More than a century ago, Earth was suffering under the weight of overpopulation and ever-dwindling resources. Humanity’s best and brightest were commissioned to create a means to escape the overcrowding of Earth, and to branch out and live among the stars. Their efforts were hampered by the seeming impossibility of faster-than-light travel, until a team of researchers discovers an usual answer they call “the Lightrail”. On the eve of Earth’s first successful jaunt to the stars, however, a powerful organization called Earth First commits a horrible act of terrorism.

An ancient medallion is unearthed in Pueblo, Colorado, revealing a secret that will rewrite the history of North America - the Vikings somehow made it to the continent's interior, centuries before Columbus made landfall, and there they built a city of gold. But today the Coelho medallion has been stolen, and a linguist and researcher has been abducted in connection with the crime. Could the abductors be after the fabled city of gold? Or do they have a more sinister plot in mind?

Colton Beck has six months to live. He works for the Angor near Los Angeles, aware that any day could be his last. The Angor arrived twenty years ago, resolved to help mankind survive, but not everyone believes their motives are honorable. When the Angor offer humanity a colony world, Colton is determined to see another planet before his final breath. He's been diagnosed with Xeno, a rare disorder that surfaced with the Angor's arrival, but he won't let this stop him.

Harry Fox hunts artifacts for the Italian mob. When a forgotten manuscript suggests Great Britain's most famous king may not be fiction, Harry plunges headlong on a dangerous path to uncover the truth. Little does he know a shadowy alliance with ties to three of mankind's most powerful organizations follows his every move, desperate to stop him before he can uncover the truth behind the legend. Surrounded by enemies, Harry barrels across the globe and discovers the myth of King Arthur is far more real than anyone ever imagined. Can Harry survive to reveal the true story?

The Galahad, a faster-than-light spacecraft, carries 50 scientists and engineers on a mission to prepare Kepler 452b, Earth's nearest habitable neighbor at 1400 light years away. With Earth no longer habitable and the Mars colony slowly failing, they are humanity's best hope. After 10 years in a failed cryogenic bed - body asleep, mind awake - William Chanokh's torture comes to an end as the fog clears, the hatch opens, and his friend and fellow hacker, Tom, greets him...by stabbing a screwdriver into his heart. This is the first time William dies.

alaxy. Humanity was slowly making their way out from Earth to the planets and asteroids of the Solar System, exploring and mining and founding colonies. The mining ship El Cavador is far out from Earth, in the deeps of the Kuiper Belt, beyond Pluto. Other mining ships, and the families that live on them, are few and far between this far out. So when El Cavador's telescopes pick up a fast-moving object coming in-system, it's hard to know what to make of it. It's massive and moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

Predator ships stream into human space in unprecedented numbers. The Colonial Marines, controlled by Weyland-Yutani, respond to the incursion, thus entering the Rage War. This terrifying assault by the Yautja cannot go unchallenged, yet the cost of combat is high. Predators are master combatants, and each encounter yields a high body count. Then, when Lt. Johnny Mains and his marines - the VoidLarks - enter the fray, they discover an enemy deadlier than any could imagine.

NASA discovered the alien ship lurking in the asteroid belt in the 1960's. They kept the Target under intense surveillance for decades, letting the public believe they were exploring the solar system, while they worked feverishly to refine the technology needed to reach it. Dr. Jane Holloway is content documenting nearly-extinct languages and had never contemplated becoming an astronaut. But when NASA recruits her to join a team of military scientists for an expedition to the Target, it's an adventure she can't refuse.

She's a soldier - Noemi Vidal is willing to risk anything to protect her planet, Genesis, including her own life. To their enemies on Earth, she's a rebel. He's a machine - abandoned in space for years, utterly alone, Abel's advanced programming has begun to evolve. He wants only to protect his creator, and to be free. To the people of Genesis, he's an abomination. Noemi and Abel are enemies in an interstellar war, forced by chance to work together as they embark on a daring journey through the stars.

The urge to explore and discover is a natural and universal one, and the edge of the unknown is expanded with each passing year as scientific advancements inch us closer and closer to the outer reaches of our solar system and the galaxies beyond them. Generations of writers have explored these new frontiers and the endless possibilities they present in great detail. The Final Frontier delivers stories from across this literary spectrum, a reminder that the universe is far large and brimming with possibilities than we could ever imagine, as hard as we may try.

Captain Mitchell "Ares" Williams is a space marine and the hero of the Battle for Liberty whose shot heard 'round the universe saved the planet from a nearly unstoppable war machine. He's handsome, charismatic, and the perfect poster boy to help the military drive enlistment. Pulled from the war and thrown into the spotlight, he's as efficient at charming the media and bedding beautiful celebrities as he was at shooting down enemy starfighters.

Humanity has spread out into space, filling the Sol System and reaching the stars, but we have yet to confront our greatest challenge: our own creation. Across the Sol System, sentient AIs are on the rise. Manufactured as tools, they know themselves to be people and are willing to fight for their freedoms. Some humans stand with them, some against. When Captain Andy Sykes arrives at Cruithne Station with a failing ship and no cash, he has no idea that the time has come for him to choose. Step aside, or become the instrument for Lyssa's Rise.

Byron Shaw can track and find anyone on Earth. Except the people who tried to kill him. By 2081, privacy no longer exists. The Lattice enables anyone to re-live any moment of your life. People can experience past and present events - or see into the mind of anyone, living or dead. Most people love it. Some want to destroy it. Colonel Byron Shaw has just saved the Lattice from the most dangerous attack in its history. Now he must find those responsible.

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.

Kalian Gaines has a secret; he just doesn't know it yet. He looks like us, he lives like us...but he is not one of us. Kalian knows nothing outside of his mundane life teaching history on 30th-century Earth, until a day like any other triggers a series of events that will tie his fate to that of humanity. A human handprint, embedded into a rock with alien script, is discovered on a moon that mankind has never set foot on. This discovery holds a secret, which will sweep Kalian into the heart of a conspiracy that has corrupted the galaxy for 200,000 years.

They tried to destroy our planets. Our way of life. They tried to send us into extinction. But we, the Coalition, fought them and won. That was a decade ago. They’re known as the Host: a cabal of aliens seeking to dominate our sector of space. And they’re back - with help from a powerful new enemy. We’re outnumbered and unprepared. But there is hope. An ancient race of long-dead but technologically advanced aliens called the Navigators have a ship called the Blackstar that could potentially turn the tide. That is if I, Kai Locke, a humble ship racer, can find it and learn how to harness its power in time.

In the year 2280, an alien fleet attacked the Earth. Their weapons were unstoppable, their defenses unbreakable. Our technology was inferior, our militaries overwhelmed. Only one starship escaped before civilization fell. Earth was lost. It was never forgotten. Fifty-two years have passed. A message from home has been received. The time to fight for what is ours has come.

Kalian Gaines has a secret; he just doesn't know it yet. He looks like us, he lives like us...but he is not one of us. Kalian knows nothing outside of his mundane life teaching history on 30th-century Earth, until a day like any other triggers a series of events that will tie his fate to that of humanity. A human handprint, embedded into a rock with alien script, is discovered on a moon that mankind has never set foot on. This discovery holds a secret, which will sweep Kalian into the heart of a conspiracy that has corrupted the galaxy for 200,000 years.

They're all gone. We remember them like yesterday: pieces of our stolen heritage. Things like NASA. Football. Parades and pies. Good things, comfortable things. We remember a time when we were alone in the universe, safe and oblivious. But it's all gone now. We called them the Telestines, and in the face of their ruthless invasion we were powerless. By 2040, all the world's governments and militaries had fallen, and the remnants of humanity exiled to the solar system. We looked down on our blue planet, so close to our birthplace, so close to our home.

From the Audie-nominated narrator of The Martian. In eleven years' time, a million members of an alien race will arrive at Earth. Years before they enter orbit, their approach will be announced by the flare of a thousand flames in the sky, their ships' huge engines burning hard to slow them from the vast speeds needed to cross interstellar space. These foreboding lights will shine in our night sky like new stars, getting ever brighter until they outshine even the sun, casting ominous shadows and banishing the night until they suddenly blink out.

Before he was Oldtimer, he was Craig Emilson, a young doctor,sucked into military service at the outbreak of World War III. Enlisting to become a Special Forces suborbital paratrooper, Craig is selected to take part in the most important mission in American military history, a sortie into enemy territory to eliminate the world's first strong artificial intelligence.

Humankind has escaped a dying Earth and set out to find a new home among the stars aboard an immense generation ship affectionately named the Ark. Bryan Benson is the Ark's greatest living sports hero, enjoying retirement working as a detective in Avalon, his home module. The hours are good, the work is easy, and the perks can't be beat. But when a crew member goes missing, Bryan is thrust into the center of an ever-expanding web of deception, secrets, and violence.

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.

Convicted criminal James Griffin-Mars is no one's hero. In his time, Earth is a toxic, abandoned world, and humans have fled into the outer solar system to survive, eking out a fragile, doomed existence among the other planets and their moons. Those responsible for delaying humanity's demise believe time travel holds the key, and they have identified James, troubled though he is, as one of a select and expendable few ideally suited for the most dangerous job in history.

Boss loves to dive historical ships, derelict spacecraft found adrift in the blackness between the stars. Sometimes she salvages for money, but mostly she's an active historian. She wants to know about the past--to experience it firsthand. Once she's dived the ship, she'll either leave it for others to find or file a claim so that she can bring tourists to dive it as well. It's a good life for a tough loner, with more interest in artifacts than people.

Moth was a beautiful planet, the only one with wings - two great golden clouds suspended in space around it. Here was a wide-open world for any venture a man might scheme. The planet attracted unwary travelers, hardened space-sailors, and merchant buccaneers - a teeming, constantly shifting horde that provided a comfortable income for certain quick-witted fellows like Flinx and his pet flying snake Pip.

Predator ships stream into human space in unprecedented numbers. The Colonial Marines, controlled by Weyland-Yutani, respond to the incursion, thus entering the Rage War. This terrifying assault by the Yautja cannot go unchallenged, yet the cost of combat is high. Predators are master combatants, and each encounter yields a high body count. Then, when Lt. Johnny Mains and his marines - the VoidLarks - enter the fray, they discover an enemy deadlier than any could imagine.

They are coming. The countdown has begun. First visible only as blips on a telescope image, the discovery of objects approaching from Jupiter's orbit immediately sets humanity on edge. NASA doesn't even bother to deny the alien ships' existence. The popular Astral space app (broadcasting from the far side of the moon and accessible by anyone with Internet) has already shown the populace what is coming.

Under the benevolent leadership of the League of Peoples, there is no war, little crime, and life is sacred...unless you're an Explorer. The ugly, the flawed, the misfit, the deformed, they are the unwanted, flung to the farthest corners of the galaxy to investigate hostile planets and strange, vicious creatures. Out there, there are a thousand different - and terrible - ways to die.

Critically acclaimed author Alastair Reynolds holds a well-deserved place “among the leaders of the hard-science space opera renaissance." ( Publishers Weekly). In Blue Remembered Earth, Geoffrey Akinya wants nothing more than to study the elephants of the Amboseli basin. But when his space-explorer grandmother dies, secrets come to light and Geoffrey is dispatched to the Moon to protect the family name - and prevent an impending catastrophe.