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Top Gun in space!An alternative history with aliens, an immortal misanthrope and SF tropes aplenty The year is 1975 – Robert Oppenheimer has invented the Atomic Engine, the first human has walked on the moon, and Jet Carson and the Eagle Seven have sacrificed their lives to stop alien invaders. Brooklyn, however, just wants to keep his head down, pay his mother's rent, earn a little scratch of his own, and maybe get laid sometime. Simple pleasures! But life is about to get real complicated when a killer with a baseball bat and a mysterious box of 8-track tapes sets him up for murder. So, his choices are limited – rot away in prison or sign up to defend the planet from the assholes who dropped a meteorite on Cleveland. Brooklyn crosses his fingers and picks the Earth Orbital Forces, believing that after a few years in the trenches – assuming he survives – he can get his life back. Unfortunately, the universe has other plans. Brooklyn is launched into a quest to save humanity, find his true family, and grow as a person – while simultaneously coping with high-stakes space battles, mystery science experiments and the realisation that the true enemies perhaps aren't the tentacled monsters on the recruitment poster… Or are they? File Under: Science Fiction [ Little Green Men | Injection | Below the Crust | The Truth is out There ]

The third book in the Web Shifter's Library series returns to the adventures of Esen, a shapeshifting alien who must navigate the perils of a hostile universe.Here Be MonstersSomething malevolent lurks in deep space, something able to pluck starships from their course and cause their crews to vanish.It has a purpose: to use those ships to mark an unmistakable boundary. A warning.It has an interest: Botharis, the planet where Esen and Paul have established the All Species'Library of Linguistics and Culture. Home to Veya Ragem, whose ship was the first to trespass.Esen and Paul will need every resource, every friend and even foes, if they're to discover who--or what is behind this before more are lost. Once they do, Esen plans to use her abilities to comprehend and reason with this new species. What she doesn't know? There truly are monsters. And they wait for you in the dark.Just ask Evan Gooseberry.

Pushing Ice is the brilliant tale of extraordinary aliens, glittering technologies, and sweeping space opera from award-winning science fiction author Alastair Reynolds.2057. Humanity has raised exploiting the solar system to an art form. Bella Lind and the crew of her nuclear-powered ship, the Rockhopper, push ice. They mine comets. And they're good at it.The Rockhopper is nearing the end of its current mission cycle, and everyone is desperate for some much-needed R & R, when startling news arrives from Saturn: Janus, one of Saturn's ice moons, has inexplicably left its natural orbit and is now heading out of the solar system at high speed. As layers of camouflage fall away, it becomes clear that Janus was never a moon in the first place. It's some kind of machine -- and it is now headed toward a fuzzily glimpsed artifact 260 light-years away. The Rockhopper is the only ship anywhere near Janus, and Bella Lind is ordered to shadow it for the few vital days before it falls forever out of reach. In accepting this mission, she sets her ship and her crew on a collision course with destiny -- for Janus has more surprises in store, and not all of them are welcome.

A loner cursed with a psychic power learns he was part of an illicit experiment as a baby and embarks on a perilous hunt to find those responsible.If Aiden Manchester had to have a superpower, why couldn't it be something useful? Like predicting the future? Or Jedi mind tricks? Instead, Aiden is afflicted with'manifestations', mysterious balls of goo which materialise mid-air while he sleeps.But then, Aiden learns he was a'Quiver Kid', one of seven orphaned children drafted for an illicit experiment at Tau Nine-One. Setting out to find the perpetrators and his fellow victims, Aiden's quest quickly turns lethal when he's kidnapped by a maniacal Quiver Kid with a dark agenda.As he uncovers the dangerous truth about his past, Aiden's very essence is called into question. Will a hellish confrontation at Tau Nine-One reveal the ultimate purpose of the Quiver Kids?File Under: Fantasy [ Strangest Things | Manifest Destiny | X-Kids | Chunkie ]

The second book in the Web Shifter's Library series returns to the adventures of Esen, a shapeshifting alien who must navigate the perils of a hostile universe.Relationships get complicated when you don't know who—or what—you really are. Esen must find a way to rescue a hapless group of chimeras, beings who are a new and unique blend of species she knows, when she can't become one herself. When Evan Gooseberry tries to help, he is shattered to learn he himself isn't entirely Human and begins to suspect his new friend Esen isn't what she seems.Complicating matters, a mysterious contagion has killed the crew of the ship that brought the chimeras—and Evan—to Botharis. Everyone's been quarantined inside the All Species'Library of Linguistics and Culture, including over a hundred disgruntled alien scholars. The risks climb as Skalet and Lionel continue their quest to solve the disappearance of Paul's mother's ship, the Sidereal Pathfinder, only to find themselves caught in a tangle of loyalties as Skalet is betrayed by her own Kraal affiliates, who infiltrate the Library.All of which would be quite enough for one Web-being's day, but Paul Ragem hopes to rekindle the romance of his first love. A shame Esen hasn't told him who's hiding in their greenhouse.

Now in paperback, the second novel of the galaxy-spanning Sun Eater series merges the best of space opera and epic fantasy, as Hadrian Marlowe continues down a path that can only end in fire.Hadrian Marlowe is lost. For half a century, he has searched the farther suns for the lost planet of Vorgossos, hoping to discover a way to contact the elusive alien Cielcin. He has pursued false leads for years among the barbarian Normans as captain of a band of mercenaries, but Hadrian remains determined to make peace and bring an end to nearly four hundred years of war. Desperate to find answers, Hadrian must venture beyond the security of the Sollan Empire and among the Extrasolarians who dwell between the stars. There, he will face not only the aliens he has come to offer peace, but contend with creatures that once were human, with traitors in his midst, and with a meeting that will bring him face to face with no less than the oldest enemy of mankind. If he succeeds, he will usher in a peace unlike any in recorded history. If he fails, the galaxy will burn.

The New York Times and USA Today bestselling seriesHumanity has finally found a new home, but the price is blood …After a long, perilous journey, Hell Divers Xavier Rodriguez and Magnolia Katib discover the Metal Islands, a sunny habitable zone where thousands of people live by fishing and farming. But this “paradise” is really a violent warrior society ruled by the cannibal king el Pulpo. For the first time in X's life, he is forced to lay down his arms and surrender.Back on the airships, the Hell Divers are recovering from a gruesome discovery at Red Sphere, where they learned the truth about World War III. Now they must fight another war—this time for what remains of their own endangered species. As the battle approaches, alliances will be forged, and others broken.Forced to fight in the Cazador army, X faces his toughest mission yet. Will he help his people come down from the sky and claim the promised land, or will humanity go extinct?

'It's plausible, unpredictable, and thoroughly entertaining'Publishers Weekly on NetherspaceIt's half-way through the twenty-first century.Contact with alien races was made forty years ago, but communication turns out to be impossible. We don't share a way of thinking or common sensory inputs with the aliens, let alone a grammar. But there is trade, done on a basis of putting things on a table and taking them off again until agreement is reached. There is no obvious pattern to the trades. Alien anti-gravity technology was traded for a bicycle tyre. Human science has become fixated on understanding alien technology – with little success. We can learn what it does and how to operate it. We don't know how it works – or how to fix it. The world may be a better place but it's no longer our own. We may be colonizing the stars, but we're dependant on inexplicable alien Faster-Than-Light technology. This is controlled by aliens we call the Gliese and is the only constant trade: FTL engines for human beings, any age or condition, as long as they're alive. We don't know what happens to them, but rumour says they are taken to a Nirvana where all illnesses will be healed. Their families are also very well compensated. Interstellar immigration and trade are central to the world's economy. There is no shortage of volunteers.

Authors explore new corners of the Clan Chronicles universe in an anthology that brings readers into the lives of the alien inhabitants of one of the sci-fi series's most memorable locationsWelcome to one of the iconic settings of the Clan Chronicles: the infamous interstellar shopping extravaganza of the Trade Pact known as Plexis Supermarket! A market and meeting place, Plexis is where pirates rub shoulders with freighter crews, where the rich come to party and the out-of-luck chase that last opportunity, where anything can be bought or sold and only your airtag tells the truth. Most of the time.Dock your starship, pay your parking fee, and enter. You'll never know what you'll find. Or who you'll meet. Because here, for the first time, Julie E. Czerneda has opened the airlocks to her fellow scribes and lovers of all things Trade Pact to produce this anthology of remarkable, all-original stories.Learn the beginnings (and kitchen secrets) of the famed Claws & Jaws: Interspecies Cuisine. Solve mysteries. Slip through service tunnels or shop with goldtags!Want the truth about Turrneds? The Neblokans? How Terk met his partner? More of Raj Plexis and Bowman? The way to Ansel's heart? Kurr di Sarc. Huido. Manouya. Those balloons. Plexis awaits your pleasure.

The eighteenth novel in Cherryh's Foreigner space opera series, a groundbreaking tale of first contact and its consequencesAlpha Station, orbiting the world of the atevi, has taken aboard five thousand human refugees from a destroyed station in a distant sector of space. With supplies and housing stretched to the breaking point, it is clear that the refugees must be relocated down to the planet, and soon. But not to the atevi mainland: rather to the territory reserved for human, the island of Mospheira. Tabini-aiji, the powerful political head of the atevi, tasks his brilliant human diplomat, Bren Cameron, to negotiate with the Mospheiran government. For the Alpha Station refugees represent a political faction that the people of Mospheira broke from two centuries ago, and these Mospheirans are not enthusiastic about welcoming these immigrants from space. In the decades Bren has served Tabini, he has become enmeshed in the atevi world in a way no human ever has before. Bren is now an atevi lord, with his own estate on the mainland, his own household, and his own Assassin's Guild bodyguards. He is a treasured resource to Tabini and has become close to Tabini's young son and heir, Cajieri, the first atevi child ever to grow up in the presence of a human. Tabini, impatient with human politics, has ordered Bren to return to the island of his birth in his official capacity as an atevi lord, with his full atevi retinue. Bren is to inform the president of Mospheira that he is no longer his diplomat, that Mospheira must take in the refugees from Alpha, and that there is no other acceptable solution. And among the refugees are three children requiring special protection because Cajieri has made them his “associates”—a bond of atevi loyalty that is unbreakable and lifelong. While Bren travels to Mospheira, Tabini sends Cajieri to the country to visit his uncle Tatiseigi—a political gesture to shore up an old man and give the boy a well-earned vacation, a cherished opportunity to escape the formality of the atevi court. Tatiseigi's neighbors, however, are determined to end an old feud to their own satisfaction….and Cajieri's presence is just the excuse they need.

Fans of Elizabeth Moon and Anne Leckie will love this first thrilling adventure in an epic space opera trilogy—set in a future where alien technology comes at a steep price: human life. Aliens came to Earth 40 years ago. Their anatomy proved unfathomable and all attempts at communication failed. But through trade, humanity gained technology that allowed them to colonize the stars. The price: live humans for every alien faster-than-light drive. Kara's sister was one of hundreds exchanged for this technology, and Kara has little love for aliens. So when she is drafted by GalDiv—the organization that oversees alien trades—it is under duress. A group of colonists have been kidnapped by aliens and taken to an uncharted planet, and an unusual team is to be sent to negotiate. As an ex-army sniper, Kara's role is clear. But artist Marc has no combat experience, although the team's pre-cog Tse is adamant that he has a part to play. All three know that success is unlikely. For how will they negotiate with aliens when communication between the species is impossible?

With his critically acclaimed military science fiction debut series, Dave Bara launched readers on a star-spanning journey of discovery, diplomacy, and danger. Peter Cochrane and his new wife, Karina, have been married less than a year. And although things have been quiet in relation to the old Empire during that time, they're about to get a lot hotter. Peter and Karina have embarked on a diplomatic mission to Sandosa, an old ally of Pendax, the newest member of the Union. But during their mission the government of Sandosa attacks Peter's new command, Defiant, and tries to assassinate Karina and him. Peter responds the only way he can, with all the power at his disposal to protect both his wife and Defiant.Then suddenly Defiant is called away to Skondar, where Peter's old flame Dobrina Kierkopf and her new ship Impulse II have come under attack by the Butcher of Carinthia, Prince Arin. Though Defiant chases away the prince, it is not before some pretty devastating events have occurred. And soon Peter finds himself racing toward the mysterious world of Altos, where he discovers an unpleasant truth about the Union's allies, the Historians of Earth. Each encounter with Arin and his allies leaves Peter and the Union Navy fleet reeling, even as they continue to pursue this elusive enemy. But all of this can only have one conclusion, a final confrontation in which Peter and Arin will battle over the future of humanity—Union or Empire.

The seventeenth novel in Cherryh's Foreigner space opera series, a groundbreaking tale of first contact and its consequences…The human and atevi inhabitants of Alpha Station, orbiting the world of the atevi, have picked up a signal from an alien kyo ship telling them that the ship is inbound toward Alpha. Five thousand of the inhabitants of Alpha are human refugees from the now derelict Reunion Station. They have seen this scenario before, when a single kyo ship swooped into the Reunion system and, without a word, melted a major section of Reunion Station with a single pass. These refugees, who were rescued through the combined efforts of an allied group of humans and atevi and brought to safety at Alpha, are now desperate with fear.Bren Cameron—brilliant human emissary of Tabini-aiji, the powerful atevi political leader on the mainland below, and also the appointee of the human president of the island nation of Mospheira—is the obvious choice of representative to be sent up to deal with both the panicked refugees and the incoming alien ship.As a member of the spacefaring delegation who rescued the refugees, Bren has talked to kyo before—and even won their trust by saving one of their kind from a Reunioner prison. Because of his remarkable diplomatic and linguistic abilities, Bren managed to communicate with that grateful kyo individual on a limited basis, and he has evidence that that same kyo is on the ship heading to defenseless Alpha Station.But no one can predict what an alien race might do, or what their motivations could be.And Bren Cameron, the only human ever to be accepted into atevi society, is now the one individual with a hope of successfully interacting with the crew of the incoming ship. But Bren knows it will take putting himself in the hands of the kyo.Can Bren count on the gratitude of one individual alien to save his life and the lives of thousands on Alpha Station?

With his critically acclaimed military science fiction debut series, Dave Bara launched readers on a star-spanning journey of discovery, diplomacy, and danger. The Lightship H.M.S. Impulse is gone, sacrificed in a battle against First Empire ships. And though the fragile galactic alliance has survived the unexpected invasion, the Union forces might not prove victorious against a full onslaught by this legendary enemy. For Peter Cochrane, serving as an officer aboard his world's flagship, H.M.S. Starbound is a dream come true. Tasked with investigating a mysterious space station in a rediscovered star system, Peter and Starbound face a surprise attack by unknown forces and suffer terrible losses. But there is no time to grieve or even regroup as Peter is thrust into a new crisis, a potential civil war on the Union world of Carinthia. Caught between his rank in the navy and his status as a royal heir, Peter is put on trial for the loss of Impulse, used as a political pawn as Carinthia stands on the brink of a devastating conflict. Peter escapes but faces the prospect of interstellar war when he learns of a possible alliance between the First Empire and Carinthia, a coalition which could tear the Union apart!

The New York Times bestselling series based on the blockbuster video game for Xbox!It is 2555, more than two years after the Master Chief went missing-in-action following a decisive conflict on Installation 00—the massive, extragalactic Forerunner construct known as the Ark—as part of the final chapter in humanity's bloody thirty-year struggle against the overwhelming forces of the Covenant. Now, as a tenuous peace exists between the humans and the Elites, a startling scientific discovery is made…and the riddle behind its Forerunner origins could very well seal the fate of the entire galaxy within a matter of weeks. In order to unravel these dangerous secrets, a heroic, hastily formed coalition of humans and Elites must attempt to overcome their differences as they embark on a covert mission back to the Ark—an astonishing, enigmatic place beyond comprehension from which few have returned and where mortal danger awaits them all…

“A beautiful book…one that should not be missed!” (The Guardian): The first in a stunning science fiction trilogy, this mesmerizing novel introduces a world where young rebels must unlock their powers to rescue humankind from a powerful alien rulership.Earth has been invaded by the Illyri—a beautiful, civilized, yet ruthless alien species. But humankind has not given up the fight, and Paul Kerr is one of a new generation of young Resistance leaders waging war on the invaders. Syl Hellais is the first of the Illyri to be born on Earth. Trapped inside the walls of her father's stronghold, hated by the humans, she longs to escape. But on her sixteenth birthday, her life will change forever. Syl becomes an outcast, an enemy of her people, for daring to save the life of one human: Paul Kerr. Only together do they have a chance of saving not only each other, but also the planet they both call home. For there is a greater darkness behind the Illyri conquest of Earth, and the real invasion has not yet even begun…

In the future, only one rule will matter:Don t. Ever. Peek.Seventeen-year-old Ari Alexander just broke that rule and saw the last person she expected hovering above her bed arrogant Jackson Locke, the most popular boy in her school. She expects instant execution or some kind of freak alien punishment, but instead, Jackson issues a challenge: help him, or everyone on Earth will die. Ari knows she should report him, but everything about Jackson makes her question what she s been taught about his kind. And against her instincts, she s falling for him. But Ari isn t just any girl, and Jackson wants more than her attention. She s a military legacy who s been trained by her father and exposed to war strategies and societal information no one can know especially an alien spy, like Jackson. Giving Jackson the information he needs will betray her father and her country, but keeping silent will start a war.

“Space opera the way it ought to be [...] Bujold and Weber, bend the knee; interstellar adventure has a new king, and his name is Walter Jon Williams.” -- George R.R. MartinAt last, the climactic final episode of the Dread Empire's Fall trilogy--what started with The Praxis and The Sundering comes to the brilliant conclusion in Walter Jon William's epic space adventure.Working on opposite sides of the galaxy--one in deep space, the other undercover on an occupied planet--and haunted by personal ghosts, Captain Gareth Martinez and Lieutenant Lady Caroline Sula fight to save the Empire from the vicious, alien Naxid. In a desperate, audacious bid to stop the Naxid fleet, Martinez makes a move that could win the war...and lose his career. Meanwhile, Sula's guerilla tactics may not be enough to stop the Naxid, until she tries one deadly, final gambit.And make sure to see what happens after, in the first new Praxis novel in ten years, The Accidental War, available Fall 2018!