First Contact

Rejected scientist Alexander Hawke is down to his last chance. Brilliant but sheltered, every banker in New York has refused to finance his ideas. Enter the Russian—charming, dangerous, and offering an Antarctic expedition that promises answers to all of his questions. Now, Alexander stands at the edge of a bottomless chasm. With a helpful shove from his foreign benefactor, he plunges into adventure. Landing in darkness, Alexander finds a portal to destiny—weirder than New York, colder than Russia, and filled with the ruins of an empire that once spanned the galaxy.

Decades after a successful invasion of Earth and the Terran Democratic Empire by the Ryqril—hostile, leathery-skinned aliens—resistance fighter Allen Caine is training for an undercover mission. He will assume the identity of an aide to the senate—part of the government that colludes with the invaders.

Grad student Danae Panya's dream assignment has been approved. She'll study Triplet, the strange planetary system scarred by nuclear war and connected through portals. The most experienced Courier of Triplet, Ravagin, will lead her to its hidden worlds—Threshold, Shamsheer, and Karyx—and introduce her to their secrets, including their advanced technology, their dark magic, and the captivating demon culture of the innermost planet.

In the grand tradition of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, Stanislaw Lem's The Invincible tells the story of a space cruiser sent to an obscure planet to determine the fate of a sister spaceship whose communication with Earth has abruptly ceased. Landing on the planet Regis III, navigator Rohan and his crew discover a form of life that has apparently evolved from autonomous, self-replicating machines—perhaps the survivors of a “robot war.” Rohan and his men are forced to confront the classic quandary: what course of action can humanity take once it has reached the limits of its knowledge?

John W. Campbell Jr.’s Who Goes There? is a chilling and masterfully crafted science fiction classic that delves into themes of paranoia, survival, and the unknown. Set in the frozen isolation of Antarctica, the story follows a group of scientists who uncover a mysterious alien organism buried in the ice. What begins as a groundbreaking discovery quickly spirals into terror when the creature reveals its horrifying ability to mimic any living being perfectly.

When the solar flare took out the world's power… nobody could explain why the street lights still glowed in Jakarta. Was it a signal from space? When the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) transmits strange images of the red planet: a scientifically unexplained light phenomenon on the summit of Elysium Mons has the experts both concerned and baffled. A team needed to check it out. The mission to Mars was set. Now, they had to build the team.

An ancient legend. A snarky sword. And a reluctant hero who’s about to regret everything. Nate Arturi never wanted to save the world. He wanted to graduate, land a decent job, and maybe figure out why his neighbor's corgi keeps climbing onto roofs. But when a deranged alien beacon wakes up on Earth, Nate’s mundane life goes up in smoke—literally. Ambushed by an alien monster, saddled with a sarcastic sword, and scammed by a scruffy wizard claiming to be the Merlin, Nate is thrown into an adventure that’s way above his pay grade.

The world’s crops have been destroyed by a mysterious virus, and the end of mankind draws near. However, the Grey aliens from Xi Boötes, the constellation of the farmer, have coincidentally come to the rescue. The Greys have promised to take everyone to a better world, one with fertile land, clean oceans, living space, and without war and want. But it could be a perilous journey, for in the universe humans do not sit atop the food chain.

On a remote, desolate planet, something is amiss. Several somethings in fact. With something watching them, a murderer amongst them and no way of escaping, the small research team on Graves' World are going to need all the help they can get.

We only have ten years to save the planet. What if this belief was taken seriously by others not from our world? How would they help to save Mankind? Would they even bother? Brett Martin is about to find out as he finds himself sucked into a dystopian nightmare in which there are few easy ways out. The Gardeners are here and they have come to prune our planet. As the stakes are raised impossibly high, Martin struggles to come to terms with his new reality and the dawn of a new age.