Space Science

On a cold January morning in 1986, NASA launched the Space Shuttle Challenger, despite warnings against doing so by many individuals including Allan McDonald. The fiery destruction of Challenger on live television moments after launch remains an indelible image in the nation's collective memory. In Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, McDonald, a skilled engineer and executive, relives the tragedy from where he stood at Launch Control Center.

It started the night Geena and Henry broke up. What was that strange light in the sky? A new star? A comet? Neither. It was the death of Venus. As if to commemorate the end of NASA’s golden couple, our neighbor planet exploded into a brilliant cloud of dust and debris, showering the Earth with radiation and bizarre particles as big as bacteria - a 10-dimensional superstring nanovirus that literally eats rock, transforming it into liquid, and then into molecule-size black holes that devour the very fabric of space-time.

Heartfelt reunions with friends... Desperate plans to gain advantage... Opportunities that cannot be ignored... Discovery of family once thought lost... The time has come for Captain Scott to fight for that which was taken...the very freedom of the world he was sworn to protect.

Tyler Callas is the pampered heir of a high-level Corporate Council executive, groomed from birth to take a seat beside her as a member of the ruling class of the Commonwealth society. But the bloody war with the alien Tahni has hit close to home and Tyler wants to join the military, something his powerful mother won't allow. Desperate to escape her control, Tyler changes his identity to Randall Munroe, a product of the poverty-stricken Underground, and enlists in the Marines.

Sometimes a farmer can turn a profit by diversifying his crops . . . Tom Savage and Gwen Wilder have a farm hand now, Silas Vick. And Silas has some ideas of new things they can grow out here. That might be good, since a lot of stuff got destroyed recently, meaning they'll have to wait on more equipment from Lute before continuing experiments. Tom's got other responsibilities, too, with a list that seems to be growing along with the farm. At least Lisa’s capabilities are expanding, with greater communications and teleportation capabilities. Meanwhile, Wink and Jinxie have more smuggling ...

Centuries from now, the basic right to expand human intelligence beyond its natural limits has become a war-worthy cause for the Demarchists and Conjoiners. Only vast lighthugger starships bind these squabbling colonies together, manned by the panicky and paranoid Ultras. And the hyperpigs just try to keep their heads down. The rich get richer. And everyone tries not to think about the worrying number of extinct alien civilizations turning up on the outer reaches of settled space...because who's to say that humanity won't be next?

Captain Nathan Scott must decide whether to stand and fight to the end, or live to fight another day - even if it means the end of his world.

This captivating anthology presents a selection of fourteen short stories by the legendary science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein, showcasing his unparalleled imagination and narrative prowess. Among the featured tales are "Space Jockey," which explores the life of a daring pilot navigating the perils of interstellar travel, and "The Long Watch," a poignant reflection on duty and sacrifice.

The Force is everything. A single life connected to all life. All things connected to all other things. This is what the Jedi believe, and this is why they fight. For life . . . and the light. For too long, the light has been threatened by Marchion Ro, a sinister despot who will stop at nothing in his quest for power. The conflict with Ro and his marauding Nihil forces has left scars across the galaxy and held the Republic hostage. Countless lives have been lost, beacons of hope have fallen, and the collective courage and resolve of the Republic have been tested like never before.

The theoretical physicist shares his thoughts on the nature of space and time in this anthology of selections from Princeton University Press. Along with eminent colleagues, Hawking extends theoretical frontiers by speculating on the big questions of modern cosmology.

Zac was the most senior REV alive, a miracle of science and a legend in the Corps. His job was to be the battering ram for the Marines, the first in while revved up on NT-4. During a Run, he was a mindless killing machine, dangerous to both foe and friend alike. But something was happening to Zac. Long after most other REVs were dead, burned out or "retired", Zac was growing stronger, more powerful. He was also doing what no REV had ever done before during a Run. He was beginning to think.

Major Rodger Y. Murphy should have died when his helicopter crashed off the coast of Mogadishu in November, 1993. Instead, he woke up in August, 2125, in a binary star system 152 light years from home. Without any memory of the otherworldly abductors who spirited them away in cold sleep, Murphy and 100 other “Lost Soldiers” have been retrieved and awakened by officers of the Consolidated Terran Republic. Promising to return to the 55 Tauri B system after completing a distant mission, they leave the twentieth century castaways with a daunting objective.

An alien cat turned me into a superweapon. I was homeless on the streets of Third York when it happened. Then the military arrived and gave me a choice. Enlist or die. The next thing I knew, I was fighting giant robots at the Xenoforce Academy's boot camp. Figuring out superpowers and energy levels was hard enough, but I had to deal with a mind-reading alien princess, a team of gorgeous women, and a femme fatale in charge of the whole operation. Oh, and a galactic conspiracy is threatening all of humanity. It's up to me and my new feline friend to set things right. A civil war's brewing on ...

Junkyard Saboteur is a pulse-pounding military espionage thriller where sabotage, deep-cover deception, and personal stakes collide. Packed with covert operations, tactical improvisation, and high-tech warfare, it’s a story of loyalty tested in the shadows and a veteran who knows that sometimes the dirtiest jobs fall to the man with nothing left to lose.

Mars is supposed to be dead. Bizarre quakes are rumbling over the long-dormant tectonic plates of the planet, disrupting its trillion-dollar mining operations and driving scientists past the edges of theory and reason. However, when rocks shake off their ancient dust and begin to roll seemingly of their own volition carving canals as they converge to form a towering structure amid the ruddy terrain, Lt. Jain and her JSC team realize that their routine geological survey of a Martian cave system is anything but. The only clues they have stem from the emissions of a mysterious blue radiation, and a 300-year-old journal that is writing itself.

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?

Somewhere on the outer rim of the universe, a mass of decaying world-ships known as the Legion is traveling in the seams between the stars. For generations, a war for control of the Legion has been waged, with no clear resolution. As worlds continue to die, a desperate plan is put into motion. Zan wakes with no memory, prisoner of a people who say they are her family.

With the invading aliens temporarily driven from Human-and-NeHaw-occupied space, all the races are using the pause to recover and rebuild, both friend and foe alike. For the NeHaw, that means pressuring the Earth to allow them to rebuild and rearm their fleet from the Wawobash shipyards, a risk that could easily backfire. For Jake, the lingering concerns of a lost crew with the un-activated Artificial Life installed in the captured saucer still dominate his thoughts.

Neal Asher takes on first contact, Polity style. This original novel recounts the first contact between the aggressive Prador aliens, and the Polity Collective as it is forced to retool its society to a war footing. The overwhelming brute force of the Prador dreadnaughts causes several worlds and space stations to be overrun. Prador Moon follows the initial Polity defeats, to the first draws, and culminates in what might be the first Polity victory, told from the point of view of two unlikely heroes.

The lines. No ship can traverse the void without them. Only linesmen can work with them. But only Ean Lambert hears their song. And everyone thinks he's crazy.... Most slum kids never go far, certainly not becoming a level 10 linesman like Ean. Even if he's part of a small and unethical cartel, and the other linesmen disdain his self-taught methods, he's certified and working. Then a mysterious alien ship is discovered at the edges of the galaxy.