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 and serious chills.

Living and slaving in Fill City One, you get used to the smell. We call it the Everpresent Stink. But every once in a while, on a spring day with a breeze, it clears away enough to remind us that there is something more out there. Most Fillers' wildest dreams would be just to get past the walls and live in the mainland. But my dream? It’s a little bigger. I’m going to Mars.

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.

In 2018, Canadian archaeologist Ron Jackson makes a mind-boggling discovery in Antarctica - right before disappearing without a trace, leaving behind only his controversial theory that humans have lived on Earth far, far longer than we think they have. Decades later, in 2042, when Jackson's wife dies under mysterious circumstances, an unlikely pair of investigators, Agatha Devenworth and Pano Hofer, begin investigating whether her death might be connected to Jackson's disappearance.

Decades after the last footprints were left on the Moon, the US was preparing to return to the Lunar surface in a new class of rockets, when the mission suddenly became much more urgent. It would have to be a rescue mission. Unbeknownst to the rest of the world China had sent its own Lunar expedition. A manned expedition. Until a distress call was received, no human outside of China even knew that the mission was manned - or that their ship had crash-landed and couldn't take off again.

Mars is supposed to be dead. Bizarre quakes are rumbling over the long-dormant tectonic plates of the planet, disrupting its trillion-dollar mining operations and driving scientists past the edges of theory and reason. However, when rocks shake off their ancient dust and begin to roll seemingly of their own volition carving canals as they converge to form a towering structure amid the ruddy terrain, Lt. Jain and her JSC team realize that their routine geological survey of a Martian cave system is anything but. The only clues they have stem from the emissions of a mysterious blue radiation, and a 300-year-old journal that is writing itself.

At the turn of the 22nd century, scientists make a breakthrough in human spaceflight. Through a revolutionary method known as somaforming, astronauts can survive in hostile environments off Earth using synthetic biological supplementations. With the fragility of the body no longer a limiting factor, human beings are at last able to journey to neighboring exoplanets long known to harbor life. A team of these explorers, Ariadne O’Neill and her three crewmates, are hard at work in a planetary system 15 light-years from Sol, on a mission to ecologically survey four habitable worlds.

A wicked snowstorm had blown in from the north and the roads were a mess. Recently split from his one-time girlfriend, there was now nothing holding Cameron Decker here in the little backwater mountain town of Larksburg Stand. Time to get back to college, back to Stanford. Seeing a guy knee-deep in slush at the side of the road, he pulled to the curb and waved him over. The guy smacked his head getting in - knocked his watch cap askew. Only then did Cameron notice - noticed that the individual couldn't possibly be human. Cameron decided to help his stranded passenger - a decision he'd soon come to regret. Along with his rust-bucket of a pickup truck, he was soon heading deep into space aboard an interstellar spacecraft. After the vessel crash-landed onto an alien world, he would now have to contend with a murderous droid and a slew of strange alien life forms.

The world holds its breath as the colossal asteroid 2011 AG5 hurtles towards the Earth. As humanity is faced with extinction, archaeologist Sarah Morgan is in a race against time to uncover a secret that has been buried for millennia: that an advanced ancestor once populated the Earth. As Sarah travels across the continents in search of the truth, she discovers there are those that will kill to protect this most ancient of secrets....

On June 30, 1908, an object fell from the sky, releasing more energy than a thousand Hiroshima bombs. A Siberian forest was flattened, but the strike left no significant crater. The anomaly came to be known as the Tunguska Event, and scientists have never agreed whether it was the largest meteor strike in recorded history - or something else. Alien artifacts have been uncovered since the 1908 event, and a new star drive is discovered.

Nothing quite prepared telepath Larry Greenberg for mind-to-mind contact with an alien. In the interest of science, Larry tapped the mind of Kzanol - and that was his first mistake. Kzanol was a thrint from a distant galaxy. He had been trapped on Earth in a time-stasis field for two billion years. Now he was on the loose, and Larry knew everything he was thinking. Thrints lived to plunder and enslave lesser planets - and what the planet Kzanol had in mind was Earth!

In this collection of short stories, New York Times best-selling author Jack Campbell explores what kinds of problems mankind might face as our horizons expand.

Welcome to the Tora star system, home of the spectacular Cardinal-4 space station overlooking Amulen and Banor, twin worlds that share the same orbit. One visit and you'll understand why this station is the pinnacle of Torian achievement and a wonder of the Erobian Sphere.

On humanity's first extra-solar mission, the exploration vessel Magellan, or, as she prefers, "Maggie", discovers an alien artifact. Deciding that finding advanced alien life is too important to ignore, Captain Allison Ridgeway chooses to return to Earth while ordering her crew to reverse engineer technology far beyond anything back home. Meanwhile, at mission control, the governments struggle to maintain the existence of aliens a secret while also combating bureaucracy, the military industrial complex, and everyone else who wants a piece of what could skyrocket humanity into a new technological age.

On August 25, 2012, the Voyager 1 probe crossed into interstellar space. It contained a "golden record" with sounds, pictures, and greetings from Earth. On March 15, 2013, NASA received a transmission from the spacecraft that said: "Hello. We received your golden record. Let's meet." Now, internationally best-selling author B.C. Chase invites you on a daring first contact mission into deep space with five intrepid astronauts, one spunky cosmonaut, and a 75-year-old truck driver.

A wicked snowstorm had blown in from the north and the roads were a mess. Recently split from his one-time girlfriend, there was now nothing holding Cameron Decker here in the little backwater mountain town of Larksburg Stand. Time to get back to college, back to Stanford. Seeing a guy knee-deep in slush at the side of the road, he pulled to the curb and waved him over. The guy smacked his head getting in - knocked his watch cap askew. Only then did Cameron notice - noticed that the individual couldn't possibly be human. Cameron decided to help his stranded passenger - a decision he'd soon come to regret. Along with his rust-bucket of a pickup truck, he was soon heading deep into space aboard an interstellar spacecraft. After the vessel crash-landed onto an alien world, he would now have to contend with a murderous droid and a slew of strange alien life forms.

You think you’re struggling to find your place in the universe? Consider poor old Colin Douglass, a terminally ill insurance agent who awakens from centuries in cryogenic freeze to find Earth is a devastated wasteland. Now, he’s being pursued by a homicidal interstellar tourist board, and calculating insurance dividends is as outdated as making stone axes. Sci-fi-hating technophobe Colin seeks a cure for his illness in this strange new galaxy where toilets talk back, and door handles are a long-forgotten relic.

It's been over a century since three generation ships escaped an Earth dominated by artificial intelligence in pursuit of a life on a distant planet orbiting Tau Ceti. Now, it’s nearly Braking Day, when the ships will begin their long-awaited descent to their new home. Born on the lower decks of the Archimedes, Ravi Macleod is an engineer-in-training, set to be the first of his family to become an officer in the stratified hierarchy aboard the ship. While on a routine inspection, Ravi sees the impossible: a young woman floating, helmetless, out in space.

They reach the shore, barks and joyful laughter swallowed by the crashing waves. Suddenly, an odd-looking object in the sky draws closer. As dark clouds loom, a flicker of unease crosses Scotty’s face. Before he can react, an eerie glow surrounds both boy and dog. In an instant, they vanish without a trace. Now aboard an alien ship, Scotty faces a reality far from home. The walls breathe, the corridors pulse and his fear deepens.

Living and slaving in Fill City One, you get used to the smell. We call it the Everpresent Stink. But every once in a while, on a spring day with a breeze, it clears away enough to remind us that there is something more out there. Most Fillers' wildest dreams would be just to get past the walls and live in the mainland. But my dream? It’s a little bigger. I’m going to Mars.

Higgens has the best job in the galaxy. Except for the fact that he’s technically a janitor on a galactic mining vessel. When he discovers an unknown alien species, his world gets turned upside down. He will have to find unlikely allies if he is going to save his new friend and help her build a new home. The Mimic and the Space Engineer boxed set contains the first three books in the Space Shifter Chronicles. If you like fast-paced space adventures with engaging, and quirky, characters, you will love Higgens, Mimic, and their adventures in space.

When Jack Harrison climbed down the short ladder from the airlock and stepped onto the debris covered soil, the ground crackled with the sound of dried leaves and twigs.

Humans call them Monument-Makers. An unknown race, they left stunning alien statues scattered on distant planets throughout the galaxy, encoded with strange inscriptions that defy translation. Searching for clues about the Monument-Makers, teams of 23rd century linguists, historians, engineers and archaeologists have been excavating the enigmatic alien ruins on a number of planets, uncovering strange, massive false cities made of solid rock. But their time is running out.

NASA finally made it. The very first human has just set foot on the surface of our neighbor planet. This is the start of a long research expedition that sent four scientists into space. But the four astronauts of the NASA crew are not the only ones with this destination. The privately financed "Mars for Everyone" initiative has also targeted the Red Planet. Twenty men and women have been selected to live there and establish the first extraterrestrial settlement.

The crew of Moonbase Columbus makes an amazing discovery on the far side of the Moon - a massive alien structure is erecting itself, built up atom by atom by living machines, microscopically small, intelligent, and unstoppable, consuming everything they touch. The mysterious structure begins to expand and take shape, and its creators begin to multiply. Is this the first strike in an alien invasion from the stars? Or has human nanotechnology experimentation gone awry, triggering an unexpected infestation?

Doctor Benjamin Schröder was far from a man of action. In fact, he was a history teacher - chairman of the Castle Rock University history department - and if his life wasn't perfect, it was close. Until, that is the discussion of his star student Elzbietá Abramowski's dissertation on Operation Oz, the Pacific Allies' invasion of Vladivostok, was brutally interrupted. The psychotic episode that turned his entire world upside down struck with absolutely no warning, and it was more terrifying than anything he should have been able to imagine.

At the turn of the 22nd century, scientists make a breakthrough in human spaceflight. Through a revolutionary method known as somaforming, astronauts can survive in hostile environments off Earth using synthetic biological supplementations. With the fragility of the body no longer a limiting factor, human beings are at last able to journey to neighboring exoplanets long known to harbor life. A team of these explorers, Ariadne O’Neill and her three crewmates, are hard at work in a planetary system 15 light-years from Sol, on a mission to ecologically survey four habitable worlds.

Space travel just isn't what it used to be. With the invention of quantum teleportation, space heroes aren't needed anymore. When one particularly unlucky ex-adventurer masquerades as famous pilot and hate figure Jacques McKeown, he's sucked into an ever-deepening corporate and political intrigue. Between space pirates, adorable deadly creatures, and a missing fortune in royalties, saving the universe was never this difficult!

When humanity reaches for the stars, our probes are destroyed. They crash into an incredibly advanced piece of technology: a massive force-field. Unknown beings have placed a barrier around our star and planets, enclosing us within. We’re locked inside a Great Sphere. Was this invisible obstacle built to imprison us - or to protect us? No one knows the truth, but it soon becomes clear the barrier has leaks. Aliens infiltrate and try to sabotage our efforts to escape our cage.

What lies on the dark side of the moon could change the course of humanity forever. When a Chinese rover discovers an alien technology on the dark side of the moon, it is up to Richard "Rock" Crandon and his NASA team of scientists and engineers to devise a way to return before the Chinese and Russians. Forced to deal with bureaucratic oversight and a complex team of personalities, Rock Crandon pushes his team to their limits.