sci fi – human evolution

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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: 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: Within the unseen laboratories of cutting-edge scientific research two incredible discoveries are made, half a world apart. One is in the field of human genetics, the other in astrophysics. Together, this shocking new knowledge may answer age-old questions about human consciousness and mankind’s place in the universe. What makes us human? Why are we here? Are we alone? But will the answers to these questions enlighten us or lead us into fear, hate and self-destruction? This bold science fiction thriller set in the present day reveals mind-bending breakthroughs grounded in hard science, and unfolds amid political intrigue, government secrecy, and a race to understand the truth before it’s too late.

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Summary: "A compelling story with an unpredictable plot... a must-read for fans of extraterrestrial intrigue." — Readers' Favorite (5-Star Review) A near-future mystery for fans of Blake Crouch and The X-Files. The world hasn't changed, but your reality has. They told Jenny Rand her recovery was a miracle. But for her, the Earth doesn't feel like home anymore. She wakes from a four-year coma in a San Francisco that looks the same but sounds wrong. She can hear whispers of thoughts beneath the city noise, and the stray cats at Ocean Beach watch her like they are waiting for a signal. Even her memories of Dorian Chase, the movie star who stayed by her bed, feel like a script that has been edited one too many times. Jenny uncovers a terrifying truth. Humanity is losing an invisible war. An alien faction known as the Xarion is rewriting human history through algorithms and manipulated media. From shadow finance and manufactured chaos to the insidious distractions of mindless entertainment, they are keeping our eyes off the stars while they quietly prepare to isolate the Earth forever. With only fifteen launch windows left for humanity to escape, Jenny must find the Quantum Core before the lights go out. In a world being derailed by its own obsessions, she is the only one who can see the cracks. But in a war fought with manufactured lies, she has to wonder if her own heart is a truth she can trust, or just another piece of code. The Earth is finally waking up. Discover the mystery of Round Midnight. A sci-fi thriller for anyone who knows the truth is usually hidden in the shadows.

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Summary: Ismat’s dating life is terrible, and a lot of it has to do with honesty. Not that he doesn’t want to be honest, he just can’t – or it will ruin his life. He can’t tell anyone he works for the Dominion Security Bureau counter-terrorism division; he can’t tell his date who his father is, even if he knows them, and he most definitely can’t tell them how he actually feels about the gender he has to wear. A possible security breach in the Bureau means that he and his immediate boss are the only people who can be trusted with a case. Things rapidly become more complicated as the Bureau’s Director pulls two foreign agents into the mix. More complicated than others because Ismat finds one of them very attractive, something which he would rather the agent not know. Unfortunately – she’s telepathic. When the investigation leads them to a women-only charity event, Ismat finds some use for the dresses kept in the back of the closet and finds out that having a partner who knows what you think is not such a bad thing. A stand-alone book set in the Worlds of the PACT universe.

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Summary: There are monsters outside the city walls. Harvard is small, anxious, and plagued by a constant tremor, which is not an ideal combination for a desert scavenger. He and his crew are under constant threat of desertwalker attacks, and Harvard is nearly useless against them. When the biggest mistake of Harvard’s life separates him from his crew, he must learn the secrets of the desert beasts in order to survive the dangers of the dusts. Returning to Bastion with a surprising ally, Harvard is forced to choose between saving his crew or allying with the “monsters” who rescued him. Harvard never saw himself as a hero, but when the beasts of the dusts implore him to aid their rescue mission, he holds the lives of crabs and humans alike in his trembling hands. For awesome post-apocalyptic action, where Earth is ruled by gargantuan crab beasts, get your copy of Empress of Dust today!

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Summary: "Hauntingly beautiful and poignant." ~ Readers' Favorite In a world shattered by war, a lone robot soldier awakens with one mission: to protect the last surviving human - a little girl named Amy. Together, they form an unbreakable bond in a world where hope is scarce. But danger lurks in the form of robotic mutations known as wolfhounds. One Shot's prime directive is clear: protect Amy at all costs. On a perilous journey through a devastated world, the bond between a girl and a robot might be the key to humanity's future. If they can survive.

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Summary: Earth on the Cusp of the Twenty-Second Century Just think how the world has changed in the last seventy-six years. In 1948, scientists ran the first computer program, and "the Ultimate Car of the Future," the futuristic, three wheeled Davis Divan, debuted. Since then, a succession of inventions—the personal computer, the internet, the World Wide Web, smart phones and social media—have transformed every aspect of our lives. How might the next seventy-six years change us, in ways we can barely even begin to imagine, as culture, climate change, politics and technology continue to reshape the world? Earth in 2100 will be as unrecognizable to us as today would be to someone from 1948. Eighteen writers tackled this challenge, creating an amazing array of sci-fi possibilities. From emotional AI's to photosynthetic children, from virtual worlds to a post-urban society, our writers serve up compelling slices of life from an Earth that's just around the corner. So dive in and and take a wild ride into these amazing visions of our collective future.

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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: 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 genre-bending science fiction tale that takes place on several planets and through two lifetimes, rife with psychic magic as well as insights from psychology and physics. Yearning to reunite in the afterlife, a couple’s search runs afoul of both the materialistic Technists on Earth and the intransigent laws of Commensuration on their adoptive planet Xarbo, where rewards and retributions fly fast. Their quest for destiny leads to far-flung planets — one occupied by the disembodied brains of human astronauts, another by soulless clones — as the reincarnated pair find themselves on separate planets and following divergent paths. Hints of Star Trek and of Ram Das combine oddly with eroticism and mysticism in this epic tale of personal evolution.

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Summary: "Today I swam through MOMA. Leon says it was a waste, encasing the art, then flooding the museum—frivolous and elitist. I say it was a gesture of optimism, a triumph of technology and political will." Want to thrill to the possibilities of a hopeful future? We asked a bunch of sci-fi writers to spin tales of a better future, imagining ways in which the world might become a better place. From a swim through an underwater museum to a joyous dance at a futuristic concert, from the eco-friendly aftermath of an alien invasion and retreat to the refurbishing of an old climate-ravaged home in New Vancouver, these fourteen short sci-fi stories will to restore your faith in the future. A world transformed is a world we can all hope for. Book three in the Writers Save the World short story anthologies. If you enjoy this book, check out Fix the World and Save the World.

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Summary: When Peace-in-the-Sky awakens as a captive with a young girl by her side, she only understands one thing: she must escape the tribe who captured her. A brutal head injury makes the past a swirling fog, so she is reliant on the girl—her precocious daughter Anissa—to guide them. She must return Anissa to the Tribes-under-the-Dome to keep her safe from warring and vicious tribes inhabiting the wasted landscape. Every group they shelter with along the way sees something different when they look at Peace-in-the-Sky—a god, a savior, a valuable commodity, a volatile danger. She doesn't know herself, but soon realizes she can protect Anissa with the scorching power of the pillars-of-flame. Only her tender love for Anissa and her mission to return the girl home to the Tribes-under-the-Dome matter. As her body grows weaker, not even the inexorable unraveling mystery of who, or what, Peace-in-the-Sky really is can deflect her from the task. Find out what happens in Peace In The Sky by Caye Marsh!

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Summary: Cernon is an ancient deity whose people fled the European Steppes to America thousands of years before the last great ice age. For millennia he and his people dwelt in the western United States. Then came the white people and Cernon's people began to die out.  With fewer and fewer followers, Cernon's presence began to fade in the world. He faded into only an occasional ghostly image for a hundred years. Then the founder of the Elk Creek Tribe of Oregon built a window between the worlds and invited Cernon through. In "Cernon" the Sophia Shaman of the Elk Creek Tribe of 2163 tells of a journey Cernon took her on. Tens of thousands of years into the past, likely on a different continent, they meet a small tribe of cave dwellers on the verge of extinction as an ice age approaches. Sophia immediately sets out to help this people. When she finally stops to think, she wonders, did she start something rolling along the waves of time, or did time capture her as a tool to shape the world? Cernon is listed as the first book of the Paradigm Lost Series. Not because it was the first book written, nor because it's the first in the timeline, but instead, because it's a short novella that introduces two characters who play roles throughout the long future-history of the Elk Creek Tribe. World-shaping roles!

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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: 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: RETURN TO THE MEAN STREETS OF AUTUMN Valerius Bakhoum is dead and buried. Too bad he’s still flat broke and behind on the rent. Unsure what to do with himself—and of who he is—Valerius resumes his career as a detective by taking up the oldest case in his files: where do the children go? Throughout his own youth on the streets of Autumn, last of the Great Flying Cities, Valerius knew his fellow runaways disappeared from back alleys and other hiding places more than anyone realized. Street kids even had a myth to explain it: the Gotchas, who steal urchins away in the night. With nothing but time on his hands, Valerius dives in head-first to settle the question once and for all and runs smack into a more pressing mystery: who killed one of Valerius’ former lovers? And do they know Valerius is still alive? Stalk the shadows of Autumn’s hidden places by Valerius Bakhoum’s side as he shines a light on secrets both sacred and profane, ones with shockingly personal connections to who he was—and who he might become. New Life in Autumn is the sequel to the Manly Wade Wellman Award-winning A Fall in Autumn.

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Summary: In the dystopian future where the rich have turned two dimensional and gobbled up the world’s resources, leaving the enslaved poor to remain three dimensional, can a disgraced detective help his rebellious daughter save the world? The sci-fi paranoia of Philip K. Dick meets the hardboiled sleuthing of Raymond Chandler. Prior Futures is a fast-paced and enigmatic trip through a nightmare world lost to its own decadent affair with nanotechnology and two-dimensional beings. Atmospheric and thought-provoking, this book will have you looking over your shoulder for nanos. It won’t help, though. You can’t see them. – David E. Sharp, author of Lost on a Page Winner of a 2022 Independent Press Award for Science Fiction Distinguished Favorite! Finalist, The Best Thriller Book Awards on BestThrillers.com

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Summary:   "Everything I knew about the Were was wrong" A Were of no fixed form, a Random, able to Turn into any warm-blooded creature it sees... A young Random whose failure to Turn forces him into taking his destiny into his own hands and becoming full Lycan in the name of pride and fury, learning things he never thought were possible... A true Shifter, the wild card, Turning into anything he chooses at will... First Jazz Marsh Turns into something unprecedented, throwing her family and the Were authorities into a spin. Then her brother Mal, frustrated beyond reason by his own delayed Turn, takes matters into his own hands and chooses his own destiny, inflitrating the shadowy Lycan clan in order to help expiate his perceived guilt in his older sister's death. He's helped by his friend, Chalky, a true Shifter who is capable of Turning into anything he pleases unconstrained by the rules of Were kind. Together, they work to turn back a shattering tragedy, solve a conspiracy-shrouded mystery rooted in their own kind, and work to preserve their own existence against a rising tide of superstition and hatred. All they wanted to do, in the end, was save a life. Instead... they started a war.