Dark Space Opera

Rose McKenzie may be far from Earth with no way back, but she's made a powerful ally—a fellow prisoner with whom she's formed a strong bond. Sazo's an artificial intelligence. He's saved her from captivity and torture, but he's also put her in the middle of a conflict, leaving Rose with her loyalties divided. Captain Dav Jallan doesn't know why he and his crew have stumbled across an almost legendary Class 5 battleship, but he's not going to complain. The only problem is, all its crew are dead—all except for one strange, new alien being.

One man will transcend death to seek vengeance. One woman will transform herself to gain power. And no one will emerge unscathed... Thorvald Spear wakes in a hospital to find he's been brought back from the dead. What's more, he died in a human vs. alien war that ended a century ago.

Following the success of their Locus Award-winning anthology

The New Space Opera, editors Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan up the ante with

The New Space Opera 2, in which more of the most beloved names in science fiction spin stunning tales of interstellar adventure and wonder.

The Majority always gets what it wants. Thomas Hill just wishes it didn't want him. There's no way to escape a galactic mob of mind readers, no way for him to blend in with his foster family and other average Americans. Because Thomas invented a way to save his own life. His custom medicine halts the progress of his degenerative neuromuscular disease. Newscasters proclaim him the next Einstein, but mere humans have no idea his bioengineered processing capacity rivals that of a supercomputer. They just think he's smart. However, there are other bioengineered supergeniuses in the Majority.

Hadrian Marlowe is lost. For half a century, he has searched the farther suns for the lost planet of Vorgossos, hoping to find a way to contact the elusive alien Cielcin. He has not succeeded, and for years has wandered among the barbarian Normans as captain of a band of mercenaries. Determined to make peace and bring an end to nearly 400 years of war, Hadrian must venture beyond the security of the Sollan Empire and among the Extrasolarians who dwell between the stars.

Ten years ago the Sythians invaded the galaxy with one goal: to wipe out the human race. Now the survivors are hiding in the last human sector of the galaxy: Dark Space--once a place of exile for criminals, now the last refuge of mankind.

A century ago, the Sentience Wars tore the galaxy apart and nearly ended the entire concept of intelligent space-faring life. In the aftermath, a curious tradition was invented - something to cheer up everyone who was left and bring the shattered worlds together in the spirit of peace, unity, and understanding. Once every cycle, the civilizations gather for the Metagalactic Grand Prix - part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of the wars of the past.

This dazzling anthology includes epic interstellar adventures, tales of space and wonder, from some of the brightest names in science fiction.

I was engineered in the freezing labs of Siberia to be a weapon against the dark. I never expected to be sold to the king of monsters. Elian Vance is a Venator. Genetically altered, trained to feel nothing, and lethal to the vampires that plague Neo-London. He is a tool of war—until he’s captured, stripped of his armor, and thrown onto an alien auction block. The highest bidder is a nightmare carved from obsidian scales and ancient heat. Warlord Vorakh. He is eight feet of terrifying, primal power, the last king of a dying star-faring race. The Vrail are facing extinction, silenced by a...

Listen on if you dare! This unique in-world collection hallows the spooky tales and ghost stories that would have kept young Luke and Leia up at night. Created by George Mann and Grant Griffin—the same team behind the stunning Star Wars: Myths & Fables—these seven frightful fables have been carefully woven from the expansive fabric that is the Star Wars galaxy.

Liam Saunders-Chang is one of the last humans left on Mars. The son of two scientists who have been racing against time to create technology vital to humanity's survival, Liam, along with his friend Phoebe, will be on the last starliner to depart before Mars, like Earth before it, is destroyed. Or so he thinks. Because before this day is over, Liam and Phoebe will make a series of profound discoveries about the nature of time and space and find out that the human race is just one of many in our universe locked in a dangerous struggle for survival.

01011001 01101111... This is how the message arrives. Not with a greeting, but with a death sentence, decoded by SETI from a tightbeam transmission in 2025. It is the first hint that humanity is not alone. It is the last warning they will ever receive. It began with ‘Oumuamua. The anomalous interstellar object that tumbled through our solar system in 2017, a splinter in the mind of science. Was it a natural phenomenon, or something else? The world’s astronomers debated, while a few lone voices in the intelligence community and academia warned it was a scout. They were dismissed as ...

Captain Morgan Starling and her crew travel the stars, shipping cargo from one system to the next. Easy work, until first contact with another race devolved into all-out war. Now, they’re under attack from humanity’s mysterious alien foe, ambushed in the void between systems. When an unknown vessel comes to their aid, events spiral out of control, a twisted secret within its haunted corridors threatening to consume them, body and soul.

No matter the foe, regardless of the odds, the proud warriors of the Dark Angels stubbornly refuse to accept defeat. Descendants of the First Legion, they stand foremost amongst the Chapters of the Space Marines, mankind’s mightiest defenders. None fight with more grim determination than the Dark Angels, and their renowned special companies - the Deathwing and the Ravenwing - are held in awe by allies and enemies alike. Yet behind their devotion to the Imperium lies a dark obsession.

On a planet shrouded in darkness, a stranded crew must fight for survival. But, the darkness may have plans of its own in this wildly original story from Adrian Tchaikovsky, Hugo and Arthur C. Clarke Award–winning author of Children of Time. They looked into the darkness and the darkness...

Packed with slaughter and swordplay, these audio dramas, written by Black Library authors including Gav Thorpe, James Swallow, Ben Counter and more, offer fresh insight into two of the Imperium's most beloved fighting forces.

In the near future, an elderly English widow is stirred from her mundane existence by surreal omens and visitations. Centuries later, the space freighter Nova Swing takes on an illegal alien artifact as cargo, with consequences beyond reckoning. While on a distant planet, a nameless policewoman tries to bring order to an event zone where ordinary physics do not apply, only to find herself caught up in something even stranger and more sublime....

The galaxy isn’t saved by heroes—it’s saved by the stubborn, the broken, and the slightly unhinged. Across shattered star empires, forbidden timelines, and battlefields that burn brighter than suns, ordinary people keep picking up impossible weapons and doing extraordinary damage. In The Voidwalker Chronicles, fleet captains and outlaws fight wars where victory costs more than death. In The Crimson Deathbringer saga, alien forces attack Earth and discover humanity is far more dangerous than they predicted. And in The Scarlet Queen series, a seductive mercenary and a nerdy scientist ...

Captain Blite and Agent Cormac thought they had defeated the malevolent AI Straeger. But Straeger's mission to plunge the galaxy into a devastating war is far from over. With a twisted p-prador army bred from the Spatterjay virus, Straeger sets his plans in motion.

When a desperate search for answers leads Thomas to the isolated world of Ferraden, he discovers that Turquine's ambitions run deeper than anyone imagined. What began as a hunt for a rogue Draconite has become something far more dangerous. As the final pieces of an ancient puzzle fall into place, Thomas will learn that some battles can't be won with starships and swords. Some enemies require a different kind of courage entirely.