Showing titles in Hard Science Fiction

The planet is called Banshee. The air is unbreathable, the water poisonous. It is the home of the most implacable enemies that humanity, in all its interstellar expansion, has ever encountered. Felix is a scout in A-team Two. Highly competent, he is the sole survivor of mission after mission. Yet he is a man consumed by fear and hatred.

In the 25th century, humans have conquered space. The advent of faster-than-light travel has opened up hundreds of habitable planets for colonization, and humans have exploited the virtually limitless space and resources for hundreds of years with impunity. So complacent have they become with the overabundance that armed conflict is a thing of the past, and their machines of war are obsolete and decrepit. What would happen if they were suddenly threatened by a terrifying new enemy?

While J. Robert Oppenheimer and his Manhattan Project team struggle to develop the A-bomb, Edward Teller wants something even more devastating: a weapon based on nuclear fusion - the mechanism that powers the sun. But Teller’s research leads to a terrifying discovery: by the year 2030, the sun will eject its outermost layer, destroying the entire inner solar system - including Earth. After the war ends, Oppenheimer’s physicists combine forces with Albert Einstein, computing pioneer John von Neumann, and rocket designer Wernher von Braun.  

The sixth book in this action-packed, New York Times bestselling science fiction series – STAR CARRIER. Once rebels themselves facing off against the Earth Confederation, the United States of North America is now the dominant force in negotiations with the interstellar Sh'daar Collective. But...

Captain Jackson Wolfe never thought he'd see the end of the Phage War in his lifetime. The enemy was too powerful, too numerous, and utterly determined to exterminate humanity. But the appearance of a new ally in the fight has changed all of that. For the first time since the original incursion, Wolfe thinks that maybe there's a chance to stop their implacable enemy before they have the chance to wipe out any more human planets.

From Joshua Dalzelle comes the follow-up to the number-one best seller Warship. Captain Jackson Wolfe survived the initial incursion of a vicious alien species into human space...barely. He had assumed the juggernaut that had devastated three Terran systems was the herald for a full invasion, but for the last few years it has been eerily quiet along the Frontier. Jackson now struggles to convince the Confederate leadership the threat is still imminent and needs to be taken seriously.

From the author of the Sunday Times best seller Cocaine Nights comes an unnerving tale of life in a modern tower block running out of control. Within the concealing walls of an elegant forty-storey tower block, the affluent tenants are hell-bent on an orgy of destruction. Cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on "enemy" floors and the once-luxurious amenities become an arena for riots and technological mayhem.

Piloted by a six-year-old girl, the godlike Skalm guards the Districts of TASC. Her family is long dead. Her adopted father is a synthetic copy of an alien, her nanny an artificial mind connected via subspace to every part of the globe, feeding the young girl information, finding prey to satiate her growing thirst. But the young girl is an innocent, a victim, one of millions the war has already claimed.

On the barren surface of an asteroid, located deep in the galaxy beneath the unbearable light of the Kefahuchi Tract, lie three objects: an abandoned spacecraft, a pair of bone dice covered with strange symbols, and a human skeleton. What they are and what they mean are the mysteries explored and unwrapped in Light, M. John Harrison's triumphant novel.

Still reeling from a former teammate's betrayal, Commonwealth operative Simon Kovalic and his band of misfit spies have no time to catch their breath before being sent on another impossible mission: to pull off the daring heist of a quasi-mythical alien artifact, right out from under the nose of the galaxy's most ruthless crime lord. But their cold war rivals, the Illyrican Empire, want the artifact for themselves. And Kovalic's newest recruit, Specialist Addy Sayers, is a volatile ex-con with a mean hair-trigger who might put the whole mission at risk.

Years after a meteorite strike obliterated Washington, DC—triggering an extinction-level global-warming event—Earth’s survivors have started an international effort to establish homes on space stations and the Moon. The next step–Mars. Elma York, the Lady Astronaut, lands on the Red Planet, optimistic about preparing for the first true wave of inhabitants. The mission objective is more than just building the infrastructure of a habitat–they are trying to preserve the many cultures and nuances of life on Earth without importing the hate. But from the moment she arrives, something is off.

AD 7.783 - In 43 Stunden startet das letzte Raumschiff. Die Jericho-Mission ist das teuerste Fiasko der bemannten Raumfahrt. Dennoch wird Ben, Fernaufklärer und Scharfschütze, aus dem Kälteschlaf geholt. Der Einsatz: Sicherung einer Stellung im Nirgendwo, dem HWY51. Natürlich gibt es hier keinen Highway, sondern nur extraterrestrischen Wüstendreck. Noch 7 Stunden. Als Ben erkennt, was auf dem Mond läuft, fliegt ihm der Laden bereits um die Ohren. Kein Ding, damit kommt er klar. Mehr zu schaffen machen ihm seine Erinnerungen.

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.

Commander Lisa Chao works in the US Navy's Strategic Planning Center in Pearl Harbor. When tensions rise with China over Taiwan, she has to unravel exactly what's happening in the Pacific and why. What she uncovers leads America to war—but not with China. Bullets and bombs are no match for an extraterrestrial warship that can fly between stars, but perhaps the answer to the coming war lies not in the present but in the past. Could Sun Tzu's The Art of War provide humanity with a fighting chance against a technologically superior alien enemy?

How can a colony on Mars survive when the greatest danger on the planet is humanity itself. All contact is lost with the first human colony on Mars during a long, intense sandstorm. Satellite imagery of the aftermath shows extensive damage to the facility, and the fifty-four colonists who called it home are presumed dead. Three years later, a new mission sets down on the planet surface to investigate what remains of the derelict site.

Francis Saxover and Diana Brackley, two scientists investigating a rare lichen, discover it has a remarkable property: it retards the aging process. Francis, realising the implications for the world of an ever-youthful, wealthy elite, wants to keep it secret, but Diana sees an opportunity to overturn the male status quo by using the lichen to inspire a feminist revolution. As each scientist wrestles with the implications and practicalities of exploiting the discovery, the world comes ever closer to learning the truth.

Adrift in the divide between galaxies and surrounded by the vast emptiness of the intergalactic void, the Tantalus Cluster is the only home humanity has ever known. Desperate and facing starvation, humanity’s only hope is a strange nebula that has suddenly appeared beyond the edge of the cluster. Its shifting clouds may hide a source of salvation for the people of Tantalus, but time is running out.

Es treibt Antonia Gleichweit – Apothekerin in einem verschlafenen Stadtviertel von Graz – und Martin Moser – Opernsänger mit Talent, aber ohne Engagement – zueinander und auseinander. Es wirbelt das Leben von Erwin Schrempf – Landesbeamter zuständig für die Beobachtung von Sekten, insbesondere Islamgemeinschaften – durcheinander. Und es bringt eine fremde Frau.

Als der Physiker Lukas Heuer am LIGO eine merkwürdige Gravitationswellenanomalie entdeckt, hält er sie zuerst für einen Messfehler. Doch Messdaten deuten auf extrem massereiche Objekte hin, die sich der Erde nähern und dabei eine gravitative Schneise durch das Sonnensystem ziehen. Sollte er recht haben, blieben der Menschheit nur wenige Wochen, um den Untergang abzuwenden. Gleichzeitig macht die Archäologin Mira Najafi zur selben Zeit eine ganz andere Entdeckung: Sie findet einen bislang unbekannten Raum in der großen Pyramide von Gizeh, der voller düsterer Prophezeiungen steckt.

Armed with a warning of a future Atlantis drowning in its own ruins, Robert Shaw, Kira Shelton, and Matt Jones return to the ancient past carrying a device that can shield civilization itself. But Kairos Daedalus is waiting—scarred, vengeful, and no longer entirely human in his ambitions. Behind him stand the Draconians: a species that has played the long game across galaxies and millennia. As old allies become fugitives, new enemies rear their lethal heads, and deceit becomes the rule, the trio from the future is devastated to learn the truth: the stakes have elevated beyond belief.