Okay, so you’ve read Dune, you’ve read Starship Troopers, you’ve read 2001: A Space Odyssey, and maybe you’ve even read From Earth to the Moon and The First Men in the Moon. Seen the movies, too (or maybe you cheat and say you’ve read the books when you’ve only seen the flicks). Bet you think that makes you an expert on science fiction about space, right? Not even close! If you want to read more than just the well-known classics everyone else has, find these books. Some have become obscure and are now out of print, but they’re not hard to find; try ABE, eBay, and local second-hand bookstores. They’re worth searching for, and then you’ll really have something to talk about.
This novel, about the discovery of an alien probe hidden within an Earth orbit-crossing asteroid and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence it provokes, is the first volume of a long, six-volume epic, the Galactic Center series, that is regarded by most critics as a landmark work. You can read this novel on its own or you can go from there with the rest of the series; in any case, it’s hard SF at its thought-provoking best.
Set in a world of lunar colonies, cybernetic miracles, fanatic cults, deadly pollution and famine, the first story in the GALACTIC CENTRE CYCLE. This world of social decay is facing hardship, but not far beyond the shores of space comes a mystery, which one man, astronaut Nigel Walmsley is about to touch. From the author of TIMESCAPE.
As a child I grew up around blue-collar type men and women, and as I became an adult I grew to learn that these are the sorts of people who pioneer civilizations, who keep them running once they are built, and who are the ones to brave high-risk labor to bring us the food, shelter, and comforts we often take for granted. Adding a fictional element in the form of aliens, monsters, or the supernatural can put a fine and dynamic point on the life & struggles of such people. I strive for this in much of my military science fiction work and enjoy reading it as an audience member.
This is a cyberpunk novel, and while most books in that genre focus more on characters like criminals or rebels, this one narrows in on a former police detective and private security contractor. This is one of the few books in the genre that looks at the working stiffs of the cyberpunk future, instead of the punks with mohawks & machine guns or the corporate suits with their android bodyguards and elegant penthouses.
Hawai‘i author Chris McKinney’s first entry in a brilliant new sci-fi noir trilogy explores the sordid past of a murdered scientist, deified in death, through the eyes of a man who once committed unspeakable crimes for her.
Year 2142: Earth is forty years past a near-collision with the asteroid Sessho-seki. Akira Kimura, the scientist responsible for eliminating the threat, has reached heights of celebrity approaching deification. But now, Akira feels her safety is under threat, so after years without contact, she reaches out to her former head of security, who has since become a police detective.
I have always been a fan of Young Adult fiction, even into my late thirties. This is why when I decided to write my first novel, I wrote it for that genre. My biggest draw to this type of book is the emotional connection and hope you get from younger characters. Like most of us, we lose hope as we get older, so reading a book about a young character full of hope in a chaotic world gives me a little of that hope back. Young people feel things much stronger than we do when we’re older. It feels good to reconnect to that and remember what it’s like.
I found this book on TikTok. The author's words and images inspired me to order it. Once I picked up the book, I couldn’t put it down. The book is thought-provoking from the first page. What is Oliver hiding from his wife? The zombie apocalypse starts, and you almost forget about the question as you follow Oliver and Zoe as they struggle through the end of the world.
I loved that even though this book is about a new type of zombie apocalypse, the overall feeling I got from it was the hope that Oliver and Zoe kept. They hoped that the other was alive and that they could keep each other safe when they were reunited.
The world was ready to defend against an asteroid of epic proportions… but nobody was ready for what came after.On the last day of normality in Mackinaw, Illinois, Oliver McCallister thinks his worst problem is figuring out how to come clean to his wife about the secret he’s been keeping from her. Zoe McCallister thinks her worst problem is squeezing in an errand at the courthouse before another long day of nursing classes—and worrying about whatever Oliver is hiding from her.
Oliver has just started his garbage route when an emergency broadcast announces the arrival of a ten-kilometer-long asteroid. A…
To hide a corporation’s failure to properly service a space ship, Captain Jonas Stryker is prosecuted but saved from imprisonment by a dying man, who hires Stryker to collect asteroids for their mineral content. Stryker soon finds he must stop a shadowy corporate group called The Board, who employ space piracy, terrorism, and even weaponised asteroids to overthrow the Federation government.
Set in Lagrange points, space stations, the Moon and outback Australia, it is a fast-moving story with some speculative future technology. If you were interested in the NASA attempt to alter the orbit of the asteroid Dimorphos, you might…
When a trial to cover-up a corporate failure ends Captain Jonas Stryker's career, he wants revenge against The Board, a ruthless, shadowy organization with limitless funds that employs space piracy, terrorism, and even weaponised asteroids. Posing as a space miner, Stryker learns that The Board wants him killed, while a young female SCIB police agent wants retribution against him for having her career spoiled at his trial. As Stryker avoids attempts to kill him, he becomes the only chance to prevent The Board from overturning the Federation Government and imposing a Fascist-style rule. A story of greed, corruption and honour,…
This is a seafaring adventure story, except it happens in space, in the far-distant future. The Lost Star is a tramp spaceship with a long history and some dark secrets.
When Wil Litang becomes its acting captain, he has no idea where he and his crew will end up or what nail-biting adventures they will experience. As a reader, I was right there with them, fleeing space pirates through asteroid fields, visiting strange planets and stranger planetoids.
The best thing about the book is its matter-of-fact approach to space travel and the first-person narration by Captain Wil, liberally seasoned with "spaceer" slang. There were many places where I dreaded to read on but absolutely could not stop. Totally diverting and highly recommended.
Boothman is not a well known author but he should be. Stormy Weather is a collection of short stories and musings that cover a wide range of genres.
I love the unexpected twists, the great variety and above all the humor, sometimes slapstick, sometimes exquisitely dry, and always uniquely Boothman. These stories include a psychic detective, a mysterious TV channel leading into a disturbing world, a nameless assassin who does the right thing when others can’t, a strange artifact on a distant asteroid, and a series of “news snippets”, including Nasa Captures Shots of Happy Face on Sun. There is literally never a dull moment in this book.
I’m a military veteran who has read science fiction and fantasy since the second grade. After reading everything on my parent’s bookshelves, everything in the school and public libraries, I had a teacher recommend I become an author. I love stories about strong-willed individuals standing up for what they believe in and changing the world. I have a master’s degree in engineering, a love for well-built things and taking stuff apart to see how it works, and a fascination with people and how they behave. In addition to writing, I am an avid gamer and a dabbler in a variety of things, from metalworking to hiking.
I really enjoyed the fun and humor in this book. It’s corny, it’s off the wall, and it’s deeply rooted in 80’s action movies. I love the over-the-top outrageousness of some of the scenes and how the author still can pull it back for moments of the main character working through his own personal tragedies.
I love that it’s a superhero/alternate history/urban fantasy book that can poke fun at itself while still dealing with serious themes like government overreach and individual freedoms.
1954, the year of the asteroid, the year of change…
It altered the world forever.
People began to develop unexplained abilities. Biological Enhanced Nascent Talents seemed to appear at random. There was no particular genetic reason for fifteen percent of the human population to be affected. Talents developed skills that set them apart from the great majority of those affected.
The others… they were just BENT.
In ’58 Alexander Lloyd became America’s most wanted criminal and is still at large, but it’s much more difficult to hide in an ever-advancing technological world. There is no official place for him to…
I love middle grade novels and this one is moving and incredibly unique. Eleven year old Kemi is dealing with a grief so huge, she creates another world--one that's ending--and makes it so credible and vivid, we live that pending loss with her. I was drawn in and mystified and I can't stop marveling at Sarah Everett's brilliant handling of heartbreak and grief through her narrator's wild imagination and the resilience Kemi doesn't even know she has.
A heart-wrenching middle grade debut about Kemi, an aspiring scientist who loves statistics and facts, as she navigates grief and loss at a moment when life as she knows it changes forever.
Eleven-year-old Kemi Carter loves scientific facts, specifically probability. It's how she understands the world and her place in it. Kemi knows her odds of being born were 1 in 5.5 trillion, and that the odds of her having the best family ever were even lower. Yet somehow, Kemi lucked out.
But everything Kemi thought she knew changes when she sees an asteroid hover in the sky, casting a…
In 2016 I was enjoying an early morning cup of coffee on my back porch in Arizona when an eerie red light lit up the dark sky, followed seconds later by a tremendous distant explosion that rattled my cup and set my dogs howling. As a soldier and journalist, I had seen all kinds of human and natural catastrophes and mayhem, but never anything like this. Later I was astonished to learn that this event, which was seen as far away as Texas, was caused by a small asteroid the size of a refrigerator that had exploded in the atmosphere with the energy equivalent of a million pounds of TNT. I wanted to find out more – and I did.
This book is about asteroid hunters, written by an asteroid hunter – and she clearly loves her work. Nugent is an assistant professor of computational physics and planetary science at Olin College and worked on NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE), which discovered hundreds of Potential Hazardous Objects – asteroids and comets – that could someday threaten Earth. You don’t have to be a scientist to enjoy this book. Nugent patiently walks us through the process of finding and tracking potentially dangerous space rocks with skill and passion for her subject.
Dr Carrie Nugent is an asteroid hunter - one of the select group of scientists working diligently to map our cosmic neighbourhood. For the first time ever we are reaching the point where we may be able to prevent a natural disaster resulting from an asteroid collision. Nugent will delve into the impact asteroids have had in the past: the extinction of the dinosaurs, the earth-sized hole Shoemaker-Levy 9 left in Jupiter just a few years ago, how the surprise hit on Chelyabinsk in Russia could have started a war and unlucky Ms Anne Hodges - the only person (that…
I’ve been an astronomer since I was young and lucky enough to make a living at it. I ventured into space mining when I found Mining the Sky. I started doing some calculations using the newest research. What I found was surprising and ignited a new passion in me that has led me from asteroids to the Moon to the ends of the Solar System and from pure astrophysics into questions of law, government, and ethics. Now, I write almost entirely about our future in space.
Nothing was more counter-intuitive to me than mining the sky. Surely, space is a void, I thought. John Lewis put me right. He convinced me–that there are huge resources out in the void that dwarf Earth’s supplies. Our future could well lie among them.
But will it be soon or centuries from now? I reckon soon.
While we worry over the depletion of the earth's natural resources, the pollution of our planet, and the challenges presented by the earth's growing population, billions of dollars worth of metals, fuels, and life-sustaining substances await us in nearby space. In this visionary book, noted planetary scientist John S. Lewis explains how we can mine these precious metals from the asteroids, comets, and planets in our own solar system for use in space construction projects. And this is just one of the possibilities. Join John S. Lewis as he contemplates milking the moons of Mars for water and hollowing out…
In 2016 I was enjoying an early morning cup of coffee on my back porch in Arizona when an eerie red light lit up the dark sky, followed seconds later by a tremendous distant explosion that rattled my cup and set my dogs howling. As a soldier and journalist, I had seen all kinds of human and natural catastrophes and mayhem, but never anything like this. Later I was astonished to learn that this event, which was seen as far away as Texas, was caused by a small asteroid the size of a refrigerator that had exploded in the atmosphere with the energy equivalent of a million pounds of TNT. I wanted to find out more – and I did.
The subtitle of this book says it all. As a planetary scientist for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Yeomans’ job was to plot the courses of known and newly-discovered NEOs – that is, asteroids and comets that in space terms come close to Earth’s orbit – and determine if and when they might be on a collision course with our planet. With more than 25,000 known NEOs orbiting around up there, it’s not an easy task. But Yeomans makes the crucial point: it’s not the space rocks we know about that pose the biggest threat, but rather the thousands and thousands of large near-Earth asteroids we don’t know about that are the greatest danger. It’s not like the movie Armageddon; it would take years to develop a space mission to deflect or destroy an incoming asteroid, so it’s crucial that we find and track them – as Yeomans says, before…
Of all the natural disasters that could befall us, only an Earth impact by a large comet or asteroid has the potential to end civilization in a single blow. Yet these near-Earth objects also offer tantalizing clues to our solar system's origins, and someday could even serve as stepping-stones for space exploration. In this book, Donald Yeomans introduces readers to the science of near-Earth objects--its history, applications, and ongoing quest to find near-Earth objects before they find us. In its course around the sun, the Earth passes through a veritable shooting gallery of millions of nearby comets and asteroids. One…
