Category: Sciencefiction

The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson

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The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson
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A man ventures into a world deprived of sunlight in this early-twentieth-century dystopian fantasy masterpiece. 

“One of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written.” —H. P. Lovecraft

The sun went out centuries ago. A vestige of mankind still clings to life, hidden from Earth’s frozen surface in an underground fortress called the Last Redoubt. But this tenuous refuge is under siege by enormous spiders, “Abhuman” creatures, and “Watchers” from another dimension. With this host of horrors lurking just beyond, leaving the Last Redoubt is unthinkable.

When a man receives a telepathic message from a long-forgotten Redoubt, he recognizes the woman’s voice as a love from another lifetime. To rescue her, he will risk his life—or worse—as he ventures into the Night Land. First published in 1912, William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land is a pioneering work of sci-fi fantasy.

The Ross 248 Project

The Ross 248 Project
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HUMANITY’S HOPE FOR A BETTER FUTURE AT A NEW STAR

A bold journey into a future where humanity and its children travel to a new star where they must overcome the unexpected challenges on the exoplanets that await them—or die trying.

Traveling to the stars will be difficult, but not, perhaps, the most difficult part. What about when we get to another star? What then? Will the planets be immediately habitable? Not likely. Will those who undertook the journey be able to easily turn around and come home if they don’t find “Earth 2.0?” Almost certainly not. Therein the lies the challenge: Finding worlds that are potentially habitable and then taking the time, perhaps centuries, to make them compatible with Earth life. They will encounter mysteries and unexpected challenges, but the human spirit will endure. Join this diverse group of science fiction writers and scientists as they take up the challenge of The Ross 248 Project.

Contributors:

USAF General Steven Kwast
Patrick Chiles
Stephanie Osborn
Brent Ziarnick
Laura Montgomery
Daniel M. Hoyt & E. Marshall Hoyt
Matthew Williams
D. J. Butler
Robert E. Hampson
Monalisa Foster
J. L. Curtis
K. S. Daniels
Les Johnson & Ken Roy

The Founder Effect

The Founder Effect
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AWARD-WINNING AND BEST-SELLING AUTHORS CONTRIBUTE NEW STORIES: All-new fiction from Dragon Award winner and New York Times best-selling author David Weber, Dragon Award nominee D.J. Butler, best seller Jody Lynn Nye, indie best sellers Chris Kennedy and Mark Wandrey, and more. Also featuring an introduction by multi-award-winning and New York Times best-selling author Larry Correia.

It is 2185 CE. Humans now live throughout the Solar System, but their most ambitious adventure is about to begin. The starship Victoria will carry over 10,000 colonists to a new world outside the Solar System. The larger-than-life exploits of those colonists will become legendary. The colonists will build a new civilization, and the actions of a few individuals will become famous—and infamous—forever marking their new colony with the Founder Effect.

Contributors:
Larry Correia, Mark H. Wandrey, Les Johnson, Christopher L. Smith, David Weber, Daniel M. Hoyt, Brad R. Torgersen, Monalisa Foster, Sarah A. Hoyt, Chris Kennedy, Vivienne Raper, Jody Lynn Nye, Brent M. Roeder, Catherine L. Smith, Philip Wohlrab, D.J. Butler

About Stellaris: People of the Stars, co-edited by Robert E. Hampson:

[A] thought-provoking look at a selection of real-world challenges and speculative fiction solutions. . . . Readers will enjoy this collection that is as educational as it is entertaining.”—Booklist

“This was an enjoyable collection of science fiction dealing with colonizing the stars. In the collection were several gems and the overall quality was high.”—Tangent

Threading the Needle

Threading the Needle
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A NEW START—OR AN OLD CALLING?

Talia Merritt, a former military sniper once known as Death’s Handmaiden, is a woman haunted by her past. Her cybernetic arm and her phantom—the implant that allows her to control it—serve as a constant reminder of what she’s lost. But Talia is hoping to leave her past and her reputation behind and start anew on the colony world of Goruden, a hardscrabble planet of frontier-minded people seeking a better life. And she’s finally earned enough to start to make that dream come true.

In the bucolic town of Tsuri, she interviews for a job as a marksmanship instructor for local bigwig Signore Ferran Contesti. But Contesi is not what he seems. A recent arrival on Goruden, he hopes to mold the colony world in his own image—an image at odds with the unencumbered life free of government and corporate meddling that Talia has come to find.

Soon, Talia finds herself thrust into the start of another conflict. Talia desperately wants to stay out of it, but she may not have that luxury.

With the fate of a planet and her own peace of mind hanging in the balance, Talia must decide whether or not to once again take up the mantle of Death’s Handmaiden. . . .

At the publisher’s request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).

Praise for Monalisa Foster:
“I cannot overly recommend this 40-odd page jewel. It’s a painful piece, but that’s its strength, really. And it is also a story which literally CANNOT be told too strongly or too often.” —David Weber on “Pretending to Sleep”

Monalisa Foster won life’s lottery when she escaped communism in Romania and became an unhyphenated American citizen. Her works tend to explore themes of freedom, liberty, and personal responsibility. Despite her degree in physics, she’s worked in several fields, including engineering and medicine.

The Heads of Cerberus by Francis Stevens (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics)

The Heads of Cerberus by Francis Stevens (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics)
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This Halcyon Classics ebook is Francis Stevens’ (Gertrude Barrows Bennett) dystopian future history novel THE HEADS OF CERBERUS.

After inhaling a strange gray dust, the protagonist awakes in the year 2118 in a dystopian Philadelphia–a totalitarian city where every aspect of life is rigidly regulated by the state.

Gertrude Barrows Bennett (1883–1948) (who published under the pseudonym Francis Stevens) was the first major female writer of fantasy and science fiction in the United States. Bennett wrote a number of highly acclaimed fantasies in the 1910s and early 1920s, and has been called “the woman who invented dark fantasy.” While she lived until 1948, Bennett evidently published no new works after 1923.

This unexpurgated edition contains the complete text with errors and omissions corrected.

Shapers of Worlds: Science fiction & fantasy by authors featured on the Aurora Award-winning podcast The Worldshapers

Shapers of Worlds: Science fiction & fantasy by authors featured on the Aurora Award-winning podcast The Worldshapers
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Within these pages lie eighteen stories, from eighteen worlds shaped by some of today’s best writers of science fiction and fantasy, all guests on the Aurora Award-winning podcast The Worldshapers during its first year. There are original stories from Tanya Huff, Seanan McGuire, David Weber, L.E. Modesitt, Jr., John C. Wright, D.J. Butler, Christopher Ruocchio, Shelley Adina, and Edward Willett, plus fiction by John Scalzi, David Brin, Julie Czerneda, Joe Haldeman, Gareth L. Powell, Dr. Charles E. Gannon, Fonda Lee, Derek Kunsken, and Thoraiya Dyer. Some are international bestsellers

. Among them are winners and nominees for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Aurora, Sunburst, Aurealis, Ditmar, British Science Fiction Association, and Dragon Awards. Some have been writing for decades, others are at the beginning of their careers. All have honed their craft to razor-sharpness.

A teenage girl finds something strange in the middle of the Canadian prairie. An exobiologist tries to liberate a giant alien enslaved on its homeworld by humans. The music of the spheres becomes literal for an Earth ship far from home. A superhero league interviews for new members. Strangers share a drink on a world where giant starships fall. Two boys, one a werewolf, one a mage, get more than they bargained for when they volunteer to fight an evil Empire. A man with amnesia accepts a most unusual offer. A young woman finds unexpected allies as she tries to win a flying-machine race in steampunk London . . .Ranging from boisterous to bleak, from humorous to harrowing, from action-filled to quiet and meditative; taking place in alternate pasts, the present day, the far, far future, and times that never were; set on Earth, in the distant reaches of space, in fantasy worlds, and in metaphysical realms, each of these stories is as unique as its creator. And yet, they all showcase one thing: the irrepressible need of human beings to create, to imagine, to tell stories.To shape worlds.

Sword and Planet (short stories collection)

Sword and Planet (short stories collection)
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John Carter and Dejah Thoris, Flash Gordon and Dale Arden, the Lensmen, the Galactic Patrol, where are you now?

This anthology sets out to revive the spirit of former days of planetary romance, of square jawed rocketeers and raiders of the spaceways, killer robots and space princesses, beastmen and barbarians; from the desert cities of Mars to the reptile infested jungles of lost worlds that time forgot…

The Best of Jim Baen’s Universe

The Best of Jim Baen's Universe
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Astounding Tales! (Also Amazing and Astonishing!)

Tell the truth: you flat-out love science fiction and fantasy. Time travel. Space opera. Alternate history. Doesn’t matter. What you love is the story. The great idea. The adventure and action. That good old-fashioned science fiction staple, the Sense of Wonder.

We know exactly how you feel. Here’s the best of the best: new science fiction tales told by the likes of David Drake, Gregory Benford, Gene Wolfe, Esther Friesner, Mike Resnick, John Barnes, and L. E. Modesitt, Jr. The list of award-winning story-tellers and brilliant new talent goes on and on. More important: here are stories that grip you. Transport you. Expand your universe. Make you late for important appointments like bedtime and supper!

Edited by New York Times best-seller and creator of the hugely-popular “Ring of Fire” series, Eric Flint, a master story-teller in his own right, these tales are all taken from the e-pages of Jim Baen’s Universe, the new standard in science fiction storytelling created and inspired by publisher and editor Jim Baen, whose nose for a great story made him a science fiction legend!

see also The Best of Jim Baen’s Universe II 

BattleTech Legends: Decision at Thunder Rift

BattleTech Legends: Decision at Thunder Rift
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THE EPIC FIRST NOVEL OF THE LEGENDARY SCIENCE FICTION SERIES…

Thirty meters tall, seventy tons of quick-striding death and destruction, the armored war machines called BattleMechs are the front line forces of the crumbling star empire locked in the horror of the endless Succession Wars. Their pilots are MechWarriors, 31st-Century knights riding armored machines powerful enough to take a city apart.

Grayson Death Carlyle had been training to be a MechWarrior since he was 10 years old, but his graduation came sooner than expected. With his friends and family dead and his father’s regiment destroyed, young Grayson finds himself stranded on a world turned hostile. Now he must learn the hardest lesson of all: it takes more than a BattleMech to make a MechWarrior…

But to claim that title, all Grayson has to do is go out and capture one of those giant killing machines…if it doesn’t kill him first.

ABOUT BATTLETECH: Decision at Thunder Rift is one of the first of more than 100 novels set in the BattleTech universe, a 31st-century setting of constant war between planets, nations, and peoples. A ‘Mech is a 12-meter-tall, 100-ton walking war machine. Only another ‘Mech can face one. Mercenary armies battle for pay, for honor, and for causes innumerable.

Deep Space Accountant (The Sphere of Influence)

Deep Space Accountant (The Sphere of Influence)
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Could this be the worst job interview in the entire history of the universe? Possibly. So when Elton D Philpotts lands his dream Space Corps accountancy job he can’t help wondering how it happened. And why.
Somebody in the Space Corps must need him, and they need him bad.

But the work is dull; nothing like the glamour job he expected. Until he sees things he should not have seen: A hidden ledger, dodgy accounting transactions, bogus gate receipts.

And when a whole starship disappears, who are they going to blame?
A frantic race across the Sphere of Influence takes Elton and his hapless band of followers into adventure and dangers none of them could ever have imagined.