Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Hard Science Fiction

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. The winner of Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards, Neuromancer didn't just explode onto the science fiction scene - it permeated into the collective consciousness, culture, science, and technology.Today, there is only one science fiction masterpiece to thank for the term "cyberpunk," for easing the way into the information age and Internet society.

Where Flynne and her brother, Burton, live, jobs outside the drug business are rare. Fortunately, Burton has his veteran's benefits, for neural damage he suffered from implants during his time in the USMC's elite Haptic Recon force. Then one night Burton has to go out, but there's a job he's supposed to do - a job Flynne didn't know he had. Beta-testing part of a new game, he tells her.

United States of America, 2051 AD It has been 20 years since Eustace Fargo's justice bill was passed. There are new weapons on the streets, and vast city blocks rising to the sky, as the first human being sets out to visit another star system. New York, California and Texas cry out for autonomy, chafing against a federal government they feel has lost control. Reeling from news of Chief Justice Fargo's death in service, the nation asks: has it all been worth it?

Particle physicist Jon Grady is ecstatic when his team achieves what they've been working toward for years: A device that can reflect gravity. Their research will revolutionize the field of physics - the crowning achievement of a career. Grady expects widespread acclaim for his entire team. The Nobel Prize. Instead, his lab is locked down by a shadowy organization whose mission is to prevent at all costs the social upheaval sudden technological advances bring.

Surrounded by secrecy, it is home to the wildest dreams and darkest nightmares. Incredible amounts of money have been lavished on it. The best minds of two generations have labored to build it. And somehow, bit by bit, it is claiming the Earth's most valuable resource - its children.

It is twenty years after the catastrophic war between the US and China that brought down the old American political order. A new party has emerged in the US, one that’s held power for over a decade. Efforts to tighten its grip have resulted in mounting violent resistance. The American president has control of the media, but he is beginning to lose control of the streets. Many fear he’ll stop at nothing to remain in the White House. Suddenly, he collapses in the middle of an address to the nation. After an initial flurry of misinformation, the administration reluctantly announces his death.

Bobby Chombo is a "producer" and an enigma. In his day job, Bobby is a troubleshooter for manufacturers of military navigation equipment. He refuses to sleep in the same place twice. He meets no one. Hollis Henry, an investigative journalist, has been told to find him.

Otherland. In many ways it is humankind's most stunning achievement: a private, multidimensional universe built over two generations by the greatest minds of the twenty-first century. But this most exclusive of places is also one of the world's best kept secrets, created and controlled by an organization made up of the world's most powerful and ruthless individuals, a private cartel known - to those who know of their existence at all - as The Grail Brotherhood.

Hollis Henry worked for the global marketing magnate Hubertus Bigend once before. She never meant to repeat the experience. Milgrim is even more thoroughly owned by Bigend. He's worth owning for his useful gift of seeming to disappear in almost any setting. baked into bone, entirely experimental, to show for it. Garreth has a passion for extreme sports. Garreth isn't owned by Bigend at all.

Is BER-66 a human or a machine? As he navigates the corridors and locked rooms of a strange bunker, he must solve the mysteries of murderous doppelgangers, a slow-motion city on the verge of destruction and, ultimately, the all-powerful Mechanism itself.

Mountain of Black Glass is the third volume of Tad Williams's highly acclaimed four-book series, Otherland. A truly unique reading experience combining elements of science fiction, fantasy, and techno-thriller, it is a rich epic tale in which virtual reality could prove the key to a whole new universe of possibilities for the entire human race - or become the exclusive domain of the rich and the ruthless as they seek a technological pathway to immortality.

This celebration of Chinese science fiction - 13 stories, all translated for the first time into English - represents a unique exploration of the nation's speculative fiction from the late 20th century onwards, curated and translated by critically acclaimed writer and essayist Xueting Christine Ni.

A sweet-smelling, deadly cloud of poisonous gas has devastated the world, and as Adam Jeffson travels the stricken globe in search of human life, he slowly succumbs to madness and unleashes fire and destruction on his planet.

When it first appeared, the astronomers named the asteroid Keanu. A Near Earth Object, from a distant constellation, it was headed directly toward our sun. But when we went to meet it, it turned out to be far more than a huge rock hurtling through space...

Three years ago, an object 100 miles across was spotted on a trajectory for Earth's sun. Now, its journey is almost over. As it approaches, two competing manned vehicles race through almost half a million kilometers of space to reach it first. But when they both arrive on the entity, they learn that it has been sent toward Earth for a reason. An intelligent race is desperately attempting to communicate with our primitive species. And the message is: Help us.

Everything changed when scientists discovered the drug. It looked like the cure for aging, but comes with a price tag. The blood of “carriers” is the most valuable commodity on earth. When treated with a new wonder drug, it cures disease, increases power, and makes the recipient a virtual superman. It also makes the carriers targets. Young people with the right genes are ripped from their families and stashed in “blood farms”. Ellie Bautista became an LAPD officer specifically to fight this evil as a member of the Blood Squad, but her ambitions are thwarted....

Twenty years have passed since the mysterious Near-Earth Object nicknamed Keanu appeared in the night sky and transported an assortment of humans from all over Earth into its interior. There they discovered that Keanu was an immense long-range spaceship - and they were not its only inhabitants. They joined forces with the aliens called the Architects, who had come from a distant galaxy to seek help in fighting the vicious Reivers. And they defeated them - or so they thought.

James Tiptree Jr., the pen name of Alice Bradley Sheldon, is widely considered to be one of the most influential American genre writers ever, and a pioneer of feminist science fiction. 10,000 Light Years from Home, her brilliant debut collection, displays all her trademark humour, intensity and originality, with dark dystopian thrills, fast-paced intergalactic satire and hardboiled tales of alien invasion. 

In infinite parallel universes, there's a version of you who already has everything you've ever wanted. But 24-year-old drop-out Bridge is paralysed, by all the other lives she could have lived, the choices she could have made and now, whoever she's supposed to be in the wake of her mother's premature death. They've always had a complicated relationship. Jo was the teenage runaway turned maverick neuroscientist who threw everything away chasing after an impossibility—a mysterious artefact—the dreamworm—that allows you to switch between realities.

Four hundred years ago, Ed and Alice Rico threw themselves through a mysterious portal on the London Underground, hunting for Ed's lost brother - Alice's husband - Verne. Now, starship captain Katherine Abdulov embarks on a desperate race against ruthless rival captain - and her former lover - Victor Luciano, to try and earn back her family's trust. Tomorrow, all their lives will be thrown together by disaster, as an ancient evil stirs among the stars, threatening the survival of all life.