Breakers


Edward W. Robertson - 2012
    In Los Angeles, Raymond and Mia James are about to lose their house. Within days, none of it will matter.When Vanessa dies of the flu, Walt is devastated. But she isn't the last. The virus quickly kills billions, reducing New York to an open grave and LA to a chaotic wilderness of violence and fires. As Raymond and Mia hole up in an abandoned mansion, where they learn to function without electricity, running water, or neighbors, Walt begins an existential walk to LA, where Vanessa had planned to move when she left him. He expects to die along the way.Months later, a massive vessel appears above Santa Monica Bay. Walt is attacked by a crablike monstrosity in a mountain stream. The virus that ended humanity wasn't created by humans. It was inflicted from outside. The colonists who sent it are ready to finish the job--and Earth's survivors may be too few and too weak to resist.

The Culled


Simon Spurrier - 2006
    Although there are pockets of an attempted continuation of civilisation, the truth is that the world has gone to hell in a handcart. The reason for this is a disease that has wiped out most of the world's population. It kills almost all those who are not of the blood group 'O neg'. Those people who survive are untouched. Everyone else dies. Infrastructures have collapsed. Mobs run rampant. The only kind of law that exists is that imposed by the people with the biggest guns. In this devastated and chaotic world who can bring hope and order? The Blight arose from nowhere. It swept across the bickering nations like the End of Times. As the numbers thinned and societies crumbled, the survivors picked their way between silent streets and looked out on the squalid new order. Hotheaded religion and territorial savagery rule the cities now. Somewhere, amidst the chaos, a damaged man receives a signal, and with it the tiniest flicker of hope. This is the chance to rediscover the humanity he lost, long ago, in the blood and filth and horror of the Cull. He mustcross the Atlantic, defeat warrior gangs in New York and seek out the location of his missing love.

The Death of Grass


John Christopher - 1956
    The rest of the world looks on with concern, though safe in the expectation that a counter-virus will be developed any day. Then Chung-Li mutates and spreads. Wheat, barley, oats, rye: no grass crop is safe, and global famine threatens.In Britain, where green fields are fast turning brown, the Government lies to its citizens, devising secret plans to preserve the lives of a few at the expense of the many.Getting wind of what's in store, John Custance and his family decide they must abandon their London home to head for the sanctuary of his brother's farm in a remote northern valley.And so they begin the long trek across a country fast descending into barbarism, where the law of the gun prevails, and the civilized values they once took for granted become the price they must pay if they are to survive.

Love Conquers All


Saxon Andrew - 2009
    This series is Space Opera at its finest. All seven books in the series have been number one bestsellers at Amazon's Science Fiction Series. The following review describes the series well:This review is from: Annihilation: Love Conquers All I was amazed at Saxon's beautiful re-creation of some of the best Golden Age SF. There just wasn't enough of it written. Modern authors usually don't or won’t get into the spirit of a good Space Opera. Saxon has real heroes (smart ones, great space battles, grand alien empires and bad guys you can love). He has it all. The characters are pure types. They are also powerful. What really made this book great was the marvelous style. His pacing and scene cutting remind me of E.R. Burroughs. Sharp! Fast paced and quick, the battle scenes remind me of Drake. I am so grateful to read a book that is not dripping PC (sorry PC police!). A true blast from the past, I cannot wait to read the rest of the series. I only wish more authors had the ability and courage to write like this. E.E Smith would be proud.A young boy born with unique psychic abilities.An ancient alien artifact he accidently discovers.Now Earth is targeted for total annihilation by 50,000 warships.In this epic story, Saxon Andrew takes us into the future and the lives of human and nonhuman characters, some we can easily relate to, and others who are a bit different. Along with a hearty dose of battles and spaceships, this is a story that offers humor and a tale of enduring love against the backdrop of galactic war on a grand scale. The following is an excerpt from the book:Admiral Dorg sat in his command chair on board the Alliance Flagship War Weapon and watched as his fleet was destroying the humans’ ships. He heard his bridge crew cheering but he couldn’t help thinking, “This is too easy. This fleet couldn’t have defeated our ships at the Human Colony World.” Then he said, “Communications, put a picture of one of those human ships that was just destroyed on my display.” A picture of a small ship suddenly appeared on his console. He looked at it for a minute and then pulled up a picture of the small human ship that had killed two heavy cruisers. He put it next to the ship that had just been destroyed; they looked nothing alike. His internal alarms went off at full blast; he stood and yelled, “Order the fleet back into formation!” His crew stopped cheering and looked at him like he was crazy. “Do it now; we’re being set up for a trap!” His crew hesitated, looking at each other for just a moment, and then started issuing orders, but that small hesitation proved fatal; the human fleet ripped into the Alliance ships like a tsunami.

Solar Kill


Charles Ingrid - 1987
    It is the story of his desperate struggle to survive and his determination to claim justice for the lives and worlds wrongfully destroyed.

The Anome


Jack Vance - 1971
    A land where men and women are marked for life. Where they are bound to irrevocable destinies by the proclamations of the Faceless Man-an unseen power which terrorises and controls the world.Durdane is a place where defiance is punished with death. But this kingdom of myriad mystery and incalculable peril is now threatened by a menace from without-the dreaded Rogushkoi. And only one youth, Gastel Etzwane, dares to challenge the unchallengeable, the power of the Faceless Man, in an extraordinary struggle for mastery and for the survival of Durdane...

The Inverted World


Christopher Priest - 1974
    Rails must be freshly laid ahead of the city & carefully removed in its wake. Rivers & mountains present nearly insurmountable challenges to the ingenuity of the city's engineers. But if the city does not move, it will fall farther & farther behind the optimum & into the crushing gravitational field that has transformed life on Earth. The only alternative to progress is death. The secret directorate that governs the city makes sure that its inhabitants know nothing of this. Raised in common in creches, nurtured on synthetic food, prevented above all from venturing outside the closed circuit of the city, they're carefully sheltered from the dire necessities that have come to define human existence. Yet the city is in crisis. People are growing restive. The population is dwindling. The rulers know that, for all their efforts, slowly but surely the city is slipping ever farther behind the optimum. Helward Mann is a member of the city's elite. Better than anyone, he knows how tenuous is the city's continued existence. But the world he's about to discover is infinitely stranger than the strange world he believes he knows so well.

Planet Urth


Jennifer Martucci - 2013
    The planet has been battered by war, its inhabitants plagued by disease and death. Few humans survived and remained unaffected. Most changed dramatically and evolved into something else entirely. Irrevocable alterations caused by chemical warfare have created a new species. North America is in ruins and has been overtaken. Humanity has fallen at the hands of mutants known as Urthmen. Seventeen year-old Avery is alive and unchanged. But she has not been immune to the harshness of the new world. She has lived on the run for much of her life, in terror. After losing her father, Avery is the sole guardian of her eight-year-old sister, June. Avery is now charged with June’s safety as well as her own, a nearly impossible task.Forced to hide deep in the forest and away from the cities overrun by Urthmen, Avery and her sister are constantly hunted. Danger awaits them at every turn. They fear they are the only human beings left, that they are the last of their kind. But are they truly alone?Find out in this raw and rousing first installment of the Planet Urth series.

Accelerando


Charles Stross - 2005
    It is the era of the posthuman. Artificial intelligences have surpassed the limits of human intellect. Biotechnological beings have rendered people all but extinct. Molecular nanotechnology runs rampant, replicating and reprogramming at will. Contact with extraterrestrial life grows more imminent with each new day.Struggling to survive and thrive in this accelerated world are three generations of the Macx clan: Manfred, an entrepreneur dealing in intelligence amplification technology whose mind is divided between his physical environment and the Internet; his daughter, Amber, on the run from her domineering mother, seeking her fortune in the outer system as an indentured astronaut; and Sirhan, Amber's son, who finds his destiny linked to the fate of all of humanity.For something is systemically dismantling the nine planets of the solar system. Something beyond human comprehension. Something that has no use for biological life in any form.

Weatherman


Lois McMaster Bujold - 1990
    When the commander orders his men to enter a facility that is leaking poisonous radiation, the men revolt, and it's up to Miles to use his wits to avoid a massacre. A story later incorporated into the Hugo Award-winning novel THE VOR GAME.NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHORBujold's "work remains among the most enjoyable and rewarding in contemporary SF."- Publishers Weekly“Bujold has a gift, nearly unique in science fiction, for the comedy of manners.” - Chicago Sun Times“Bujold is not just a master of plot, she is a master of emotion.”- SF Site"Bujold is one of the best writers of SF adventures to come along in years."- LocusLois McMaster Bujold was born in 1949, the daughter of an engineering professor at Ohio State University, from whom she picked up her early interest in science fiction. She now lives in Minneapolis, and has two grown children. She began writing with the aim of professional publication in 1982. She wrote three novels in three years; in October of 1985, all three sold to Baen Books, launching her career. Bujold went on to write many other books for Baen, mostly featuring her popular character Miles Naismith Vorkosigan, his family, friends, and enemies. Her books have been translated into over twenty languages. Her fantasy from Eos includes the award-winning Chalion series and the Sharing Knife series.

Defenders


Will McIntosh - 2014
    Our only chance for survival was to engineer a new race of perfect soldiers to combat them. Seventeen feet tall, knowing and loving nothing but war, their minds closed to the aliens. But these saviors could never be our servants. And what is done cannot be undone.