Book picks similar to
Used Aliens by M. Sid Kelly


science-fiction
sci-fi
first-reads
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Communion of Dreams


James Downey - 2012
    When an independent prospector on Saturn’s moon Titan discovers an alien artifact, assumptions that we are alone in the universe are called into question. Knowing that news of such a discovery could prompt chaos on Earth, a small team is sent to investigate and hopefully manage the situation. What they find is that there's more to human history, and human abilities, than any of them ever imagined. And that they will need all those insights, and all those abilities, to face the greatest threat yet to human survival.

Dog Aliens 1: Raffle's Name


Cherise Kelley - 2012
    Every morning he digs out of his yard to join his fellow Kaxians. So far, his humans have just filled in the holes, so he should be fine, right? But Clem must keep his secret.No humans can know that dogs are aliens. This gets difficult when Clem's latent psi abilities start to appear!Dog aliens can't wait for their humans to leave them home alone. That's the only time they can do their covert intergalactic trading duties. The little dogs are aliens, too, but they are from a rival planet called Nique, and anyway, who cares about them?There is a happy ending, and no dogs or humans are harmed in the story, although there are scary parts and sad parts. The dog tells the story!The sequel, Dog Aliens 2: Oreo, is now available!

Corpus Chrome, Inc.


S. Craig Zahler - 2014
    develops a robotic body, dubbed a “mannequin,” that can revive, sustain and interface with a cryonically-preserved human brain. Like all new technology, it is copyrighted.Hidden behind lawyers and a chrome facade, the inscrutable organization resurrects a variety of notable minds, pulling the deceased back from oblivion into a world of animated sculpture, foam rubber cars, dissolving waste and strange terrorism. Nobody knows how Corpus Chrome, Inc. determines which individuals should be given a second life, yet myriad people are affected. Among them are Lisanne Breutschen, the composer who invented sequentialism with her twin sister, and Champ Sappline, a garbage man who is entangled in a war between the third, fourth and fifth floors of a New York City apartment building.In the Spring of 2058, Corpus Chrome, Inc. announces that they will revive Derek W.R. Dulande—a serial rapist and murderer who was executed thirty years ago for his crimes. The public is horrified by the decision, and before long, the company’s right to control the lone revolving door between life and death will be violently challenged…

Larry Goes To Space


Alan Black - 2016
    He couldn’t help himself; he was going for a ride with aliens from outer space! The aliens wouldn’t tell him where he was going, how long he would be gone, or if he was ever coming back, but a space trip sounded like more fun than beer and burgers at Benny’s Been There and Done That Bar and Grill. He had to go. “A BRILLIANT NOVEL!” says Melanie Tighe, reviewer for The CitySunTimes, Phoenix, Arizona Larry’s ride into deep space wasn’t just a Sunday jaunt. This space-faring species was in danger of being wiped off the galactic map. They offered Larry a ride because his assistance was vital to their survival, but they were xenophobic to the point of barely tolerating Larry in the same room. He was willing to help, but what could he do? Could he live long enough to save himself? What skills did Larry have to save an alien species threatened with annihilation? Every time he asked them for information, they stonewalled him.

The Outer Rims


Clint Morey - 2013
    But expansion means contact with new worlds and species—and with them, new challenges.As a young boy, Matthew Wallace experienced this as the child of missionaries on the planet Altair, living a rugged existence on the undeveloped world. Undeveloped, but not uninhabited. For Altair was home to a proud race of warriors—the Ananke.The same warriors Matthew watched as they murdered his parents.Now he is the Marshal of the place he swore he’d never return to, his hatred for the Ananke only tempered by his desperation to treat his wife’s terrible illness. For located on Altair is a clinic performing medical miracles, curing men and women of terminal diseases that even the most advanced technologies can’t touch. And yet, nothing is without its price, and as Matthew learns more about the world where he’s now charged with keeping the peace, he slowly realizes he’s going to have to decide what is more important: The life of his wife…or the lives of an entire species.A sci-fi thriller that calls to mind the grand masters of the genre, The Outer Rims explores the morality of doing whatever is necessary and the question of whether humanity and sentience are one in the same.

Unidentified


Michael McBride - 2018
    All they know is that there were five of them when they found the carcass of the mutilated cow. Forty years later, Eric Devlin sends a cryptic email to the other three survivors: I remember everything. Karl Doering has spent the majority of his life trying to understand what happened that night and learn the fate of his missing friend. He responds to the mysterious message and finds that Eric has killed himself in a decrepit barn, behind which is a cornfield filled with mutilated cattle. When a local girl goes missing, Karl realizes that he and the other two survivors are her only hope. To find her they must confront repressed memories so traumatic they’d driven Eric to take his own life…and creatures straight out of their worst nightmares. About the Author: Michael McBride was born in Colorado and still resides in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. He hates the snow, but loves the Avalanche. He works with medical radiation, yet somehow managed to produce five children, none of whom, miraculously, have tails, third eyes, or other random mutations. He writes fiction that runs the gamut from thriller to horror to science fiction...and loves every minute of it.

Bridge Through Time


Scott Spotson - 2014
    Max's son, Dr. Kyle Thorning, is now a high particle physicist at CERN in Switzerland. Meanwhile, after First Contact, powerful aliens with four arms and four legs, named Darsians, are taking control of the planet, with the muted subservience of its human population due to the astounding technological advances that the aliens introduce. Kyle has a powerful weapon—a new Time Travel machine—and must decide to travel to his father's old parallel universe, where he doesn't even exist, or confront the aliens in his home universe.

Naughty Shorts: True Stories of Sex and Bad Judgment at Work


Jesse Lawler - 2019
    These workplace disasters bring out the voyeurism, Schadenfreude, and plain old warped sense of humor in all of us. And so . . . from my naïve colleague who called our CEO a dildo, to the employee caught on videotape licking door handles in the company parking garage, their stories must be told! “...the entertainment factor is consistent and the laughs should come easily for readers who fancy the awkwardness of workplace weirdness... Ideal for readers who need a refresher course on the consequences of impropriety.” - Kirkus Reviews

Soul of a Warrior


Denna Holm - 2013
    But he also claims to be from another world. She does what any sane woman would do in her situation. She runs. Tagging along are her two best friends and a feisty tabby cat. No one could anticipate the second stranger showing up, one with a completely different agenda. Kimi and her friends are abducted by the second man, a vampire, then tortured and abandoned on a hostile alien world. Given only the clothes on their back, they must now try to find a way back home again. One man will do everything in his power to see Kimi and her friends are brought safely back home, even sacrifice his own life. The second man wants Kimi and her mate to suffer, alive, but forever out of reach of each other. Kimi and her friends must work together against astronomical odds for any hope of surviving this nightmare.

Scattered Leaves: The Legend of Ghostkiller


Lynny Prince - 2008
    More than a century later, Kyle Ghostkiller is given the chance to go back and save them.Kyle has just returned to his hometown to accept a medicine bundle that gives him the power to time travel and reverse a curse on an old government document. But when four teenagers are found brutally murdered, newcomer Kyle becomes a prime suspect. With the FBI hot on his trail, and a jilted childhood sweetheart learning to love him all over again, Kyle escapes into the past where he must confront dark forces to save the "38" or risk losing them to the hangman's noose forever. It's a fierce battle between good and evil that Kyle must win. Only the sacred ceremonies of his ancestors and Kyle's sheer determination can save the "38", but can he successfully change history for the Great Sioux Nation?

The Emerald Enigma


Paul Regnier - 2015
    Broke, with an unreliable star freighter and a bounty on his head, Glint is desperate enough to try anything. Even set out on a quest to find a fabled good luck charm, the Emerald Enigma. Now for a crew. A passive aggressive ship computer, a peaceable alien warrior, and time-traveling teen from the past aren’t what he had in mind. But they’ll have to do. The Emerald Enigma won’t wait forever and neither will the bounty hunter tracking him.

An Etiquette Guide to the End Times (An End Times Novella)


Maia Sepp - 2014
    On top of that, someone just turned the Internet off. Seeing as how it’s humanity’s last chance to turn things around manners are, understandably, a bit frayed. Bookish etiquette buff Olive O’Malley is busy microfarming her urban property and minding her own business (and her chickens) when the government comes calling. Their goal is to push the populace towards carbon-neutrality while keeping kvetching to a minimum, and they come with a proposal: transition Olive’s popular etiquette column to a radio show for the masses, and they’ll help Olive find her grandfather, who’s gone missing.Olive doesn’t trust the hipster government officials who try to bribe her with delicious-but-probably-a-little-evil chocolate pastries, and declines their offer. (Politely, of course.) But they won't take no for an answer, and soon Olive is knee-deep in turmoil, eco-terrorism, and missing chickens. Now she has to untangle herself from their demands and figure out how to make sure her family (and her poultry) are safe before it’s too late.An Etiquette Guide to the End times is a 27,500 word novella.

Robots Like Blue


Anthony J. Deeney - 2014
    Running revolutionary new software, these robots are truly unique. His only desire is to serve Lucy Walker. Brian Webster, his developer, also installs "The Governor" overseeing software that adds an additional safety layer, but this denies the robots free will.Hoping to develop the robots further, Brian inadvertently opens a channel where the robots can communicate and share their experiences.One hundred intelligent, enslaved robots, collecting and sharing data on humans... Surely, they must learn to serve humans better?After all, they are programmed to serve.Lucy just wants help following a deep loss.Brian just wants commercial success.Robbie just wants to serve Lucy Walker... or so he believes..."Robots Like Blue" follows Robbie on his emotional journey of self discovery. A journey where questions lead to more questions, rather than answers. Where will such a journey end?

The Northern Star: The Beginning


Mike Gullickson - 2012
    As the dwindling oil supply plunges the world into chaos, and "Mindlink" technology opens cyberspace to the masses, crippled soldier John Raimey becomes a powerful bionic to infiltrate China and retrieve the King Sleeper: a computer hacker so devastating on-line, he can decimate government infrastructure, subliminally persuade the masses, and even kill.

Whatever Gods May Be


George P. Saunders - 2012
    He had been assigned to Earth as an evolutionary observer, and his travels have taken him to every era of human history – from the day Christ died on the cross – to the 21st Century, where World War III strikes out of the blue.Earth in 1 million years, A.D. is a burned out hell-hole populated by mutated bloodsuckers called Redeyes, and led by a mysterious all-powerful being known as The Resistor. Humans have reverted to prehistoric primitives, and are slowly dying out as a species.Due to the World War, several unwitting parties, including Rizzdik Zolan, have been thrust into the future. Colonels John and Cathy Phillips, on a rare shuttle mission to the space station, are also catapulted into this decaying future, along with Thalick – an intergalactic traveler that resembles an enormous scorpion. Earth is a dying cinder, and yet one hope remains for it: the young daughter of John and Cathy Phillips – Valry Phillips - who may hold the secret to Earth’s salvation – or it’s inevitable destruction and ownership by the Resistor. It will be up to Zolan, Thalick and young Valry to do battle against the most powerful evil Earth has ever known.