Showing results for "First Contact" in Anthologies & Short Stories

A dilemma in the Nebula! Two spaceships meet in deep space. How do they establish trust, not only between their two crews, but also between their home worlds? A classic puzzle. The only way to warn home would be to return, and how do you know you were not being followed? Trade would be desirable, but how can you base an exchange of knowledge on unfounded trust?

They came in peace...or so they said. Here are 18 examples of how they lied. This is an exciting collection of first contact science fiction stories, all completely different! Take a risk - venture into the unknown with us. Who is out there? What will they want from us? Come join us in our adventure to find out how first contact pans out. It will be a great adventure!

What will become of our self-destructed planet? The answer shatters all expectations in this subversive speculation from the Hugo Award - winning author of the Broken Earth trilogy. An explorer returns to gather information from a climate-ravaged Earth that his ancestors, and others among the planet’s finest, fled centuries ago. The mission comes with a warning: A graveyard world awaits him. But so do those left behind - hopeless and unbeautiful wastes of humanity who should have died out ages ago.

First contact with a mysterious race of aliens reveals an unusual request; a family's pet dog comes to grips with the newly bestowed gift of human-like intelligence; a poet, in danger and alone on a distant world, makes unlikely allies; hundreds of years in the future, a famous hermit lives in the sea above the now-underwater Harvard University; former friends navigate unsteady peace between human refugees and the technologically superior race that saved them; in a future where human life can be infinitely extended through cybertronic rebirth, one woman declines immortality.

The urge to explore and discover is a natural and universal one, and the edge of the unknown is expanded with each passing year as scientific advancements inch us closer and closer to the outer reaches of our solar system and the galaxies beyond them. Generations of writers have explored these new frontiers and the endless possibilities they present in great detail. The Final Frontier delivers stories from across this literary spectrum, a reminder that the universe is far large and brimming with possibilities than we could ever imagine, as hard as we may try.

Mysterious alien entities have emerged to enslave humanity. They draw their identities and their immense powers from the gods of ancient myth and legend. Only David Montague, billionaire inventor, stands in their way. With the ability to read auras, he’s amassed for himself wealth and power, but now his ability will be turned toward more noble ends: defending humanity.

Jeff Dolan always wanted to be an astronaut. After helping a private space company build a ship that can travel to Saturn's largest moon in five months, he gets his chance. Shortly after launch, a devastating malfunction forces Jeff and the crew to make a choice: continue to Titan, or go back home. As the truth about their mission unravels, one thing is clear: someone on Earth knew about the system flaw and covered it up. Yet surviving the journey isn't the crew's only concern. Even if they make it to Titan, they will face another problem: Something is already there.

A colony survives among the icy rings of a planet, hiding from alien robots determined to destroy them … at a remote site on the edge of the Arctic Circle, a group of scientists, engineers, and physicians gather to gamble humanity’s future on one last-ditch experiment … a man who can’t feel pain has been bioengineered to be a killing machine, but he refuses to give in to his fate … a man is contacted by three future versions of himself, each trying to save their world from destruction.

With The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Six, award-winning editor Neil Clarke provides a year-in-review and 33 of the best stories published by both new and established authors in 2020.

It’s the 22nd century. The galaxy has opened up to humanity as a hyperactive beehive of stargates and new technologies, and we suddenly find ourselves in a vast playground of different races, environments, and cultures. There’s just one catch: We are pretty much at the bottom of the food chain.

Wally K. Daly was a prolific, award-winning dramatist, whose writing credits included Casualty, Juliet Bravo and Doctor Who. He wrote 38 radio plays during his 30-year career, across a range of genres including comedy, horror and science fiction. This collection includes his best-known SF serial, The Scream Trilogy, and three other thrilling sci-fi dramas.

In Skin Folk, with works ranging from science fiction to Caribbean folklore, passionate love to chilling horror, Nalo Hopkinson is at her award-winning best spinning tales like "Precious", in which the narrator spews valuable coins and gems from her mouth whenever she attempts to talk or sing. In "A Habit of Waste", a self-conscious woman undergoes elective surgery to alter her appearance; days later she's shocked to see her former body climbing onto a public bus.

Nineteen gut-wrenching reports from the front lines of the War of the Worlds, as logged by Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt, H.P. Lovecraft, Winston Churchill, Jules Verne, and many of the other most famous writers of the time. The most popular and acclaimed science fiction writers of today relive the Martian invasion through the eyes of their famous predecessors.

For years, writers and filmmakers have speculated about the possibility of the Earth being invaded by aliens from another planet. But what if the aliens have been watching us, infiltrating us via human collaborators or even surgically altering themselves to look human?

Keeping up-to-date with the most buzzworthy and cutting-edge science fiction requires sifting through countless magazines, e-zines, websites, blogs, original anthologies, single-author collections, and more - a task accomplishable by only the most determined and voracious readers. For everyone else, Night Shade Books is proud to introduce the latest volume of The Best Science Fiction of the Year, collecting the finest that the genre has to offer, from the biggest names in the field to the most exciting new writers.

Orson Scott Card, Kevin J. Anderson, and Larry Niven have seen the future. Now you can, too. A constellation of the brightest lights in the science fiction and fantasy firmament have judged these authors to be the best, the brightest, the truest emerging stars in the field.

Racconto vincitore del “Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire” 2003. Un portale TransUniverso gestito da un’intelligenza artificiale rappresenta l’ultima difesa contro l’invasione di Alusia da parte dell’agguerrito popolo degli arkosiani. Il destino del pianeta è legato alla capacità del governatore Josef Rekl di negoziare le condizioni di un’ardua convivenza con la misteriosa diplomatica arkosiana.

H. G. Wells fue un gran escritor prolífico de ficción y no ficción. Su carrera literaria se extendió por más de sesenta años y sus primeras novelas de ciencia ficción le concedieron el título (junto con Julio Verne y Hugo Gernsback) de «Padre de la ciencia ficción».

In "The Variable Man", Earth (The Terran System) is in a cold war with the older, corrupt Centaurian System, which suppresses Terra from exploring space and expanding its borders. When a devastating new weapon called Icarus is developed by Terra, everyone expects the odds to tip in Terra's favor. But the computers calculating these odds find an unknown variable that throws off the odds. A time traveler from 1913 known as Thomas Cole has arrived. Can this variable man from the past rescue mankind from a catastrophic future?

On a far-off colony, humans tower over the local species who grow the plants they need. Narr keeps the workers in line—someone has to. But when Narr learns just how short-lived their species is, the little alien embarks on a big mission: to find out why their people die and how to stop it. Stubborn and hopeful, Narr has a plan for the locals, for humans, and for the future.