Showing titles in Hard Science Fiction

The machine races demand a turn at the job, but the organics refuse to allow it. For more than a century, the Galactics have battled for supreme power. War and instability reign in place of peace, with every species spread over a hundred billion stars suffering as the Empire decays. James McGill discovers a scheme is underway. A new power is rising, determined to snatch the Throne from all the rest. Will this unite the Galactic Empire, or destroy it utterly?

Dark Intelligence is the first novel in the Transformation series, a no-holds-barred adventure set in Neal Asher's popular Polity universe. One man will transcend death to seek vengeance. One woman will transform herself to gain power. And no one will emerge unscathed . . . Thorvald Spear wakes...

The stunning conclusion to the trilogy that began with the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning Ancillary Justice. For just a moment, things seem to be under control for the soldier known as Breq. Then a search of Atheok Station's slums turns up someone who shouldn't exist - someone who might be an ancillary from a ship that's been hiding beyond the empire's reach for three thousand years.

Tom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a law enforcement officer with the Panoply. His beat is the multifaceted utopian society of the Glitter Band, that vast swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone, the teeming hub of a human interstellar empire spanning many worlds. His current case: investigating a murderous attack against one of the habitats that left 900 people dead, a crime that appalls even a hardened cop like Dreyfus.

They travelled into the unknown and left themselves behind . . . Alien Clay is a thrilling tale of alien encounter – from the acclaimed Arthur C. Clarke Award-winner Adrian Tchaikovsky. ‘Unputdownable’ – Stephen Baxter, author of Proxima Professor Arton Daghdev has always wanted to study...

The universe is a dangerous place in John Scalzi's Old Man's War, the first in The Old Man's War series. At seventy-five years old, John Perry is after a fresh start - so, naturally, he joins the army. Earth's military machine can transform elderly recruits, restoring their lost youth. But in...

As tensions escalate between the emerging Earth Space Agency alliance and a powerful coalition led by Russia and China, the struggle for dominance extends beyond Earth’s atmosphere. In orbit, rival megacorporations and governments race to construct the largest structures ever built by human hands — rotating wheel space stations capable of reshaping civilization’s future.

The People's Republic of Haven made a tiny mistake when it announced the execution of Honor Harrington. It seemed safe enough. After all, she was already dead. Unfortunately, they were wrong. Now Honor has escaped from the prison planet called Hell and returned to the Manticoran Alliance with a few friends. Almost half a million of them, to be precise including some who know what really happened when the Committee of Public Safety seized power in the PRH.

The hunter becomes the hunted in Gridlinked, the first sci-fi thriller in Neal Asher's compelling Agent Cormac series. When a portal to other planets explodes on Samarkand, thousands are killed and a terraforming project is obliterated. Earth Central Security suspects sabotage – and assigns a...

Charlie7 is the progenitor of a mechanical race he built from the ashes of a dead world—Earth. He is a robot of leisure and idle political meddling—a retirement well-earned. Or he was, until a human girl named Eve was dropped in his lap. Geneticists have restored Earth’s biome and begun repopulation. But primate cloning is in its infancy; human cloning is banned. Far from a failed genetics experiment, Eve is brilliant, curious, and heartbreakingly naïve about her species’ history. But Eve’s creator wants her back and has a gruesome fate planned for her.

Faced with determining the fate of the galaxy, Golan Trevize hesitantly chose to hand over the rule of the galaxy to planet Gaia. Two mysteries now remain: who has erased the records of Earth – and why? Determined to ensure his choice was right, Golan sets off with Janov Pelorat and Bliss, to answer these questions once and for all. But nothing could prepare them for the secrets which await them on Earth. Secrets which predate history as they know it, and will change its significance forever.

Truth Medici knows life isn't fair. But for the first time, the balance is in his favor. Cultivation has taken him from desperate slumrat to burglar to mercenary to bodyguard to terrorist, and now he's the revered prince of a kingdom to come—immortal heir to a dynasty hidden for millennia. Pampered by succubae, demons, and sprites, Truth is more than ready to embody the might of his ancestors, who've prospered in secret for centuries. With an aura that reeks of power, he'll make his presence known. His word and will are law.

When a colonist dies in tragic circumstances, just a few sols before a major terraforming experiment, Dr. Jann Malbec begins to suspect that all is not what it seems.

Captain Jackson Wolfe never thought he'd see the end of the Phage War in his lifetime. The enemy was too powerful, too numerous, and utterly determined to exterminate humanity. But the appearance of a new ally in the fight has changed all of that. For the first time since the original incursion, Wolfe thinks that maybe there's a chance to stop their implacable enemy before they have the chance to wipe out any more human planets.

"Such realistic brilliance you can see a whole civilisation in it" - The Times "Simply amazing science fiction that will have me grabbing book two" - Goodreads Reviewer, 5 stars "one of the best scifi concepts out there" - Amazon Reviewer, 5 stars Stephen Baxter's highly acclaimed first novel...

Four hundred years from now mankind is strung out across a region of interstellar space inherited from an ancient civilization discovered on Mars. The colonies are linked together by the occasional sublight colony ship voyages and hyperspatial data-casting. Human consciousness is digitally...

The first novel in Isaac Asimov’s classic science-fiction masterpiece, the Foundation series THE EPIC SAGA THAT INSPIRED THE APPLE TV+ SERIES FOUNDATION Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has...

In the 10 years since his regiment was transported to an alien world, Commander Andrew Keane has bravely fought time and time again for humanity's freedom. But after he is injured in battle, his confidence is shaken, and his ability to lead is damaged. Seeing their leader struck down also takes its toll on Keane's men, who have followed him to hell and back.

It has a dark past—one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself “Murderbot”. But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more. Teaming up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don’t want to know what the “A” stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue. What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks.

Breq - the soldier who used to be a spaceship - is serving the emperor she swore to destroy. She's been given her own warship, her own crew, and ordered to the only place in the galaxy she would have agreed to go: to Athoek Station, to protect the family of the lieutenant she murdered in cold blood. Athoek was annexed by the Empire some 600 years ago, and by now everyone is fully 'civilised'. Or should be - but everything is not as tranquil as it appears.