Showing titles in First Contact

Before Hr'ent Golramm became a legendary Enforcer for the Peacemaker Guild, he was a mere candidate. Granted, he was a particularly unusual candidate - only six Oogar had ever successfully graduated from the Peacemaker Academy on Ocono, and Hr'ent would be the seventh. Every candidate must pass a commissioning mission in order to graduate, though, and Hr'ent's is unsolvable. The Pushtal of Vorrhurna were once one of the Mercenary Guild's 37 races. 

James Decker, captain of the living starship Farrago, has a mission: locate the seven symbiotes scattered across space. This mission will bring him credits beyond his imaginations, but it could also save the universe. He has found three, but there are still four more out there. All the while, the strange, faceless man from the Cloud Sea is never far away. He has his eye on this side of the void, and Captain James Decker might be the only one who can stop him.

Bruge: I’m a serious warlord, not a youngling warrior in need of a mate. Ensuring the duskhorde don’t kill us, and that the clan gathering runs smoothly, is enough to keep me busy. Court an Earthling female? Perhaps later. But when I meet Alexa, my second heart starts beating, proving she’s my maelstrom mate. Now I want her, and the best way to claim her is with an ancient Ferlaern tradition: abduction and seduction. If only my entire village would stop trying to help make it happen.

Not long ago, Morgan Hall was a simple maintenance tech on a spacecraft bound for Tau Ceti. Then he and his shipmates found themselves unwillingly transplanted to Fanwath, where magic is real, danger abounds, and the almighty “System” grants levels, points, and powers based on one’s individual triumphs. Now, Morgan and his native Ardeni mate, Issa, have founded a growing colony for both their peoples, and they’re able to draw ever more tribes and lifeforms—even some of their former Urghat enemies—into trade and warfare alliances.

Durran: The Earthling females are settling into our clan, finding new homes high in the forest's canopy. Matches are being made, but not for me. Scarred as I am, none will ever glance my way. But one Earthling... Rayne's sweet and funny, and I want to scoop her up in my arms and kiss her until she moans my name. To protect my heart, I'll keep busy with my investigation into a new threat to our clan. Someone's harming our trees, and I need to stop them before our way of life is destroyed.

When NASA's Sentinel I satellite detects an impossible reflection and a mysterious signal from Shackleton Crater, the world is thrown into chaos. The discovery points to one chilling truth: an alien artifact lies hidden beneath the lunar surface—and it wants to be found. As China scrambles to exploit the revelation, a new moon race ignites, pushing humanity to the brink.

On a day like any other, an alien descends to Earth, unleashing untold death and destruction. Alistair watches the live news footage of the carnage, his eyes glued to the image of impossible power made manifest. The alien’s arrival kicks events into motion that no one could have predicted. Earth is prematurely initiated into a universe-spanning empire of cut-throat cultivators, beasts, and entities of ungodly power–all guided by a mysterious AI System.

Brought together by fate - or phenomena - heiress Jennifer Quinn, journalist Timika Mars, pilot Alan Young, and ex-Marine Barry Regis are bonded by the incidents they've witnessed, hunted by agents of a wealthy corporate cabal desperate for unimaginable power, and possessed of extraordinary abilities they do not understand, much less control. Now, they're on a mission of their own. As Alan and Barry test the limits of their strange gifts inside the military complex known as Dreamland, Jennifer and Timika begin a quest to locate an ancient tablet that may hold the answers to humanity's greatest question.

Dalton Greaves is a hero. He's one of humankind's first representatives to Unity, a pan-species confederation working to bring all sentient life into a single benevolent brotherhood. That's what they told him, anyway. The only actual members of Unity that he's ever met are Boreau, a giant snail who seems more interested in plunder than spreading love and harmony, and Boreau's human sidekick, Neera, who Dalton strongly suspects roped him into this gig so that she wouldn't become the next one of Boreau's crew to get eaten by locals while prospecting.

Something always goes sideways, but this is bigger than expected. Maybe it's not an entirely bad thing, though, as mana-infected animals spreading over the world would definitely make everyone more open to the idea of the apocalypse. The question is what was Silas supposed to do about it, though. He still couldn't tell anyone who wasn't inducted about the system. It was time to get creative. If that wasn't enough, though, he still had the wild hunt hanging over his head. Seven days to go, and then he'd be thrown into whatever twisted event the system had cooked up for him.

In Los Angeles, Theodore and his team have no choice but to go into the lion’s den to learn the secrets that have not only destroyed their lives, but perhaps the lives of an entire generation. Their road leads to Cerberus. Can he, Jack, Ludwig, and Yuna Saki come back with the truth that Rhein Ruhr Industries is determined to keep buried? Once behind enemy lines, they uncover a plot that goes all the way to Ganymede and changes their objective to just one thing: survival.

The battle over the alien artifacts rages across the solar system. On Earth, Los Angeles becomes the battleground for two mega-corporations that will stop at nothing to get their hands on the strange material. Meanwhile, as she races towards Ganymede, astronaut Rachel Ferreira discovers that the biggest threat to the ship and her team is not awaiting ahead out in space, but is right under their own feet. As the satellite images received from Ganymede get stranger and stranger, Rachel and Theodore each find themselves in a race against time.

The arrival of the Malor spacecraft proved, once and for all, that humanity is not alone in the universe...the path of destruction it left behind showed that aliens are not always friendly. Remaining on Earth, Sydney and Brian must now face the aftermath of the Malor invasion. When a mysterious stranger shows up on Sydney's doorstep in the middle of the night, she's drawn into an urgent mystery: There has been a massive increase in alien abductions around the globe, despite the breakdown of Malor technology - and someone powerful is trying to keep it quiet. 

The War of the Worlds is HG Wells’ dramatic science fiction tale of aliens invading England. The story is narrated in the first person by two brothers as the aliens criss-cross the country in their three-legged machines, destroying everything in their path with heat rays and poison gases. Panic rules as people flee from London, but when all seems lost, an unusual ally comes to mankind’s aid. This brilliant combination of science fiction and Gothic horror has inspired countless films, radio dramas, and television series.

Adrift in an unknown sector of space, Slater and the crew of the Franklin are cut off from friendly support and surrounded by enemies on all sides. The mysterious council means to destroy him, but a derelict core is a deadly opponent, and Captain Slater will stop at nothing to get his crew home safely. It’s time for Slater to go on the offensive. It’s time to take the fight to the enemy. It’s time to counterattack!

Herself a biologist, Julie E. Czerneda has earned a reputation in science fiction circles for her ability to create beautifully crafted, imaginative, yet believably realized alien races. In Survival, the first novel in her new series, Species Imperative, she draws upon this talent to build races, characters, and a universe which will draw listeners into a magnificent tale of interstellar intrigue, as an Earth scientist is caught up in a terrifying interspecies conflict.

In this thrilling second book of the Earthborn trilogy, Lucas and Asha have survived the decimation of Earth at the hands of the invading Xalans and seek safe haven with their enemy's true foes, the Sorans. They find a lush planet inhabited by a civilization far more advanced than their own, waging a seemingly endless war against a constantly evolving enemy. The Sorans call the pair of them the "Earthborn", and they're welcomed as heroes, almost as gods.

Frederik Pohl was on a streak when this Hugo Award-finalist novel was published in 1980. Now back in print after an absence of nearly a decade, this unique science fiction novel is as fresh and entertaining as ever. The story begins when the hero of Gateway finances an expedition to a distant alien spaceship that may end famine forever. On the ship, the explorers find a human boy, and evidence that reveals a powerful alien civilization is thriving on a transport ship headed right for Earth....

When out-of-shape IT technician Roen wakes up and starts hearing voices in his head, he naturally assumes he’s losing it. He isn’t. As of last night, he has a passenger in his brain - an ancient alien life-form called Tao, whose race crash-landed on Earth before the first fish crawled out of the oceans. Over the millennia his people have trained human heroes to be great leaders, to advance our species at a rate far beyond what it would have achieved on its own. Split into two opposing factions - the peace-loving, but under-represented Prophus, and the savage, powerful Genjix - the aliens have been in a state of civil war for centuries.

With The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 3, award-winning editor Neil Clarke provides a year-in-review and 27 of the best stories published by both new and established authors in 2017.