sci fi – space exploration

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Summary: When torn between love and duty, even broken shards can kill. The year is 2293, and the Truth no longer exists. In this future, there are many truths, giving rise to many worlds—but each must be kept separate. Born to protect these truths, Axton Bryce patrols the New Worlds Star System—to observe, participate, and report. But as she learns the rules of each world, she must also hunt those who defy them: the Outliers. While stationed on a nearby planet, Axton meets the charming Ambassador Bray Wilde, sparking memories of a love she thought lost forever. When the ambassador proposes a daring rescue mission, Axton faces a second shot at first love—and an impossible choice between lifelong allegiance . . . and the chance to claim a truth of her own. A blend of Black Mirror and 1984—but with hope—this gripping, heartfelt dystopia will captivate fans of Ancillary Justice and Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers series.

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Summary: Captain Janet Hollander is recalled to duty when XenoCorp loses contact with a remote moonbase—the site of secret experiments with the alien artifact she discovered on her last, disastrous mission. She and a security team arrive at the moon to find the base deserted—but far from lifeless. The artifact is recreating the planetary environment of the extinct alien race who created it—along with its lifeforms, which trap the team and cripple their ship. Now Hollander must return to command to stop a runaway biological process that could end humanity.

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Summary: Peanut butter and chocolate. Cheese and wine. Sex and rock n' roll. History is full of great pairings. Get ready for your new favorite: Lesbians and Space! Join a host of intrepid explorers heading to the outer reaches of the galaxy, exploring planets, space stations, strange new worlds and interesting aliens. Launch into stories that span the cosmos, covering Space Opera, Xenobiology, Space Stations, Adventure, and Spaceships! From spaceship mechanics to intergalactic colony queens, heists, smugglers, gods, and sentient planets, Lesbians in Space explores the galaxy from the unique perspective of the lesfic world, blending the best of sapphic literature with modern sci-fi and space opera tropes. With stories by: Mary Robinette Kowal, Seanan McGuire, Travis Baldree, Emma Newman, MK Hardy, Ashleigh Martin, Nathan Chu, Stewart C Baker, Kayla Whittle, Joel Glover, Caye Marsh, Kira Neu, Jes Honard, S.M. Passmore, Sylvie Althoff, Jasmine Gower, Siena Buchanan, Beáta Fülöp, Danielle Woolhead, J.S. Fields, and Heather Tracy

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Summary: What happens when we lose everything that makes us human? === In the final days of 2025, the world learns its fate: a supermassive black hole, thirty-seven times the mass of Sagittarius A, is barreling toward the Milky Way at a tenth the speed of light. As panic and chaos sweep the globe, scientist Dane Currier and his brilliant team at the University of Washington race against extinction. Their only hope lies in Project Courier—a radical teleportation technology that could offer humanity a second chance on a distant exoplanet. But the path to salvation is fraught with peril. Each breakthrough brings new dangers, from grotesque teleportation failures to a mysterious cognitive affliction spreading across the planet. As governments seize control and society unravels, Dane and his allies must risk everything to perfect a system that could save a chosen few—or doom them to a fate worse than oblivion. The Slide by Aaron Ryan is a pulse-pounding blend of hard science, emotional stakes, bittersweet sacrifice, and existential dread. Follow Dane Currier and his team as they race to perfect a radical teleportation technology, risking everything to escape extinction. With grotesque teleportation failures, a mysterious cognitive affliction, and society unraveling, every page is a fight for survival—and for what it means to be human. === From the creator of the bestselling and award-winning Dissonance alien invasion saga, the Christian dystopian saga THE END, and the 9/11 historical fiction thriller Forecast comes a new science fiction disaster novel about black holes and teleportation technology in fiction. Brace yourself for The Slide: a relentless, high-stakes race against cosmic annihilation. As Earth faces extinction, a desperate team gambles everything on a last-ditch escape. Perfect for fans who love their doomsday stories with brains, heart, and a gut-punch of suspense. Get this black hole disaster thriller before it hits the Milky Way! If you enjoyed Lords of Uncreation by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel, or The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler, you'll enjoy this books about extinction level events.

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Summary: Early in the twenty-second century, many scientists realized that unrelenting global warming would render the Earth uninhabitable within 100 years. Having no viable planet for human migration in the Solar System, the far-sighted Chinese Space Agency plans to send a human expedition to the Earthlike exoplanet Teegarden-B, 12.5 light-years from Earth, to explore it as a potential for humanity to survive. The problem is that no human could survive that long a space voyage with their present technology, thus they decide to clone a human brain into a robot specially designed for space travel and exoplanet exploration. To assure success, they recruit Dr. Victor Wollstone and his wife, Sara Pang, the only people to have successfully written a human brain into a robot body previously, to help them. The mission is fraught with risk as the development team strives to launch it in time to get the data they need to save humanity while they battle anti-brain-cloning activists and anti-Chinese moles and saboteurs, and deal with the growing global panic due to the accelerating collapse of Earth’s ecology. When the expedition does finally make it to the destination planet, the human brain-controlled robot is astounded at what he finds. Can the human race get there and survive?

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Summary: They told him the Lette were monsters. But the truth lies buried on a dead world—and it’s far more terrifying. Commander Zane Renner awakens alone aboard a vast, silent colony ship orbiting the planet Artemis. The crew is gone. The only others aboard are a woman driven to madness—and a Lette, one of the alien race humanity has been at war with for decades. Zane has always believed the Lette started the war. But when he descends to the surface and uncovers the haunting truth behind the colonists’ deaths, everything he thought he knew begins to unravel. A failed alien experiment. A world-spanning mind. A virus that could doom the entire galaxy. And a war that may never have needed to happen. Guided by the being he once called an enemy, Zane must confront a devastating reality: the danger isn’t the Lette. It’s what lies below—and within humanity itself. To stop the threat from spreading, Zane must forge an alliance with the last being he ever thought he could trust. In doing so, he’ll uncover a truth buried beneath generations of lies: the Lette never wanted war. Brothers of Mind is a gripping sci-fi thriller about alien contact, dangerous truths, and the courage to rewrite history. Sometimes the greatest enemy is the lie we’ve lived by. And sometimes the only way forward… is together.

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Summary: A long-dead genius. A hidden invention that could save—or doom—humanity. Can Leif find it before it falls into the wrong hands? The Martian Girl is a myth, some people say, created in the dark years after an apocalyptic global war. Perhaps she was a genius in mathematics and the greatest theoretical physicist since Einstein and Hawking.  She may have made a mathematical breakthrough or a powerful weapon. No one knows for sure. In AD 2726, Leif Grettison, former army ranger and exoplanetary scout, returns from the stars a weary man.  Four and a half centuries have passed since he was last on Earth. Now, statues honor him, and history books extol the almost-accurate legends of Lucky Leif. But all he really wants is a small cottage on a hill with a good view and no neighbors.  (Good luck with that, Leif!) Leif knows nothing about the Martian Girl.  But when he agrees to a simple request, his path leads to a relationship he never expected, two teens nobody wants, and a scheme to revive the Martian Girl’s former home, a dead city on Mars. Suddenly, discovering what the Martian Girl did is the center of Leif’s life. Bringing a city on Mars back to life is hard enough, but some of the team are agents of competing powers, each determined to find what the Martian Girl created. They will resort to anything, even murder, to possess it. If there is a weapon and Leif cannot secure it, his friends will be in danger, the shaky peace on Earth will collapse, and the world may plunge into devastating wars. Can a legend still gripped by his past save our future? Or will the Martian Girl’s invention push humanity over the brink?

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Summary: Half a century before Ray M. Holler sets off for the stars for the first time, a chance encounter near Neptune forever changes not only the course of human history but that of the entire Galaxy. Colonel Milan Pavel is a highly decorated officer in the Visegrád Union Navy, serving his last few months in command of the Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the flagship of the VU’s Third Fleet. When an alien ship appears near Neptune, he initially dismisses it as an elaborate pre-retirement prank by his crew, but he is quickly proven wrong. The situation escalates rapidly as it turns out that the ship is on the run from a powerful enemy who is not far behind. Colonel Pavel has a decision to make: Either follow protocol and leave the aliens to their cruel fate, or risk his ship and crew in an attempt to save them.

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Summary: The fate of Lida looms. Agetha thought her fate was sealed, pushed to the edge of the colony to die. But with the revelation that the biomass is not only intelligent, but sentient, changes to colony are accelerating, threatening its very existence. Those who were controlled by the biomass once again have free will. Now, the human colonists are raising their voices and for the first time really influencing their new home. The planet-wide consciousness is slipping into a crisis of identity, when it doesn’t even have a sense of self. The wilds surrounding the colony are becoming increasingly unstable, and the colonists find themselves divided into those who have been touched by the biomass and those who are still wholly human. Can one small colony survive its inner conflicts as well as the titanic might of an entire planet?

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Summary: A distant star is calling us. Will it end in tears? Could the first contact between humanity and an intelligent species from outer space come at a worse time? The signal arrives when Earth is only beginning to recover from an apocalyptic cyber- and nuclear war.  Transportation is by horse. New construction relies on salvage from ruined cities, and indoor plumbing is a thing of the past. Leif Grettison was an army ranger and then an exoplanetary scout who survived two interstellar missions. He thought he had finally found a home and family to call his own when a rider appeared in town, looking for help to deal with a message received from another star system—a message nobody understands. To Leif, this message is the most important event he can imagine. He wants to learn what it says, who sent it, and have humanity respond to it. It is important enough for him to embark on horseback across what used to be the eastern United States to reach Earthbase, the birthplace of humanity’s former interstellar exploration program. At Earthbase he discovers an insular small town in the wilderness, its inhabitants riven by internal politics and preoccupied with day-to-day survival. Tech is almost nonexistent, and even those who want to respond to the mysterious star signal are not sure how. Worse, Leif’s arrival upsets the precarious balance that exists among the factions vying for control. Can Leif reconnect humanity to the stars, or will he start a civil war? If we do reach out to the stars, will we find the stuff of our dreams…or unleash Earth’s biggest nightmare yet? Will Leif regret the decisions he makes?

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Summary: Cmd. Boone knows he works for the bad guy. He knows the warlord wants to end humankind. And he knows his treachery—hiding the warlord's rival—means death. His plan: escape with the warlord's weapon. But his superiors are catching on, and the rival fleet isn't as receptive as he'd hoped. And worse: the weapon has a reckless agenda of her own. Multi-award winning space opera. Full of page-turning action, epic space battles, twists & biological magic.

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Summary: RISE (noun / verb) Eight definitions to inspire writers around the world, and an unlimited number of possible stories to tell: 1) An upward slope or movement 2) A beginning or origin 3) An increase in amount or number 4) An angry reaction 5) To take up arms 6) To return from death 7) To become heartened or elated 8) To exert oneself to meet a challenge Rise features 300-word speculative flash fiction stories from across the rainbow spectrum, from the minds of the writers of Queer Sci Fi.

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Summary: A damaged ship, a dying shipmate–can she save both? Under attack! The flight back to Hyvilma should have been the easy part for the crew of the Majera–until a deadly ambush by pirates sends them reeling through hyperspace. Now getting to the planet in time is the only way Captain Kitra Yilmaz can save her dying friend. But landing at Hyvilma may be impossible: war has broken out on the Frontier. With illustrations by Hugo Finalist Lorelei Esther.

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Summary: Forty years after landing on Lida, the colony still isn't finished. Agetha has survived many more battles than she anticipated when she first landed on her new home planet. She's older and wiser, has gained family and lost loved ones. And yet her reward for four decades of service is to be pushed to the colony’s outer edges with the other aging Generationals. But that was only the beginning of her adventure. The biomass has spent years studying the intruders who landed on its surface, carving a new home from its very essence. Never satisfied in its attempt to communicate with this new and invasive species, finally it has found a way to express its intentions. The colonists may never be the same. Discover the fate of the colony in the second book of The Biomass Conflux trilogy!

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Summary: Over a million years in the future, a desperate stowaway lies concealed in a space freighter’s cargo hold. Tam Amergan is bound for the prison world Corustloth, where his partner Brogan has been abducted. Ever since the Senate took over the planetary system decades earlier, gay men like Tam and Brogan—degens, as they are labeled under Senate rule—have been forced to live in secrecy. But Brogan is Tam’s life-line, bound to his soul in a ritual performed by a secret sisterhood of women with ancient, unknown designs. Tam has no choice but to follow Brogan wherever he goes. What Brogan sees, Tam sees; what Tam feels, Brogan feels. Neither can live without the other. Thousands of lightyears away, an ancient brotherhood of mentalists works at uncovering the mystery of humanity’s long-forgotten origins. Their leader, Father, enlists the help of Bennett, who is able to connect with the mind of a space freighter stowaway on the other side of the galaxy. Is Bennett the key to humanity’s origins? Could Tam’s quest to find Brogan have a wider purpose? ​ Both a soaring love story and sweeping sci-fi epic, Life-Line: Origins is a thrilling gay romance and science fiction novel. Ambitious, gripping, and full of heart, it is a must-read for anyone hungry for adventure and intrigue.

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Summary: Time is running out for planet Earth. An insidious Martian plague has been infecting the planet for over twenty years, and has resisted all human efforts to eradicate it. With all life on Earth facing extinction, the only solution left is to directly access a specific piece of Martian technology. But, according to diaries left behind by Ogilvy the astronomer, the Martians have hidden it at the lake on the moon. In 1945, three rockets converted from Martian cylinders take off on the vital lunar mission, and amongst the crew is Ogilvy's nephew, Jack Stent. Will the astronauts locate the Martian shadow-weapon, thought to hold the desperately needed cure for Marseria? Can it really be used to instigate another timeline on Earth so that mankind can survive? The stakes are high and so is the risk of contact and conflict with Martians. Nearly two hundred years later, at a scientific colony on Mars, a shocking discovery is made about Jack Stent, and Ogilvy's Martian diaries are once again pivotal to human survival and the continuation of life on Earth. Gateway To Mars is the third volume of The Martian Diaries series that continues the classic H.G. Wells alien invasion novel in a compelling, unmissable action adventure. If you're a fan of The War Of The Worlds you won't want to miss this story of survival, courage and hope, that brings the original tale full circle. Available in paperback, ebook and audiobook featuring original music and immersive sound effects. What readers/listeners have said: "A riveting sequel...I highly recommend this flawless production to sci-fi, action-thriller, time travel and adventure fans." Readers Favorite Reviews (Audiobook version) "Gateway To Mars delivers a perfect conclusion to this remarkable trilogy, one I know I'll revisit time and again." Goodreads “A really well written, excellent continuation of the story and a truly brilliant tribute to HG Wells! I do recommend!” Goodreads "An absolute peach of sci-fi adventure - this series is dynamic. Fabulous escapism all the way." C.A. Powell sci-fi author The last Days Of Thunder Child

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Summary: Explore the birth of a new world! Journey through time and space to the intricate biosphere of Juno, where three species have been birthed by the gods. First the Kuhifadi, inheritors of sun magic, able to do great deeds with magic stored in their bodies. Second the fearsome Uchafumlaji, technological savants who live in the depths of the ground. Third the weird Ngisikaa, a species uplifted from animals through communal memories. Small decisions and single individuals will affect the tide of history. Learn of the first Ngisikaa to meet death, whether a Kuhifadi will make the sacrifice to become a mage, and if an Uchafumlaji can build a bridge to the past. These stories and more will create The World of Juno! With content by: Nick Bright and Brent Lambert, C.J. Hosack, Nate Battalion, Daniel Eavenson, Malcolm F. Cross, Katie Cordy, William C. Tracy, N.L. Bates, Reese Hogan, Cedan Bourne, Robin C.M. Duncan, and X.M. Moon Genres: Science Fiction / Fantasy / Adventure / LGBT and Non Binary Market: Adult

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Summary: Lida was their last chance for an uncolonized planet. But a world-spanning fungus had colonized it first. Agetha and her husband have spent their whole lives in the fleet’s zero-G. Now all is turmoil as the fleet lands, discovering they are surrounded by a single fungal biomass spanning the entire planet. To build a new home, the fleet must confront a dangerous organism, and Agetha must decide if she can raise a family in this inhospitable landscape. Jane Brighton holds tenuous command over the colony and its administrators. She and the other gene-modded leaders emerged from their four-hundred-year suspended animation to find a crew much different from the one that departed Old Earth. Jane must direct the colony’s fragile growth and defend it against being overrun by the fast-growing biomass. But there is something none of the colonists know. The massive organism that spans the planet is not simply a fungal mass, nor even a chimerical combination of species that once roamed the planet. The biomass has desires and goals, and one is to know these strange beings carving out a home in its midst. Download today to read of the colony’s fate in Of Mycelium and Men! Genres: Space Opera / Science Fiction / Colonization / Alien Contact / LGBT / Non Binary / Trans Market: Adult

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Summary: There’s something in the dark … but is Lem’s imagination worse than reality? Out in the vast emptiness of the galaxy, anything can happen. It’s a fact that Lem and her trusty companion Spock know all too well. Sometimes, the things lurking in the darkness are all in your head. Then again, maybe there really is something out there. With her talking dog and an infuriatingly literal AI by her side, Lem must rely on nothing but her strength and wits to help her. As a humorous homage to Arthur C Clarke’s classic A Walk in the Dark, this short adventure is a not-actually-scary sci-fi horror story that’s perfect for fans of Martha Wells and John Scalzi.

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Summary: If you find alien technology … don’t turn it on. Beyond the farthest reaches of explored space, survey ship Cerberus arrives at an unclaimed planet to find a deserted vessel already in orbit. When newly commissioned captain Janet Hollander leads a team to the derelict, they find an ancient alien artifact on board. As her own crew members begin to disappear, Hollander learns that neither the ghost ship nor the planet are as lifeless as they appear. She must survive long enough to find out what happened to the derelict—before she and her crew suffer the same fate.