Sci Fi - Space Exploration Genre

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Summary: Now what? As Kendra recovers from her wounds, Artemis is planning their next strike. But so are others. Artemis has been too corrupt for too long; their own people are ready to take control. It's just going to take a little encouragement...  

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Summary: Aaron Okonkwo, a Nigerian scientist, travels with a crew in the 24th century to evaluate Viridis, which proves to be a beautiful and fabulous world. There, Aaron discovers a strange, alien species and amazing machines and technology left in a vast underground complex by a mysterious race called the Creators. Aaron soon falls under the irresistible, seductive spell of Nightsong, a green alien female with ominous and bewitching powers. However, an even greater danger rises. He will be forced to fight for the planet’s survival against a ruthless invasion of many ships to conquer and enslave the planet – just as Africa itself was once enslaved. Aaron knows it’s A Senseless Act of Beauty to try to reclaim his ancient warrior heritage and fight back against such overwhelming odds, but he knows he must try.

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Summary: Teens and their giant robots search for a new home for mankind, but the planet they discover belongs to the dragons. Two hundred years after the Climate Wars left Earth uninhabitable, Johari and his giant robot companion lead a squad of scouts on a quest for a new Goldilocks planet to settle the remnants of the human race. When one of the scouts and his bot go down in a hostile wilderness, Johari's fight to save them reveals complex behavior in the dragon-like dominant species. The scout team fragments as Johari strives to rescue his friends and discover the truth about the aliens. If he's right, mankind will lose its best hope for a home — or sacrifice its own humanity.

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Summary: Feared by her own kind. Hunted by extraterrestrial forces. Can one super soldier find her place among the stars? Lieutenant Tabitha Chiu is plagued by doubt and conflict. Still heartbroken over the loss of her AI companion and marooned on a faraway moon, the space marine and her ragtag team of super-powered civilians stand as the last line of defense against alien hunters. But when her powers pick up whispered threats of approaching invaders, she’s horrified to discover her own people have betrayed her squad. Barely escaping assassination, Tabitha and her fellow psionics flee the hateful moon to the sanctuary of a single surviving combat ship where she hopes to reunite with her AI friend. But when her newly resurrected acquaintance hijacks the craft, the nonbinary fighter is torn between protecting those she loves best and saving humanity from annihilation. Can this conflicted officer and her misfit allies defeat a formidable enemy intent on driving them to extinction? Amp Squad is the electrifying second book in the Ship Whisperer military science fiction series. If you like strong LGBTQ+ characters, unusual weaponry, and fearsome space battles, then you’ll love this pulse-pounding story. Buy Amp Squad to launch into a gut-wrenching thrill ride today!

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Summary: He needs a payday. He’ll settle for payback. Betrayed and left to rot on the edges of the galaxy, Caspian Robeaux is deep in debt and stuck flying courier missions in an old rustbucket he can barely keep afloat. His only friends are an annoying robot named Box and a bottle of booze. It’s a far cry from his once-promising military career, but Cas stopped caring a long time ago. Things start to look up, though, when a stranger arrives and offers a lucrative job that Cas can’t refuse, with a payday big enough to change his fortunes permanently. His luck gets even better when Cas learns that the job might offer him the one thing he wants more than his next drink: A chance to clear his name. But nothing in his life is ever that simple, and for a man trying to buy his way out of debt, the price of redemption might be too steep. From bestselling author Eric Warren, Caspian’s Fortune is the first book in the Infinity’s End series. With a rich universe full of quirky characters and breathtaking adventure, it’s perfect for fans of JN Chaney and Michael Anderle.

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Summary: An implacable alien intelligence called the Cluster has arrived in the galaxy and dissects almost every star ship it encounters. Grandson of an infamous space pirate, Commander John Mark Ellis is disgraced and booted out of the space service when he fails to save a merchant ship from the Cluster. Even so, Ellis believes he holds the key to communicating with the invader. His mother, Suki Firebrandt Ellis, is a historian who believes the galaxy's leaders are withholding information about the Cluster. Clyde McClintlock believes the Cluster is God incarnate and provides the path to salvation. G'Liat is an alien warrior who hopes to protect his people from the Cluster. All together, they set out to stop the Cluster's reign of destruction.

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Summary: Clarity (noun) Four definitions to inspire writers around the world and an unlimited number of possible stories to tell: 1) Coherent and intelligible 2) Transparent or pure 3) Attaining certainty about something 4) Easy to see or hear Clarity 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: Colonists struggle to build their lives, but first they have to survive. Read the complete series through generations.

• Glory on Mars - Emma joins the first settlers amid death and betrayal. She must learn the truth before Mars kills them all.
• Born on Mars - Jake didn't ask to be born into a failing habitat, but new arrivals bring hope and peril. Can he save his friends and family?
• Hermit on Mars - Sig will rescue the ungrateful Martian prospectors, even if it kills him.
• Water on Mars - Scoundrels on Mars and Earth drag Bliss into their lethal schemes.
• Storm on Mars - An AI may be a psychopath's only friend. Zeker's always close by when something weird happens.

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Summary: What if first contact happened, and nobody even noticed? Light-years away, years ago, something insignificant happened. Now, the spirits are restless. Loki has returned, seeking help for his people. Entire stations are being consumed, populations lost. No one understands why, and the threat continues to spread. Can Jack, Marsha, and teenager Po carry the weight of saving Loki’s civilization? This time, it may break them all.

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Summary: THE POWER TO DESTROY A KINGDOM. THE POWER TO HEAL A HEART. Ari’s new powers have awakened, threatening to tear apart a kingdom already on the edge. Sent back to Valon to face her father’s—and the people’s—judgement, Ari must decide how far she’ll go to reclaim her former life, if that’s even possible anymore. In the heart of the turmoil, Iata, the reigning ruler, is losing control of his increasingly unstable magics. As his secrets threaten to spill out, his brother’s wife, Haneri, draws ever closer—and he’s not sure he wants her to stop. At the border to Kidaa Space, Rhys grapples with the ominous and impossible patterns in the Kidaa attacks, and comes face to face with the Kidaa themselves in a harrowing meeting that could change the future of the kingdom. And Dressa, who secretly married an enemy prince, must now face the consequences of that marriage. Because Lesander was activated by her family. And Lesander has a choice: obey her family, or betray her wife. With enemies without and enemies within, can the Truthspoken save their kingdom, or is this kingdom doomed to fall? Court of Magickers collects episodes 94-150 of The Stars and Green Magics, previously published in serial form. Note: This book has main characters who use gender-neutral pronouns (they/them/their, fae/faer/faerself).

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Summary: Give the Enemy Hell! At the ass-end of the galaxy, Allied Forces-including the 142nd Mobile Special Ops Team, better known as Daire's Devils-stand ready to defend the contested colony planet Demeter from military invasion and corporate exploitation. But when the Allied Forces are infiltrated by those determined to secure the top-secret designs of AeroCom's new prototype flagship, the Cromwell, the newest member of the Devils, Corporal Katrion Alexander, finds herself facing off against an unexpected menace, synthetic operatives indistinguishable from living beings. She and the Devils must neutralize this new threat, but how when the enemy wears a trusted face?

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Summary: He tried to bury it. But some things refuse to stay hidden. Having survived his encounter with the mysterious Sil race, Caspian and the crew of the USCS Tempest receive a new assignment: investigate the threat emerging far beyond the Coalition’s borders. With its advanced engines, Tempest is the only ship fast enough to reach whatever is out there before they cross into Coalition territory. But just because Cas is part of the mission now doesn’t mean the crew has to like it. Being back on board a starship hasn’t been easy, and now that he’s been tasked with keeping their new ally from killing the crew, it isn’t getting any easier. It seems his only option is to bury what the Coalition did to him and return to the model officer he used to be. Tensions and tempers rise when the ship gets stuck at the edge of a seldom-traveled nebula, costing them precious time and energy. But is there something more to this dark edge of space? As the mystery unfolds, Caspian realizes not only is this unlike anything he’s ever seen before, but he may not be able to bury his past as deep as he hoped. Brand new from bestselling author Eric Warren, DARKEST REACH is the third installment in the INFINITY’S END SAGA. Fans of Star Trek, Firefly and The Twilight Zone will enjoy this illuminating look into what really resides in the darkest corners of space and our minds.

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Summary: Rules were made to be broken. From terraformed outposts to magical realms, journey to worlds where deadly plants, rampant biodiversity, or failed colonies have created irresistible opportunities for those brave enough to seize them. New worlds, found family, mystical secrets, and deadly science weave together in this lesbian-centric anthology focusing on a very different kind of first time—a first encounter with a world, or being, entirely unlike our own. If you like diverse stories with lesbian heroines practicing science, magic, and seduction, buy Distant Gardens today!

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Summary: It’s the find of a lifetime – an ancient alien spaceship hanging in a forgotten corner of space. For Song this could change everything. She’s got as many problems with her finances as she does in her marriage, but maybe at last her passion for wreck-diving will pay off. One piece of unknown tech could set her whole crew up for life. The ship conforms to nothing in their records and dwarfs the largest human vessels. Battle-scarred and old before humanity ever reached the stars, it’s a mausoleum of an unknown, long-dead species. And it’s just winked at her.

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Summary: Ellison Firebrandt fights the good fight for Earth. Under a letter of marque, he raids the ships of Earth's opponents, slowing down their progress and ability to compete with the home system. On the planet Epsilon Indi 2, he rescues a woman named Suki Mori from a drug lord, only to find she isn't so happy about living a pirate's life. However, when the captain finds a new engine that will make him the most successful pirate of all, Suki is the only one who can make it work. Now Firebrandt must find a way to keep his crew fed and his ship supplied while relying on a woman who barely trusts him and while every government in the galaxy hunts him to get the engine back!

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Summary: A mysterious distress call draws the crew of courier ship Hermes to what appears to be an empty, drifting troop vessel--empty except for the blood and gore spattered corridors and a lone survivor locked in a holding cell. Drawn to the handsome, traumatized man, the crew’s comm officer, Isaac Ozawa, makes Turk his personal responsibility, offering him the kindness and warmth he needs after the horror he experienced. Isaac knows firsthand what it’s like to be different and an outcast, and this cements their bond. Once a promising pilot, Isaac was left with a damaged body when his brain didn't meld with the high-tech implant needed to fly fighter ships. Turk’s brain is no better. The result of a military experiment gone wrong, his natural abilities have been augmented to a dangerous degree. When an amoral, power-hungry admiral kidnaps Isaac and uses him to convince Turk to become the cataclysmic weapon he’s hungered for, it will take Turk’s strength, the ingenuity of the Hermes crew, the help of the enigmatic Drak’tar, and Isaac’s own stubborn will to save them.

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Summary: We were trying to write a nice friendly SciFi Space Story. Something with food and fun. Although backstabbing, cheating, gambling, pirates, and passive-aggressive families, were not uncommon. Every sentient was nice, in their own way and as their species permitted. And as always, watch your back. A conflict between Hive Mother at the Heliopause and the Hive Sisters at the heliotail was almost unavoidable. As with any war, a misunderstanding and an attempt to over-write source code led to conflict. The bioGels, who could be moody and quarrelsome at times, became weapons and sailors in an all-out Hive War. The sentients, dependent on the bioGel computers, received fallout from this interlude. It all started to go bad when the Navy discovered they could take the discrepant features of Einsteins' classic theorem and flip the bit to power a laser rifle. It seems that the somewhat unstable bioGels did not appreciate the pain and suffering required from them to fire off a photonic bullet. And here we are; no computers, no vid screens, no nice tones. The human, simian, canine, and octopus sentients have to work together to take back their ships and livelihood.

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Summary: The Earth has gone silent. John Mark Ellis and the crew of the Sanson are sent to investigate. When they arrive, they find vast alien machines known as Clusters in orbit. Fearing the worst, they land and discover that the once overcrowded, polluted Earth has become a paradise of sorts. The problem is over half the population is dead or missing and the planet's leaders don't seem to care. As Ellis works to unravel the mystery, sudden gravitational shifts from the galaxy's center indicate something even worse is in the offing. Can Ellis save the galaxy from the heirs of the new Earth?

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Summary: When fire and steel meet flesh and bone, a soldier learns a hard truth: you’re not fighting for Glory and Honor, but for survival, for you and your comrades, and you will be damned if you’re going to leave any of them behind. Join us for twelve tales of military heroism and courage in the face of a hostile enemy. With stories by Brenda Cooper, Bud Sparhawk, David Sherman, Robert E. Waters, Jeff Young, James Chambers, Lisanne Norman, Robert Greenberger, Aaron Rosenberg, Christopher M. Hiles, Eric V. Hardenbrook, and Danielle Ackley-McPhail

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Summary: IN-NO-VA-TION (Noun) 1) A new idea, method, or device. 2) The introduction of something new. 3) The application of better solutions to meet unarticulated needs. Three definitions to inspire writers around the world and an unlimited number of possible stories to tell. Here are 120 of our favorites. Innovation features 300-word speculative flash fiction stories from across the rainbow spectrum, from the minds of the writers of Queer Sci Fi.