First Contact Fiction

What could be more commonplace than grass or a world covered over all its surface with a wind-whipped ocean of grass? But the planet Grass conceals horrifying secrets within its endless pastures. And as an incurable plague attacks all inhabited planets but this one, the prairie-like Grass begins to reveal these secrets - and nothing will ever be the same again.

When Nathan stops a brutal attack on an unsuspecting victim, he gets more than he bargained for and sets into motion events that will change his life forever. They told him he should’ve run away, and maybe they were right. Nathan is about to embark on an adventure of a lifetime. Aliens are real. He has something they need, and they’re not the only ones hunting for it.

My name is Alice, and I live in the Bugpocalypse. I survived my first post-apocalyptic winter, and spring is here. That’s bad news! With warm weather comes the endless swarms of deadly bugs. I need to forage for food, but there’s just one little problem. Okay, so “little” isn’t the best word to describe the fierce Xarc’n warrior who is obsessed with me. Kaj’k is freakin’ huge! And his sharp claws, pointy fangs, and massive horns are scary. I reject his gift of food and flowers, but my massively muscled alien hunter doesn’t get the hint.

. Some of us are meant to grow old disgracefully, but morality is very much our own choice. Patience, a dark-haired, fast greying woman. No longer the young, nimble, and striking girl she had once been. Yet, she was still able to turn heads. Beauty such as hers did not diminish, as it had never been purely skin deep. Finding herself suddenly thrown into a position of unyielding terror. Followed closely by an unyielding love, one she had never known in all her years. Patience has a tough choice. Which would she give into? When everything you have ever known and believed in, suddenly becomes ...

Though perhaps most famous as a novelist, Philip K. Dick wrote more than 100 short stories over the course of his career, each as mind-bending and genre-defining as his longer works. Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams collects 10 of the best. In "Autofac," Dick shows us one of the earliest examples (and warnings) in science fiction of self-replicating machines. "Exhibit Piece" and "The Commuter" feature Dick exploring one of his favorite themes: the shifting nature of reality and whether it is even possible to perceive the world as it truly exists.

Jesse Sampson and her two younger sisters have lived a hard life on the streets of Seattle, Washington, for the past several years. Four years before, the Earth received its first visitors from space, causing mass fear. Alone in a world gone mad with just her sisters, Jesse has learned to use the darkness and the remains of the city to survive and keep what was left of her family alive. She has seen the savage side of human nature and finds they are not much different from the aliens who conquered the Earth.

Tobias Sinclair was willingly taken from the Earth by extraterrestrial beings aboard their spaceship for his own safety. Apparently, his insightful writings and teachings had unknowingly placed him - and the people of Earth - in great danger. The extraterrestrials now implored Tobias to help them to urgently establish their first open contact with humanity. Yet, Tobias remained torn in his struggle between his passionate desire to change the world through new knowledge and his desperate need to repair the family that he had so painfully neglected. Ultimately, his thrilling journey will ...

The largest known meteorite has been discovered, entombed in the earth for millions of years on a frigid, desolate island off the southern tip of Chile. At four thousand tons, this treasure seems impossible to move. New York billionaire Palmer Lloyd is determined to have this incredible find for his new museum. Stocking a cargo ship with the finest scientists and engineers, he builds a flawless expedition. But from the first approach to the meteorite, people begin to die....

Kris Bjornsen has come a long way since alien slave ships scooped her up in Denver with thousands of others. Dropped off on an apparently uninhabited world with the rest, she has fallen in love with Zainal, a renegade Catteni, and has made a comfortable life for herself and her new family. But she feels a soldier's duty to escape Botany and rejoin the struggle for freedom.

Ezra Barker is a traitor. When the Merg invaded Earth, he didn’t fight or even hide. He cooperated, helping them as they seized control of the planet and began their pillaging of its resources. While others toil away in mines and quarries, Ezra works an office job, helping his boss, The Senator, rule over the swath of territory given to her by the Merg. Sergeant Hayes is a brutal enforcer of the Merg’s rules. As an officer in the Health and Safety Department, he follows Merg orders, arresting, interrogating, and executing at their command.

What would you do if you found a spaceship? Would you call the government, would you pretend you never saw it, or would you keep it a secret? What would you do with it? Use it to gallivant around the galaxy, conquer Earth, get filthy rich, or try to improve life on Earth? Listen along and find out how Marc works to convert Earth into a spacefaring world capable of defending itself and of being united as it meets the other civilizations in the galaxy.

Someone born to maintain, fix, and correct any and every issue that could go wrong in the Habitat that he lives in to make sure he and his fellow humans can remain on display and entertain their owners as any good human pet would. Or at least, that's what he was born to be. Now, after getting a second chance along with a superpower that lets him alter anything and everything in regard to his own body, he's trying to fix his life. To live his life for himself with the goal of actually enjoying it, all while being thrust ever deeper into a situation he didn't expect.

Astronaut Frank Borman is alone and stranded on the surface of the moon. His radio is dead. He can't remember how he got there. It's early 1969 — Armstrong and Aldrin's lunar landing is still months away. The last thing Borman can remember is standing in the desert and hurriedly pulling on a spacesuit. After that… everything is a blank. At best, his portable life support system has a half an hour of air left. He'd scream in frustration, but nobody will hear and he'll only burn through his air supply more quickly. Whoever conspired to leave him here, it can't have been NASA — he knows ...

The shipments of Catteni slaves continue, but they find that they are enjoyably reinventing the creature comforts of home, and searching for the origin of the Farmers who were the original occupants of the planet Botany, all under the keen eyes of two very different observers.

With no water, no air, and no native life, the planet Gora is unremarkable. The only thing it has going for it is a chance proximity to more popular worlds, making it a decent stopover for ships traveling between the wormholes that keep the Galactic Commons connected. If deep space is a highway, Gora is just your average truck stop. The Five-Hop is run by an enterprising alien and her sometimes helpful child, who work hard to provide a little piece of home to everyone passing through.

Before the end, there is often change, and change can be very painful. Declan and Stacia come face-to-face with the most powerful elemental of them all, one with the power to eliminate mankind before the Vorsook ever show up. It’s time to confront his destiny and decide what it means to be the most powerful witch of all time.

Having magical powers makes you less than human, a resource to be exploited. Half-unicorn Gary Cobalt is sick of slavery, captivity, and his horn being ground down to power faster-than-light travel. When he's finally free, all he wants is to run away in his ancestors' stone ship. Instead, Captain Jenny Perata steals the ship out from under him so she can make an urgent delivery. But Jenny held him captive for a decade, and then Gary murdered her best friend...who was also the wife of her copilot, Cowboy Jim. What could possibly go right?

After traversing the dangerous Dead Zone, Zac has finally managed to save his sister and bring her back to Port Atwood. But Zac knows he can't relax. Not if he wants to keep her safe. The foreign factions keep spreading their influence, and ancient foes have set their sights on Earth. With his newfound abilities, Zac has joined the Limited Hunt to gain the strength needed to protect his family and his world. However, the System is unwilling to let Zac train in peace, and the hunt is not what it seems...

Who knew her number would be drawn in the first round? Nothing goes right after that - the transport ship is attacked, she is captured by the enemy Morr-ta aliens and thrown in prison. When a gorgeous Stryxian warrior rescues her, she thinks she's won freedom and her fated mate, but he has some big, bad secret, and apparently, it's a deal breaker for him.

The descendants of a fourth Earth colony ship, Destiny, successfully establish a foothold in unoccupied space. Naiad, the home world, is a frozen ball, but the colonists persevere and expand through wormholes to remote systems. Navigating the time-space anomalies requires Axis-ships. The expensive vessels are constructed by corporations, and remote worlds are claimed by the companies for their valuable ores and gases.