Showing titles in Hard Science Fiction

A story in which little is as it seems. Someone murdered Morgan Djai’s brilliant but estranged brother. When they killed him, he had a $10,000 chunk of platinum in the pocket of his jeans. Morgan has problems of his own. His company’s been bought out, he’s been laid off, and his wife’s having an affair. Better yet, she’s planning to take everything he has in a divorce. As Morgan tries to assume his duties as guardian for his brother’s teenage children he’s confronted with the mystery of why his brother died carrying a piece of platinum. Morgan’s fifteen year old niece is ...

Webmind - the vast consciousness that spontaneously emerged from the infrastructure of the World Wide Web - has proven its worth to humanity by aiding in everything from curing cancer to easing international tensions. But the brass at the Pentagon see Webmind as a threat that needs to be eliminated. Caitlin Decter-the once-blind 16-year-old math genius who discovered, and bonded with, Webmind - wants desperately to protect her friend. And if she doesn't act, everything - Webmind included - may come crashing down.

A wave of death is spreading through the Milky Way galaxy, an expanding sphere of lethal gamma radiation that erupted from the galaxy's core 28,000 years ago. Every world it touched was wiped clean of all life. But it's possible to protect a planet from gamma radiation. Now, guided by the ancient intelligent machines called the Predecessors, men and women from Earth seek out those precious, rare worlds that harbor intelligent species, determined to save them.

From bestselling author Saxon Andrew comes a story about all the things that make us human. Angle Barrett decides to buy a broken spaceship as a monument to his deceased wife. He had no idea that purchase would lead to repercussions that would shake the foundations of all the civilizations in the galaxy. All he wanted was to live in peace until he joined his wife. Instead, he is targeted by the most powerful civilization in the galaxy, and they will do anything to prevent a secret from coming out, even if it means destroying Earth in the process. A Warship Named Sky-A Hero's Story is a ...

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....

Alex Wolfe is an elite agent with the CIA. He has a proven track record of stopping international bioweapons programs. Skylar Cruz is a skilled Marine whose battlefield injury sidelined her from serving her country. When they’re recruited for a brand-new covert-op group, Vector, combating biological and chemical weapons threats, their first mission had better be a success. Because it’s not just their careers at stake. It’s all of humanity.

On a cold spring night in 1952, a huge meteorite fell to earth and obliterated much of the East Coast of the US, including Washington, DC. The ensuing climate cataclysm will soon render the Earth inhospitable for humanity, as the last such meteorite did for the dinosaurs. This looming threat calls for a radically accelerated effort to colonize space and requires a much-larger share of humanity to take part in the process. Elma York’s drive to become the first lady astronaut is so strong that even the most dearly held conventions of society may not stand a chance against her.

An alien spacecraft four times the size of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier enters the solar system. Tensions run hot within the UN, but the alien vessel doesn't approach Earth. Instead, it sits off at L4, over a hundred million miles from Earth, baffling scientists around the world. Chris "Crash" Williams leads an international crew to investigate the appearance of this ghost ship, but he quickly learns that the spacecraft isn't as dead as it seems.

Idris Telemmier has uncovered a secret that changes everything – the Architects’ greatest weakness. A shadowy Cartel scrambles to turn his discovery into a weapon against these alien destroyers of worlds. But between them and victory stands self-interest. The galaxy’s great powers would rather pursue their own agendas than stand together against this shared terror. Human and inhuman interests wrestle to control Idris’ discovery, as the galaxy erupts into a mutually destructive and self-defeating war.

The last thing K-404 remembers is a happy home with the human child Ele, whose care is his primary purpose. So, when he wakes up in a landfill of tossed-away technology, his only thought is to reunite with his family. This world is not his own, though. It’s a wasteland of desolate buildings, flying metal disks, and monstrosities that keep themselves active by stealing another bot’s power. How did the world get this way? And why was he discarded? Hampered by imperfect memory, an obsolete body, and limited battery life, 404 sets out to find his home.

Joe Haldeman is the esteemed Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of The Forever War. Things are going nowhere for lowly MIT research assistant Matt Fuller - especially not after his girlfriend drops him for another man. But then while working late one night, he inadvertently stumbles upon what may be the greatest scientific breakthrough ever. His luck, however, runs out when he finds himself wanted for murder - in the future.

Despite political foes, professional jealousies, and the scandal which drove her into exile, Capt. Honor Harrington has been offered a chance to reclaim her career as an officer of the Royal Manticoran Navy. But there's a catch. She must assume command of a "squadron" of jury-rigged armed merchantmen with crew drawn from the dregs of her service and somehow stop the pirates who have taken advantage of the Havenite War to plunder the Star Kingdom's commerce.

What happens when a robot begins to question its creators? What would be the consequences of creating a robot with a sense of humour? Or the ability to lie? How do we truly tell the difference between man and machine? In I, Robot, Asimov sets out the Three Laws of Robotics - designed to protect humans from their robotic creations - and pushes them to their limits and beyond.

Six months after she left, Dee is struggling to manage her rage toward the people who ordered the nuclear strike that destroyed Earth. She's trying to find those responsible, but she's not getting very far alone. A dedicated gamer, Dee is endeavoring to discover a mersive good enough to enable her to escape her trauma. When she is approached by a designer who asks her to play test his new game, she hopes it will be what she needs - but it isn't like any mersive she's played before.

For five centuries, human life has been restricted to Earth, while posthuman descendants called alloys freely explore the galaxy. But when the Earthlike planet of Meru is discovered, two unlikely companions venture forth to test the habitability of this unoccupied new world and the future of human-alloy relations. For Jayanthi, the adopted human child of alloy parents, it’s an opportunity to rectify the ancient reputation of her species as avaricious and destructive, and to give humanity a new place in the universe.

The haiman Orlandine, charged with safeguarding lethal Jain tech swirling inside an accretion disc located in the distant reaches of space, has weaponized a black hole to eliminate the threat. But others are suspicious of her motives, and both the Polity AIs and the leaders of the alien prador kingdom dispatch fleets of warships in anticipation of conflict. As the black hole continues to eat its way through the planets in the accretion disc, making its way towards a dead sun, it becomes clear the disc has been hiding a larger secret.

In the vast, domed cities of Earth, artificial intelligence is strictly controlled; in the distant Outer Worlds, colonists and robots live side by side. A Spacer ambassador is found dead and detective Elijah Baley is assigned to find the killer. But with relations between the two cultures in the balance, the Spacers insist that he work with a partner of their choosing – a robot partner, R. Daneel Olivaw. Baley has never seen a robot like Daneel before – and soon, though the Three Laws of Robotics should render the crime impossible, Baley’s partner becomes his prime suspect.

A millennium into the future two advancements have altered the course of human history: the colonization of the galaxy and the creation of the positronic brain. Isaac Asimov's Robot novels chronicle the unlikely partnership between a New York City detective and a humanoid robot who must learn to work together. Like most people left behind on an over-populated Earth, New York City police detective Elijah Baley had little love for either the arrogant Spacers or their robotic companions.

Mark and Tyler Victor have fought Harmony from Masoul to Osdal. They've lost friends, shed blood and tears, and now, they're headed for one of Harmony's strongholds: Fernix. Osdal left Mark a changed man, a man not just looking to keep his people alive, but a man looking to avenge the only woman who cared for him. He has nothing to lose but his life, something he would gladly give to destroy Harmony.

Jack Four - one of 20 human clones - has been created to be sold. His purchasers are the alien prador, and they only want him for their experimentation program. But there is something different about Jack. No clone should possess the knowledge that’s been loaded into his mind. And no normal citizen of humanity’s Polity worlds would have this information. The prador’s king has been mutated by the Spatterjay virus into a creature even more monstrous than the prador themselves.