Space First Contact

Born on a forsaken desert planet, Cole Shaw has two options - perish from starvation and disease, or enlist in the New World Republic’s armed forces. He chooses the military. For the first time, he thinks he has a shot at a better life. But survival is not guaranteed. Leading an elite team of mech operators, he is deployed to a frozen planet called Ferrous where dangerous relics of a past war lurk beneath the ice and savage creatures prowl the barren wastelands. Scientists on Ferrous are chasing rumors of godlike technologies buried in the ruins of a long-extinct civilization.

The year is 2164. Humanity has slipped the surly bonds of its golden sun, and prospers as it finds a way across the stars. A new era of exploration dawns, its citizens asking the question eagerly: “Is there anyone out there?” Now, the answer comes suddenly and violently, a surprise attack on a peaceful colony. Deadly conflict, long forgotten by the governments of Man, makes itself known once more. New enemies emerge from the void: children of war, heirs to its terror and splendor. But this foe too has questions to answer, faced as it is with a civilization previously unimagined.

Dr. Renee Caisson knows there are worse things than an attractive man in uniform drafting her into a secret government project—especially when Major Jackson makes it clear that he isn’t bothered by her questionable past. But when her labs come back with decidedly odd results, the Major is forced to come clean over who the government is actually studying. Renee is shocked to learn her subjects are demonic-looking beings who call themselves “Neighbors”—refugees from a dying world, who arrived during the nation-wide solar eclipse.

Daniel Clay fought across the galaxy as a corporate soldier. He left the violence behind for a life of science, raising a family far from the bloodshed of the Corporation. With his wife, Sarah, and son, Michael, he studied the alien Tyr for years, hidden among their complex societies. Their mission should have ended with the arrival of a replacement team. Instead, the Clays’ corporate overlords choose a death sentence: an invasion fleet to conquer the Tyr.

Thirteen hundred gates have opened to solar systems around the galaxy. But as humanity builds its interstellar empire in the alien ruins, the mysteries and threats grow deeper. In the dead systems where gates lead to stranger things than alien planets, Elvi Okoye begins a desperate search to discover the nature of a genocide that happened before the first human beings existed and to find weapons to fight a war against forces at the edge of the imaginable. But the price of that knowledge may be higher than she can pay.

Mars and the Moon have been colonized, piracy runs rampant in the asteroid belts, and a thriving society grows in the depths of space. Humanity prepares to embark upon its greatest journey - the colonization of Alpha Centauri. Then, everything changes. A deep space reconnaissance probe discovers a new Earth-like planet 12 light-years from Earth’s sun. The probe also finds something unusual, something unnerving. A new mission is created, a space fleet is formed, and humanity embarks on unravelling the greatest mystery of all - the origins of life itself.

Firstname Lastname is a no one with nowhere to go, with a name that is the result of an unfortunate clerical error and destined to be one of the only humans on an alien space station. That is, until she sneaks aboard a ship and joins up with a crew of repo men (they are definitely not pirates). Now she's traveling the galaxy "recovering" ships. What could go wrong?

Late in the 26th century, the human race has advanced enough to accidentally trigger the Inhibitors---alien-killing machines designed to detect intelligent life and destroy it. The only hope for humanity lies in the recovery of a secret cache of doomsday weapons---and a renegade named Clavain who is determined to find them. But other factions want the weapons for their own purposes---and the weapons themselves have another agenda altogether.

The once-utopian Chasm City - a domed human settlement on an otherwise inhospitable planet---has been overrun by a virus known as the Melding Plague, capable of infecting any body, organic or computerized. Now, with the entire city corrupted - from the people to the very buildings they inhabit---only the most wretched sort of existence remains. The stakes are raised when Tanner Mirabel's search brings him face to face with a centuries-old atrocity that history would rather forget.

The Year is 2166: To the people of Earth, the universe seemed to be a very lonely place. Astronomers had discovered tens of thousands of planets and many had indications of organic life. SETI had been searching for signals for over 200 years. There had been a few tantalizing bits of radio or radar energy received but nothing was ever proven to be of intelligent origin. But there was an alien civilization out there, in fact, many of them linked together in a Web of Worlds. They were watching us quietly, carefully and patiently. It had long been the prime directive of the Web that no ...

The TDF Marco Polo embarks on its maiden voyage outside Earth's solar system, leading to the discovery of an extinct civilization destroyed by orbital bombardment. Deep underground is a mysterious library of alien secrets.

You can't mistake just anyone for a Phule. When the planet Zenobia is invaded, Captain Willard Phule is made their military advisor. The first priority for Phule's Company: staying out from underfoot of the peaceful, dinosaurlike Zenobians.... But, unbeknownst to the Zenobians, they're getting two Phules for the price of one. A robot double of Phule appears out of nowhere. And only the real Phule knows who the real Phule is....

Collected in one volume is all three books in C. J. Cherryh's epic The Faded Sun trilogy: Kesrith, Shon'jir, and Kutath.

For almost a hundred years, Hadrian Marlowe has served the empire in its war against the Cielcin, a vicious alien race bent on humanity's destruction. Rumors of a new king among the Cielcin have reached the imperial throne. This one is not like the others. It does not raid borderworld territories, preferring precise, strategic attacks on the humans' empire.

Hadrian Marlowe is lost. For half a century, he has searched the farther suns for the lost planet of Vorgossos, hoping to find a way to contact the elusive alien Cielcin. He has not succeeded, and for years has wandered among the barbarian Normans as captain of a band of mercenaries. Determined to make peace and bring an end to nearly 400 years of war, Hadrian must venture beyond the security of the Sollan Empire and among the Extrasolarians who dwell between the stars.

Hadrian Marlowe is trapped. For nearly a century, he has been a guest of the Emperor, forced into the role of advisor, a prisoner of his own legend. But the war is changing. Mankind is losing. The Cielcin are spilling into human space from the fringes, picking their targets with cunning precision. The Great Prince Syriani Dorayaica is uniting their clans, forging them into an army and threat the likes of which mankind has never seen.

High above the windswept plains of Kazakhstan, three astronauts on board a Russian Soyuz capsule begin their reentry. A strange shimmer in the atmosphere, a blinding flash of light, and the capsule vanishes in a blink as though it never existed. Daniel Rice is a government science investigator. Marie Kendrick is a NASA operations analyst. Together, they must track down the cause of the most bizarre event in the history of human spaceflight. They draw on scientific strengths as they plunge into the strange world of quantum physics.

Shifted by quantum entanglement from Earth to an alien planet, military contractor Zander Greaves and his squad would have to adapt—and quickly—if they wanted to live. As they tried to understand what was happening, the stark truth of their new reality thrust itself on the shaken humans. Giant machines of war were attacking an equally humongous bug. And, quite unfortunately, the giant bug had a lot of little friends.

There is fortune to be made across the stars. If it doesn't kill him first. When Deadeye, a hotshot space jockey, is captured by pirates, he decides to join the motley group called the Redshift Runners. Maybe they can help him get rich. These Runners aren’t typical interstellar bandits, however. They risk their lives delivering food and supplies to starving colonies in the outer rim.

The Majority always gets what it wants. Thomas Hill just wishes it didn't want him. There's no way to escape a galactic mob of mind readers, no way for him to blend in with his foster family and other average Americans. Because Thomas invented a way to save his own life. His custom medicine halts the progress of his degenerative neuromuscular disease. Newscasters proclaim him the next Einstein, but mere humans have no idea his bioengineered processing capacity rivals that of a supercomputer. They just think he's smart. However, there are other bioengineered supergeniuses in the Majority.