Old Man's War


John Scalzi - 2005
    First he visited his wife's grave. Then he joined the army.The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce-- and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So: we fight. To defend Earth, and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding.Earth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanity's resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force. Everybody knows that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They don't want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You'll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You'll serve two years at the front. And if you survive, you'll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets.John Perry is taking that deal. He has only the vaguest idea what to expect. Because the actual fight, light-years from home, is far, far harder than he can imagine--and what he will become is far stranger.

The Quantum Thief


Hannu Rajaniemi - 2010
    Just another day in the Dilemma Prison. Rescued by the mysterious Mieli and her flirtatious spacecraft, Jean is taken to the Oubliette, the Moving City of Mars, where time is a currency, memories are treasures, and a moon-turned-singularity lights the night. Meanwhile, investigator Isidore Beautrelet, called in to investigate the murder of a chocolatier, finds himself on the trail of an arch-criminal, a man named le Flambeur...Indeed, in his many lives, the entity called Jean le Flambeur has been a thief, a confidence artist, a posthuman mind-burgler, and more. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his deeds are known throughout the Heterarchy, from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of Mars. In his last exploit, he managed the supreme feat of hiding the truth about himself from the one person in the solar system hardest to hide from: himself. Now he has the chance to regain himself in all his power—in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed.The Quantum Thief is a breathtaking joyride through the solar system several centuries hence, a world of marching cities, ubiquitous public-key encryption, people who communicate via shared memory, and a race of hyper-advanced humans who originated as an MMORPG guild. But for all its wonders, The Quantum Thief is also a story powered by very human motives of betrayal, jealousy, and revenge.

The Army of Light


Stephen A. Fender - 2013
    Then, one by one, subsequent border systems began to fall victim to the unknown attackers.The Kafaran had arrived.The fighting raged on for nearly five years. Tens of thousands of military personnel perished, and millions of innocent beings lost their homes… or their lives. Then, nearly as quickly as the war had started, the Kafaran’s inexplicably retreated to an unexplored region of space. Even with their once expansive foothold in the Milky Way now lying in ruins, it seemed to the once peaceful Unified Collaboration of Systems that victory was finally theirs.Now, with the Galactic War five years in the past, retired fighter pilot Shawn Kestrel wasn’t nearly as content in his peacetime life and he should have been. Not only was his fledgling cargo business steadily losing customers, his interstellar transport was fatally incapacitated, the victim of a now all too common pirate attack.Without warning, the prudish daughter of his former commanding officer appears, informing Shawn that William has mysteriously disappeared—apparently the victim of foul play. And, as if things weren’t difficult enough, a Unified Sector Command carrier quickly arrives to assert the UCS’s own self-guided interests into the disappearance.As Shawn endeavors to put all of the pieces together, one thing becomes terrifyingly clear: the Kafaran's are no longer idle.With the government suspiciously pressing down on him from one side, and the beautiful and enigmatic daughter driving him on from the other, Shawn Kestrel must search deep within himself to decide where his past and present loyalties lie before the universe once again erupts into all-out war.

Gabriel's Redemption


Steve Umstead - 2011
    He's spent the last five years hiding from his past, from those responsible for the failed mission, from those responsible for running him out of the Navy, and from those originally responsible for making him into who he was - a highly-trained, physically and mentally augmented Special Forces soldier. Two mysterious visitors appear unannounced at the door of Gabriel's seedy hotel room in the slums of Jamaica. His past has finally caught up with him. From the decaying Caribbean to politically-charged South America, from the back alleys of Mars to a tiny colony on a planet six hundred light years from Earth, Gabriel's Redemption is a near-future military science fiction story of a personal journey seen from the perspective of a soldier who has lost everything -- one who desperately needs to redeem himself not only in his government's eyes, but also his own. Interstellar action and political intrigue mix with one-on-one battles on the surface of a frozen planet in Book One of the science fiction-adventure trilogy.

Enduring the Crisis


K.D. Kinney - 2016
    However, timing is everything. When an EMP nuclear event takes out the grid and brings the nation to a complete stop, Tammy and Ben may not have been as prepared as they thought. Tammy is a food storage and emergency preparedness specialist. So she thinks. She and her five daughters will find out how prepared they are when they're put through the ultimate test when the worst happens. Having everything she needs won't bring all her family members home or keep the crazies away. What's worse is she has no way to contact her husband Ben to find out if he survived. Ben is supervising a road-building project in a remote fishing village in Alaska when the state's defense system takes out what could have been a nuclear EMP disaster. The lights are still on where he is, but with all flights grounded, there's no easy way back to Anchorage, much less the lower forty-eight. He might be thousands of miles away from the disaster but he's determined to return home to his family no matter what it takes. As North America is in chaos, Tammy and Ben know the hardships that are in store for them and their family. However, nothing could have prepared them for the real struggles they encounter as they try to protect and reunite with the ones they love. Book One of the Endure Trilogy

The Star Thief


Jamie Grey - 2014
    There's just one problem - all she wants is to get out of the business.But after Renna rescues an injured boy on her final job, she finds herself on the run from the mob instead of enjoying retirement. She unwittingly becomes ensnared by MYTH, a top-secret galactic protection agency who offer her a choice - either help them on their latest mission, or spend the rest of her life on a prison ship.Forced to work under the watchful eye of handsome but arrogant Captain Finn, Renna learns the former mercenary-turned-hero has a few dirty secrets himself. As Renna works to discover the truth about Finn's past and keep the tantalizing man at arm's length, she unearths a plot to create an unstoppable army. The target? The human star fleet.Now Renna must pull off the biggest job of her career - saving the galaxy. And maybe even herself.

The Synchronicity War Part 1


Dietmar Arthur Wehr - 2013
    As the outgunned Space Force is driven back in battle after battle in what appears to be a war of extermination, one officer experiences precognitive visions that help him blunt the enemy onslaught but he can't control or predict when they occur.With the Senior Brass convinced that he's a tactical genius, he's given more and more responsibility and is terrified by the belief that Humanity's Fate rests on his shoulders. Can he solve the mystery of his precognitive visions before the Human Race plunges into the abyss of total extermination? This is Volume 1 of a military SF series about desperate space battles and the men, women and Artificial Intelligences, who fight and die in them.

Cosmonaut Keep


Ken MacLeod - 2000
    Against his better judgment, he accepts an assignment to crack the Marshall Titov, a top-secret orbital station operated by the European Space Agency. But what Matt will discover there will propel him on an extraordinary and quite unexpected journey.Gregor Cairns is an exobiology student and descendant of one of Terra Nova's first families. Hopelessly infatuated with a lovely young trader's daughter, he is unaware that his research partner, Elizabeth, has fallen in love with him. Together, Gregor and Elizabeth confront the great work his family began three centuries earlier-to rediscover the secret of interstellar travel.Ranging from a gritty near-future Earth to a distant alien world, Cosmonaut Keep is contemporary science fiction at its highest level, a visionary epic filled with daring individuals seeking a place for themselves in a vast, complex, and enigmatic universe. Cosmonaut Keep is a 2002 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel.

Winter World


A.G. Riddle - 2019
    and a shocking discovery...will change humanity forever.In the near future, a new ice age has begun.Humanity stands on the brink of extinction.Desperate for answers, scientists send probes into the solar system to take readings. Near Mars, a probe spots a mysterious object drifting toward the Sun. Is it the cause of the ice age? Or could it be our only hope of survival?With time running out, NASA launches an international mission to make contact with the object. But it isn’t what anyone thought. In the dark of space, alone, the team makes a shocking discovery that will change the course of human history—and possibly end it.

Star Force: Origin Box Set #93-96


Aer-ki Jyr - 2016
     Follow a core group of characters known as the Trailblazers as they use alien technology and knowledge discovered in Antarctic ruins to obtain limited immortality and lead Humanity out into the galaxy, encountering, befriending, and fighting hundreds of alien races all the while desperately trying to prepare Earth for the unbeatable threat at the core of the Milky Way that is destined to return and reclaim their lost colony…and their former Human slaves. Episodes in this box set: SF93-Crusade SF94-Paladin SF95-Capitulation SF96-Leonidas

America One


T.I. Wade - 2012
    Now Ryan Richmond has $3 billion to play with, he is in his forties; and still wants to go to space. His only enemy; the US Government who doesn’t have its own space program-and wants his new spaceship; AMERICA ONE.He sold his first company at 19 and employed the remnants of the Russian Space Program; a couple of the best Russian space brains in the world.Ryan founded, and sold two more companies in his twenties, and then hired most of the European Space Authority.In his thirties he invested over $100 million into Internet Start-ups and Google, netting Billions. Then he waited until NASA’s Shuttle Program came to a sad end and employed the best brains in the U.S. Space Program.Now he is in his forties, still wants to go to space- the only problem is that The U.S. government doesn't have a current spaceship of their own- and wants his!

Mars Journey: Call to Action Book 1


Bill Hargenrader - 2015
    These two veterans of space-flight were used to these conditions. What they were not used to was the dangerous rescue mission they were embarking on—one that had never been attempted before… Mars Journey: Call to Action Book 1 is the first book in bestselling author Bill Hargenrader's epic science fiction action and adventure thriller series set in the near future: Brent Carlson, a brilliant but disgraced former astronaut, embarks on a modern day quest to gather and train the crew of the first international mission to Mars. Meanwhile, the power hungry billionaire CEO of a massive global technology conglomerate has launched a bid to reach Mars first and claim the red planet as corporate property. The Mars Journey series delves into the science, technology, drive, and determination of the human spirit to come together to overcome our greatest challenges, explore space, and become the first martians to colonize the Red Planet.

The Galactic Mage


John Daulton - 2012
    Seeking to avoid a looming doom, he sets his magical sights on the stars—a quest that will likely bring about the very end he's seeking to escape.Far across the galaxy, Ensign Orli Pewter of planet Earth has a looming doom of her own—one of loneliness, depression and, worse, a race of genocidal aliens known as Hostiles seeking to destroy humanity. Trapped aboard a spaceship she never asked to be upon, Orli is in a fight for her life and her sanity.Worlds apart, Altin and Orli share a destiny, though neither knows the other is alive. The Hostiles know. And they have other plans.

Alien: Out of the Shadows


Tim Lebbon - 2013
    But in deep space, he found only darkness and isolation. Then on planet LV178, he and his fellow miners discovered a storm-scoured, sand-blasted hell - and trimonite, the hardest material known to man.When a shuttle crashed into the mining ship Marion, the miners learn that there was more than trimonite deep in the caverns. There was evil, hibernating - and waiting for suitable prey.Hoop and his associates uncover a nest of Xenomorphs, and hell takes on new meaning. Quickly they discover that their only hope lies with the unlikeliest of saviors...Ellen Ripley, the last human survivor of the salvage ship Nostromo.

Omega Rising


Joshua Dalzelle - 2013
    But when he investigates the crash, what he finds will yank him out of his self-imposed exile and thrust him into a world he could have never imagined.He suddenly finds himself trapped on a damaged alien spacecraft and plunged into a universe of interstellar crime lords and government conspiracies, along the way meeting strange new friends… and enemies. As he struggles to find his way back home he is inexorably drawn deeper into a world where one misstep could mean his death. Or worse. He desperately wants to get back to Earth, but it may be the end for him. … or is it just the beginning?