Showing results by author "Peter Watts" in All Categories

Set in 2082, Peter Watts' Blindsight is fast-moving, hard SF that pulls readers into a futuristic world where a mind-bending alien encounter is about to unfold. After the Firefall, all eyes are locked heavenward as a team of specialists aboard the self-piloted spaceship Theseus hurtles outbound to intercept an unknown intelligence.

Lenie Clarke has grown sick to death of her own cowardice. For five years, she and her bionic brethren have hidden in the mountains of the deep Atlantic. The facility they commandeered was more than a secret station on the ocean floor. Atlantis was an exit strategy for the corporate elite, a place where the world's Movers and Shakers had hidden from the doomsday microbe ßehemoth. For five years "rifters" and "corpses" have lived in a state of uneasy truce, united by fear of the outside world.

It's the eve of the 22nd century: a world where the dearly departed send postcards back from Heaven and evangelicals make scientific breakthroughs by speaking in tongues; where genetically engineered vampires solve problems intractable to baseline humans. And it's all under surveillance by an alien presence. Daniel Bruks is a field biologist in a world where biology has turned computational.

This is the way the world ends: A nuclear strike on a deep sea vent. The target was an ancient microbe—voracious enough to drive the whole biosphere to extinction—and a handful of amphibious humans called rifters who'd inadvertently released it from three billion years of solitary confinement. The resulting tsunami killed millions. It's not as through there was a choice: saving the world excuses almost any degree of collateral damage. Unless, of course, you miss the target.

How do you stage a mutiny when you're only awake one day in a million? How do you conspire when your tiny handful of potential allies changes with each job shift? How do you engage an enemy that never sleeps, that sees through your eyes and hears through your ears, and relentlessly, honestly, only wants what's best for you? Trapped aboard the starship Eriophora, Sunday Ahzmundin is about to discover the components of any successful revolution: conspiracy, code - and unavoidable casualties.

It's the eve of the 22nd century: a world where the dearly departed send postcards back from heaven and evangelicals make scientific breakthroughs by speaking in tongues; where genetically engineered vampires solve problems intractable to baseline humans. And it's all under surveillance by an alien presence. Daniel Bruks is a field biologist in a world where biology has turned computational. He's turned his back on humanity, but awakens one night to find himself at the center of a storm that will turn all of history inside-out.

A huge international corporation has developed a facility along the Juan de Fuca Ridge at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to exploit geothermal power. They send a bio-engineered crew - people who have been altered to withstand the pressure and breathe the seawater - down to live and work in this weird, fertile undersea darkness.

Lenie Clarke has destroyed the world. The horror she unleashed—an ancient, apocalyptic microbe called ßehemoth—has been free in the world for half a decade now. North America lies in ruins. Digital monsters have taken Clarke's name, wreaking havoc throughout the decimated remnants of something that was once called Internet. Governments have fallen across the globe; warlords and suicide cults rise from the ashes, pledging fealty to the Meltdown Madonna. All because five years ago, Lenie Clarke had a score to settle.

This unabridged audio collection spotlights the “best of the best” hard science-fiction stories published in 2017 by current and emerging masters of the genre.

1845, a village outside Sydney Town. Humble blacksmith Ian Steele struggles to support his widowed mother. All the while he dreams of a life in uniform, serving in Queen Victoria's army. 1845, Puketutu, New Zealand. Second Lieutenant Samuel Forbes, a young poet from an aristocratic English family, wants nothing more than to discard the officer's uniform he never sought. When the two men cross paths in the colony of New South Wales, they are struck by their brotherly resemblance and quickly hatch a plan for Ian to take Samuel's place in the British army.

An epic tale of two families, the Macintoshes and the Duffys, who are locked in a deadly battle from the moment squatter Donald Macintosh commits an act of barbarity on his Queensland property. Their paths cross in love, death and revenge as both families fight to tame the wild frontier of Australia's north country.

In October 1863, Ian Steele, having taken on the identity of Captain Samuel Forbes, is fighting the Pashtun on the north-west frontier in India. Half a world away, the real Samuel Forbes is a lieutenant in the third New York Volunteers and is facing the Confederates at the Battle of Mission Ridge in Tennessee. Neither is aware their lives will change beyond recognition in the year to come. In London, Ella, the love of Ian's life, is unhappily married to Count Nikolai Kasatkin.

Here is an unabridged audio collection of the "best of the best" science fiction short stories published in 2009 by current and emerging masters of the genre, as narrated by top voice talents. In "Erosion",l by Ian Creasey, a man tests the limits of his exo-suit prior to leaving a dying earth. In "As Women Fight", by Sara Genge, a hunter has no time to train for a fight to inhabit his wife's body in a society of body-switchers....

Private Patrick Duffy was forced to flee Malaya as a child and was left orphaned when his mother died in a Changi prison. Now, returning to fight a fearless enemy, he must confront the ghosts of his past if he is to find any hope for the future. Michael Macintosh is forging his own path to escape his mother's obsessive control. Sailor, soldier and mercenary, he will soon face war again in the brutal jungles of Vietnam. Sarah Macintosh ruthlessly crushes anyone who gets in her way and has vowed to destroy her sister-in-law, Jessica Duffy-Macintosh.

It is 1885. After a decade spent fighting for Queen and Country across the globe, Colonel Ian Steele is enjoying the quiet life in the colony of New South Wales, reunited with his friend Conan Curry and watching over his children and numerous business enterprises. But the British Empire's pursuits are ceaseless, and when the colony's soldiers are required to assist a campaign in Sudan, North Africa, Ian's son Lieutenant Josiah Steele heeds the call, despite an ultimatum from the love of his life, Marian.

An unabridged audio collection of the "best of the best" science fiction stories published in 2010 by current and emerging masters of the genre as narrated by top voice talents. Stories in this year's collection include "Under the Moons of Venus" by Damien Broderick; "The Shipmaker," winner of the 2011 British Science Ficiton Association Award for short fiction, by Aliette de Bodard; Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain" by Yoon Ha Lee, "Re-Crossing the Styx" by Ian R. MacLeod; "Eight Miles" by Sean McMullen; and more.

As the son of 'the Colonial', legendary Queen's Captain Ian Steele, Josiah Steele has big shoes to fill. Although his home in the colony of New South Wales is a world away, he dreams of one day travelling to England so he can study to be a commissioned officer in the Scottish Regiment. After cutting his teeth in business on the rough and ready goldfields of Far North Queensland's Palmer River, he finally realises his dream and travels to England, where he is accepted into the Sandhurst military academy.

As the Allied forces fight to repel invaders in the Pacific, the Duffy and Macintosh clans face their greatest challenges at home. Sergeant Jessica Duffy relishes her work as a code breaker in MacArthur's headquarters but is secretly reporting on the Americans to the Prime Minister. Captain James Duffy, a decorated fighter pilot with the United States Marine Corps, is expected to wait out the war assisting the bond effort. Major David Macintosh has survived prison camps, torture and countless battles, but can he endure the machinations of his obsessive cousin, Sarah?

Soldier of fortune Michael Duffy returns to colonial Sydney on a covert mission and with old scores to settle, still enraged by a bitter feud between his family and the ruthless Macintoshes. The Palmer River gold rush lures American prospector Luke Tracy back to Australia's rugged north country in his elusive search for riches and the great passion of his life, Kate O'Keefe. 

In Sydney, siblings Donald and Sarah Macintosh battle for their father's approval, and control of his empire, while their cousin David fights the enemy across the continents. US Marine Pilot James Duffy defies his grandfather's wishes, and a number of times, death, protecting Australian skies from the Japanese. Below, trapped in the jungles of Malaya, Diane Duffy is caught between saving the lives of hundreds of orphaned children, or that of her son. While Tom Duffy finds himself enlisting in yet another world war, his daughter, Jessica, narrowly escapes slaughter at a mission station.