Centuries ago, we lost our world. Planetary Acquisitions keeps us alive solely to maintain their vast fleet of gate ships in an endless quest to find them new worlds to settle - or to conquer. Years flutter by like a tree shedding its spring petals, and so we desperately cling to this chunk of dirt-and-machine we call home. 

Aliens exist...and, as it turns out, most of them are fairly harmless. It's the humans you need to watch out for. Priya Radcliffe wasn't even born yet when the first set of terrorists struck. She was 17 when they struck again, but this time her parents paid the ultimate price. That was seven years ago, and since then, the United Nations finally agreed to field its first spaceborne military. Serving aboard one of the first true starships had been a dream of hers. All of her years of education and training had been geared for entering the service.  

Cities all around the world reported strange alien vessels descending. Some saw them as the heralds of a new age; others fired everything they had at them. All were taken as the beams lashed down and drew them into the sky. Dean was left behind, seemingly the last man on Earth. A trail of clues left by his dead wife guides Dean on a perilous journey across America and beyond to learn the truth behind the mysterious ships and save humanity from its doom.   

The year is 2049, and we most certainly are not alone...A miraculous, life-enhancing microbe has been discovered on Mars and the race is on to bring the organism back to Earth. But failed physicist Jack Harding has his own reasons to get to Mars first - to save a dying, seven-year-old boy. All he must do to succeed is break the law - the law of gravity. To make the mission to Mars, Jack must perfect a ground-breaking anti-gravity technology and avoid being killed by ruthless billionaire, Travis Locke, a man who has no qualms with breaking a few laws himself - even murder.

Ethan Bryant was supposed to fall asleep on a ship leaving Earth and wake up 50 years later with his family on the planet Minea. Instead, after the ship's caretaker - the lone human in charge of monitoring the ship's vital systems - suddenly died, the ship's computer locked Ethan out of his stasis chamber and gave him the job. That was five years ago. Five years of checking to make sure everything ran smoothly on a ship Ethan knows almost nothing about.

A well-placed kick into Kanti’s stomach dropped him back to the deck, grasping his gut and gasping for breath. 

Living and slaving in Fill City One, you get used to the smell. We call it the Everpresent Stink. But every once in a while, on a spring day with a breeze, it clears away enough to remind us that there is something more out there. Most Fillers' wildest dreams would be just to get past the walls and live in the mainland. But my dream? It’s a little bigger. I’m going to Mars.   

Theodorus was a dreamer. As a child, he dreamed of aeroplanes, rockets and outer space. When the wild card virus touched him and transformed him into a monstrous snail centaur weighing several tons, his boyhood dreams seemed out of reach, but a Witherspoon is not so easily defeated. Years and decades passed, and Theodorus grew to maturity and came into his fortune...but still his dream endured.

In the not too distant future, on a decaying space-station from a high Venus orbit, a cantankerous and disgraced scientist awaits the delivery of a mysterious shipment. He hopes to use it to invent a new propulsion system and, in doing so, salvage his reputation. However, the station’s decommissioning crew, led by Chief O’Connor, are skeptical about his plans. They believe them to be nothing but drunken delusions, a theory which seems more than plausible given the bold and outlandish claims he has been making of late.

Maeve Merritt chafes at the rigid rules at her London boarding school for “Upright Young Ladies.” When punishment forces her to sort through the trash, she finds a sardine tin that houses a foul-tempered djinni with no intention of submitting to a schoolgirl as his master. Soon an orphan boy from the charitable home next door, a mysterious tall man in ginger whiskers, a disgruntled school worker, and a take-no-prisoners business tycoon are in hot pursuit of Maeve and her magical discovery.

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, the endlessly-mysterious moon is explored in this reprint short science fiction anthology from award-winning editor and anthologist Neil Clarke (Clarkesworld, The Best Science Fiction of the Year).

When money trouble forces Clarity and her traveling companion, Irohann, to take on passengers, Irohann worries his secret identity will be revealed. He's a canine alien on the run from an empire of sentient plants, and their queen has a personal vendetta against him. But Clarity believes his fears are unfounded and the Doraspians gave up on him long ago. 

Jack Bishop needs a pair of tickets aboard one of the Arks - colossal lifeboats destined to shepherd humanity to the stars. Desperate to save his wife, he signs up for a dangerous wormhole experiment...but something goes catastrophically wrong, and Jack finds himself cast into the Stellar Abyss. 

It's the turn of the 20th century in New York's Lower East Side and a sense of adventure and excitement abounds for five young sisters. Follow along on their adventures and experience their holiday fun.

When an interstellar freight hauler puts a doomsday weapon in the wrong hands, he seeks redemption, and at any cost. Space trucker Jon Simmons has messed up, big time. He’s put blueprints for a planet-destroying weapon in the wrong hands, threatening billions. And now it’s up to his guilt-ridden derrière to stop it – once he’s had supper, that is...After the revelation of what he’s done sinks in, Jon is hell-bent on putting things right – even if things do get a bit...squiffy.