Sci fi stories that adhere closely to science and logic. Return to general Sci Fi
Note: these books are currently sorted by release date, with newest first.
Word Count: 4000
Summary: Isolated on Mars, anyone could start going stir crazy… Katya should be on top of the world. She’s overcome a traumatic past and now she’s part of the first permanent settlement on Mars. So why do things feel so wrong? The colonists are confined to a small base on the surface of a hostile planet, so perhaps it’s only cabin fever. After all, she’s got great friends, an exciting career, and an ex-girlfriend who – she’s sure – would do anything to have her back… But with cracks appearing in the relationships between the crew and nothing but empty Martian desert beyond the safety of their domes, it’s far too easy for the mind to drift. And when it does, it can be difficult to tell what’s real, and what’s pure imagination… Past Imperfect is a short story set during Livid Skies, SI CLARKE’s second novel. It’s written for people who enjoy science fiction that challenges their preconceptions. This is a work of neurodiverse, culturally diverse, gender-bendy, socio-politico-economic, drunken-arguments-in-the-pub science fiction – not bang-bang-pew-pew science fiction.
Word Count: 161705
Summary: An underground city, built centuries ago to ride out the devastating heat. A society under attack. And a young solar engineer whose skills may be the key to saving her city…if she doesn’t get herself killed first. When Jossey was ten, the creatures of the aboveground took her brother and left her for dead, with horrible scars. Now, years later, she’s a successful solar engineer, working to keep her underground city’s power running, but she’s never really recovered. After she saves dozens of people during a second attack, she is offered a top-secret assignment as a field Engineer with Patrol, but fear prevents her from taking it…until Patrol finds bones near where her brother disappeared. She signs on and finds herself catapulted into a world that is far more dangerous, and requires far more of her, than she ever imagined. The creatures and the burning heat aboveground are not the only threats facing the City, and what she learns during her assignment could cost her her life: one of the greatest threats to the City may in fact lie within. With thousands of lives at stake, can she act in time? Aestus is an adult dystopian science-fiction series set centuries after climate change has ravaged much of Earth. An epic story of vengeance, power, shifting loyalties, and survival that looks at just how far people will go to protect what they love, brought to you by science writer S.Z. Attwell, Aestus paints a picture of a world in which far too little has changed.
Word Count: Information not available
Summary: Rhonda Wray: Raptor Wrangler is about a teenage girl who was innocently trying to listen to some live music … her favorite boy band happened to be playing a festival on a dinosaur planet … when bad things suddenly happened. Now she and her trusty robot are all alone in the wilderness, picking up survival skills and looking for her favorite singer, Sebastian Rose, just in case he needs to be rescued. There’s hard science, explosions, plenty of dinosaurs (with feathers), diversity, no sex (although there are a few references to it), less violence than many dinosaur stories, cliffhangers galore, and a little bogus science just to honor the fine tradition of speculative fiction (what if raptors had syrinxes and could sing like birds?
Word Count: 101000
Summary: What happens when a woman loses her memory but gains a conscience? Dr. Alexandra Turing is a roboticist whose intellect is unrivaled in the field of artificial intelligence. While science has always come easy, Alexandra struggles to understand emotional cues and responses. Driven by the legacy of her late great-uncle, she dedicates her life to the Synthetica project at her father's company, Organic Advancement Solutions (OAS). Her life is rebooted when she wakes from a coma, six months after being struck by a car. Traumatic brain injury altered Alex's senses, her memory, and her personality. Despite the changes, she feels reborn as she navigates her way back into her old life. Part of her new journey includes dating the alluring Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, Emily St. John. Emily is enamored with the hyper-intelligent scientist, but there are things about Alex and OAS that don't add up. With Emily's prompting, Alex undergoes testing that leaves her with more questions than answers. What she discovers changes more than her life, it will change the world around her.
Word Count: 94000
Summary: Braxton Thorpe has discovered a threat to the entire Solar System, but he has a problem: he's dead. Frozen at death, he awakens to find himself uploaded into an electronic matrix. Exploring beyond the matrix and the larger GlobalNet, he discovers the Oort, a distributed electronic entity older than humanity, with an unnerving secret: aliens wiped out nearly all life on Earth once, and are coming back to do it again. The mathematical entity that is Thorpe has to find a way to convince humans of the threat, and in time to do something about it. But how, and what? If you've read Niven's A World Out of Time or Taylor's We Are Legion, the opening of Icicle will only seem familiar. Buckle up for a wild ride; you ain't seen nothing.
Word Count: 80,0-00
Summary: MIKE CHRISTOPHER RETURNS TO EARTH TO BATTLE AN OLD NEMESIS! Mike Christopher, an artificial Human spurned and abused by much of Earth society, left Earth to become a Galactic explorer. Now, 25 years later, he returns to battle the Jenregar, an alien enemy he's fought before. But the key to defeating the alien threat also presents a soul-crushing moral dilemma!
Word Count: 112,000
Summary: Chanda Kasmira devotes years of her life and career to saving the inhabitants of the planet Splendor from the planet's coming destruction. Her latest effort fails. Life on Splendor faces more danger than ever before. Disheartened, Chanda places herself into a "long sleep," intending to awaken decades later to a brighter future for Splendor and its people. She doesn't. Instead, an even more difficult path lies ahead after CHANDA'S AWAKENING.
Word Count: 66,000
Summary: Two star systems are colliding... ...And Mike Christopher of the Earth starship Asaph Hall is rushing to unlock their secrets. But two alien races on the journey are keeping their own potentially deadly secrets. It doesn't help that the love of Mike's life can't handle the emotional stress of being near him, and that he has to give the Earth ambassador on-the-job training!
Word Count: 36590
Summary: Can you drop from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) with just a hardshell wingsuit? Navy SEAL Derek “Tiger” Baily and his SEALS Winged Insertion Command (SWIC) develop an experimental Gryphon hardshell wingsuit that can do just that. Eventually, when the presidential front-runner is seized by pirates for ransom, Baily’s 6-man SWIC team must hurtle around the world, staging critical re-entry for a rescue, challenged to solve life-or-death problems with only seconds to spare. Can they survive? Will they effect the rescue? Join Tiger Baily through all four adventures in sci-fi master Robert G. Williscroft’s Daedalus series, now collected for the first time as The Daedalus Files: SEALS Winged Insertion Command (SWIC).
Word Count: 55000
Summary: Stranded in space: no fuel, no way home… and no one coming to help. From the pen of Hugo Finalist Gideon Marcus comes the found-family, YA Space Adventure you’ve been waiting for: Nineteen-year-old Kitra Yilmaz dreams of traveling the galaxy like her Ambassador mother. But soaring in her glider is the closest she can get to touching the stars — until she stakes her inheritance on a salvage Navy spaceship. On its shakedown cruise, Kitra’s ship plunges into hyperspace, stranding Kitra and her crew light years away. Tensions rise between Kitra and her shipmates: the handsome programmer, Fareedh; Marta, biologist and Kitra’s ex-girlfriend; Peter, the panicking engineer; and the oddball alien navigator, Pinky. Now, running low on air and food, it’ll take all of them working together to get back home. With illustrations by Hugo Finalist Lorelei Esther.
Word Count: 80000
Summary: Other stories will take you to Mars. This one will take you inside the boardroom, the pub, and the bedroom with the people planning the mission. Gurdeep is an engineer and a soldier. Georgie’s a food scientist. One is pragmatic with a tough outer shell; the other’s an optimist, a person of ideas and compassion. In the span of a single afternoon, the couple find themselves in charge of planning a self-sustaining colony on Mars. Together, they’re humanity’s last hope for survival. They have 160 slots to fill with experts from all over the world as they set about designing an all-new society with its own government, economy, and culture – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Among those chosen for the mission is Devon, an autistic scientist with a unique skill set who finds life on Earth strange and alienating. Maybe a whole new planet is exactly what’s needed. With 1,114 days until the launch, excitement and tensions run high. Earth’s second chance hangs in the balance. Between strict genetic requirements and the dangers of the dystopian almost-present, will everyone make it to the final countdown? This is a work of neurodiverse, culturally diverse, gender-bendy, socio-politico-economic, drunken-arguments-in-the-pub science fiction – not bang-bang-pew-pew science fiction.
Word Count: 12500
Summary: SEALS Winged Insertion Command (SWIC) has based Tiger Bailey's operational SWIC-3 out of Howland Island near the Equator in the central Pacific, just a few kilometers away from Baker Island, location for the socket where Amelia Earhart Skytower terminates. Tiger Bailey's squad is tasked to drop from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to Mayotte Island, northwest of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, to rescue a U.S. Senator and his family who were taken hostage by pirates.
Word Count: Information not available
Summary: In the year 2069, humanity’s last chance for peace is the first ever interstellar mission. A multi-national crew of the most talented scientists and pilots has been chosen based on their expertise and skill. The final spot aboard the craft is assigned as a prize in a global “BerthRight” lottery, and Leif Grettison is the “everyman volunteer” who won. However, Leif isn’t really an “everyman.” He’s a helicopter paramedic, a lab tech and a former army ranger who fought in The Troubles – a decade plus war that brought the world to the brink of apocalypse. He’s the perfect brawn to the brains aboard the ship and quickly finds himself playing the role of security and handyman as the crew begins to fragment and divide by country, just as they had during the war. Little is known about the world circling the distant star that is the target for the voyage and the journey will take almost fourteen years, Earth-time, each way. To deal with the unexpected, the crew has the finest equipment and the planners believe they have thought of everything. However, when you believe you have thought of everything, the universe has a way of showing that you haven’t. What do you do when it goes wrong, when you can’t call for help, and when adventure leads to deaths?
Word Count: 12300
Summary: After his successful proof-of-concept drop from Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Tiger Bailey's squad undertakes the next step in the development process of the Gryphon hardshell wingsuit, a coordinated drop from LEO by six team members. They tried to plan for every conceivable contingency, however, Mother Nature intervened with disastrous results.
Word Count: 15600
Summary: Following his successful base jump from Fred Noonan Skyport, Tiger Bailey undertakes the next step in the development process of the Gryphon hardshell wingsuit, a drop from Low Earth Orbit. Using the Gryphon-10 with enhanced navigation and computer control, and with a greater wingspan, he uses the Slingshot Space Launch Loop to gain Low Earth Orbit (LEO), but experiences equipment problems that nearly destroy him and doom the project. Ultimately, Tiger perseveres and drops into the Earth's atmosphere. He skips out in in several times before eventually making a harrowing but safe landing.
Word Count: 13500
Summary: Using a new Gryphon-7 hard-shell wingsuit, Tiger Baily, irreverent member of the Navy SEALS Winged Insertion Command, makes a harrowing first experimental base jump from the edge of Space, the Fred Noonan Skyport 80,000 meters above Jarvis Island in the Equatorial Pacific. Tiger’s target, which he must reach to survive, is Kiritimati Island, a tiny isolated atoll 379 km northeast of Jarvis over ever-threatening and oh-so-deep ocean waters.
Word Count: 81000
Summary: A hijacked spaceship... kidnapped colonists... their destiny changed forever Award-winning first book of the Titan trilogy follows a family whose torn loyalties threaten doom on a strange world that real-life science has only begun to explore. What if you awoke on a shadowy moon where water freezes as hard as granite and lakes fill with liquid methane? On Titan, a bizarre cult seeks utopia, but what will be different on this distant world? Real readers say: Dynamic story - Engaging characters - Feel like you were there - Devoured this book Discover a riveting mix of science and society on Saturn's deadly frozen moon. If you love gripping science fiction with twists and turns, you won't want to put it down.kk
Word Count: 366200
Summary: This is a Kindle book and Audible book of all three volumes in the set. The Starchild Trilogy begins with building a Space Launch Loop enabling massive movement off Earth and subsequent settlement of Cislunar-Space, Mars, and beyond. Slingshot is the story of the struggle behind constructing the largest machine ever built stretching between Baker and Jarvis Islands in the Equatorial Pacific, and how the men and women behind Slingshot overcome the project's physical, economic, and human obstacles. In The Starchild Compact, a team exploring Saturn's moon Iapetus discovers it to be a derelict starship, and meets the Founders, remnants of an ancient, advanced race, the Ectarians, that arrived in the Solar System 150,000 years ago. Together, they create the Starchild Institute governed by a document they call the Starchild Compact to further develop and introduce Ectarian technology to the Solar System. Using Ectarian technology, they develop near lightspeed spacecraft, artificial wormholes, FTL starships, and human longevity. As human colonies expand into the Solar System, they form a governing coalition: The Iapetus Federation. While a united Islam pursues a global Jihad that rages across the planet putting millions to the sword, the Federation enables an exodus from Earth using artificial wormholes. From hand-to-hand combat in the oceans, to battles on Earth's surface, to the challenge of living off-Earth and reaching for the stars, our heroes fight to survive and to expand humankind to the far reaches of the universe.
Word Count: 161800
Summary: Following the dramatic events in The Starchild Compact, the starship Starchild departs on a 185-year interstellar journey. Meanwhile, the Iapetus Federation in cooperation with the Founders, descendants of the people who originally constructed Iapetus, expands to include the Mirs Complex at L-4, the Lunar Complex, a new habitat being constructed at L-5, the growing Mars settlements, and several asteroids including Daphne and Ceres. On Earth, America turns away from its world leadership position to focus on internal matters and the idea of an all-inclusive, multicultural society. Saeed Esmail, the stowaway Jihadist who played a significant role in The Starchild Compact, becomes the guiding prophet of a new form of Islam that quickly dominates the vanquished Persian Caliphate territories, and threatens the rest of the planet. Aided by Founder Asshur, the besieged Israelis reluctantly forge a new homeland on Mars, while the United States balkanizes into a half-dozen smaller units dominated by the Lone Star Conservancy under the leadership of Texan Sam Houston, who had earlier established the Lone Star Settlement on Mars. Science does not stand still. Founder researchers develop a longevity treatment that has the potential to extend human life indefinitely. The Starchild Institute, headed by former U.S. President Marc Bowles, develops advanced spacecraft, and a new form of transportation based on artificial wormholes. As the global Jihad on Earth heats up, most of the planet falls under the domination of Saeed Esmail, with only the Lone Star Conservancy, Columbia Freehold, Australia, and New Zealand left as independent territories. The Institute opens evacuation portals between Earth and Iapetus to rescue as many people as possible. While Earth sinks into medieval barbarism, the focus of human activity shifts from Earth to the Iapetus Federation as humans settle virtually every potentially habitable spot in the Solar System and begin planning for expansion into the rest of the Galaxy.
Word Count: 131000
Summary: Are we the children of starchildren? The Starchild Compact is an adventure of heroic proportions, commencing on a planet 500 lightyears distant, arriving here just a few years from now, and ending up in the far distant expanses of the Universe. Is Saturn’s moon Iapetus an artifact? To find out, Jon Stock takes his international exploration team on a 1.4 billion km journey to Saturn, but will Jihadist stowaway Saeed Ismail succeed in sabotaging the mission? On Iapetus, Jon Stock and his team meet the Founders. Where are they from? How did they get here? How will they impact Earth and the Solar System? Will the Founder’s presence signal the end of humanity, or will it pave the way for a joint push to the distant reaches of the Galaxy? The Starchild Compact is hard SciFi reminiscent of Arthur C. Clarke or James P. Hogan, with a geopolitical twist worthy of Tom Clancy or Clive Cussler.
