In 1954, the Swedish government ordered the construction of the world’s largest particle accelerator. The facility was complete in 1969, located deep below the pastoral countryside of Mälaröarna. The local population called this marvel of technology The Loop. These are its strange tales.

The colony on Haven-7 has gone rogue. The colonists have split into two factions: the Techborn and the Dusters. The Techborn have always ruled the planet. They control the remnants of the crashed starship that brought humanity to this new world. The Dusters… they eat Techborn dust. Now, the Techborn strength is waning. Their weapons are getting old, and radiation leaks from the aging reactors have created mutations. Some of these, like their brutish troops known as Tuskers, have proven useful—but others are abominations.

The Pandominion: a political and trading alliance of a million worlds–except that they’re really just the one world, Earth, in many different realities. And when an AI threat arises that could destroy everything the Pandominion has built, they'll eradicate it by whatever means necessary, no matter the cost to human life.

Go to war or go to jail. For small-time street hustler Cam Alvarez, the choice is simple.... He has no family, no friends, no place in the world...nothing to lose. When his latest con results in the death of a cartel hit man, Cam opts to join the Marines and leave Earth to fight a vicious alien enemy. Drafted into the Marine Drop-Troopers, Cam discovers there’s one thing he’s even better at than running street-con games, and that’s killing the enemy.

A vast conflict, one that has encompassed hundreds of worlds and solar systems, appears to be finally at an end. A conscripted soldier is beginning to consider her life after the war and the family she has left behind. But for Scur - and for humanity - peace is not to be.

Take a trip to a terrifying carnival and uncover the secrets within, solve a mysterious puzzle box and await your reward, join a travelling circus and witness the strangest ventriloquist act you've ever seen. In this follow-up to the bestselling Cursed: An Anthology, you'll unearth curses old and new. From a very different take on Snow White, to a new interpretation of The Red Shoes, the best in fantasy spin straw into gold, and invite you into the labyrinth.

Equipped with the entirety of human knowledge, a sentient ship is launched on a last-ditch journey to find a new home for civilization. Trillions of miles. Tens of thousands of years. In the space between, the AI has plenty of time to think about life, the vastness of the universe, everything it was meant to do, and—with a perspective created but not limited by humans—what it should do.

The planet of Kiln is where the tyrannical Mandate keeps its prison colony, and for inmates, the journey there is always a one-way trip. One such prisoner is Professor Arton Daghdev, xeno-ecologist and political dissident. Soon after arrival, he discovers that Kiln has a secret. Humanity is not the first intelligent life to set foot there. In the midst of a ravenous, chaotic ecosystem are the ruins of a civilization, but who were the vanished builders and where did they go?

Adventurers journey into the foreboding unknown regions of outer space in these two classic science fiction tales from the Hugo and Nebula Award winning author.

New York Times best-selling and Hugo Award-winning author John Scalzi gift-wraps 15 short takes on the holiday season - interviews with holiday notables, "informational" articles about TV specials and Christmas carols, short stories and poems, and even a couple of nods to Thanksgiving and New Year’s - and puts them all into a stocking stuffer-sized package that makes the perfect gift for friends, family, or yourself.

The year is 2108, and the North American Commonwealth is bursting at the seams. For welfare rats like Andrew Grayson, there are only two ways out of the crime-ridden and filthy welfare tenements: You can hope to win the lottery and draw a ticket on a colony ship settling off-world...or you can join the service. With the colony lottery a pipe dream, Andrew chooses to enlist in the armed forces for a shot at real food, a retirement bonus, and maybe a ticket off Earth.

Humanity is running out of options. Habitable planets are being destroyed as quickly as they're found and Naira Sharp thinks she knows the reason why. The all-powerful Mercator family has been controlling the exploration of the universe for decades, and exploiting any materials they find along the way under the guise of helping humanity's expansion. But Naira knows the truth, and she plans to bring the whole family down from the inside.

Five years ago, the US Space Force became a reality. And while those writing the checks took things very seriously, the other military branches did not. As a result, Space Force was populated by undesirables. My name is Captain Ethan Stone, a decorated member of SEAL Team Six turned Space Force "recruit". Flash forward five years and between tenses. President West is in office. Power has shifted. And Space Force is defunded. With just a handful of us still living on base, we find ourselves being evicted. But before all of us can leave, aliens invade.

Beyond the Aquila Rift: It's shorthand for the trip no one ever hopes to make by accident. The one that will screw up the rest of your life, the one that creates the ghosts you see haunting the shadows of company bars across the whole Bubble. Men and women ripped out of time, cut adrift from families and lovers by an accident of an alien technology we use but rarely comprehend.

Renowned historian Max Hastings recreates one of the most thrilling events of World War II: Operation Pedestal, the British action to save its troops from starvation on Malta - an action-packed tale of courage, fortitude, loss, and triumph against all odds.

After damaging climate change, humanity is divided, torn into the technophobic nature-worshippers on Earth and the banished children of science on the new worlds. Jaruss awakens, drifting 300 light-years from Earth, trapped, memoryless, and alone. Who is he, where does he come from, and what are these recurring nightmares that trouble his sleep? To find out, he must outwit an efficiency-obsessed AI and join the dangerous crew of the stealth ship, Pangolin.

For some it’s an opportunity. For others it’s a moment to question their faith: In God, in science, in everything. Still others try to keep the world running in the face of absurdity and uncertainty. And then there are the billions looking to the sky and wondering how a thing that was always just there is now... something absolutely impossible.

It’s Sunset Station! Where astronaut Kris Standard and her crack team of fellow astronauts work tirelessly to bring us the future of space travel for a fraction of the cost! On Sunset Station! cost-effectiveness is baked into in the design specs! Really! “Ask not how to do it, ask how to do it for less” is our motto! When it comes to Sunset Station! keeping six people alive in space on a budget is no problem! Just as long as everything continues to work exactly right! Because if something goes wrong…? Dear God, nothing better go Sunset Station! Nothing ever goes wrong! Ever!

Dive into the captivating world of Frank Herbert beyond Dune with this immersive audiobook edition of 'Missing Link.' A brilliant exploration of humanity's evolution and potential, Herbert's masterful novella challenges listeners with profound questions about our species' future. Follow the expedition of Lewis Orne as he investigates an emerging civilization that may hold the key to mankind's next evolutionary step.

It is the beginning of 1918, the last year of the greatest war in human history, to date. All the belligerents stagger on their feet. Starvation is an ever present reality, while disease waits in the wings. In Russia, no longer a belligerent but, instead, rapidly descending into civil war and chaos, a lone family—Father, Mother, four beautiful young girls, and a brave but sickly boy—await their own fate, shivering and hungry in the dark, hoping and praying for salvation. Their relatives in England have turned their backs. The guards set over them do little but torment them.

Stories of the Trader and his convoy of war wagons endure in the badlands of post-holocaust America. A dealer in Deathlands' most precious commodities - weapons and fuel - Trader takes note of a young Ryan Cawdor. Surrounded in myth and rumor, Trader sets into motion the beginnings of legend at a place called Virtue Lake...At Spearpoint, the ultimate redoubt housing a valuable cache of predark technology, two opposing wills clash. Levi Shabazz intends to carve his own empire out of the vast wastelands, but the Trader intends to thwart him and end his bloody siege of power.

London is abuzz as the beautiful Ray Marcable’s final shows at the West End approach. Before she jets off to perform in America everyone in the city is clamoring to see her once more. The lines wrap around the street and crowds are tightly knit together. One fateful night, just as he is nearing the box office, a man drops to the ground—dead. Although a knife protrudes from his back and there were countless potential witnesses, no one knows the poor man and no one saw who did the deadly deed. It is up to Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard to solve this case.

The ex-planet Pluto has a few choice words about being thrown out of the solar system. A listing of alternate histories tells you all the various ways Hitler has died. A lawyer sues an interplanetary union for dangerous working conditions. And four artificial intelligences explain, in increasingly worrying detail, how they plan not to destroy humanity. Welcome to Miniatures: The Very Short Fiction of John Scalzi.

En route to far-off stars, Toby’s consciousness has a crucial mission: inhabit his clone long enough to repair a spaceship, then zip back to Earth. He’s done it a million times, more or less. OK, twelve times. It should only take a few hours. Until he wakes up in jail. And he’s not alone. His fellow prisoners: a cadre of alien soldiers. His prison: an ethereal boundary that will imprison their spirits until their bodies die. His jailers can’t even see him. But their pet cat (er, iguana cat?) can—and it’s got a serious case of the zoomies.

Everyone aboard Kilgore Station is living their best life. Everyone except for Johnny Gomez. While humans, the augmented, and aliens of all shapes and sizes enjoy exotic cuisine on the dining deck or gamble away their credits on the entertainment deck, Johnny is elbow-deep in oily, black, alien excrement. A "space broom" custodian for the entire station. This was obviously not the life Johnny dreamt of.

The question is, how can you tell the President's brain is missing? And are we sure we need it back?

A human diplomat creates an interstellar incident when he kills an alien diplomat in a most unusual way. To avoid war, Earth's government must find an equally unusual object: A type of sheep ("The Android's Dream"), used in the alien race's coronation ceremony. To find the sheep, the government turns to Harry Creek, ex-cop, war hero and hacker extraordinaire.

Lainie Eaves has no idea she's descended from shifters. She doesn't even know shifters exist because when she was born human, her grandparents made sure she would never learn the truth about her family. But now they're dead. And she's back in Hideaway Cove to deal with their crumbling old estate—and discover everything that was kept hidden from her. Hideaway Cove is the only safe haven griffin shifter Harrison Galway has ever known—a place where, as a shifter, he can live without hiding what he is. When gorgeous, curvy Lainie arrives in town, he knows at once that she's his fated mate.

In Rip-Off!, 13 of today’s best and most honored writers of speculative fiction face a challenge even they would be hard-pressed to conceive: Pick your favorite opening line from a classic piece of fiction (or even non-fiction) - then use it as the first sentence of an entirely original short story.

Captain Ean Tephe is a man of faith, whose allegiance to his lord and to his ship is uncontested. The Bishopry Militant knows this — and so, when it needs a ship and crew to undertake a secret, sacred mission to a hidden land, Tephe is the captain to whom the task is given....