the imaginations of science fiction writers as Earth's next-nearest neighbor, Mars. But while the Red Planet conjured up in Golden Age science fiction stories was a place of vast deserts and ruined cities, bright blue Venus was its polar opposite: a steamy, swampy jungle world with strange creatures lurking amidst the dripping vegetation. Alas, just as the last century's space probes exploded our dreams of Mars, so, too, did they shatter our romantic visions of Venus, revealing, instead of a lush paradise, a hellish world inimical to all life.

But don't despair! This new anthology of sixteen original stories by some of science fiction's best writers--edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author George R. R. Martin and award-winning editor Gardner Dozois--turns back the clock to that more innocent time, before the hard-won knowledge of science vanquished the infinite possibilities of the imagination.

Join our cast of award-winning contributors--including Elizabeth Bear, David Brin, Joe Haldeman, Gwyneth Jones, Mike Resnick, Eleanor Arnason, Allen M. Steele, and more--as we travel back in time to a planet that never was but should have been: a young, rain-drenched world of fabulous monsters and seductive mysteries.

Table of Contents:

• "Frogheads" by Allen M. Steele
• "The Drowned Celestrial" by Lavie Tidhar
• "Planet Of Fear" by Paul Mcauley
• "Greeves And The Evening Star" by Matthew Hughes
• "A Planet Called Desire" by Gwyneth Jones
• "Living Hell" by Joe Haldeman
• "Bones Of Air, Bones Of Stone" by Stephen Leigh
• "Ruins" by Eleanor Arnason
• "The Tumbledowns Of Cleopatra Abyss" by David Brin
• "By Frogsled And Lizardback To Outcast Venusian Lepers" by Garth Nix
• "The Sunset Of Time" by Michael Cassutt
• "Pale Blue Memories" by Tobias S. Buckell
• "The Heart's Filthy Lesson" by Elizabeth Bear
• "The Wizard Of The Trees" by Joe R. Lansdale
• "The Godstone Of Venus" by Mike Resnick
• "Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts By Ida Countess Rathangan" by Ian Mcdonald

Fleeing Elizabeth Lindstrom's anger at the death of her son, Vance Garamond, a flickerwing commander, leaves the solar system far behind. Pursued by Earth's space fleet, Garamond finds a vast, alien-built spherical structure which might just change the destiny of the human race.

Since his debut in Terry Carr's legendary Ace Specials of the 1980s, Carter Scholz has occupied an enviable, if demanding, position on the cutting edge of modern speculative literature (vulgarly called SF).

Proudly debuting in this volume, Gypsy is his first major work since his 2002 nuclear thriller Radiance. An interstellar adventure grounded in the hard science of accurate physics and biology, Gypsy soars far beyond the heliosphere of conventional science fiction. Jettisoning the easy warp-drives of fantasy and space opera, Scholz chronicles with chilling realism the epic voyage of a team of far-seeing scientists, who crowdsource a secret starship and abandon the doomed Earth for the Alpha Centauri system, our nearest stellar neighbor and last desperate chance. Heartbreak and hope collide in this moving and visionary tale.

Plus... An epistolary story about a story, "The Nine Billion Names of God," uses a classic SF text to deconstruct literary deconstruction itself, with hilarious results. In the wickedly droll "Bad Pennies," a spy tasked with trashing a foreign economy testifies before a complacent Congress. Quietly furious, "The United States of Impunity" is an alarming look under the tent of today's political sideshow. Adults only.

And Featuring: "Gear. Food. Rocks." -- our Outspoken Interview, in which a postmodern Renaissance man charts the synergies and dissonances of a career that embraces both literary and musical composition, reveals the hidden link between winemaking and deep space astronomy, and tells you how to steal his car.

Table of Contents:

• Gypsy - (2015)
• The Nine Billion Names of God - (1984)
• The United States of Impunity - essay by Carter Scholz
• Bad Pennies - (2009)
• Gear. Food. Rocks. - interview of Carter Scholz by Terry Bisson

The Stars are Ours! describes the first interstellar voyage, undertaken to escape the tyranny that rules the Earth.

One hundred and fifty years from now, in a world where Africa is the dominant technological and economic power, and where crime, war, disease and poverty have been banished to history, Geoffrey Akinya wants only one thing: to be left in peace, so that he can continue his studies into the elephants of the Amboseli basin. But Geoffrey's family, the vast Akinya business empire, has other plans. After the death of Eunice, Geoffrey's grandmother, erstwhile space explorer and entrepreneur, something awkward has come to light.

Eunice's ashes have already have been scattered in sight of Kilimanjaro. But the secrets she died with are about to come back out into the open, and they could change everything.

In the 22nd century a combination of computer-augmented bio-feedback and chemo-therapy techniques has given man the ability not only to heal himself, but to change himself - to alter his very shape at will. But Form Change has its darker aspects, ranging from unautorized experimentation on human subjects to a threat to the very essence of humanity.

Leo Graf was just your average highly efficient engineer: min your own business, fix what's wrong and move on to the next job. Everything neat and according to spec, just the way he liked it. But all that changed on his assignment to the Cay Habitat. Could you just stand there and allow the exploitation of hundreds of helpless children merely to enhance the bottom line of a heartless mega-corporation?

Leo Graf adopted a thousand quaddies -- now all he had to do was teach them to be free.

Moving Mars is a story of human courage and love set within the greater saga of a planetary liberation movement. Mars is a colonial world, governed by corporate interests on Earth. The citizens of Mars are hardworking, but held back by their lack of access to the best education, and the desire of the Earthly powers to keep the best new inventions for themselves. The young Martians -- the second and third generations born on Mars -- have little loyalty to Earth, and a strong belief that their planet can be independent. The revolution begins slowly, but will grow in power over decades of political struggle until it becomes irresistible.

Told through the eyes of an extraordinary character, Casseia Majumdar, a daughter of one of Mars' oldest, most conservative Binding Multiples, Moving Mars is Greg Bear's brilliant conception of the human colonization of the red planet, with lovingly painted details and a grand historical sweep, embellishing an audacious scientific speculation.

At first, only a few things are known about the celestial object that astronomers dub Rama. It is huge, weighing more than ten trillion tons. And it is hurtling through the solar system at inconceivable speed. Then a space probe confirms the unthinkable: Rama is no natural object. It is, incredible, an interstellar spacecraft. Space explorers and planet-bound scientists alike prepare for mankind's first encounter with alien intelligence. It will kindle their wildest dreams... and fan their darkest fears. For no one knows who the Ramans are or why they have come. And now the moment of rendezvous awaits -- just behind a Raman airlock door.

Years ago, the enormous, enigmatic alien spacecraft called Rama sailed through our solar system as mind-boggling proof that life existed -- or had existed -- elsewhere in the universe. Now, at the dawn of the twenty-third century, another ship is discovered hurtling toward us. A crew of Earth's best and brightest minds is assembled to rendezvous with the massive vessel. They are armed with everything we know about Raman technology and culture. But nothing can prepare them for what they are about to encounter on board Rama II: cosmic secrets that are startling, sensational -- and perhaps even deadly.

In the year 2130 a mysterious spaceship, Rama, arrived in the solar system. It was huge, but empty - apparently abandoned. By the time Rama departed for its next unknown destination many wonders had been uncovered, but few mysteries solved. Only one thing was clear: everything the enigmatic builders of Rama did, they did in threes.

Eighty years later the second alien craft arrived in the solar system. This time, Earth had been waiting. Now Rama II is on its way out of the solar system. Aboard it are three humans, two men and a woman, left behind when the expedition departed. Ahead of them lies the unknown, a voyage no human has ever experienced; and at the end of it may lie the truth about Rama.

Awakening from a drunken spree in a London pub to find himself on one of Saturn's moons, Lister joins the Space Corps and boards the Red Dwarf, determined to return to Earth.

Rimmer, Cat and Kryten are trapped in a computer game which can transport players directly to the world of imagination, a world where each player can enjoy fabulous success. The only catch is that the game kills.

This is the third adventure of the unlikely space heroes of the cult TV hit "Red Dwarf" - Lister, Rimmer, Kryten, Holly and the Cat - as they continue their epic journey through frontal-lobe-knotting realities. We join them just as Dave Lister has finally found his way back to planet Earth - which is good. What's bad, however, is that time isn't running in quite the right direction. And if he doesn't get off the planet soon, he's going to have to go through puberty again - backwards. If his crewmates can't help him, Lister will carry on growing younger until he becomes a baby, then an embryo, meeting a very sticky end indeed.

Jason Morgan is a troubling mystery to friends and enemies alike: once a starship captain and trader, then Joined to the most powerful member of the Clan, Sira di Sarc, following her and her kind out of known space.

Only to return, alone and silent.

But he's returned to a Trade Pact under seige and desperate. The Assemblers continue to be a threat. Other species have sensed opportunity and threaten what stability remains, including those who dwell in the M'hir. What Morgan knows could save them all, or doom them.

For not all of the Clan followed Sira. And peace isn't what they seek.

Dr. Dan Sylveste, an archaeologist who has for years been fascinated with the long-dead alien race the Amarantin, is about to discover something that could change the course of mankind. But before he can act on anything his wife is killed and he is captured when a coup sweeps across the planet Resurgam. Meanwhile, an astonishing ship bearing a crew of militaristic cyborgs and a kidnapped Gunnery Officer is bearing down on Resurgam, crossing light years of space to enlist Sylveste's help to save their metamorphosing Captain. Only Sylveste, or, more accurately, the software programme containing his father's knowledge that he carries in his mind, can save the Captain. None of them can anticipate the cataclysm that will result when they meet, a cataclysm that will sweep through space and could determine the ultimate fate of humanity.

A superb SF adventure set in the rubble of a ruined universe, this is a deep space heist story of kidnap, betrayal, alien artefacts and revenge.

The galaxy has seen great empires rise and fall. Planets have shattered and been remade. Amongst the ruins of alien civilisations, building our own from the rubble, humanity still thrives.

And there are vast fortunes to be made, if you know where to find them...

Captain Rackamore and his crew do. It's their business to find the tiny, enigmatic worlds which have been hidden away, booby-trapped, surrounded with layers of protection - and to crack them open for the ancient relics and barely-remembered technologies inside. But while they ply their risky trade with integrity, not everyone is so scrupulous.

Adrana and Fura Ness are the newest members of Rackamore's crew, signed on to save their family from bankruptcy. Only Rackamore has enemies, and there might be more waiting for them in space than adventure and fortune: the fabled and feared Bosa Sennen in particular.

Revenger is a science fiction adventure story set in the rubble of our solar system in the dark, distant future - a tale of space pirates, buried treasure and phantom weapons, of unspeakable hazards and single-minded heroism... and of vengeance...

Table of Contents:

• In the Great Central Library of Deneb University - (1986)
• The Only Neat Thing to Do - (1985)
• Good Night, Sweethearts - (1986)
• Collision - (1986)

"A Daring Trip to Mars", which traces with considerable engineering detail a stress-fraught voyage to the Moon and then Mars, which they able only to orbit due to fuel problems.

Drowsy (1917), is a sentimental love story whose outcome is a child Telepath who, after maturing into an early Superman figure, discovers Antigravity and builds a spaceship, visiting the Moon and Mars, the latter of which is inhabited by humanoid Aliens.

A group of scientific adventurers builds a space ship for the purpose of exploring Mars. The motor device is a shield that protects against earth's gravity while being attracted to Mars. On the return ship they discover a stowaway -- a Martian girl.

France, 1905. In a quiet Normandy village, amateur violinist Denis Borel meets a mysterious white-haired scientist known only as Doctor Omega, who is building an amazing spacecraft, the Cosmos. Doctor Omega invites Borel to accompany him on his maiden voyage - to Mars!

Doctor Omega: A Classic Tale of Space and Time, in which the ingenious, only seemingly scatterbrained Doctor and (after the pattern of Jules Verne) his contrasting companions travel by Antigravity machine to Mars, which is inhabited, most interestingly by the large-brained Macrocephales, who are clearly based on the Selenites in H G Wells's The First Men in the Moon (1900).

A Trip to Venus (1897) is an account of a journey by Spaceship - powered by a new Antigravity as a sustaining Power Source - to an idyllic Utopia on Venus, with a brief excursion to Mercury.

First published in English in 1931, this novel for young adults is an accurate mirror of many of the space travel concepts that have been discussed by pre-war European experts. The author's imaginative theories about the history of the Earth--many of which presage those of Velikovksy and von Daniken--are explored.

A young German scientist and his uncle, with one mechanic, take off in a rocket-like device, and finally reach the moon. An egotistical young American news reporter succeeds in going with them as a stowaway.

First published in English in 1930, this remarkable science fiction novel details the fate of three astronauts whose Spaceship takes off accidentally from its mooring in the artificial Island of New Atlantis, just west of San Francisco. After a daring trip, they reach the Moon. Based on the pioneering work of Hermann Oberth, this suspenseful novel is an accurate mirror of the state of the art of astronautics of the time.

Adrift in the Stratosphere, aimed at a juvenile audience, has a young protagonists accidentally take off in a professor's experimental Spaceship and they soon find themselves attacked by irrationally hostile Martians with various Rays and a madness-inducing Basilisk radio broadcast; there are subsequent tours of Utopias set on space Islands.

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

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

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

The Skylark of Space is one of the earliest novels of interstellar travel. Originally serialized in 1928 in the magazine Amazing Stories, it was first published in book form in 1946 by The Buffalo Book Co. The Skylark of Space is often categorized as the first literary space opera (in the complimentary sense), complete with protagonists perfect in mind, body, and spirit, who fight against villains of absolute evil.

The Skylark of Space is available to read free on-line from Project Gutenberg.

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

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

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

The incredible staship Skylark Three has fought the Fenachone Supermen to a standstill, and Richard Seaton has gone back to his first love - exploration. Roaming the galaxy, he discovers a world of disembodied intelligences; a world of four dimensions where time was insanely distorted and matter obeyed no terrestrial laws, where 3-dimensional intellects were barely sufficient to thwart invisible mentalities! Meanwhile, the villainous DuQuesne is allying himself with the remnants of the Fenachrone, and planning his next attack...

Almost half a century ago, renowned science fiction and fantasy author Andre Norton introduced apprentice cargo master Dane Thorson in Sargasso of Space and Plague Ship.

Dane signed on with the independent cargo ship Solar Queen looking for a career in off-world trade.

In Sargasso of Space, the Solar Queen free traders win exclusive rights to trade with the planet Limbo, but the crew arrives to find most of the planet's surface charred, with little signs of life. They find a valley with life, but others may still lurk. Worse yet, a strange force threatens to cripple the Queen. They must solve the planet's mysteries if they hope to escape not only with tradeable goods, but their lives.

This Andre Norton novel is the second of the adventures of young merchant traveller Dane Thorsen after her work Sargasso of Space. An expedition to another planet is also anything but routine: the locals are hard to deal with, and the consequences of leaving, are worse.

Lured by its exotic gems, the space trader Solar Queen lands on the little-known planet of Sargol, only to find the ruthless Inter-Solar Company there ahead of them. Adapting quickly to the culture of Sargol's feline inhabitants, the crew of the Queen beat out their rivals and successfully make a deal with the natives. But soon after takeoff, the Queen's crew is stricken with a plague, and they are now banned from landing on any inhabited planet. Will the Queen's crew save themselves, or be condemned to drift forever through space?

On the moon, an enigma is uncovered. So great are the implications of the discovery that, for the first time, men are sent out deep into the solar system. But before they can reach their destination, things begin to go wrong. Horribly wrong.

Nine years after the disastrous Discovery mission to Jupiter in 2001, a joint U.S.-Soviet expedition sets out to rendezvous with the derelict spacecraft *to search the memory banks of the mutinous computer HAL 9000 for clues to what went wrong... and what became of Commander Dave Bowman.

Without warning, a Chinese expedition targets the same objective, turning the recovery mission into a frenzied race for the precious information Discovery may hold about the enigmatic monolith that orbits Jupiter.

Meanwhile, the being that was once Dave Bowman *the only human to unlock the mystery of the monolith *streaks toward Earth on a vital mission of its own...

Fifty years after meeting the spirit of Dave Bowman aboard the abandoned Discovery and witnessing the fiery transformation of Jupiter into Earths second sun, 103-year-old Dr. Heywood Floyd boards the luxury spaceship Universe for the historic first landing on the surface of Halley's Comet.

At the same time, the Galaxy expedition sets out to probe the evolutionary upheaval on Jupiter's former moon Europa haunted by the fate of a doomed Chinese mission and by the ominous message from space: "All these worlds are yours *except Europa. Attempt no landings there. "

As the stranded Galaxy awaits rescue on the dangerous and forbidden surface of Europa and Universe races to her aid, the omniscient force that is Dave Bowman watches *and waits to reveal the extraordinary secrets of the monoliths, of the masters he now serves, and of mankind's ultimate role in the course of cosmic history . . .

Mary Doria Russell's debut novel, The Sparrow, took us on a journey to a distant planet and into the center of the human soul. A critically acclaimed bestseller, The Sparrow was chosen as one of Entertainment Weekly's Ten Best Books of the Year, a finalist for the Book-of-the-Month Club's First Fiction Prize and the winner of the James M. Tiptree Memorial Award. Now, in Children of God, Russell further establishes herself as one of the most innovative, entertaining and philosophically provocative novelists writing today.

The only member of the original mission to the planet Rakhat to return to Earth, Father Emilio Sandoz has barely begun to recover from his ordeal when the Society of Jesus calls upon him for help in preparing for another mission to Alpha Centauri. Despite his objections and fear, he cannot escape his past or the future.

Old friends, new discoveries and difficult questions await Emilio as he struggles for inner peace and understanding in a moral universe whose boundaries now extend beyond the solar system and whose future lies with children born in a faraway place.

Strikingly original, richly plotted, replete with memorable characters and filled with humanity and humor, Children of God is an unforgettable and uplifting novel that is a potent successor to The Sparrow and a startlingly imaginative adventure for newcomers to Mary Doria Russell's special literary magic.

Ellfive colony won its independence in the One-Day Revolution, but while much may be forgiven, its debts haven't been. The orbital nation needs a serious supply of minerals and ore to realize its manufacturing potentials, and in this solar system, the cost of lifting rocks to orbit is prohibitive, the only viable option is to mine them yourself.

And so, Star Svensdotter leads a prospecting expedition to the Belt, almost two AUs out, on the very edges of Earth's colonization of space. It's not exactly unexplored territory--a motley assortment of grifters, drifters and fortune-hunters have already made the Belt their home--but Star and her crew soon find that they have a lot to offer the anarchic frontier society, and that there are richer opportunities than merely mining for minerals.

The second in Dana Stabenow's Star Svensdotter trilogy, A Handful of Stars follows humanity's outward migration into the solar system.

This book is the first in the series of novelizations of the episodes of the animated Star Trek series. The episodes featured are:

Beyond the Farthest Star
The Enterprise investigates an unusual radio signal and finds itself next to a gigantic and ancient star ship of unknown design and origin. Upon exploration, they learn that a strange and dangerous creature invaded the ship and the crew self-destructed rather than allow the creature to take over the ship. That creature manages to enter the Enterprise and the crew must engage in very heroic actions in order to defeat the creature and return to Federation space.

Yesteryear
Kirk and Spock accompany a team of historical researchers through the guardian of forever. Great care is taken to make sure that no changes are made in the timeline, but when they return, no one on the Enterprise recognizes Spock. After investigation, it is determined that Spock must travel back in time to his home planet of Vulcan and give critical aid to himself when he was a child.

One of Our Planets is Missing
In this episode, a giant cloud-like creature journeys into Federation space and consumes planets for food. After destroying an uninhabited planet, it is moving towards Mantilles, a planet with 82 million inhabitants. The Enterprise is the only thing standing between the creature and the destruction of the planet.

Adaptations from TV scripts: Beyond the Farthest Star by Samuel A. Peeples; Yesteryear by D.C. Fontana; One of Our Planets is Missing by Marc Daniels.

Contents:

• 1 - The Survivor - novella by Alan Dean Foster
• 67 - The Lorelei Signal - novella by Alan Dean Foster
• 127 - The Infinite Vulcan - novella by Alan Dean Foster

Adaptations from TV scripts: The Survivor by James Schermer; The Lorelei Signal by Margaret Armen; The Ultimate Vulcan by Walter Koenig.

Contents:

• 1 - Once Upon a Planet - novella by Alan Dean Foster
• 85 - Mudd's Passion - novella by Alan Dean Foster
• 157 - The Magicks of Megas-Tu - novella by Alan Dean Foster

Adapted from TV scripts: Once Upon a Planet by Len Jansen and Chuck Menville; Mudd's Passion by Stephen Kandel: The Magicks of Megas-Tu by Larry Brody.

Contents:

• 1 - The Terratin Incident - novella by Alan Dean Foster
• 97 - Time Trap - novella by Alan Dean Foster
• 167 - More Tribbles, More Troubles - novella by Alan Dean Foster

Adapted from TV scripts: The Terratin Incident by Paul Schneider; Time Trap by Joyce Perry; More Tribbles, More Troubles by David Gerrold.

Contents:

• 1 - The Ambergris Element - novella by Alan Dean Foster
• 81 - The Pirates of Orion - novella by Alan Dean Foster
• 133 - Jihad - novella by Alan Dean Foster

Adapted from TV scripts: The Ambergris Element by Margaret Armen; The Pirates of Orion by Howard Weinstein; Jihad by Stephen Kandel.

Contents:

• 3 - Albatross - novella by Alan Dean Foster
• 67 - The Practical Joker - novella by Alan Dean Foster
• 137 - How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth - novella by Alan Dean Foster

Adapted from TV scripts: Albatross by Dario Finelli; The Practical Joker by Chuck Menville; How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth by Russell Bates and David Wise.

Contents:

• The Counter-Clock Incident - Novel by Alan Dean Foster

Adapted from a TV script: The Counter-Clock Incident by John Culver.

Contents:

• The Eye of the Beholder - Novel by Alan Dean Foster

Adapted from a TV script The Eye of the Beholder by David P. Harmon.

Contents:

• BEM - Novel by Alan Dean Foster

Adapted from the TV script BEM by David Gerrold

Contents:

• Slaver Weapon - Novel by Alan Dead Foster

Adapted from a TV script Slaver Weapon by Larry Niven

At the end of 2385, in a significant shift of its goals from military back to exploratory, Starfleet sent Captain Benjamin Sisko and the crew of the U.S.S. Robinson on an extended mission into the Gamma Quadrant. Tasked with a yearlong assignment to travel unknown regions, they set out to fulfill the heart of Starfleet's charter: to explore strange new worlds, and to seek out new life and new civilizations.

But now three months into the mission, their first contact with an alien species comes in the form of an unprovoked attack on the Robinson. With the ship's crew suddenly incapacitated, seventy-eight of the 1,300 aboard are abducted--including Sisko's daughter, Rebecca. But Rebecca had already been kidnapped years earlier by a Bajoran religious zealot, part of a sect believing that her birth fulfilled the prophecy of the arrival of the Infant Avatar. Does her disappearance now have anything to do with the harrowing events of the past? And for what purposes have these enemies taken Sisko's daughter and the rest of the missing?

Commander Benjamin Sisko is just recovering from the death of his wife when he is assigned command over the former Cardassian, but new Federation space station, Deep Space Nine. This space station is strategically located not only because of its orbit about Bajor, but also because of its proximity to the only known stable wormhole in the galaxy. After meeting the other Bajoran and Starfleet personnel assigned to the station, including a former Bajoran freedom fighter and a shapeshifter, Sisko finds himself in that very wormhole and in the midst of a metaphysical experience as the alien inhabitants of the wormhole question the concepts of time and love. Sisko, filled with humanistic hubris, begins to explain these experiences, and resolve his painful past.

A powerful novel in the classic tradition of "All Good Things..." Seven years ago, Benjamin Sisko took command of an alien space station newly christened "Deep Space Nine." There he met Kira Nerys, Odo, Miles O'Brien, Quark, Worf, Julian Bashir, and many others who would touch his life deeply. He also found a new and troubling destiny as the long-awaited Emissary to the mysterious wormhole entities known as the Prophets. Now, after years of triumph and tragedy, and a cataclysmic war that rocked the entire Alpha Quadrant, Captain Sisko and his valiant crew face their final challenge. No one is safe, nothing is certain, and not even the Prophets can predict the ultimate fate of Deep Space Nine!

While living on "Deep Space Nine", Jake Sisko has seen a lot of strange things, since his father, commander of the station, opened it to every lifeform who passes through this sector of space. But when Jake's Ferengi friend Nog says he's seen a ghost, Jake doesn't believe him, until a shimmering figure with glowing red eyes appears in Jake's quarters. Soon enough the spectre has Jake on a dangerous mission into the depths of the station, with the fate of "Deep Space Nine" resting on his boyish shoulders.

An all-new novel based upon the explosive Star Trek TV series!

A shattered ship, a divided crew--trapped in the infernal nightmare of conflict!