Dune Messiah continues the story of Paul Atreides, better known -- and feared -- as the man christened Muad'Dib. As Emperor of the known universe, he possesses more power than a single man was ever meant to wield. Worshipped as a religious icon by the fanatical Fremen, Paul faces the enmity of the political houses he displaced when he assumed the throne -- and a conspiracy conducted within his own sphere of influence. And even as House Atreides begins...

An alien artifact working through its program under the clouds of Venus has emerged to build a massive structure outside the orbit of Uranus: a gate that leads into a starless dark. Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante are part of a vast flotilla of scientific and military ships going out to examine the artefact. But behind the scenes, a complex plot is unfolding, with the destruction of Holden at its core.

As human colonists settle on the planet of Amarantin, a world whose native inhabitants mysteriously vanished nearly a million years before, one man becomes convinced that their disappearance could hold the key to human survival on the planet.

Ben Bova continues his hard SF Star Quest series which began with Death Wave and Apes and Angels. In Survival, a human team sent to scout a few hundred light years in front of the death wave encounters a civilization far in advance of our own, a civilization of machine intelligences. The sentient, intelligent machines have existed for eons, and have survived earlier "death waves," gamma ray bursts from the core of the galaxy. They are totally self-sufficient,...

Sequel to: Rama II. During the 23rd century, three human cosmonauts learn of their destination and their challenge in a rendezvous with a Raman base.

Avice Benner Cho, a human colonist on a distant planet populated by the Ariekei, sentient beings famed for their unique language, returns to Embassytown after many years of deep space exploration to find she has become a living simile in the Ariekei language even though she cannot speak it, and she is torn by competing loyalties when hostilities erupt between humans and aliens.

Set in 2082, Peter Watts' Blindsight is fast-moving hard SF that pulls readers into a futuristic world where a mind-bending alien encounter is about to unfold. After the Firefall, all eyes are locked heavenward as a team of specialists aboard the self-piloted spaceship Theseus hurtles outbound to intercept an unknown intelligence.

Bean's past was a battle just to survive. He first appeared on the streets of Rotterdam, a tiny child with a mind leagues beyond anyone else. He knew he could not survive through strength; he used his tactical genius to gain acceptance into a children's gang, and then to help make that gang a template for success for all the others. He civilized them, and lived to grow older. Then he was discovered by the recruiters for the Battle School. For Earth...

On the planet of Petaybee, when a visiting scientist discovers the shapeshifting talents of the Shongili twins, who are able to tranform from human to seal and back, the twins are in danger of kidnapping and must flee their home.

In a far distant future, an enforcement agent named Quillon has been living incognito in the last human city of Spearpoint, working as a pathologist in the district morgue. But when a near-dead angel drops onto his dissecting table, his world is wrenched apart. For the angel is a winged posthuman from Spearpoint's Celestial Levels, and with the dying body comes bad news--to save the angel's life, Quillon must leave his home and travel into the cold...