Book picks similar to
The Butcher's Bill by David Drake
science-fiction
sci-fi
scifi
military-sci-fi
Sten
Chris Bunch - 1982
The factory planet is ugly, harsh, and company-run for centuries. Sten meets a stranger who is his ticket off - and back.
Cradle
Arthur C. Clarke - 1987
After launch it mysteriously disappears. If it reaches civilian areas they'll be in big trouble. Carol Dawson, a journalist, is alerted by an unusual sight of whales in the Miami area & decides to write about it. Armed with equipment provided by her friend, Dr. Dale Michaels from the Miami Oceanographic Institute, she goes to investigate the rumors of a missing missile that could be behind the mysterious whale behavior. She hires the services of Nick Williams & Jefferson Troy, boat owners, so she can get to the Mexican Gulf to investigate. They find an unknown artifact. They have doubts about its nature, hoping it's part of a lost treasure. Old friends of Williams & Troy notice their discovery & want to steal it. In the story's background, the authors describe a submarine snake civilization on a planet called Canthor, & how they struggled to stay alive despite threats to their ecosystem. It's revealed that the artifact is actually a cradle that contains seeds with altered superhumans extracted from Earth millions of years ago & altered so they could live with other species--including the submarine snakes--on Earth. The spaceship that carries the cradle is manned by robots/cyborgs & has hidden itself on the ocean floor to make repairs. Dawson, Williams & Troy are asked to gather materials so the ship can be repaired & return to its mission. The ship...
Conquerors' Pride
Timothy Zahn - 1994
. . measures that Lord Cavanaugh has no choice but to defy. He recruits Adam Quinn, who once flew with the elite Copperheads--fighter pilots whose minds are literally one with their machines--to rescue his son. Quinn assembles a crack force of Copperheads to steal out of the Commonwealth security zone and snatch Pheylan Cavanaugh from the conquerors. Depending on the outcome, Quinn and his men will retum home as heroes or as the galaxy's most despised traitors--if they come home at all.
Warship
Joshua Dalzelle - 2015
The advent of faster-than-light travel has opened up hundreds of habitable planets for colonization, and humans have exploited the virtually limitless space and resources for hundreds of years with impunity. So complacent have they become with the overabundance that armed conflict is a thing of the past, and their machines of war are obsolete and decrepit. What would happen if they were suddenly threatened by a terrifying new enemy? Would humanity fold and surrender, or would they return to their evolutionary roots and meet force with force? One ship—and one captain—will soon be faced with this very choice. Against incredible odds, Jackson Wolfe is determined to save humanity–and in the process, might end up saving himself.
Rally Cry
William R. Forstchen - 1990
But they also found themselves up against creatures who considered humans mere cattle to sacrifice!
Our Friends from Frolix 8
Philip K. Dick - 1970
Dick was largely concerned with humanity’s most achingly familiar heartaches and struggles. In Our Friends From Frolix 8, he clashes private dreams against public battles in a fast-paced and provocative tale that ultimately addresses our salvation both as individuals and a whole.Nick Appleton is a menial laborer whose life is a series of endless frustrations. Willis Gram is the despotic oligarch of a planet ruled by big-brained elites. When they both fall in love with Charlotte Boyer, a feisty black marketer of revolutionary propaganda, Nick seems destined for doom. But everything takes a decidedly unpredictable turn when the revolution’s leader, Thors Provoni, returns from ten years of intergalactic hiding with a ninety-ton protoplasmic slime that is bent on creating a new world order. Winner of both the Hugo and John W. Campbell awards for best novel, widely regarded as the premiere science fiction writer of his day, and the object of cult-like adoration from his legions of fans, Philip K. Dick has come to be seen in a literary light that defies classification in much the same way as Borges and Calvino. With breathtaking insight, he utilizes vividly unfamiliar worlds to evoke the hauntingly and hilariously familiar in our society and ourselves.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000
L. Ron Hubbard - 1982
Earth has been dominated for 1,000 years by an alien invader—and man is an endangered species. From the handful of surviving humans a courageous leader emerges—Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, who challenges the invincible might of the alien Psychlo empire in a battle of epic scale, danger and intrigue with the fate of the Earth and of the universe in the tenuous balance.