Showing titles in First Contact

In the year 2031, a robot probe detects traces of biological activity on Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons. This sensational discovery shows that there is indeed evidence of extraterrestrial life. Fifteen years later, a hurriedly built spacecraft sets out on the long journey to the ringed planet and its moon. The international crew is not just facing a difficult twenty-seven months: if the spacecraft manages to make it to Enceladus without incident it must use a drillship to penetrate the kilometer-thick sheet of ice that entombs the moon.

Dan Delgado is a private investigator. When it comes to finding cheating spouses, corporate thieves, or runaway teenagers, he’s unenthusiastic, and unmatched. As a former San Francisco detective, he misses more meaningful work, but he hasn’t had the heart for it since his wife’s death five years prior. That is, until a phone call from a distraught mother, an illegal immigrant who can’t go to the police, puts him on the hunt for a missing little girl. By the time he reaches the mother’s small home, she’s missing, too. The circumstances are strange....

Paolo Bacigalupi's debut collection demonstrates the power and reach of the science-fiction short story. Social criticism, political parable, and environmental advocacy lie at the center of Paolo's work. Each of the stories herein is at once a warning and a celebration of the tragic comedy of the human experience.

When Dan McCarthy stumbles upon a folder containing evidence of the conspiracy to end all conspiracies - a top-level alien cover-up - he leaks the files without a second thought. The incredible truth revealed by Dan's leak immediately captures the public's imagination, but Dan's relentless commitment to exposing the cover-up and forcing disclosure quickly earns him some enemies in high places.

Der erste Kontakt mit einer außerirdischen Spezies hat die Menschheit in eine Krise gestürzt, denn die fremde Zivilisation hat sich Zugang zu jeglicher menschlichen Informationstechnologie verschafft. Der einzige Informationsspeicher, der noch vor den Aliens geschützt ist, ist das menschliche Gehirn, weshalb das Wallfacer-Projekt ins Leben gerufen wird: Vier Wissenschaftler sollen die ultimative Verteidigungsstrategie gegen die Aliens ausarbeiten - doch können sie einander trauen?

For nearly a billion years, every known sentient species in the universe has been the result of genetic and cultural guidance - or "uplifting" - by a previously uplifted patron race. Then humans are discovered. Having already uplifted chimps and dolphins, humanity clearly qualifies as an intelligent species, but did they actually evolve their own intelligence, or did some mysterious patron race begin the process, then suddenly abandon Earth?

It has been 10 years since the Battle of the Breach and the oceans are still, but restless. Vindicated by the victory at the Breach, the Jaeger program has evolved into the most powerful global defense force in human history. The PPDC now calls upon the best and brightest to rise up and become the next generation of heroes when the Kaiju threat returns.

Earth has been allowed to colonize the planet Garth only because its previous occupants went berserk and wiped out virtually all life there. But now humans, chimps, and their alien allies on Garth are being held hostage in a conflict that could affect the fate of the entire Five Galaxies.

John Carter is a veteran looking to make his way in the world after the Civil War. After finding gold in Arizona, he is chased into hiding in a cave that turns out to house a portal to Mars. He quickly discovers that Mars is inhabited by many intelligent lifeforms who have used advanced science to create a welcoming natural environment on the red planet. John is soon drawn into a tribe of nomadic Martians and quickly rises in their ranks due to his otherworldly strength. Eventually, John’s group gets into a dispute with a rival tribe.

Robert A. Heinlein wrote The Number of the Beast, which was published in 1980. In the book Zeb, Deety, Hilda, and Jake are ambushed by the alien "Black Hats" and barely escape with their lives on a specially configured vehicle (the Gay Deceiver) which can travel along various planes of existence, allowing them to visit parallel universes. However, unknown to most fans, Heinlein had already written a "parallel" novel about the four characters and parallel universes in 1977.

Everything had changed for Zander Greaves over the last few weeks. He'd gone from being a private military contractor with his squad in the Middle East to being isekai-ed into a different multiverse. He lost his friends and his lover, Selda, in the same hour of his arrival, sparking in him the mission to kill every single Entoma he could to repay them for his loss. Luckily, an alien named Crish arrived to help Zander adjust to his new reality.

Led by a man willing to risk everything for power and conquest, armed with technology a hundred years ahead of ours—technology promising salvation to its allies and doom to its enemies—and drawing on a far deeper military history, the Protectorate Expeditionary Force has arrived to invade and incorporate our world into the greatest empire the multiverse has ever known, or die trying.

Our hero Chris Alan has been in some tight situations, to be sure. Hostile alien invasion, daring rescues of his friends, and trials by the insane kidnapper. But now he's marooned alone on the most hostile planet in the galaxy with no food, water, communication equipment, or spaceship. It couldn't look any bleaker. All he has to do is pull off another miracle with absolutely no resources or reasonable hope of survival. Just another day in the life of a teenage boy. Same old, same old, right?

In den finsteren Weiten des inneren Asteroidengürtels hoffen die Bergbauastronauten Walter Adams und Tiziana Fontana, reiche Vorkommen an Gold, Platin und Seltenen Erden im gerade freigegebenen neuen Sektor zu entdecken. Doch als sie ein rätselhaftes Signal empfangen, stoßen sie auf ein pechschwarzes, mysteriöses fremdes Objekt. Nicht nur Walters Arbeitgeber, Wayaki Industries, erwartet schnelle Antworten: Auch zwei konkurrierende Konzerne haben längst Kurs auf das Objekt genommen. Was als Wettlauf um Profit begann, verwandelt sich in eine grausame Prüfung um Leben und Tod.

The Aliens by Murray Leinster is a gripping, high-stakes first-contact science fiction adventure from the golden age of the genre. Set during humanity’s expansion across the stars, the story follows the crew of the starship Niccola as they confront the mysterious and technologically advanced Plumies—an alien species whose intentions are entirely unknown. When an unexpected encounter leads to a violent misunderstanding and the two ships become physically fused together in deep space, humans and Plumies are forced into an uneasy alliance for survival.

سنة بدأت فيها الأرض تدخل كون موازي، وهبطت تلك المخلوقات ذات التكوين الآدمي في مصر، وأدخلت العالم كله إلى عصر جليدي صناعي.

Published in Galaxy Science Fiction in October 1953, The Carnivore, by G. A. Morris, is a science fiction short story that explores the impact of mass extinction on humanity. The story is set in a future where the world has been decimated by war, and the remaining human race is isolated on Earth. The narrative follows the last living human, George, as he encounters alien beings who have judged humanity as a whole and are now seeking to understand the world they inhabit. The story is prescient in its themes of survival, technology, and the consequences of human actions.

When aliens descend on Earth, most people panic. Mariko Waterfield sees it as a sign: time to leave North Loop Manor and start a new chapter out west. The world is changing, the future uncertain—but before she can move on, she owes her best friends one final farewell. One last perfect goodbye in the shadow of an alien invasion.

John Donovan is a Frontiersman: smuggler, pilot, and professional debtor. He'll haul anything for the right price—cargo, cattle, fugitives, even a preacher with secrets too big to pray away. When a desperate job takes him through the forbidden space of the warlike Peko, Donovan figures it's just another high-risk run. Between hostile aliens, scavenger pirates, and a haunted luxury cruiser adrift in the void, Donovan and his mismatched crew are in for the ride of their lives.

HG Wells' perennially popular, and never out-of-print, 1898 science fiction novel, depicting a sudden invasion of the English heartland by highly intelligent and coldly malevolent creatures from Mars, and the rout of human resistance before the invaders' superior technology. The novel has been many times adapted for other media, including Hollywood movies, and the legendary 1938 radio presentation by Orson Welles.