Hard Science Fiction Space

Rapid colonization of the moon is pushing both national space agencies and powerful corporations to negotiate a New Lunar Accord in an effort to prevent escalating conflicts over valuable resources and territory. But hope that this treaty will bring stability to the nascent lunar civilization is suddenly dashed when a high-energy solar storm causes a cascade of destruction to the vast satellite constellations that orbit Earth. Now it’s only a matter of weeks before the ever-increasing debris cloud makes travel back to the home planet impossible.

In AD 2600, the human race is finally beginning to realize its full potential. Hundreds of colonized planets scattered across the galaxy host a multitude of prosperous and wildly diverse cultures. Genetic engineering has pushed evolution far beyond nature's boundaries, defeating disease and producing extraordinary spaceborn creatures. Huge fleets of sentient trader starships thrive on the wealth created by the industrialization of entire star systems, and throughout inhabited space the Confederation Navy keeps the peace.

Merritt Alder is done with Earth. The planet is polluted and overpopulated, and its people are hungry. Earth's first colony, Galena, is a pioneer world 10,000 light years away. It has clean air, unpolluted water, and continents of arable land. Anyone can start a new life…if they can get there. For Merritt, the journey is only the beginning. Obstacles arise every step of the way, forcing compromise and sacrifice. And not everyone on his ship is pure of heart. The bonds he forges on the journey will be the key to surviving on another world—a world anyone has yet to fully explore.

Aristide, a semi-retired computer scientist turned swordsman, is a scholar of the implied spaces, seeking meaning amid the accidents of architecture in a universe where reality itself has been sculpted and designed by superhuman machine intelligence. While exploring the pre-technological world Midgarth, one of four dozen pocket universes created within a series of vast, orbital matrioshka computer arrays, Aristide uncovers a fiendish plot threatening to set off a nightmare scenario, perhaps even bringing about the ultimate existential crisis: the end of civilization itself.

A planet in the endless emptiness of space, far from the warmth of any sun. And yet there are people who populate its vast caverns, living, working and loving. Since time immemorial, they have been on course for Andromeda, the neighboring galaxy of the Milky Way. This is the prophecy of the ancients, the one goal that unites them all, their cult. But then the unthinkable happens: the journey stops because the planet enters the orbit of a mysterious object that can't be seen in any telescope.

Late in the 21st century, Earth receives what looks like an urgent plea for help from planet Proxima Centauri b in the closest star system to the Sun. Astrophysicists suspect a massive solar flare is about to destroy this heretofore-unknown civilization. Earth's space programs are unequipped to help, but an unscrupulous Russian billionaire launches a secret and highly-specialized spaceship to Proxima b, over four light-years away.

Tanis and Sera have taken the I2 to Khardine, the new capital of the Transcend, and must now travel to the Inner Stars and meet with Scipian Empress, Diana - who they hope will be an ally to the Transcend. With the Trisilieds Kingdom, the Hegemony of Worlds, and the Nietzschean Empire all aligned with the Orion Guard - not to mention a civil war brewing in the Transcend - they will need all the help they can get to secure the Inner Stars. But Empress Diana has her own plans for the Inner Stars, and while they may dovetail with the Transcend's for now, they may not always do so....

The first of the acclaimed Vatta's War books, the exciting military science fiction series that features a swashbuckling spaceship-captain heroine who mixes commerce with combat.

Although the exciting military career she hoped for never got off the ground, Ky Vatta ended up seeing plenty of combat when she took the helm of one of the commercial transport vessels in her family's fleet...and steered it into a full-blown war. Now the lessons she learned in that trial by fire are about to pay off---because this time, the war has come to her. Someone has launched a full-throttle offensive against Vatta Transport Ltd., Ky's father's interstellar shipping empire.

Contains books one and two of The Stasis Stories: A Pause in Space-Time (Book 1) and The Thunder of Engines (Book 2). Kaem Seba is a sickly and financially destitute young man with extraordinary math skills. With the help of Arya Vaii, a business student, he has developed a theory and an electronic device that allows him to stop time within limited volumes of space-time.

Autistic scientist Yasira Shien has developed a radical new energy drive that could change the future of humanity. But when she activates it, reality warps, destroying the space station and everyone aboard. The AI gods who rule the galaxy declare her work heretical, and Yasira is abducted by their agents. Instead of simply executing her, they offer mercy - if she'll help them hunt down a bigger target: her own mysterious, vanished mentor. With her homeworld's fate in the balance, Yasira must choose who to trust: the gods and their ruthless post-human angels, or a rebel scientist....

First contact with a mysterious race of aliens reveals an unusual request; a family's pet dog comes to grips with the newly bestowed gift of human-like intelligence; a poet, in danger and alone on a distant world, makes unlikely allies; hundreds of years in the future, a famous hermit lives in the sea above the now-underwater Harvard University; former friends navigate unsteady peace between human refugees and the technologically superior race that saved them; in a future where human life can be infinitely extended through cybertronic rebirth, one woman declines immortality.

So far, Officer Candidate School is living up to its cutthroat reputation. Still, the merciless mental, physical, and psychological torture may be worth it for Lance Warder to have a chance to fight in space. The space that awaits isn't for the faint of heart. He'll have to shed his mental chains to prove his mettle. Because no one cares who your father is when you're faced with unknown threats in a dark, infinite void.

On the planet of Per Ardua, alien artifacts were discovered - hatches that allowed humans to step across light-years of space as if they were stepping into another room. But this newfound freedom has consequences. As humanity discovers the real nature of the universe, a terrifying truth comes to light: We all have countless pasts converging in this present - and our future is terrifyingly finite. There are minds in the universe that are billions of years old, and now we are vulnerable to their plans for us.

Keeping up-to-date with the most buzzworthy and cutting-edge science fiction requires sifting through countless magazines, e-zines, websites, blogs, original anthologies, single-author collections, and more - a task accomplishable by only the most determined and voracious readers. For everyone else, Night Shade Books is proud to introduce the latest volume of The Best Science Fiction of the Year, collecting the finest that the genre has to offer, from the biggest names in the field to the most exciting new writers.

Fleet of Worlds takes a closer look at Human-Puppeteer (Citizen) relations and the events leading up to Niven's first Ringworld novel. Kirsten Quinn-Kovacks is among the best and brightest of her people. She gratefully serves the gentle race that rescued her ancestors from a dying starship, gave them a world, and nurtures them still. If only the Citizens knew where Kirsten's people came from.

How do you stage a mutiny when you're only awake one day in a million? How do you conspire when your tiny handful of potential allies changes with each job shift? How do you engage an enemy that never sleeps, that sees through your eyes and hears through your ears, and relentlessly, honestly, only wants what's best for you? Trapped aboard the starship Eriophora, Sunday Ahzmundin is about to discover the components of any successful revolution: conspiracy, code - and unavoidable casualties.

A gripping collection of stories about machines called Berserkers that are programmed to destroy all organic life.

Critically acclaimed author Alastair Reynolds holds a well-deserved place “among the leaders of the hard-science space opera renaissance." ( Publishers Weekly). In Blue Remembered Earth, Geoffrey Akinya wants nothing more than to study the elephants of the Amboseli basin. But when his space-explorer grandmother dies, secrets come to light and Geoffrey is dispatched to the Moon to protect the family name - and prevent an impending catastrophe.

Hugo Award winner Harry Turtledove is the master of alternate history. In American Front he envisions World War I as it may have been if fought on American soil. The United States and Germany clash with the Confederacy, France, and Britain as the machines of modern warfare litter the landscape with carnage. Meanwhile, oppressed southern blacks head toward a fateful confrontation.