Book picks similar to
War Games by David Bischoff


science-fiction
fiction
sci-fi
thriller

The Shrinking Man


Richard Matheson - 1956
    The radioactivity acts as a catalyst for the bug spray, causing his body to shrink at a rate of approximately 1/7 of an inch per day. A few weeks later, Carey can no longer deny the truth: not only is he losing weight, he is also shorter than he was and deduces, to his dismay, that his body will continue to shrink.

Area 51


Robert Doherty - 1997
    The President doesn't know about it. The press doesn't know about it. Just a few scientists and military personnel do, and they are about to make a very big mistake...Nashville, Tennessee...An unemployed freelance journalist receives an audio tape that nearly scares her to death - then send her racing to New Mexico.Outside Nellis Air Force Base, New Mexico...An investigative reporter and a UFO watcher sneak into a restricted zone called Area 51.Inside the Great Pyramid, Egypt...An archaeologist makes a startling discovery deep within the Lower Chamber - a discovery that could change the world.Inside Nellis Air Force Base, New Mexico...Mike Turcotte, formerly of Special Forces, joins Nightscape, the elite security force guarding Area 51, and sees something that makes his blood run cold.The White House, Washington, D.C....Dr. Lisa Duncan, the President's scientific adviser, leaves to join Majic-12, the top secret project at Nellis Air Force Base... to try to stop it before doomsday begins...

The Terminator


Shaun Hutson - 1985
    

Embers of War


Gareth L. Powell - 2018
    Seeking to atone, she joins the House of Reclamation, an organisation dedicated to rescuing ships in distress.But, stripped of her weaponry and emptied of her officers, she struggles in the new role she’s chosen for herself. When a ship goes missing in a disputed system, Trouble Dog and her new crew of misfits and loners, captained by Sal Konstanz, an ex-captain of a medical frigate who once fought against Trouble Dog, are assigned to investigate and save whoever they can.Meanwhile, light years away, intelligence officer Ashton Childe is tasked with locating and saving the poet, Ona Sudak, who was aboard the missing ship, whatever the cost. In order to do this, he must reach out to the only person he considers a friend, even if he’s not sure she can be trusted. What Childe doesn’t know is that Sudak is not the person she appears to be.Quickly, what appears to be a straightforward rescue mission turns into something far more dangerous, as Trouble Dog, Konstanz and Childe, find themselves at the centre of a potential new conflict that could engulf not just mankind but the entire galaxy.If she is to survive and save her crew, Trouble Dog is going to have to remember how to fight.

The Season of Passage


Christopher Pike - 1992
    Lauren Wagner was a celebrity. She was involved with the most exciting adventure mankind had ever undertaken. The whole world admired and respected her.But Lauren knew fear.Inside voices entreating her to love them.Outside — the mystery of the missing group that had gone before her. The dead group.But were they simply dead?Or something else?A terrifying novel of horror — and, surprisingly, of salvation — from one of America's bestselling writers.A novel you won't forget.

The Preserving Machine


Philip K. Dick - 1969
    DICKRobot psychiatrists activated by $20 coinsA war veteran who keeps changing into a blob of organic jellyBusiness advice from the souls of the departedA machine that turns musical scores into small, furry animalsA dog story that recalls Kafka's 'Investigations of a Dog' These are some of the treasures of imagination in this collection of Philip K. Dick's short fiction. They display all the uncanny inventiveness & sad, quirky humanism of his wonderful novels as well as being a testing ground for many of their later themes.Comprising:The Preserving Machine (1953);War Game (1959);Upon the Dull Earth (1954);Roog (1952);War Veteran (1955);Top Stand-By Job (1963);Beyond Lies the Wub (1952);We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (1966);Captive Market (1955);If There Were No Benny Cemoli (1953);Retreat Syndrome (1964);The Crawlers (1954);Oh, to Be a Blobel! (1964);What the Dead Men Say (1964);Pay for the Printer (1956).

A World Out of Time


Larry Niven - 1976
    Once he was outbound, where the Society that ruled Earth could not reach him, he headed his starship toward the galactic core, where the unimaginable energies of the Universe wrenched the fabric of time and space and promised final escape from his captors.Then he returned to an Earth eons older than the one he'd left...a planet that had had 3,000,000 years to develop perils he had never dreamed of -- perils that became nightmares that he had to escape...somehow!

Mistworld


Simon R. Green - 1992
    Shielded from Imperial attack by the powerful espers who have sought refuge there, Mistworld--the haven for outlaws, rebels, and misfits--faces a new threat from a shadowy figure intent on stalking its streets.

Changeling


Stephen Leigh - 1989
    At his side, a mysterious woman whose life and memory he saved, whose love he has won for a second time. His name is Derec; hers is Ariel. And their story has only begun to be told...In Robot City, the late science fiction genius Isaac Asimov challenged a talented group of science fiction writers to resolve the conundrums he set for them in the context of his famous Three Laws of Robotics. In Robots and Aliens, a new challenge was put forth: What would happen if the robots of Asimov's universe were to meet alien races? Would the Three Laws that protect both humans and robots still apply when dealing with a species that is neither...?This pair of adventures, enhanced with a pair of essays by Asimov himself, continue the saga of Robot City, where the finest minds in science fiction enter the most futuristic landscape in robot history!

The Master of the World (Extraordinary Voyages, #53)


Jules Verne - 1904
    Sometimes I even ask myself if all this has really happened, if its pictures dwell in truth in my memory, and not merely in my imagination. In my position as head inspector in the federal police department at Washington, urged on moreover by the desire, which has always been very strong in me, to investigate and understand everything which is mysterious, I naturally became much interested in these remarkable occurrences. And as I have been employed by the government in various important affairs and secret missions since I was a mere lad, it also happened very naturally that the head of my department placed In my charge this astonishing investigation, wherein I found myself wrestling with so many impenetrable mysteries.

Mass Effect: Revelation


Drew Karpyshyn - 2007
    After discovering a cache of Prothean technology on Mars in 2148, humanity is spreading to the stars; the newest interstellar species, struggling to carve out its place in the greater galactic community. On the edge of colonized space, ship commander and Alliance war hero David Anderson investigates the remains of a top secret military research station; smoking ruins littered with bodies and unanswered questions. Who attacked this post and for what purpose? And where is Kahlee Sanders, the young scientist who mysteriously vanished from the base hours before her colleagues were slaughtered?Sanders is now the prime suspect, but finding her creates more problems for Anderson than it solves. Partnered with a rogue alien agent he can't trust and pursued by an assassin he can't escape, Anderson battles impossible odds on uncharted worlds to uncover a sinister conspiracy . . . one he won't live to tell about. Or so the enemy thinks.

Spock Must Die!


James Blish - 1970
    Spocks! One is the true First Officer of the Enterprise. The other is his complete opposite, a traitor whose very existence poses a grave threat to the crew, the ship, and the Federation itself. One of the Spocks must die. But which one ... ?

The Rising Force


Dave Wolverton - 1999
    After years at the Jedi Temple, he knows the power of the lightsaber and the Force. But he cannot control his own anger and fear. Because of this, the Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn will not take him on as a Padawan apprentice.Now Obi-Wan is about to have his first encounter with true evil. He must face off against unexpected enemies—and face up to his own dark wishes.Only then can his education as a Jedi truly begin.

Before the Storm


Michael P. Kube-McDowell - 1996
    In the blockbuster bestselling tradition of Heir to the Empire comes this thrilling addition to the Star Wars(r) saga, as peace gives way to a new threat...It is a time of tranquillity for the New Republic.  The remnants of the Empire now lie in complete disarray, and the reemergence of the Jedi Knights has brought power and prestige to the fledgling government on Coruscant.  Yesterday's Rebels have become today's administrators and diplomats, and the factions that fought against imperial tyranny seem united in savoring the fruits of peace.But the peace is short-lived.  A restless Luke must journey to his mother's homeworld in a desperate and dangerous quest to find her people.  An adventurous Lando must seize a mysterious spacecraft that has weapons of enormous destructive power and an unknown mission.  And Leia, a living symbol of the New Republic's triumph, must face down a ruthless leader of the Duskhan League, an arrogant Yevetha who seems bent on a genocidal war that could shatter the fragile unity of the New Republic...and threaten its very survival.

The Faded Sun Trilogy


C.J. Cherryh - 1978
    For aeons this golden-skinned, golden-eyed race had provided the universe mercenary soldiers of almost unimaginable ability. But now the mri have faced an enemy unlike any other - an enemy whose only way of war is widespread destruction. These "humans" are mass fighters, creatures of the herd, and the mri have been slaughtered like animals.Now, in the aftermath of war, the mri face extinction. It will be up to three individuals to save whatever remains of this devastated race: a warrior - one of the last survivors of his kind; a priestess of this honorable people; and a lone human - a man sworn to aid the enemy of his own kind. Can they retrace the galaxy-wide path of this nomadic race back through millennia to reclaim the ancient world which first gave them life?