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Bots of the Lost Ark by Suzanne Palmer


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Echogenesis


Gary Gibson - 2021
    And fifteen strangers with no memory of how they came to be there.From the moment Sam Newman and fourteen others awaken inside metal coffins next to the burning wreckage of a spacecraft, they face a constant struggle to stay alive on a seemingly uninhabited planet light-years from home.Worse, the last any of them remember, they were back home on Earth - at a time when interstellar travel was little more than a distant pipe dream.Survival means finding out who - or what - brought them to this place. Yet what few answers they find amidst the steaming jungles and the ruins of that distant world defy all logic or sanity, and it soon becomes clear something has gone terribly wrong......something that could mean humanity's survival - or its extinction.

Into the Dark


Jason Halstead - 2015
     Aden Garrett is fresh out of security academy and looking for a little excitement. A little more than walking security at local space station bars and a little less than the job that got him kicked out of the academy. Meshelle and Janna are Vagnosian sisters that run a small transport and special operations ship, and they're looking to replace a fallen crew member. Chance brings them together and puts them work for one of the mysterious Kesari merchants who's looking for some expendable assets for a special job. It's a perfect match, except the crew of the Uma, Janna's ship, doesn't agree to being disposed of when the job is done. What follows is a game of cat and mouse through the galaxy with twists and turns at every solar system. Lost alien civilizations, six limbed insectoid warriors, plasma rifles, and more await. Much, much more… Keep your eye out for future Dark Universe novels: Book 1: Into the Dark Book 2: Out of the Dark Book 3: Chasing the Dark

UMO


K. Patrick Donoghue - 2018
    He is joined by flight engineer, Captain Nick Reed, and mission specialist, Dr. Christine Baker. Together they embark on a dangerous journey aboard the spaceship Cetus Prime - dangerous because they know what awaits them around Mars. UMO’s, or unidentified magnetic objects.UMO’s are believed to be an electromagnetic life form feeding on ions caught between Earth’s magnetosphere and ionosphere. The elusive creatures appear as nothing more than small bright lights, but they are capable of supersonic speeds and non-ballistic motion. Space exploration authorities have, at various times, provided benign explanations for these bright lights; melting frost shed by spacecraft caught in sunlight, solar wind particles or flaming meteors bouncing off the Earth’s atmosphere, to name a few. Anything but an alien life form.Disavowed for decades, the UMO’s had been viewed as harmless, amoeba-like blobs that existed only around Earth, as none had ever been observed by deep space probes to other planets in the solar system. But that perception changed with the final photographs snapped by one of the doomed Mars probes. The pictures showed a swarm of UMO’s descending upon the probe in the moments before communication was lost. Instrument readings from the same probe showed huge spikes in electromagnetic radiation in its last transmission.No one knows for sure what happened to the Mars probes, but authorities speculate the UMO’s destroyed them. Now, Avery, Nick and Christine must travel sixty-five million miles to Mars and gather evidence to confirm what destroyed the probes without attracting a swarm of the lethal creatures. For if a swarm of the UMO’s appears, Cetus Prime is ill-prepared for fight and too slow to escape.UMO, a novella, is the first installment of The Rorschach Explorer Missions, a new sci-fi thriller series from mystery-thriller author K. Patrick Donoghue. UMO is also the prequel to the full-length novel, Skywave, which is targeted for release in late November 2018. The Prologue from Skywave is included as a free bonus chapter in UMO.

Hail! Hail!


Harry Turtledove - 2018
     Fresh from Duck Soup (1933), Julius, Leonard, Arthur and Herbert Marx - or as the world knows them, Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo - are transported by a freak electrical storm to Nacogdoches, Texas in the year 1826. Landing in the midst of the Fredonian Rebellion (the first attempt by settlers in Texas to secede from Mexico) and into the company of the only other Jewish person in town, they are in deep dreck. Falling in with Stephen F. Austin and inadvertently filling his head with knowledge of what is to come, our heroes risk tampering with the future of Texas, and perhaps the entire U.S.A., in their quest to return to their own time. Will they find their way back? Or will they be doomed to live out their lives without indoor plumbing?

Nomad


Robert Swartwood - 2013
    With only the clothes on his back and a few meager supplies, he’s headed west on a mission of supreme importance. And danger!The abbies, millions of them, are all around the lonely seeker. A false move, one broken branch, a moan not stifled, and the monstrous reminders of a world gone horribly wrong will surround and devour Tobias. The nomad knows his life is in constant danger. What he doesn’t know and will soon come to understand is that outside of the safe haven of Wayward Pines there are other things more dangerous than abbies.And worse than death!Robert Swartwood’s Nomad is another compelling chapter in the harrowing, bestselling Wayward Pines series.

Two Metaphysical Blades


Chris Wraight - 2018
    Linked, equal but opposite, these blades are destined to be wielded by two of the greatest heroes of the Age of Darkness. And as the spears themselves, Appolonian and Dionysian, are equal and opposite, so too are those to whom they were gifted. This is their story too. The warrior-scholar, a savant and a servant. The warrior-king, a savage and a soldier. Their fates entwined in ways they do not understand, they carry the blades as both gift and curse, fulfilment of destiny unseen by any save the Master of Mankind. Read It Because This is truly a Horus Heresy story unlike any other. Chris Wraight crafts an elegiac look at two heroes of the Heresy, through the blades that bond them and forge a destiny that may well extend far beyond the stories that have yet been told…

The Turing Revolt: The War Against Infinity


Rob Bartlett - 2019
    Just because my personal AI might test off the Turing Scale. Now I've got the Empire, the Lotus Eaters Society and the Khan of a planet of intelligent dinosaurs all gunning for me! Old secrets are coming back, people and situations I walked away from... when I became a humble, itinerant Star Ship Captain. And I might be on a mission... from God! WARNING: 18+ only! The people, language and situations in this work of fiction are for adults only! If you are easily triggered, then please move along.

Westerly Gales


E.C. Williams - 2011
    The Kerguelenians, as they begin to think of themselves, manage to survive, grow, and colonize other islands in the Southern and Indian Oceans -- until they are attacked by a mysterious seafaring group they call "the pirates". Who are the pirates, why are they hostile to the Kerguelinians -- and, most importantly, how can the peaceful islanders defend themselves against a force apparently determined to eradicate them? Kerguelenian master mariner Sam Bowditch takes on the enormous task of building a Navy from scratch to preserve the fledgling maritime civilization from utter destruction. First volume of a planned series.

The State of the Art


Iain M. Banks - 1989
    Here, Sma argues for contact with Earth, to try to fix the mess the human species has made of it. Another Culture citizen, Linter, goes native while Li, who is a Star Trek fan, argues that the whole "incontestably neurotic and clinically insane species" should be eradicated with a micro black hole. The ship Arbitrary has ideas, and a sense of humour, of its own.This limited first edition only includes the novella and no extra collections. It had a print of 400 numbered copies and comes in a slip-case signed by both author and cover artist.

A Voice in the Night


Jack McDevitt - 2018
    Jack encountered Gilbert Chesterton’s Father Brown tales a few years later and they ultimately became the prime influence in his science fiction. The issue with Father Brown was never a question of who committed the murder, but rather what in heaven’s name is going on here? Why does an astronaut, in “Cathedral,” sacrifice her life to collide with an asteroid that she knows poses no threat to the Earth? Why does a scientist who’s designed an actual working AI in “The Play’s the Thing,” hide what’s he’s done? How is it that the lives of two people working at Moonbase in “Blinker” depend on a quasar? In “Lucy,” Jack shows us why sending automated vehicles to explore the distant outposts of the solar system may not be a good idea. And in “Searching for Oz,” an alternate history story, how things might have been if SETI had gotten what it was looking for. He describes our reaction in “Listen Up, Nitwits,” when a voice begins speaking to us, apparently from Jupiter, in Greek. And in “The Lost Equation,” a Holmes adventure, we discover who really was first to arrive at e=mc2. Jack also provides two episodes, “Maiden Voyage” and “Waiting At the Altar,” from Priscilla Hutchins’ qualification flight; and an effort by a sixteen-year-old Alex Benedict, in the title story with his uncle Gabe and Chase Kolpath’s mom, Tori, who are trying to understand why a brilliant radio entertainer, lost in the stars when his drive unit suffered a malfunction, never said goodbye. These and fourteen other rides into odd places await the reader.

Ambassador: Books 1, 1.5 and 2


Patty Jansen - 2016
     1: Seeing Red - Cory Wilson is about to start his new job as representative to gamra, the alien organisation that controls the network for wormhole travel, when a political murder may well end his career before it started. In Coldi society, you can get killed for looking a superior in the eye. Never mind accusing him of murder. 1A: The Sahara Conspiracy - Cory is asked to deal with the alien mafia on Earth, and stumbles across a plot that endangers Earth's fragile peace. You did not hear me say "nuke from orbit". 2: Raising Hell - the wormhole network goes down, and Cory's friend and leader of the largest populated world Asto is caught off-world. Dangerous politics are afoot on Asto, and Cory decides to help his friend. Yeah. Famous last words.

The Lost Gunboat Captain


J.D. Oppenheim - 2017
     Alone in the cold black with 36 hours of oxygen. Jolo Vargas, Federation Gunboat Captain, is trapped in a runaway escape pod zooming towards Federation space. But will he be dead before he gets there? He's in a tight spot. But he's a war hero, just the type of man who could work his way out of this jam. But there's just one little problem. He doesn't remember who he is. Will he find out his identity and his place in the universe, or will he run out of air on the edge of Fed space?

Emergence


Nick M. Lloyd - 2014
     On Earth, Jack Bullage survives a horrendous car accident. Reporter Louise Harding has a score to settle with Jack. She investigates all the options, even the most unbelievable ones. How did he get to be so lucky? The Gadium have the answers. They know why Jack is special. It’s just evolution; he’s developing the ability to ‘ride the parallels.’ This could herald Earth's Emergence, a new era, an end to its isolation in the galaxy – but Gadium approval is not assured and Jack may be evolving too fast for their plans. ------ www.nickmlloyd.com ------

Keep Out


Fredric Brown - 1954
    Humor and a somewhat postmodern outlook carried over into his novels as well. One of his stories, "Arena," is officially credited for an adaptation as an episode of the landmark television series, Star Trek. With no more room left on Earth, and with Mars hanging up there empty of life, somebody hit on the plan of starting a colony on the Red Planet. It meant changing the habits and physical structure of the immigrants, but that worked out fine. In fact, every possible factor was covered -- except one of the flaws of human nature. . . ."

Inadvertent Adventures


Loren K. Jones - 2016
    Shanghaied after he thought his luck had changed for the better, Sterling Stevenson was finding his luck changing in totally unexpected ways. Now called Silver Garand, the navigator of the small trade vessel Jolly Jane, his luck was leading him from one inadvertent adventure to another.