Between Planets


Robert A. Heinlein - 1951
    His mother was born on Venus and his father on Earth, and Don himself was born on a spaceship in trajectory between planets. And he fights for the rights of this curious citizenship in very curious ways. Heinlein reveals in a dashing fast-moving style what can happen when politics - on an interplanetary scale - disregard the liberty of the individual. In the end, only the remarkable scientist-dragons of a rebellious Mars can resolve the conflict within a man who cannot live without the society that he knows is killing him.

Declination


David Derrico - 2002
    Now, the Confederation's crises are spawned from within, and one brave woman struggles against all odds to keep mankind united amidst a hailstorm of rebellion, war, and moral declination.* * * * *The Lucani Ibron have yet to return, but all is not well within the Alpha Sector. Internal strife, terrorism, and ever-escalating conflicts with several neighboring species have spread the Confederation's resources dangerously thin. Captain Anastasia Mason, together with an eclectic group of humanity's most decorated heroes, struggles to hold the Confederation together against powerful forces that threaten to rip it apart at its very core. Then, at what appears to be mankind’s most desperate hour, an old enemy returns from a ten-year hiatus, casting humanity to the brink of civil war... and outright annihilation.

Whipping Star


Frank Herbert - 1969
    It all depended on the survival of the last of the entities known as Calebians.But the Caleban was dying - subjected to systematic torture by the richest, most wicked woman in the Galaxy. Unless she could be stopped, the end was only a few days away, or hours - or even minutes!

Now Wait for Last Year


Philip K. Dick - 1966
    Eric Sweetscent has problems. His planet is enmeshed in an unwinnable war. His wife is lethally addicted to a drug that whips its users helplessly back and forth across time -- and is hell-bent on making Eric suffer along with her. And Sweetscent's newest patient is not only the most important man on the embattled planet Earth but quite possibly the sickest. For Secretary Gino Molinari has turned his mortal illness into an instrument of political policy -- and Eric cannot tell if his job is to make the man better or to keep him poised just this side of death.Now Wait for Last Year bursts through the envelope between the impossible and the inevitable. Even as it ushers us into a future that looks uncannily like the present, it makes the normal seem terrifyingly provisional -- and compels anyone who reads it to wonder if he really knows what time it is.

Titan


John Varley - 1979
    When Cirrocco Jones, captain of the spaceship Ringmaster, and his crew are captured by Gaea, a planet-sized creature that orbits around Saturn, they find themselves inside a bizarre world inhabited by centaurs, harpies, and constantly shifting environments

Secret of the Lost Race


Andre Norton - 1959
    But now it had been learned that there was one among its runaway refugees who was more than just a misfit—one who was a definite danger to all humanity.The hunt was on for the desperate young man called Joktar—for if he was what they said he was, he could contaminate the universe!ONLY JOKTAR DIDN'T BELIEVE IT—AND HE RALLIED A WORLD OF COURAGEOUS OUTLAWS TO DEFEND HIM.

Sun of Suns


Karl Schroeder - 2006
    The world known as Virga is a fullerene balloon three thousand kilometers in diameter, filled with air, water, and aimlessly floating chunks of rock. The humans who live in this vast environment must build their own fusion suns and "towns" that are in the shape of enormous wood and rope wheels that are spun for gravity.Young, fit, bitter, and friendless, Hayden Griffin is a very dangerous man. He's come to the city of Rush in the nation of Slipstream with one thing in mind: to take murderous revenge for the deaths of his parents six years ago. His target is Admiral Chaison Fanning, head of the fleet of Slipstream, which conquered Hayden's nation of Aerie years ago. And the fact that Hayden's spent his adolescence living with pirates doesn't bode well for Fanning's chances...

Landfall: Tales From the Flood/Ark Universe


Stephen Baxter - 2015
    In the duology we see the refugees reach colony worlds they call Earth II and Earth III. The three novellas in Landfgall answer the frequently asked question, "What happened next?? The final piece, "Earth I," is original to this collection, a trio of stories that continue Baxter's masterful world-building. Stephen Baxter is the pre-eminent sf writer of his generation. Published around the world, he has also won major awards in the US, UK, Germany and Japan. Born in 1957, he has degrees from Cambridge and Southampton. He lives in Northumberland, England with his wife.

Existence


David Brin - 2012
    Gerald Livingston is an orbital garbage collector. For a hundred years, people have been abandoning things in space, and someone has to clean it up. But there’s something spinning a little bit higher than he expects, something that isn’t on the decades’ old orbital maps. An hour after he grabs it and brings it in, rumors fill Earth’s infomesh about an “alien artifact.” Thrown into the maelstrom of worldwide shared experience, the Artifact is a game-changer. A message in a bottle; an alien capsule that wants to communicate. The world reacts as humans always do: with fear and hope and selfishness and love and violence. And insatiable curiosity.

Feersum Endjinn


Iain M. Banks - 1994
    His only clues point to a conspiracy that reaches far beyond his own murder, and survival lies in discovering other fugitives who know the truth about the ultimate weapon of chaos and salvation. Reprint.

Time And Stars


Poul Anderson - 1964
    A collection of science fiction short stories.Contents:No Truce with KingsThe Critique of Impure ReasonEscape from OrbitEye Times FourTurning PointEpilogueDEEP SPACE and HIGH TIMETURNING POINT: That morning they invented the wheel; in the afternoon, the sailing ship; now night was falling and they looked up to the beckoning stars...EPILOGUE: Mankind and Earth meet again, at the Billion-year Reunion...NO TRUCE WITH KINGS: The Hugo Award-winning – novella of a feudal America at war...Always named among the handful of greats in the field of SF, Poul Anderson has expanded both his own reputation and the horizons of the art in this latest collection of stories from the pinnacle of the imagination.

Sos the Rope


Piers Anthony - 1968
    They call him Sos - a man mightier in strength and spirit than the greatest warriors of post-Blast legend. His past is shrouded in enigma, but now he wanders the earth, writing a heritage in blood and bravery.To some, he is savior; to others, agent of cataclysm. One man alone bears the terrible curse of his friendship. Two mortal women share his doom-driven love.Yet only Sos knows thee ultimate purpose of his strange, violent mission on earth: save mankind - or destroy it forever.Vivid, dramatic, and compelling in its blending of adventurous narrative and specualtion, SOS THE ROPE was the unanimous choice of the judges to receive the $5000 Pyramid Publications/Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Novel Award. Piers Anthony is one of the brightest new names in the field of science fiction, and has won considerable notice with his recent novel CHTHON.

Nemesis


Isaac Asimov - 1989
    In the twenty-third century pioneers have escaped the crowded earth for life in self-sustaining orbital colonies.  One of the colonies, Rotor, has broken away from the solar system to create its own renegade utopia around an unknown red star two light-years from Earth:  a star named Nemesis.  Now a fifteen-year-old Rotorian girl has learned of the dire threat that nemesis poses to Earth's people--but she is prevented from warning them.  Soon she will realize that Nemesis endangers Rotor as well.  And so it will be up to her alone to save both Earth and Rotor as--drawn inexorably by Nemesis, the death star--they hurtle toward certain disaster.

Probability Moon


Nancy Kress - 2000
    Earth establishes extrasolar colonies and discovers alien races--including the warlike Fallers, the only spacefaring race besides humans. Mysterious, uncommunicative, and relentlessly bent on humanity's extinction, the Fallers have mastered the star gates, and are closing in on earth. Dr. Bazargan commands the scientific team sent to a newly discovered world to study its humanoid natives: beings who literally perceive only one reality. To lie is to be unreal--and condemned to death. The humans must flee for their lives across the unknown planet when they and the aliens learn the scientific mission is a lie. It's the cover for a secret military exploration of the moon Tas, which is another artifact of the gate-makers: a superweapon capable of annihilating all life in a star system, and already known to the Fallers. Nancy Kress has won the Hugo, the Sturgeon, and three Nebula Awards. She is justly acclaimed as a literary SF writer, but receives little acknowledgement that her work is hard SF. Probability Moon should change this, winning her many new readers while pleasing her fans. It's a rare and desirable hybrid: a literary, military, hard-SF novel. Set in the same world as her Nebula- and Sturgeon-winning novelette, "Flowers of Aulit Prison," Probability Moon is the first book of a trilogy, but it has a self-contained story line. The sequel, Probability Sun, will appear in 2001, and the concluding book will be The Fabric of Space. --Cynthia Ward

Eros Ascending


Mike Resnick - 1984
    By inserting 'errors' in the accounting logs, the Syndicate intends to expose a phony embezzlement scheme as an excuse to shut down the troublesome orbiting pleasure palace. When the reclusive Redwine falls in love with the madam, he begins a tricky double-cross that threatens more than the financial well-being of the Comet.