Showing results for "MYSTERY" in Hard Science Fiction

Jazz Bashara is a criminal. Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you're not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you've got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent. Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down.

All life on Earth is about to be terminated by an entity as old as the galaxy itself. To make matters worse, Simon has broken everything already. In a future world that is run by computer systems and that is without want, how can a man find his role? Then, if the very computers he works on to try to make them more human suddenly try to kill him, revealing a secret so vast that it affects every living soul on the planet, can that man be a hero?

In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse - mathematical genius and young Captain in the US Navy - is assigned to detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists, and some of those people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt. The mission of Watrehouse and Detachment 2702 - commanded by Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe - is to keep the Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the enemy's fabled Enigma code. In the present, Waterhouse's crypto-hacker grandson, Randy, is attempting to create a "data haven" in Southeast Asia....

It is 2056. Mathematics professor Elisabeth Gabai is fascinated by multi-dimensional forms that have no equivalent in reality. Then, her boss sends her to the site of an artifact that might have come straight from her theories—or from the technology of an advanced civilization. Twenty-eight years earlier, physicist Max Webber is hell-bent on improving Einstein’s theories of relativity. His latest concept seems flawless, except it predicts the end of humanity. The extinction of Earth can only be prevented if Max can locate a multi-dimensional object.

Max and Liz have escaped the mysterious time phenomenon by traveling to the Mars colony, which promises a whole new, exciting, and secure life. But they've left behind someone important to them. Should they embark on a journey from which no one has ever returned? And why does everyone seem to put obstacles in their way even as they try? The physicist and the mathematician must contend with forces that cannot be swayed by logical arguments while time, at an accelerating pace, is running out for their friend on Earth.

Conn Maxwell returns from Terra to his poverty-stricken home planet of Poictesme, “The Junkyard Planet”, with news of the possible location of Merlin, a military super-computer rumored to have been abandoned there after the last war. The inhabitants hope to find Merlin, which they think will be their ticket to wealth and prosperity. But is Merlin real or just an old rumor? And if they find it, will it save them - or tear them apart?

A routine dig in Kazakhstan takes a radical turn for 32-year-old anthropologist Claire Knowland when a stranger turns up at the site with a bizarre find from a remote section of the desolate Kazakh Steppe. Her initial skepticism of this mysterious discovery gives way to a realization that the find will shake the very foundations of our understanding of evolution and intelligence. Corrupt politics of Kazakhstan force Claire to take reckless chances with the discovery. Ultimately, Claire finds herself fighting not just for the discovery and her academic reputation, but for her very life.

In a world stripped bare of digital images and promotainment, unveiled with the audiovisual overlay of the ImmaNet, in an exposed world, a naked world, Amon Kenzaki awakens, lost and alone. He must now travel deep into the District of Dreams in search of Rashana Birla, the one person that might help him unravel the mystery of jubilee. But deprived of the apps and informational tools he's depended on his entire life, traversing the largest bankdeath camp on Earth is no easy task.

Three fugitives on a mission in which death would be a happy ending. A client who is amazed at the sheer size of his own plan. A destination where few humans have ever set foot. A retiree who holds the salvation of the world in her hands. Möbius 3 is the culmination of the trilogy that began deep in an Icelandic volcano and in a Princeton University basement...or is it? When the past swiftly becomes the future, the future no longer offers a safe haven.

Six months have passed since the release of Nexus 5. The world is a different, more dangerous place. In the USA, the freedom fighters of the Post-Human Liberation Front use Nexus to turn men and women into human time bombs aimed at the President and his allies. The first blows in the war between human and post-human have been struck.

Our narrator is the most talented salesperson at Dare to Know, an enigmatic company that has developed the technology to predict anyone’s death down to the second. Divorced, estranged from his sons, and broke, he is driven to violate the cardinal rule of the business by forecasting his own death day. The problem: His prediction says he died 23 minutes ago. The only person who can confirm its accuracy is Julia, the woman he loved and lost during his rise up the ranks of Dare to Know.

Dr. Jake Ross, a university astronomer, wants nothing more than to teach a few classes each semester and continue his research. Instead, he finds himself aggressively recruited to be the science advisor to Frank Tomlinson, an ambitious politician with his eye on the US Senate. Tomlinson is in need of an edge that will allow him to defeat his opponent at the polls, and Dr. Ross can contribute just that: MHD. MHD, or magnetohydrodynamics, is a new innovation that will allow electricity to be generated efficiently and cheaply. But MHD is still in its infancy, and there are deadly risks.

George Galen is a brilliant scientist, a pioneer in gene therapy. But Galen is dangerously insane. He has created a method to alter human DNA, not just to heal diseases, but also to "improve" people - make them stronger, make them able to heal more quickly...and make them compliant to his will.

In the near future, the nano-drug Nexus can link mind to mind. There are some who want to improve it. There are some who want to eradicate it. And there are others who just want to exploit it. When a young scientist is caught improving Nexus, he’s thrust over his head into a world of danger and international espionage, with far more at stake than anyone realizes.

Kira Miller is a brilliant genetic engineer who discovers how to temporarily achieve savant-like capabilities in all areas of thought and creativity. But what if this transcendent level of intelligence brings with it a ruthless megalomania? David Desh left the special forces after his team was brutally butchered in Iran. Now he has been reactivated for one last mission: find Kira Miller, the enigmatic genius behind a bioterror plot that threatens millions.

Deep in Antarctica, two researchers find an enigmatic black sphere suspended in the heart of a huge crater. Neither man is ever seen again. Decades later, reality fractures. A Manhattan skyscraper vanishes into thin air. An airplane crashes in the Sahara Desert—its existence defying logic. Across the globe, breathtaking technology and mysterious artifacts appear, all leading to one chilling truth: a parallel Earth is breaching the boundary between realities.

Harry Benson suffers from violent seizures. So violent that he often blacks out when they take hold. Shortly after severely beating two men during an episode, the police escort Benson to a Los Angeles hospital for treatment. There, Dr. Roger McPherson, head of the prestigious Neuropsychiatric Research Unit, is convinced he can cure Benson with an experimental procedure that would place electrodes deep in his brain's pleasure centers.

“Think of a darker, more aggressive version of C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. . . . Filled with wicked mischief and dark dares.” — Kansas City Star From Clive Barker, the great master of horror and the macabre, comes a brilliant and truly unsettling tour de force of the...

When Murderbot discovers a dead body on Preservation Station, it knows it is going to have to assist station security to determine who the body is (was), how they were killed (that should be relatively straightforward, at least), and why (because apparently that matters to a lot of people - who knew?). Yes, the unthinkable is about to happen: Murderbot must voluntarily speak to humans! Again!

The Cure is a genre-bending thriller reminiscent of Michael Crichton or Douglas Preston, about the biological underpinnings of psychopathy. As a child, her family was taken from her by a serial killer. Erin Palmer is left orphaned and forever scarred. She dedicates her life to the study of psychopaths, conducting one-on-one interviews and tests with inmates. When Erin finally finishes years of exhaustive research, she finds herself in possession of the key to ending psychopathic behavior - in the species - forever. That' s when they try to kill her.