Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.

Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place. Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits.

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive - and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. But Mark isn't ready to give up yet.

Jazz Bashara is a criminal. Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you're not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you've got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent. Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down.

There is a time to weep and a time to mourn. For the CSV Lion of Judah, that time has not yet come. The war with the League of Sol ended in victory for the Terran Coalition. Major General David Cohen and his crew conclude their three-month goodwill cruise with one final FTL jump. But instead of returning home in a blaze of glory, the wormhole collapses and hurls them more than four million lightyears into the unknown.

Reservist Lieutenant Justin Spencer loves every minute of flying fighters through space during his annual two-week tour with the Coalition Defense Force. The job back home isn’t nearly as thrilling as blowing up asteroids with the squadron under his command, but it keeps him close to his wife and daughter. After all, joining the CDF was only for the free education. Justin never expected a battle, much less a war. With one shot across his cockpit, peacetime fades into memory.

The youngest princess of Engla leaves her homeland for the neighbouring country of Scotia, the capital of which is currently experiencing an industrial revolution. Despite departing in rebellion against the wishes of her mother, the Queen of the Commonrealm, Mira Aberdeen wants nothing more than to carve her own path free from her family's long shadow. On the road to Scotia, she meets a banker who takes her in and together they become embroiled in the plans of a ruthless vigilante, determined to take revenge on those who wronged him.

"Early Adopter" is a collection of short stories from the edge of human progress. Eight stories hold dark mirrors to our own world—experience thought-provoking sci-fi, technologic tragedy, and pulse-pounding thrillers. To Run Again: Dr. Laura Brandie is ready to change the world. She's the lead researcher behind the KSE, a revolutionary cure for paralysis and neurodegenerative conditions. And now, by good fortune, she's found the perfect candidate for her first human trial: a man who suffers from locked-in syndrome.

Ensign Carol Hansen is six months out of Fleet University, and six months out of a toxic relationship that made no sense to anyone but her. Serving aboard Liberty is everything she had aspired to. But that sweet time comes to an abrupt, violent end when Liberty is destroyed in an unexpected attack. Carol is lucky enough to be "ashore" in the alien city below, and barely survives the death raining down from space.

A news journalist arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Liv Reyes now serves as a war correspondent in a war where anyone can be drafted and everyone is expendable. It's a war we're losing. Badly. Outmatched, outsmarted, and outmaneuvered—humanity is running out of options when it comes to the Raptors. They destroy anything and anyone we send their way. Our last line of defense never even made it through basic training.

One hundred years ago, the Eternals, 13 men and women closer to gods than mortals, stood against the greatest threat the world had ever faced. They died. All save for one who managed to flee with the enemy leader’s weapon, a cursed blade of incredible power. This is a battle he fights alone, for after they defeated the Eternals, the enemy used their magic to pose as their conquered opponents, taking over rule of the world in their stead. For the last 100 years, the people have believed that the legendary Eternals triumphed, that they are safe. Only the wanderer knows the truth .

A junior intelligence officer in the Martian Combined Fleet, Radrick Siegn supplements his meager pay by smuggling contraband from Saturn to Mars. Someday, he’ll buy his own ship and escape the Fleet forever. But his captain has other plans for him. A tanker pilot has been murdered on Saturn Station. It’s up to Siegn to salvage the honor of the Fleet by finding the killer … before they kill again. The investigation plunges Siegn into the seedy underworld of Saturn Station, where he learns this was no ordinary killing.

Forty years later, the pain of his personal tragedy still echoes within John Hopper. He retreats to the small town, Ripley, West Virginia, and is content being alone and in peace. He spends his evenings as an amateur podcast host, anonymously broadcasting rants about what is wrong with the world. Through a faithful listener and scientist, Jarvis, John finds out about the impending comet impact, possibly, an extinction level event.

The Sol System is a powder keg waiting for a spark. Corporal James Aurelius didn’t sign up for this. Fancy hotels, powerful politicians, and… guard duty. Two years into his enlistment and the young marine has yet to see combat, while all his buddies from boot camp have done at least one tour in the war that raged with the Caliphate back on Terra.

Caesar, an undercover operative, enters Carmichael with the briefest of orders from his boss and a countdown on his phone. What will happen when the clock strikes zero? Deputy Amelia Miller is dispatched from a nearby city, and a series of events keeps her around much longer than she'd expected. In the middle of the night, something shifts, and the whole town disappears off the face of the Earth. Who caused the shift, and what lies beyond the veil of their settlement?

When the frantic communication from the Prison Transfer vehicle 964 came into the Interstellar Police Force headquarters on the planet Ashlar, they knew that Prodor Moffit was making his break. By the time they got to the last known position of the transfer vehicle, Moffit and the other prisoners on board the commandeered 964 were long gone into that black vacuum of space. The search went on for months until they stumbled upon their destination. A little-known world called Earth.

World-walking young surgeon Ryn Wilkie is trying to finish her residency here on Earth while also bringing modern medicine and antibiotics to a parallel but somewhat primitive Earth. She wants to improve the plight of women on that world - where they‘re treated as if they're property. It’s a world at about the technological level of our late 1800s. But she can find gold there in the same locations that history tells her they found it on Earth.

The Arrisans conquered Earth in a day. They smashed into our helpless planet like a wrecking ball, and overnight, everything changed. That’s what our history books say. The truth is, I’ve never seen an Arrisan face-to-face. But when my lone medical ship is attacked by ruthless pirates, the nightmare that hunts them down is no hero. Cloaked in assassin’s gray, metal scythes fused to his wrist-bones, he is the grim reaper of the conquerors. The Arrisan elite special forces. A blade.

Earth is no longer made up of countries and nations. Every bit of land has been privatized, and most of it is owned by five big corporations. Life is hard, and people are struggling. Crime is rampant, and they send serious offenders to Mars to help with the terraforming.