Explorations First Contact

Jeff Dolan always wanted to be an astronaut. After helping a private space company build a ship that can travel to Saturn's largest moon in five months, he gets his chance. Shortly after launch, a devastating malfunction forces Jeff and the crew to make a choice: continue to Titan or go back home. As the truth about their mission unravels, one thing is clear: Someone on Earth knew about the system flaw and covered it up. Yet surviving the journey isn't the crew's only concern. Even if they make it to Titan, they will face another problem: Something is already there.

Mars and the Moon have been colonized, piracy runs rampant in the asteroid belts, and a thriving society grows in the depths of space. Humanity prepares to embark upon its greatest journey - the colonization of Alpha Centauri. Then, everything changes. A deep space reconnaissance probe discovers a new Earth-like planet 12 light-years from Earth’s sun. The probe also finds something unusual, something unnerving. A new mission is created, a space fleet is formed, and humanity embarks on unravelling the greatest mystery of all - the origins of life itself.

What happens when a Galactic Federation of peaceful planets offers humanity a chance to join them and with it a gigantic leap into a bright future filled with all the marvels a billion-year advance of technology and intelligence can offer? All we have to do is renounce violence, embrace peace, and evolve into a higher consciousness. But if we don't, we may soon find ourselves quarantined, or worse, eradicated like a virus to prevent our violent ways from spreading across the galaxy. The clock is ticking. Now it's on the shoulders of a few unlikely heroes to save the day before it's too late.

He finally escaped the cycle of war and death only to find himself kidnapped, taken to a new universe where nothing makes sense. A world where nothing is familiar and insane robots, killer AI, and otherworldly beings he can hardly comprehend are the norm. He must learn to survive these constant threats to his very survival, all the while learning that these new experiences are changing him, molding him into something new...something extraordinary.

Colton Beck has six months to live. He works for the Angor near Los Angeles, aware that any day could be his last. The Angor arrived 20 years ago, resolved to help mankind survive, but not everyone believes their motives are honorable. When the Angor offer humanity a colony world, Colton is determined to see another planet before his final breath. He’s been diagnosed with Xeno, a rare disorder that surfaced with the Angor’s arrival, but he won’t let this stop him.

Daniel Clay fought across the galaxy as a corporate soldier. He left the violence behind for a life of science, raising a family far from the bloodshed of the Corporation. With his wife, Sarah, and son, Michael, he studied the alien Tyr for years, hidden among their complex societies. Their mission should have ended with the arrival of a replacement team. Instead, the Clays’ corporate overlords choose a death sentence: an invasion fleet to conquer the Tyr.

In the future: A united Earth, to deal with the problem of population control, divides its population into classes of citizen and non-gratis. To be born a non-gratis means a life of little freedoms and the constant possibility of being assigned to work on a colony. Lacking citizenship, every aspect of their life is controlled from where they live down to marriage and childbearing regulations. The only possible escape from life as a non-gratis is to qualify for one of the limited slots available for entrance into the military.

"It started out with a bang and just got better." -Goodreads reviewer Over 1,000 pages of nonstop action! If there's one thing Adam Eckhart knows, it's that humans are trouble. After all, he is one. As captain of the Marathon, a cobbled-together ship crewed by aliens and androids scraping by on odd jobs at the outskirts of settled space, Adam has plenty to worry about without adding his own species to the mix. But when a pair of mortally wounded humans cross his path during a heist gone wrong, he finds himself compelled to save them. Big mistake. Because if there's one more thing Adam knows...

ONE SHIP. ONE DISCOVERY. NO GOING BACK. Overseeing a mining operation in the middle of nowhere on a warship with more bark than bite, Captain Frank Olsen has a problem. A chance discovery has suddenly thrown his dig into the galactic spotlight and every power in the region, both friend and foe, is descending on Olsen's location. It's soon clear that what they've found isn't just a curiosity. It's something far more sinister. As Olsen struggles to hold the line, a new alien race appears and the balance of power in the galaxy begins to shift. With time running out and help light-years away, ...

Glory barely survived its last battle twenty years ago. Captain Drake resigned rather than face court martial. But the enemy is back, and humanity needs everything that can fly. Maybe it’s not the ship at all but the crew. They hold the key. Drake rallies old and young alike to comply with orders so secret even he wasn’t allowed to see them until after the ship left the junkyard. Would it leave? That was another question. The core hadn’t been fired in twenty years.

Jon Ryan has some unfinished business. Since he caused the universe to reboot, well, he can't seem to find his wife of two billion years. That's one great big oops. He also can't find the massive time ship Aramthella and her human crew. Double oops. And then there's the matter of not knowing whey why there are several copies of key people in the new reality he must navigate. Triple oops. He actually knows one whole heck of a lot less about his current situation than seems healthy. But he's Jon Ryan, former fighter pilot turned android warrior for humankind.

One ship. A crew of misfits. An empire that wants them vaporized. What could go wrong? Five Books. Over 2000 pages of pulse-pounding action, heart-wrenching drama, and enough snark to fuel a starship. Captain Xander Hawk sacrificed everything to rescue a doomed transport—his career, his freedom, and any chance of seeing his wife and daughter again. His reward? Life imprisonment in the galaxy's worst hellhole, where the only thing worse than the inmates is the food. But when a ragtag crew of misfits, con artists, and battle-scarred warriors break him out, Hawk discovers his sacrifice was ...

Adrian Tchaikovksy's critically acclaimed stand-alone novel Children of Time is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet. Who will inherit this new Earth? The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden.

Earth is next. The most feared armada in the galaxy has reached our doorstep. The Xortaag fleet—an empire of steel and annihilation—has crushed every world in its path. Now, their warships fill Earth’s skies. Humanity’s only hope? Four misfits who shouldn’t even be in the same room, let alone leading the planet’s last stand. A movie-quoting ace pilot with a death wish. A stuntwoman who laughs in the face of danger. A silent assassin with more kills than emotions. And a cosmic spymaster who trusts no one. Together, they must unite what’s left of humanity and stop an enemy ...

A Fire Upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale. Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function.

The Laconian Empire has fallen, setting the 1,300 solar systems free from the rule of Winston Duarte. But the ancient enemy that killed the gate builders is awake, and the war against our universe has begun again.

Over 1,600+ pages of pulse-pounding action, heart-wrenching drama, and enough snark to fuel a starship. They said saving twelve million lives would make him a hero. They were wrong. Captain Xander Hawk sacrificed everything to rescue a doomed transport—his career, his freedom, and any chance of seeing his wife and daughter again. His reward? Life imprisonment in the galaxy's worst hellhole, where the only thing worse than the inmates is the food. But when a ragtag crew of misfits, con artists, and battle-scarred warriors break him out, Hawk discovers his sacrifice was just the beginning. ...

The war for Earth is just the opening act. The Xortaag armada has never lost a war. Now their ships blot out Earth’s sky, and our last line of defense is four people who should absolutely not be in charge of saving the world: A movie-quoting pilot with a death wish. A stuntwoman who treats danger like a hobby. A silent assassin with a body count, not a personality. And a paranoid cosmic spymaster who trusts no one. Their fight starts in Earth’s orbit… then tears through wormholes, broken timelines, and clashing alternate universes. Every choice echoes across multiple Earths in the ...

What truths lie in the black void between the stars? It’s late September 2019 when a young astronomer working at the Haleakala Space Observatory in Maui, Hawaii, accidentally spots a black dot in the night sky and is calculated to be closely trailing Earth by only seventy-five million miles…on the same ecliptic plane. NASA launches an unmanned probe to Earth’s nearest neighbor, given the name ILK-87b. The images coming back from the black planet both shock and amaze those inside the halls of NASA. Curiosity, fear, and dread overcome insiders as infrastructure is detected on the black ...

"The Sleeper Awakens" is a thrilling science fiction epic that takes readers on a journey from the red sands of Mars to the very edge of reality itself. When Dr. John Cartwright and his team embark on a mission to explore Mars, they never imagined they would uncover secrets that would shake the foundations of human understanding. As they delve deeper into the mysteries of the Red Planet, they discover an ancient alien civilization with technology beyond their wildest dreams. But their groundbreaking find quickly turns into a fight for survival as they awaken cosmic entities known as the ...