Showing titles in Hard Science Fiction

Bloomsbury presents Lives of Bitter Rain by Adrian Tchaikovsky, read by David Thorpe. SHORTLISTED FOR THE HUGO AWARD FOR BEST SERIES 2025 City-by-city, kingdom-by-kingdom, the Palleseen have sworn to bring ‘Perfection’ and ‘Correctness’ to an imperfect world. But before these ruthless...

A brilliant scientist has uncovered a secret that threatens humanity's future. Now his girlfriend is missing, and the voices in his head are back. Since losing his daughter, Emma, seven years ago, Pike Shepard has struggled to maintain a normal life for himself in the coastal community of Blackwater. It’s a quiet life, until a beautiful scientist shows up on his doorstep with a desperate plea for help.

Caesar, an undercover operative, enters Carmichael with the briefest of orders from his boss and a countdown on his phone. What will happen when the clock strikes zero? Deputy Amelia Miller is dispatched from a nearby city, and a series of events keeps her around much longer than she'd expected. In the middle of the night, something shifts, and the whole town disappears off the face of the Earth. Who caused the shift, and what lies beyond the veil of their settlement?

Merritt Alder is done with Earth. The planet is polluted and overpopulated, and its people are hungry. Earth's first colony, Galena, is a pioneer world 10,000 light-years away. It has clean air, unpolluted water, and continents of arable land. Anyone can start a new life…if they can get there. For Merritt, the journey is only the beginning. Obstacles arise every step of the way, forcing compromise and sacrifice. And not everyone on his ship is pure of heart.

Household gizmos with a mind of their own. the wrong kind of cold calls. And the creeping suspicion that none of this is real. Reality, and Other Stories is a gathering of deliciously chilling entertainments - stories to be listened to as the evenings draw in and the days are haunted by uncanny technologies and the absurd horrors of modern life. 

Murderbot wasn’t programmed to care. So, its decision to help the only human who ever showed it respect must be a system glitch, right? Having traveled the width of the galaxy to unearth details of its own murderous transgressions, as well as those of the GrayCris Corporation, Murderbot is heading home to help Dr. Mensah—its former owner (protector? friend?)—submit evidence that could prevent GrayCris from destroying more colonists in its never-ending quest for profit. But who’s going to believe a SecUnit gone rogue? And what will become of it when it’s caught?

When Streaker - the first starship designed and crewed by dolphins - discovers a derelict ancient armada with evidence of the first sentient species ever, she sets off a war between dozens of galactic races eager to use the information for their own advancement.

Throughout the universe, intelligence is a rare and fragile commodity - a fleeting glimmer in the long night of cosmic history. That Earth should harbour not just one but two intelligent species at the same time defies the odds. That these species, so unalike - and yet so complementary - should forge an alliance that kindled a civilisation defies logic. But time is endless and everything comes to pass eventually....

On a cold spring night in 1952, a huge meteorite fell to earth and obliterated much of the East Coast of the US, including Washington, DC. The ensuing climate cataclysm will soon render the Earth inhospitable for humanity, as the last such meteorite did for the dinosaurs. This looming threat calls for a radically accelerated effort to colonize space and requires a much-larger share of humanity to take part in the process. Elma York’s drive to become the first lady astronaut is so strong that even the most dearly held conventions of society may not stand a chance against her.

Travel even further through space and time in the stunning sequel to NOUMENON – a tale of exploration, adventure, and science. In 2125, the interstellar convoy NOUMENON set out on a voyage that changed humanity’s place in the universe forever. Three millenia later, the convoy’s remaining...

Rapid colonization of the moon is pushing both national space agencies and powerful corporations to negotiate a New Lunar Accord in an effort to prevent escalating conflicts over valuable resources and territory. But hope that this treaty will bring stability to the nascent lunar civilization is suddenly dashed when a high-energy solar storm causes a cascade of destruction to the vast satellite constellations that orbit Earth. Now it’s only a matter of weeks before the ever-increasing debris cloud makes travel back to the home planet impossible.

Glasgow, 2025. Dr Amanda Maclean is called to treat a young man with a mild fever. Within three hours, he dies. The mysterious illness sweeps through the hospital with deadly speed. This is how it begins. The victims are all men. Dr Maclean raises the alarm, but the sickness spreads to every corner of the globe. Threatening families. Governments. Countries. Can they find a cure before it’s too late? Will this be the story of the end of the world - or its salvation?

Star humans were engineered to exist within the mantle of a star, mere tools of their Earth-evolved makers in a war against the Xeelee, owners of the universe. Stephen Baxter's third novel in his magnificent Xeelee Sequence is an exotic and endearing story of an abandoned people. Abandoned to...

In DNA, Ell’s five-year-old son Zage has become interested in the effects of certain genes on obesity. He’s obtained permission to do research in a university lab where he hopes to test some of his ideas. Work is being done to evaluate the possibility of terraforming the planet Mars by using Ell’s port technology to bring in water, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen from various other worlds in the solar system.

Survival hangs in the balance for Renton Hicks and his fellow colonists at Moon Base Delta. With a tight blockade being imposed by the Xilinex Corporation, their supplies are running dangerously low. Hope emerges in the form of a Martian evacuation ship carrying genetic engineering technology that could potentially secure their future. However, getting their hands on it demands not just outwitting Xilinex but also securing assistance from the last vestiges of the SINO power block.

The good news is that you have just awakened into Eternal Life. You are going to live forever. Immortality is a reality. A medical miracle? Not exactly. The bad news is that you are a scrap of electronic code. The world you see around you, the you that is seeing it, has been digitized, scanned, and downloaded into a virtual reality program. You are a Copy that knows it is a copy. The good news is that there is a way out.

Following a successful coup, the leaders of the rebel Midway Star System struggle to forge a government free enough to please its citizens yet strong enough to secure power. But in a world where former rulers have become new foes, an alien threat to humanity may turn old adversaries into uncertain allies. General Artur Drakon knows three words describe someone who confides in a Syndicate CEO: Stupid. Betrayed. Dead. Despite his misgivings, he partnered with another former CEO to overthrow Syndic forces.

His first step... could be his last. Colt is a maverick astronaut who accepts a daring mission to be the first person on Venus. After every other mission to Venus has failed, what could possibly go wrong? Pretty much everything, as it turns out.

Deep space holds secrets… …and one astronomer for NASA has found a big one. But it's not what she thinks. Dr. Melody Adams, a physicist at the Gemini North Observatory, was studying Pluto in the telescope data, and it struck her as odd. The numbers didn't make sense. Could there be an...

Severian is a torturer, born to the guild and with an exceptionally promising career ahead of him...until he falls in love with one of his victims, a beautiful young noblewoman. Her excruciations are delayed for some months and, out of love, Severian helps her commit suicide and escape her fate. For a torturer, there is no more unforgivable act. In punishment he is exiled from the guild and his home city to the distant metropolis of Thrax with little more than Terminus Est, a fabled sword, to his name.