Hard Science Fiction

When the Sun is threatened by an alien microbe, the fate of humanity rests on the shoulders of an unlikely hero – and an even more unlikely friendship.

From China's most beloved sci-fi author, a first-contact story that weaves politics, science, and cosmic mystery.

This near-future trilogy is the first chance for English-speaking listeners to experience this multiple-award-winning phenomenon from Cixin Liu, China's most beloved science fiction author....

Half a century after the Doomsday Battle, the uneasy balance of Dark Forest Deterrence keeps the Trisolaran invaders at bay. Earth enjoys unprecedented prosperity....

On the Moon, crime pays, but small-time crook Jazz Bashara may have just uncovered a conspiracy of lunar proportions. Welcome to Artemis.

The Three-Body Problem is the first chance for English-speaking audiences to experience the Hugo Award-winning phenomenon from China's most beloved science fiction author, Liu Cixin.

When retired millionaire Bob Johansson chose cryogenic preservation, the last thing he expected was to be reanimated as a space probe that can clone itself. Meet the Bobs.

In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the OASIS, a vast virtual world where most of humanity spends their days....

In the midst of an interstellar war, Yun Tianming found himself on the front lines. Riddled with cancer, he chose to end his life, only to find himself flash frozen and launched into space where the Trisolaran First Fleet awaited....

From a New York Times best-selling and Hugo award-winning author comes a modern masterwork of science fiction, introducing a captain, his crew, and a detective as they unravel a horrifying solar system wide conspiracy that begins with a single missing girl....

The Silicoids are a growing threat from beyond the frontier. Launching waves of crystalline drones, they ravage colonies all along the border of the Empire. Earth has been forced to ally with her enemies against this mysterious alien menace....

Juliette, now mayor of Silo 18, doesn’t trust Silo 1, especially its leader, Donald. But in the world of the Silos, there is no black and white—everything is shades of gray....

Civil war looms in the Bobiverse in this brand-new, epic-length adventure by Audible number one best seller Dennis E. Taylor. More than a hundred years ago, Bender set out for the stars and was never heard from again....

Twenty years ago, it was as if someone turned on a light. The future blazed into existence with each deliberate word that William Gibson laid down....

For generations, the solar system—Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt—was humanity's great frontier. Until now. The alien artifact working through its program under the clouds of Venus has appeared in Uranus's orbit, where it has built a massive gate that leads to a starless dark....

The fifth book in the NYT best-selling Expanse series, Nemesis Games drives the crew of the Rocinante apart, and as they struggle to survive, the inner planets fall victim to an enemy's catastrophic plan. A thousand worlds have opened....

For 12,000 years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future - to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years....

Thousands of years ago, Earth's terraforming program took to the stars. On the world they called Nod, scientists discovered alien life - but it was their mission to overwrite it with the memory of Earth. Then humanity's great empire fell, and the program's decisions were lost to time....

Earth failed. In a desperate bid to escape, the spaceship Enkidu and its captain, Heorest Holt, carried its precious human cargo to a potential new paradise. Generations later, this fragile colony has managed to survive, eking out a hardy existence....

Only once in a great while does a writer come along who defies comparison - a writer so original he redefines the way we look at the world...

The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, post-apocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us....

They mustn't harm a human being, they must obey human orders, and they must protect their own existence...but only so long as that doesn't violate rules one and two....

A classic thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Crichton, Sphere is a bravura demonstration of what he does better than anyone: riveting storytelling that combines frighteningly plausible, cutting-edge science and technology with pulse-pounding action....

In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse - mathematical genius and young Captain in the US Navy - is assigned to Detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists, and some of those people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt....

A Fire Upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale.....

A hidden mystery in Jupiter’s second-largest moon holds a power beyond imagining. Beneath the icy surface of Callisto lies an underground sea. Decades ago, a research base was built to study the strange lifeforms inhabiting this silent world before tragedy struck, killing everyone. News of this incident is quickly hushed up, with all access to the Jovian moon restricted. Kirill Sereda was orphaned when his mother never returned from that very outpost. Now an adult, he gathers together a team of misfits for a clandestine mission: head to Callisto and find out what really happened. What ...

“A twisty, satisfyingly unpredictable SF action tale. Even die-hard SF readers won’t see some of the turns coming”—Kirkus Reviews “[An] engrossing ride … [that’s] a meaningful metaphor for all the people one person becomes throughout life: how everyone grows, reinvents, and regenerates, even without special DNA. Mikheyev presents a narrative as malleable as its protagonist: changing genres from chapter to chapter, but always clinging to its core heartfelt message”—IndieReader He cannot die. He can only vanish. And a nefarious organization wants the powers he has. It's a ...

An eclectic collection of stories of strange voyages in time and space. •Dragon Fire - The pilot of a Fokker Triplane is transferred through time to fight aerial duels with dragons. •Twilight’s Last Gleaming - An AI interstellar space probe is the last defense for the human race. •Second Chance - The crew of a small base on the Moon discovers the remains of ancient alien visitors. •Prize Crew - Privateers fight a querrila war against the powerful UNE Navy in the Asteroid Belt. •Assassin - Ruthless aliens invade the Solar System and an ancient warship is Earth's last defense. •...

SHORT STORY: A sister in the far future, when we no longer burn things for fuel, finds a forbidden thing that would make the perfect gift. The Day We Stopped Burning is one of six short solarpunk stories in the Halfway to Better collection. If you enjoyed the optimistic climate solutions in Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future or the cozy cooperative future in Becky Chambers' Monk and Robot series, you will enjoy Halfway to Better.

SHORT STORY: At the bottom of the sea, a trawler crawls across an abyssal plain, carefully cleaning microplastics off the ancient mineral-rich nodules, when the crew finds something that shouldn't be possible. Slimy Things Did Crawl is one of six short solarpunk stories in the Halfway to Better collection.

Mercy Smith leads the team that is building the fastest space shuttle ever. Now her friend Red wants to steal the unstable Tetra-1 because Earth needs the information from an orbiting alien artifact. When Mercy volunteered to ride along to prevent the prototype from exploding, she didn’t count on Chinese and Muslim weapons of mass destruction or corporate spies. After landing on the artifact, she discovers there’s a new world inside, one they name Sanctuary. Although there are vast technological treasures, first the astronauts have to pass a complex test to see whether humanity is fit ...

Tomorrow’s Hope: A journey of exploration and hope builds on the themes reminiscent of classic Science Fiction written by the greats of the 1960’s. Inspired by the works of Ben Bova, Isaac Asimov, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Heinlein, Robert Silverberg, and more, we dive into worlds that could be just around the corner.

In the heart of the Pacific lies a mysterious island, shrouded in secrecy and guarded by the enigmatic Gordon McMillan, the world's wealthiest and most elusive genius. Once a titan of the technological realm, McMillan's sudden retreat from the world's stage three years ago left many puzzled minds wondering about his intentions. Little did they know, his seclusion was merely a prelude to an audacious experiment that would alter the course of human history.

Lieutenant Commander David Ashton thrives on excitement. As he strolls to the White House, he has the feeling a new adventure awaits and he's not disappointed. President Gardiner offers him the mission of a lifetime, something he's trained for all of his life. Gardiner explains that the United States is running out of oil. In desperation, he is dispatching the Excalibur, the largest starship ever built, to voyage beyond the solar system to a distant planet 103 light years from earth.

With the seizure of an advanced freighter and its strategic cargo, James Van Wert is assigned to a combat vessel that possesses a groundbreaking new technology which the Fleet hopes will stop the insurgency. But James must first battle command infighting and the technological challenges of getting an untried ship ready for action, while the freighter captives travel to the heart of the enemy cabal to fight for their very lives.

The best steel is forged by the hottest fires and under the greatest pressures. So too, have the Kurdish Peshmerga been shaped by thousands of years of warfare and oppression. Now, for the first time in history, they have their own nation, and its a chance to live, grow, and develop as a unified people. But they are surrounded by hostile dictatorships intent on the destruction of their young republic.

Far into humanity's distant future, Naga, a whimsical superintelligent being, finds herself reborn. Her trusty companion Apollo – a quantum quintessence with an uncanny ability to predict the future - helps her throw a birthday party of cosmic proportions. Naga's children – Tartarus, Gaia, Iapetus and Mnemosyne – have mixed feelings about their newly reborn mother and about each other. Remembering their own trials and tribunals, they rediscover themselves and take a stab at understanding consciousnesses, complexity and what it means to be alive.

At sixteen, Mira realizes her dream of attending the prestigious South Pacific UN astronaut school, Sirius Academy. Heiress, prodigy, pilot, and psi talent, Mira kicks butt from the first day. However, she can’t figure out how to make boys like her—making them cry is easy. To lead a team to the alien artifact that her mother discovered, Mira has to convince the Academy that she’s the only chance to unlock the alien secrets before they vanish. First, Mira has to overcome sexist students, narrow-minded faculty, kidnappers, and a tenacious aunt who wants her out of the program. Her ...

She’s a hero. Now she needs heroics from her employees. Will they be there in her hour of need? Belle Machado is overwhelmed. The Quynh-trained field agent is learning the hard way that successfully running her new security services company, Machado & Associates, takes much more than just money and grit. But business begins looking good when they are awarded a large contract to eliminate the Zyd threat within another corporation. Directly confronting the Zyd among humans for the first time, Belle comes to understand the malignant menace they represent for humanity. However, an unexpected ...

Training to serve humanity. Facing an unraveling alien society. In a brewing interfactional war, can a recruit avoid becoming a pawn? Belle Machado is returning to the Quynh to complete her field agent training. But the dedicated young woman’s education is interrupted by civil strife between opposing ighakan factions. Will Belle succeed in navigating the political situation, or will she be forced to take sides, and will the evil Zyd Hegemony take advantage of the turmoil? Belle’s War is the third novel in the Belle Machado science fiction thriller series. If you like epic battles and ...