Book picks similar to
Space Carrier Avalon by Glynn Stewart
science-fiction
sci-fi
space-opera
military
The Guns Above
Robyn Bennis - 2017
Garnia’s Air Signal Corp stands out as the favored martial child of the King. But though it’s co-ed, women on-board are only allowed “auxiliary” crew positions and are banned from combat. In extenuating circumstances, Josette saves her airship in the heat of battle. She is rewarded with the Mistral, becoming Garnia’s first female captain.She wants the job – just not the political flak attached. On top of patrolling the front lines, she must also contend with a crew who doubts her expertise, a new airship that is an untested deathtrap, and the foppish aristocrat Lord Bernat – a gambler and shameless flirt with the military know-how of a thimble. He’s also been assigned to her ship to catalog her every moment of weakness and indecision. When the Vins make an unprecedented military move that could turn the tide of the war, can Josette deal with Bernat, rally her crew, and survive long enough to prove herself to the top brass?
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.
Will Save the Galaxy for Food
Yahtzee Croshaw - 2017
With the invention of Quantum Teleportation, space heroes aren't needed anymore. When one particularly unlucky ex-adventurer masquerades as famous pilot and hate figure Jacques McKeown, he's sucked into an ever-deepening corporate and political intrigue. Between space pirates, adorable deadly creatures, and a missing fortune in royalties, saving the universe was never this difficult!From the creator of Mogworld and Jam!Benjamin Richard "Yahtzee" Croshaw is a British-Australian comedic writer, video game journalist, author, and video game developer. He is perhaps best known for his acerbic video game review series, Zero Punctuation, for The Escapist.
Artefact
Jamie Sawyer - 2015
All that stands against the alien menace are the soldiers of the Simulant Operation Programme, an elite military team remotely operating avatars in the most dangerous theatres of war.Captain Conrad Harris has died hundreds of times - running suicide missions in simulant bodies. Known as Lazarus, he is a man addicted to death. So when a secret research station deep in alien territory suddenly goes dark, there is no other man who could possibly lead a rescue mission.But Harris hasn't been trained for what he's about to find. And this time, he may not be coming back . . .Artefact is an action-drenched tale of elite space marines, deep space exploration and galactic empires. Discover The Lazarus War - the thrilling new space opera series from one of the most exciting new voices in science fiction.
The Aeronaut's Windlass
Jim Butcher - 2015
Within their halls, aristocratic houses have ruled for generations, developing scientific marvels, fostering trade alliances, and building fleets of airships to keep the peace.Captain Grimm commands the merchant ship, Predator. Fiercely loyal to Spire Albion, he has taken their side in the cold war with Spire Aurora, disrupting the enemy’s shipping lines by attacking their cargo vessels. But when the Predator is severely damaged in combat, leaving captain and crew grounded, Grimm is offered a proposition from the Spirearch of Albion—to join a team of agents on a vital mission in exchange for fully restoring Predator to its fighting glory.And even as Grimm undertakes this dangerous task, he will learn that the conflict between the Spires is merely a premonition of things to come. Humanity’s ancient enemy, silent for more than ten thousand years, has begun to stir once more. And death will follow in its wake…
Earth Unaware
Orson Scott Card - 2012
UNTIL NOW.
A hundred years before Ender's Game, humanity is slowly making its way out to the planets of the solar system, exploring and mining asteroids.
The ship El Cavador is far from Earth, in the deeps of the Kuiper Belt, beyond Pluto. When the ship's telescopes pick up a fast-moving object coming in-system, they're unsure what to make of it.
Little do they know that this object is the most important thing to happen to the human race in a million years. It's humanity's first contact with an alien race. The First Formic War is about to begin.
BOOK ONE OF THE FIRST FORMIC WAR
First Contact
Michael R. Hicks - 2009
But Aurora is disabled by gigantic alien warships and boarded by blue-skin females with fangs and claws. The warriors slaughter the crew in ritual one-on-one combat. The sole survivor is returned to Earth. This Messenger bears a real-time globe device that counts down to an impending attack. That is the way of the Kreelan Empire. For centuries before man have they waged war, seeking a prophesied savior. Soon to be extinct, the ancient species wages their last war, hoping for redemption of sins long past.
Archangel Down
C. Gockel - 2015
They’re wrong.Commander Noa Sato plans a peaceful leave on her home planet Luddeccea ... but winds up interrogated and imprisoned for her involvement in the Archangel Project. A project she knows nothing about.Professor James Sinclair wakes in the snow, not remembering the past twenty four hours, or knowing why he is being pursued. The only thing he knows is that he has to find Commander Sato, a woman he’s never met.A military officer from the colonies and a civilian from Old Earth, they couldn’t have less in common. But they have to work together to save the lives of millions—and their own.Every step of the way they are haunted by the final words of a secret transmission:The archangel is down.
The Light Brigade
Kameron Hurley - 2019
Grunts in the corporate corps get busted down into light to travel to and from interplanetary battlefronts. Everyone is changed by what the corps must do in order to break them down into light. Those who survive learn to stick to the mission brief—no matter what actually happens during combat.Dietz, a fresh recruit in the infantry, begins to experience combat drops that don’t sync up with the platoon’s. And Dietz’s bad drops tell a story of the war that’s not at all what the corporate brass want the soldiers to think is going on.Is Dietz really experiencing the war differently, or is it combat madness? Trying to untangle memory from mission brief and survive with sanity intact, Dietz is ready to become a hero—or maybe a villain; in war it’s hard to tell the difference.
Starship Blackbeard
Michael Wallace - 2014
Now Drake is on the run from Lord Admiral Malthorne, while another pursuer, Drake's old friend, believes the accusations are true, and promises to bring him to justice.But Drake won't go down without a fight. Rather than surrender, he'll lead his loyal crew into the lawless frontier worlds, infested with pirates and smugglers, to repair and rearm his ship. Then he'll return to attack Malthorne's estates and seize the evidence he needs to clear his name.But more than just Malthorne's estate is at stake. If Drake is captured, he and his crew are doomed--and the kingdom will be plunged into another war.Book #1 of the Starship Blackbeard Series, by Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author Michael Wallace.Book #2: Lords of Space: amazon.com/Lords-Space-Starship-Black...
Legion of the Damned
William C. Dietz - 1993
Dietz's acclaimed Legion of the Damned series... There is one final choice for the hopeless, the terminally ill, the condemned criminals, the victims who cannot be saved: becoming cyborg soldiers in the Legion. Their human bodies are destroyed and they are reborn as living weapons. But when aliens attack the Empire, the Legion must choose sides.
The Second Ship
Richard Phillips - 2006
Now, the American government is ready to share the Rho Project discoveries with the world. But as the world scrambles to adopt the alien technologies, three high schoolers make another shocking discovery: hidden inside a cave in the New Mexico wilderness lies another alien ship. As the friends explore the second ship, they begin to unravel a decades-long secret involving an extraterrestrial war, government cover-ups, and secret experimentation using alien technology on humans. A battle has begun, and the secrets of the second ship may be the key to humanity's last chance for survival.
Finder
Suzanne Palmer - 2019
He prefers the term finder.His latest job should be simple. Find the spacecraft Venetia's Sword and steal it back from Arum Gilger, ex-nobleman turned power-hungry trade boss. He'll slip in, decode the ship's compromised AI security, and get out of town, Sword in hand.Fergus locates both Gilger and the ship in the farthest corner of human-inhabited space, a gas-giant-harvesting colony called Cernee. But Fergus' arrival at the colony is anything but simple. A cable car explosion launches Cernee into civil war, and Fergus must ally with Gilger's enemies to navigate a field of space mines and a small army of hostile mercenaries. What was supposed to be a routine job evolves into negotiating a power struggle between factions. Even worse, Fergus has become increasingly--and inconveniently--invested in the lives of the locals.It doesn't help that a dangerous alien species thought mythical prove unsettlingly real, and their ominous triangle ships keep following Fergus around.Foolhardy. Eccentric. Reckless. Whatever he's called, Fergus will need all the help he can get to take back the Sword and maybe save Cernee from destruction in the process.
Dorsai!
Gordon R. Dickson - 1960
The ultimate warriors, they are known for their deadly rages, unbreakable honor, and fierce independence. No man rules the Dorsai, but their mastery of the art of war has made them the most valuable mercenaries in the known universe. Donal Graeme is Dorsai, taller and harder than any ordinary man. But he is different as well, with talents that maze even his fellow Dorsai. And once he ventures out into the stars, the future will never be the same.