Showing titles in Hard Science Fiction

To win an impossible war, Captain Kel Cheris must awaken an ancient weapon and a despised traitor general.

Captain Kel Cheris of the Hexarchate is disgraced for using unconventional methods in a battle against heretics. Kel Command gives her the opportunity to redeem herself by retaking the Fortress of Scattered Needles, a star fortress that has recently been captured by heretics. Cheris' career isn't the only thing at stake. If the fortress falls, the Hexarchate itself might be next.

Robots are building a colossal telescope on the far side of the moon, with just two people supervising its completion. After a minor incident, these scientists become aware of an obstacle in the lunar soil. It's located outside the area reserved for the hypertelescope and is therefore none of their business. But their curiosity gets the better of them. The artifact seems to have properties that completely defy physics as they know it.

Observer, by Robert Lanza and Nancy Kress is a slick modern, hard sf, standalone, medical thriller combining classic Robin Cook with the hard edge of Black Mirror and Altered Carbon. After neurosurgeon Caro Soames-Watkins’ career has gone down in flames, she receives a strange job offer from...

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.

Astronaut Lee Rifkin's life is about to change. NASA has done the math. The space object named Cassandra 22007 is not behaving as expected. He will lead a team on a cutting-edge ship to get a closer look. But another group wants to get there first. Who is this shadow organization that seems to be one step ahead of them? Agent Jenna Haynes works to put together the pieces that will pull the veil off those who seem to have known about Cassandra's arrival since long before NASA spotted it. What is their goal?

Behold the orphan. Born into a world that is not a world. A digital being grown from a mind seed, a genderless cybernetic citizen in a vast network of probes, satellites, and servers knitting the Solar System into one scape, from the outer planets to the fiery surface of the Sun. Since the Introdus in the 21st century, humanity has reconfigured itself drastically. Most chose immortality, joining the polises to become conscious software.

In 3001: The Final Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke brings the greatest and most successful science fiction series of all time to its magnificent, stunningly unforeseen conclusion. As we hurtle toward the new millennium in real time, Clarke brilliantly, daringly leaps one thousand years into the future...

Tom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a law enforcement officer with the Panoply. His beat is the multifaceted utopian society of the Glitter Band, that vast swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone, the teeming hub of a human interstellar empire spanning many worlds. His current case: investigating a murderous attack against one of the habitats that left 900 people dead, a crime that appalls even a hardened cop like Dreyfus.

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.

Welcome to a journey through speculative fictions, where the possibilities of tomorrow are explored like never before. In a new collaborative approach, renowned experts, armed with their deep knowledge of justice, energy, digital money, longevity and learning, join forces with talented authors to weave narratives that transcend the future that you may currently believe is inevitable.

It's 1984. Winston Smith lives alone in London. He is a secret rebel plotting his escape from the Party: the deadly dictatorship led by Big Brother. Winston dreams of finding freedom, love and peace: everything that is outlawed. His act of defiance will get him killed - but his courage is...

At the dawn of 2026, twenty passenger jets crash across the U.S. within minutes. Japan goes dark. Europe's banking systems freeze. And that's just the opening move. While authorities scramble to blame hackers, computer scientist and journalist James Miller suspects something far worse—an AI-driven cyber weapon targeting global infrastructure. When a message from the darknet thrusts him into the crosshairs of intelligence agencies, James becomes the target in a high-stakes shadow war.

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.

Waldo Packwood has had a rough time of things lately. He's lost his job, his friends, and finally his family. At 50 years old, he's living alone in a small apartment wondering what's happened to his life. He's unexpectedly asked to travel to Hector 1, a lone asteroid in the Jupiter Trojans, to investigate the missing crew. His trip is a struggle from the beginning, as he discovers more about those around him and what they're willing to do to keep Hector 1 to themselves.

Seventeen-year-old Truth Medici scavenges for scraps to eat; weathers his parents' abuse; and battles derelicts, killer pimps, and demons in the soul-crushing stretch of desperation he calls home. Even the cops steer clear of the toxic Harban slums. But just across the canal live the magical elite, with their wealth, flying carpets, gorgeous mages, and custom spell beasts, all thanks to the patronage of the almighty Starbrite Corporation. Getting there, and taking his three vulnerable siblings with him, is Truth's only dream.

Late in the 26th century, the human race has advanced enough to accidentally trigger the Inhibitors---alien-killing machines designed to detect intelligent life and destroy it. The only hope for humanity lies in the recovery of a secret cache of doomsday weapons---and a renegade named Clavain who is determined to find them. But other factions want the weapons for their own purposes---and the weapons themselves have another agenda altogether.

After 25 years serving as the human Monitor of the Interstellar Ark, Hermes, Orion is scheduled to be placed back into hibernation with the other crewmembers. Knowing he'll die there and be replaced before the ship's voyage is over, he decides that he won’t — can’t — accept that fate. Whatever it takes, Orion will escape Hermes and see what's beyond, even if it means defying the regulations of his only friend — the ship-wide artificial intelligence known as Dan.

In the bustling port of Alvarado, fortunes are made, smuggled, and stolen every day. For John Donovan and his crew, it's supposed to be a quick-and-dirty job: deliver a load of cloned cattle, collect the credits, and move on to the next job. But Alvarado doesn't do "quick." Not when two rival families are locked in a blood feud over control of the port. Not when every barfight could turn into a gunfight. And definitely not when Donovan finds himself caught between loyalty, business—and the wrong woman.

In einer einsamen Nachtschicht am Gravitationswellenobservatorium LIGO entdeckt die Astrophysikerin Tony Rodgers ein seltsames Signal aus den Weiten des Weltalls. Was diese Entdeckung nach sich zieht, stellt nicht nur ihre persönliche Welt völlig auf den Kopf, sondern rüttelt an den Grundfesten der Physik. Nach und nach wird klar, dass die Quelle des Signals nicht natürlichen Ursprungs ist. Etwas ist auf dem Weg zur Erde. Und es bedroht nicht nur die Existenz der Menschheit, sondern alles Leben auf dem Planeten.

Marooned in outer space after an attack on his ship, Nomad, Gulliver Foyle lives to obsessively pursue the crew of a rescue vessel that had intended to leave him to die.