Showing titles in Hard Science Fiction

When Lee Anderson and her parents discovered a new world teeming with life, it was the dream of every explorer: they were rich beyond their imaginations. But tragedy struck when a herd of creatures overran their camp and killed her parents. The only other adult in her life had been their partner Gordon, who adopted her as parent. Which didn't turn out to be easy, because he wasn't human. He was a large intelligent alien, and to Lee, he was Uncle Gordon, but neither his race - the Derf - nor humans were gracious about accepting their family relationship.

Cajeiri is the young son of the powerful leader of the Western Association-and he has become a target for forces bent on destroying his father's rule. For Cajeiri is the first ateva to understand the humans living among them-an understanding that threatens his own race.

Lee's parents and their business partner, Gordon, found a class A habitable planet. They thought their quest as explorers was over and they'd live a life of ease. But before they could return and register their claim, Lee's parents died doing a survey of the surface. That left Lee two-thirds owner of the claim and their partner Gordon obligated by his word with her parents to raise Lee. She had grown up aboard the ship with her uncle Gordon and he was the only family she'd ever known. Him adopting her was an obvious arrangement to them. 

In the fourth book of the series, James McGill is up for promotion. Not everyone is happy about that, and McGill must prove he's worth his stripes. Deployed to a strange alien planet outside the boundaries of the Galactic Empire, he's caught up in warfare and political intrigue. Earth expands, the Cephalopod Kingdom launches ships to stop us, and a grand conspiracy emerges among the upper ranks of the Hegemony military.

The UFS Phoenix is on a mission to find a lost data-core that may contain the secret to defeating the alo-deepynine alliance. But the means to find the data-core is hidden deep in tavalai space, in a highest-security vault where the tavalai's manipulative State Department keep all their most treacherous secrets. To recover it, Phoenix must pull off the most daring heist the Spiral has ever seen.

Lee Cargill is the head of Q5, a secret organization that can send objects a split second back into the past. And while this seems utterly useless, it turns out to be the most powerful capability the world has ever known. Those who control it can transform civilization - or destroy it entirely. When Cargill sends Aaron Blake, his most formidable operative, on an unauthorized mission to destroy Kim Jong-un, all hell breaks loose. As Blake battles for his life, his chances of thwarting the North Korean tyrant plummet. But they're about to get far worse.

Having successfully repelled the Resistance incursion into the Sol system, Terran Fleet Command must now deal with the far-flung worlds of the Sajeth Collective, which sponsored the attack. Task forces are dispatched to Damara and Lesheera to begin the first human blockades of entire planets. With the only ships fast enough to quickly bring the fight to the enemy's doorstep, TFC must do so alone, leaving only minimal forces behind to safeguard the Earth.

Anomaly examines the prospect of an alien intelligence discovering life on Earth. The technological gulf between humanity and the alien species is measured in terms of millions of years. The only way to communicate is using science, but not everyone is so patient. Humanity's first contact with an alien intelligence is far more radical than anyone has ever dared imagine. With a technological gap of millions of years, mankind is barely able to recognize the arrival of an alien space craft outside the gates of the United Nations in New York.

When DARPA's billion-dollar program to create artificial superintelligence is sabotaged, US operative Cameron Carr is tasked with finding the culprit. He's been on high-stakes missions before, but this time the stakes are nothing less than the future of humanity. Because the race to evolve a superintelligent computer is on, and power players around the world will stop at nothing to get there first.

The Hundred Worlds have withstood invasion by the relentless Hok for decades. The human worlds are strong, but the Hok have the resources of a thousand planets behind them, and their fleets attack in endless waves. The long war has transformed the Hundred Worlds into heavily fortified star systems. Their economies are geared for military output, and they raise specialized soldiers to save our species. Assault Captain Derek Straker is one such man among many.

> Disc picks up right after Vaz and Tiona's invention of an apparently reactionless drive in Tiona. Tiona and her brother, Dante, want to license the rights to the new thrusters to big aircraft and car companies, using the money from the licenses to develop a private space industry. Vaz, their scientifically brilliant but socially inept father, has little interest in such a project but is happy to have them run with it. So they set out to convince doubtful major corporations that thrusters will change the world as we know it.

Following his last adventure, Trevor "Lex" Alexander's life has managed to return to normal. He's back to splitting his time between delivering packages and transporting passengers, along with the occasional foray into testing highly experimental equipment. He's even gotten back together with his girlfriend, Michella Modane, who has been launched to stardom by her coverage of the Bypass Gemini incident. Yes, things are going quite well for Lex. But in his life, luck like this never lasts long.

He is a cyber dweller. A gamer who's grown up in the web of virtual illusion woven from hundreds of phantom worlds. His biggest dream is to dump the real world for good. His desperate hunger for new experiences forces him to take a risk and become one of the first proud owners of a neuronet implant. The new gadget becomes part of him, but soon it's not enough. If only he could finally burn all his bridges and make a step beyond the real world....

A ship under siege. A world on the brink of civil war. A distraught people seeking a new beginning. A battle weary crew that can barely hold it together. Even a legend can use a little help from time to time. The crew of the Aurora, the Karuzari, and the Corinairans must find a way to work together, or else they may all perish.

For decades, the spacefaring species of known space have battled over the largest artifact - and grandest prize - in the galaxy: the all-but-limitless resources and technology of the Ringworld. Now, without warning, the Ringworld has vanished, leaving behind three rival war fleets. If the fallen civilization of the Ringworld can no longer be despoiled of its secrets, the puppeteers will be forced to surrender theirs - everyone knows that they are cowards. But the crises converging upon the trillion puppeteers of the Fleet of Worlds go far beyond even the onrushing armadas.

Time is running out. An ally has all but fallen. Resources are running low. The time for attack has come... The Alliance must strike deep into the heart of the empire. This time, the Aurora will be going home, or going to her grave.

Since fleeing the supernova chain reaction at the galactic core, the cowardly Puppeteers of the Fleet of Worlds have - just barely - survived one crisis after another: the rebellion of their human slaves, the relentless questing of the species of Known Space, the spectacular rise of the starfishlike Gw'oth, the onslaught of the genocidal Pak. Now fresh disaster looms, as though past crises have returned and converged. Who can possibly save the Fleet this time?

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.

As mankind nears its goal of galactic citizenship, Sirius Kade, trader and Earth Intelligence Service deep cover agent, learns that wealthy and powerful leaders from across Mapped Space are vying for control of an alien relic they believe is the key to untold riches - unaware that they are being deceived. Sirius soon finds himself entangled in an interstellar plot to make humanity a cosmic outcast, denying it its place as the newest member of the vast and ancient community that has governed the galaxy for eons.

After suffering a near-catastrophic defeat by Terran Fleet Command, the Pelaran AI strain gambles on a bold, “hands-on” approach to controlling the destiny of a human world. On the pre-industrial world of Didara 4, Dryden Beck awakens alone in the depths of the Scarsdow Forest, knowing that he has murdered thousands of his own people, but with no memory of how or why. He soon discovers that he has been forever changed; modified against his will to serve as the most powerful weapon in the arsenal of a ruthless puppet master bent on total domination.