The October Round-up of Scifi Books
This Indian Summer has been a great boost to my time outdoors running qualification sessions (and indoor sessions for that matter, too). In fact, I might just see my 200th succesful NICAS candidate and my 200th succesful NNAS candidate this year.
This month I'm bringing you a selection of space marine and space police books...
Outgunned and outmanned on a remote alien world, their only hope is a recruit who doesn’t even want to be there.
Plucked from his life in academia, Jack Forge must find a way to survive as a Fleet Marine recruit. When the Chitin attack, he is forced to fight a war he never wanted any part of. The only way out is to win the war, and Jack Forge will do whatever it takes to make that happen. In the process, he just might save humanity.
A young lieutenant. A fleet of alien invaders. Will first contact be humanity’s last stand?
In his short military career, Lieutenant Warden has already battled insurgent groups, criminal gangs, and intergalactic pirates. When a distant colony sends out a distress signal, he and his fellow space commandos can't wait to transfer their consciousness and launch their clone bodies into action. But no amount of enthusiasm could've prepared Warden for humanity's first alien encounter and the ensuing bloodbath.
After his captain falls to the attack, Warden feels both pride and fear as he assumes first in command. Outmanned and outgunned, the confident commando must find a way to eliminate the aliens before they slaughter an entire human colony. Will Warden’s troops prove they are made of tougher stuff, or have they finally met their fatal match?
Ajax answers the call of duty and becomes an Einherjar space marine, charged with defending humanity against hideous alien monsters in furious combat across the galaxy.
The Garm, as they came to be called, emerged from the deepest parts of uncharted space, devouring all that lay before them, a great swarm that scoured entire star systems of all organic life. This space borne hive, this extinction fleet, made no attempts to communicate and offered no mercy. Such was the ferocity of their assault upon the civilization of humanity that our own wars and schemes were made petty in comparison.
Humanity has always been a deadly organism, and we would not so easily be made the prey. Unified against a common enemy, we fought back, meeting the swarm with soldiers upon every front.
We were resplendent in our fury, and yet, despite the terrible slaughter we visited upon the enemy, world after world still fell beneath ravenous tooth and wicked claw. For every beast slain in the field, another was swiftly hatched to take its place and humanity was faced with a grim war of attrition.
After a decade of bitter galactic conflict, it was all humanity could to do slow the advance of the swarm and with each passing year we came closer to extinction. The grinding cost of war mounted. The realization set in that without a radical shift in tactics and technology the forces of humanity would run out of soldiers before it ran out of bullets.
In desperate response to the real threat of total annihilation, humanity created the Einherjar. Fearless new warriors with frightening new weapons who were sent to fight the wolves at the gate.
We hide in shadows. Our planet is lost. We are the last humans, and we must go home.
Two thousand years ago, aliens destroyed Earth. Our fleets shattered. Billions died. The last humans fled a burning planet, heading to the stars
Today we are still refugees. Hungry. Afraid. Our enemies hunt us everywhere.
So we hide. On distant asteroids. In rundown space stations. In deep caves on frozen worlds. And we dream.
Of green hills. Blue skies. Golden fields. We dream of Earth.
And for the first time, we have hope.
A few of us, just a handful of brave souls, form the Heirs of Earth. We are humans who stand tall. Who fight back. Aliens call us terrorists. The humans we save call us heroes. We have starships, weapons, and warriors. We can bring humanity home.
Earth is far. We have not seen her in many generations. But we have not forgotten. Earth is our heritage. Earth is our birthright. We will return!
Alone and unafraid. Sometimes you prevent war by hunting down your enemies.
Integrated with a superdreadnought, the artificial intelligence known as Reynolds takes his ship across the universe in search of the elusive Kurtherians. He comes to a revelation. He’s better in the company of living creatures.
He needs a crew. He needs information. And he needs to continue his search and destroy mission.
Needing a crew and getting a crew are two completely different things. Reynolds is out of his element as he tries to reach out and make friends. Through it all, he has his vessel, the superdreadnought, the most powerful warship in the galaxy.
James McGill is sent to the Core Worlds!
In an unprecedented first, Earth sends a message to Mogwa Prime. Unfortunately, the messenger is not met with enthusiasm. Misunderstandings soon threaten all of Humanity. Forced to prove Earth can serve the Empire better than any rival, McGill does his best.
Eager to prove our worth to the Galactics, the frontier war between Rigel and Earth is expanded to Storm World. Circled by six moons, the planet is ravaged by wild storms and tides. Battles are fought in raging hurricanes, and death stalks the soldiers on both sides.
McGill grimly fights and dies in the mud until the job gets done, but will it be enough to satisfy the angry Mogwa?
A perplexing distress call. A missing crew. Only one marine can save them.
Sergeant Andrea “Andy” Dolan leads a squad of fearless marines into the depths of space. After the Star Chaser receives a distress call from the star base Zenith, Andy’s squad is sent to investigate. When all heck breaks lose, there is only one person who can save the crew of the Zenith and her own squad.
Desperate to escape a life of poverty on his desolate home planet, Ryck Lysander enlists in the United Federation Marine Corps, hoping to make a better future for himself. However, Ryck soon discovers that the Corps is more than a means of escaping his former life as he is pushed beyond the very limits of his strength and willpower.
From bootcamp brawls to skirmishes with galactic pirates, Ryck's new life presents him with unimaginable adventures and forces him to prove his mettle as he forges his new identity and fights to earn his place as one of the Brotherhood of Marines.
Tom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a policeman of sorts, and one of the best. His force is Panoply, and his beat is the multi-faceted utopian society of the Glitter Band, that vast swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone. These days, his job is his life.
A murderous attack against a Glitter Band habitat is nasty, but it looks to be an open-and-shut case - until Dreyfus starts looking under some stones that some very powerful people would really rather stayed unturned. What he uncovers is far more serious than mere gruesome murder: a covert takeover bid by a shadowy figure, Aurora (who may once have been human but certainly isn't now), who believes the people of the Glitter Band should no longer be in charge of their own destiny.
Dreyfus discovers that to save something precious, you may have to destroy part of it.
Security Lieutenant Dave is looking forward to some simple cases and patching things up with his wife. His handling of a terrorist attack has gained him acclaim and some new friends in high places, but he is still closely involved with Arancha Station's mob boss.
When the space station manager is killed in a new and worrying way, Dave realises that he's got possibly the biggest case of his career. Unfortunately, as soon as his new boss arrives with reinforcements, he is relegated to monitoring data and assigned a rookie partner to babysit.
Dave needs to find something that will crack the case open before the killer can strike again.
Half-alien Mark Praed’s mind-reading powers make him the right man to complete demanding assignments for the Commonwealth Intelligence Service. When his last mission leaves him betrayed and tortured, he faces perils worse than intergalactic traitors and spies: a new job and a partner. Forced to transfer from CIS to the Commonwealth’s counter terrorist task force, Praed is partnered with Alexandra Lansing.
Alex is a by-the-book task force veteran of two years who isn’t fond of change. And the auburn-haired beauty is far from happy working with a partner who can read her mind whenever he feels like it. Their first operation together is an easy one: Jonathan Reul is suspected of selling arms from The Groves, a resort planet he owns. They are to watch him and discover if task force suspicions are correct.
After working solo for two years at CIS, Praed is finding it difficult working with a partner. Alex wants to micromanage him, and her interfering annoys him. Added to that is her intense curiosity about his history. Her constant questions are too invasive for his liking. But as ghosts from his past rear their ugly heads, the team’s simple observe-and-report operation quickly becomes a life or death battle. Can they come together and apprehend their quarry, or will he slip away?
SpaceCorp has established a cislunar colony at the Earth Moon Lagrange Point #1, 55,000 km from the surface of the Moon towards Earth. It consists of twelve Einstein-class space stations orbiting the Lagrange Point in a 60,000-km diameter Lissajous orbit. Each of these space stations carries a crew of around 300 officers, astronauts, and able spacemen, plus a contingent of 700 to 1000 scientists and engineers. CisLuna was a happy place, until a pretty young flight surgeon is discovered nude and hanging by her feet from the ceiling of her cabin. This being CisLuna’s first major crime, Detective Sergeant Roy Stone is immediately dispatched from Vandenberg up to CisLuna to put things right. The SSS Wm Borucki on the cover, beautifully rendered by master space artist Douglas Shrock, is named for the Principal Investigator of the Kepler Mission renowned for discovering over 2000 exoplanets.
This month I'm bringing you a selection of space marine and space police books...
Outgunned and outmanned on a remote alien world, their only hope is a recruit who doesn’t even want to be there.
Plucked from his life in academia, Jack Forge must find a way to survive as a Fleet Marine recruit. When the Chitin attack, he is forced to fight a war he never wanted any part of. The only way out is to win the war, and Jack Forge will do whatever it takes to make that happen. In the process, he just might save humanity.
A young lieutenant. A fleet of alien invaders. Will first contact be humanity’s last stand?
In his short military career, Lieutenant Warden has already battled insurgent groups, criminal gangs, and intergalactic pirates. When a distant colony sends out a distress signal, he and his fellow space commandos can't wait to transfer their consciousness and launch their clone bodies into action. But no amount of enthusiasm could've prepared Warden for humanity's first alien encounter and the ensuing bloodbath.
After his captain falls to the attack, Warden feels both pride and fear as he assumes first in command. Outmanned and outgunned, the confident commando must find a way to eliminate the aliens before they slaughter an entire human colony. Will Warden’s troops prove they are made of tougher stuff, or have they finally met their fatal match?
Ajax answers the call of duty and becomes an Einherjar space marine, charged with defending humanity against hideous alien monsters in furious combat across the galaxy.
The Garm, as they came to be called, emerged from the deepest parts of uncharted space, devouring all that lay before them, a great swarm that scoured entire star systems of all organic life. This space borne hive, this extinction fleet, made no attempts to communicate and offered no mercy. Such was the ferocity of their assault upon the civilization of humanity that our own wars and schemes were made petty in comparison.
Humanity has always been a deadly organism, and we would not so easily be made the prey. Unified against a common enemy, we fought back, meeting the swarm with soldiers upon every front.
We were resplendent in our fury, and yet, despite the terrible slaughter we visited upon the enemy, world after world still fell beneath ravenous tooth and wicked claw. For every beast slain in the field, another was swiftly hatched to take its place and humanity was faced with a grim war of attrition.
After a decade of bitter galactic conflict, it was all humanity could to do slow the advance of the swarm and with each passing year we came closer to extinction. The grinding cost of war mounted. The realization set in that without a radical shift in tactics and technology the forces of humanity would run out of soldiers before it ran out of bullets.
In desperate response to the real threat of total annihilation, humanity created the Einherjar. Fearless new warriors with frightening new weapons who were sent to fight the wolves at the gate.
We hide in shadows. Our planet is lost. We are the last humans, and we must go home.
Two thousand years ago, aliens destroyed Earth. Our fleets shattered. Billions died. The last humans fled a burning planet, heading to the stars
Today we are still refugees. Hungry. Afraid. Our enemies hunt us everywhere.
So we hide. On distant asteroids. In rundown space stations. In deep caves on frozen worlds. And we dream.
Of green hills. Blue skies. Golden fields. We dream of Earth.
And for the first time, we have hope.
A few of us, just a handful of brave souls, form the Heirs of Earth. We are humans who stand tall. Who fight back. Aliens call us terrorists. The humans we save call us heroes. We have starships, weapons, and warriors. We can bring humanity home.
Earth is far. We have not seen her in many generations. But we have not forgotten. Earth is our heritage. Earth is our birthright. We will return!
Alone and unafraid. Sometimes you prevent war by hunting down your enemies.
Integrated with a superdreadnought, the artificial intelligence known as Reynolds takes his ship across the universe in search of the elusive Kurtherians. He comes to a revelation. He’s better in the company of living creatures.
He needs a crew. He needs information. And he needs to continue his search and destroy mission.
Needing a crew and getting a crew are two completely different things. Reynolds is out of his element as he tries to reach out and make friends. Through it all, he has his vessel, the superdreadnought, the most powerful warship in the galaxy.
James McGill is sent to the Core Worlds!
In an unprecedented first, Earth sends a message to Mogwa Prime. Unfortunately, the messenger is not met with enthusiasm. Misunderstandings soon threaten all of Humanity. Forced to prove Earth can serve the Empire better than any rival, McGill does his best.
Eager to prove our worth to the Galactics, the frontier war between Rigel and Earth is expanded to Storm World. Circled by six moons, the planet is ravaged by wild storms and tides. Battles are fought in raging hurricanes, and death stalks the soldiers on both sides.
McGill grimly fights and dies in the mud until the job gets done, but will it be enough to satisfy the angry Mogwa?
A perplexing distress call. A missing crew. Only one marine can save them.
Sergeant Andrea “Andy” Dolan leads a squad of fearless marines into the depths of space. After the Star Chaser receives a distress call from the star base Zenith, Andy’s squad is sent to investigate. When all heck breaks lose, there is only one person who can save the crew of the Zenith and her own squad.
Desperate to escape a life of poverty on his desolate home planet, Ryck Lysander enlists in the United Federation Marine Corps, hoping to make a better future for himself. However, Ryck soon discovers that the Corps is more than a means of escaping his former life as he is pushed beyond the very limits of his strength and willpower.
From bootcamp brawls to skirmishes with galactic pirates, Ryck's new life presents him with unimaginable adventures and forces him to prove his mettle as he forges his new identity and fights to earn his place as one of the Brotherhood of Marines.
Tom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a policeman of sorts, and one of the best. His force is Panoply, and his beat is the multi-faceted utopian society of the Glitter Band, that vast swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone. These days, his job is his life.
A murderous attack against a Glitter Band habitat is nasty, but it looks to be an open-and-shut case - until Dreyfus starts looking under some stones that some very powerful people would really rather stayed unturned. What he uncovers is far more serious than mere gruesome murder: a covert takeover bid by a shadowy figure, Aurora (who may once have been human but certainly isn't now), who believes the people of the Glitter Band should no longer be in charge of their own destiny.
Dreyfus discovers that to save something precious, you may have to destroy part of it.
Security Lieutenant Dave is looking forward to some simple cases and patching things up with his wife. His handling of a terrorist attack has gained him acclaim and some new friends in high places, but he is still closely involved with Arancha Station's mob boss.
When the space station manager is killed in a new and worrying way, Dave realises that he's got possibly the biggest case of his career. Unfortunately, as soon as his new boss arrives with reinforcements, he is relegated to monitoring data and assigned a rookie partner to babysit.
Dave needs to find something that will crack the case open before the killer can strike again.
Half-alien Mark Praed’s mind-reading powers make him the right man to complete demanding assignments for the Commonwealth Intelligence Service. When his last mission leaves him betrayed and tortured, he faces perils worse than intergalactic traitors and spies: a new job and a partner. Forced to transfer from CIS to the Commonwealth’s counter terrorist task force, Praed is partnered with Alexandra Lansing.
Alex is a by-the-book task force veteran of two years who isn’t fond of change. And the auburn-haired beauty is far from happy working with a partner who can read her mind whenever he feels like it. Their first operation together is an easy one: Jonathan Reul is suspected of selling arms from The Groves, a resort planet he owns. They are to watch him and discover if task force suspicions are correct.
After working solo for two years at CIS, Praed is finding it difficult working with a partner. Alex wants to micromanage him, and her interfering annoys him. Added to that is her intense curiosity about his history. Her constant questions are too invasive for his liking. But as ghosts from his past rear their ugly heads, the team’s simple observe-and-report operation quickly becomes a life or death battle. Can they come together and apprehend their quarry, or will he slip away?
SpaceCorp has established a cislunar colony at the Earth Moon Lagrange Point #1, 55,000 km from the surface of the Moon towards Earth. It consists of twelve Einstein-class space stations orbiting the Lagrange Point in a 60,000-km diameter Lissajous orbit. Each of these space stations carries a crew of around 300 officers, astronauts, and able spacemen, plus a contingent of 700 to 1000 scientists and engineers. CisLuna was a happy place, until a pretty young flight surgeon is discovered nude and hanging by her feet from the ceiling of her cabin. This being CisLuna’s first major crime, Detective Sergeant Roy Stone is immediately dispatched from Vandenberg up to CisLuna to put things right. The SSS Wm Borucki on the cover, beautifully rendered by master space artist Douglas Shrock, is named for the Principal Investigator of the Kepler Mission renowned for discovering over 2000 exoplanets.
No comments have been added yet.
