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The June Round-up of Scifi Books

I am writing this having spent the weekend running abseiling sessions off a viaduct in lovely sunshine and supervising orienteering on the moors in horizontal rain and near-zero visibility. My kind of weekend!

Today, the next in the series of science fiction anthologies I'm editing is released. It didn't seem right not to start this round-up with it.
There are eleven stories examining the responsibilities and conflicts faced by officers in pursuit of their duty. My own contribution, entitled 'Duty', is set a few decades before the start of the Two Democracies: Revolution series. It follows the head of security on a Republic space station as he deals with underfunding, marital difficulties, and his own ties to organised crime while attempting to solve a murder.
Here are a few quotes from early readers of The Officer:
"What a wonderful collection of stories"
"Each story expands the imagination even as it restores faith that there will always be those selfless souls who willingly commit themselves to the greater good."
"This was a great collection of amazing stories."


By the way, if you aren't yet receiving this in an email, you can subscribe to my blog mailing list here.


Being an officer means balancing many conflicting demands. Making the wrong decision can have serious consequences. It takes a special kind of person to cope with the responsibility. The Officer is an anthology of eleven science fiction short stories by writers from across the globe. It is part of the Newcomer series of scifi anthologies.


They came from deep space. They came to destroy humanity.
Two thousand years ago, bloodthirsty aliens called the Krai’kesh devastated the world of Tar Ebon. Humanity almost perished. Now they’re back to finish the deed.
But now the Federation is prepared. Now they fight back.
Captain Martin Rigsby was forged in the crucible of war. After the last war, he was assigned to the outer rim of the United Federation of Planets. Martin must lead his aging fleet to face the enemy in battle.
Marine Lieutenant Derek Jamison is stuck on a shithole planet at the far edge of the galaxy. But when destruction rains from the sky he must rally the troops and face this new threat, whatever the cost.
Agent Kimberly Hague is working routine security duty at a presidential summit when betrayal leads to an explosion and subsequent attempt on the president’s life, turning her world upside down. She must pursue the traitors responsible and bring them to justice.
Against the alien onslaught, they each stand alone. But they will fight. they will rise. They will win, or die trying.


Life on the run is no way to live, but neither is being abandoned on a treacherous planet when you’re just a kid.
Auden and T’tireva, daughters of a pilot dishonorably discharged from the Consulate Navy, are on the run. Inexplicably left behind by their loving, fugitive parents after a crash landing, the sisters toil for little reward and look for them … or an explanation for why they were abandoned. Dealing with a bureaucracy pitted against their interests, they are determined to survive until their parents’ return.
If they return.
But being stranded on a world in an inhospitable planetary system does not remove the threat of being captured by the Consulate Navy. A jealous admiral with a personal vendetta is willing to go to any lengths to get what he is after. Even if that means silencing the Mor children permanently.
Can the girls face a life without hope?


Jas Harrington, Martian Chief Security Officer of the starship Galathea, must protect her shipmates from hostile aliens on new worlds. For the efficient if quick-tempered Jas, that hasn’t been too hard up till now. But her captain is drug-addled, and he’s hungry for the bonuses he gets from finding valuable resources.
When the captain won’t listen to Jas’ fears about a mysterious planet, he is compromised by contact with a strange life form—a life form that threatens to take over the entire ship and return to Earth, where it can spread its deadly infection.
Now Jas is in a race against time, struggling to quarantine the alien infection and prevent the aliens from achieving their goal: Generation. She doesn't realize it yet, but as she fights to save her crew, the future of all humanity hangs in the balance.


In the near future, a new space race begins. Private industry is now pushing the limits of human exploration and colonization. NASA has changed its mandate into a regulatory agency to oversee all US-based corporations and individuals involved in interplanetary expansion.
Stilicho Jones always has his hands full while working as a personal troubleshooter for eccentric trillionaire Errol Flux and his numerous cutting edge space projects. When a mysterious and potentially deadly situation threatens the colonies on Mars, Stilicho must team up with a feisty NASA special agent in a race against time to avert a looming catastrophe that could end any hope of inhabiting the Red Planet.


The Aldar Dominion saved the world. Then they damned it.
After solar flares decimated Earth’s population, the alien corporation gave humans a recipe for immortality and hope for the next generation. Cloning and the technology to transport consciousness from one body to another saved the human race from extinction. But the value of human life plummeted.
In an age when animal conservation no longer exists, Selene smuggles animals to safety. While fleeing Dominion drones during a mission gone wrong, Selene suffers a debilitating head injury. The pain unlocks memories from twenty lost years: stark labs and human experiments. These nightmares could hold the key to why natural-born human children are disappearing. But worse—they reveal a sinister plot centuries in the making.
Can Selene decipher her dreams in time to avoid enslavement to the aliens? Or will she witness the end of the human race?


With an alien invasion and survival of the human race at stake, service in the Marines was no longer simply about honor and duty, it was a matter of life and death.
This was especially true for Quinn, a Marine sergeant who was hell-bent on ensuring that her young daughter had a world to grow up in. But one thing separates Quinn from the others: She’s a certifiable badass.
And as the aliens will learn, it’s tough to keep a good woman down.


Whether it's alien invasion or dark fairytales, heart-pounding galactic adventures or cyberpunk romance, Dominion Rising will satisfy with a thrilling mix of 23 BRAND NEW novels set in fantastical realms. Sword and sorcery, far-flung galactic empires, alternative history, epic magic, slipstream futures: this collection of carefully selected, exclusive novels is sure to please and delight readers of speculative fiction.
Over five thousand pages packed with aliens, faeries, vampires, gargoyles, warriors, telepaths, space pirates, starship captains, hapless mercenaries, street urchins, robots, cyber-enhanced humans, badass heroines, and lost princesses.


He has one shot: to get out, to save himself, and to protect his family.
Looking for a major payoff, Phoenix Jones will do anything to save the people he cares about. With his brother and sister suffering in a hospital, he needs money, and fast. But when his temper lands him in prison light years from home, everything changes.
Now all he's ever known and loved is on the line. It's up to Phoenix to break out of jail and battle vicious aliens he never knew existed. But can he save the only place he's ever called home before it's too late?


Entering our solar system, the Enigma is just that: a mystery. The vast alien object, ten times the size of a nuclear submarine, is a complete unknown. But Storm Kovaks, a space salvage company owner, knows one thing: the Enigma is the answer he’s been waiting for. With the immense titanium exterior worth its weight in gold, Storm knows that plundering the spacecraft is the only way to provide for his daughter and keep her safely out of the hands of her mother’s verbally abusive lover.
But even determination finds an enemy in ambition...
As a brilliant scientist for NASA, Drew Kovaks has a successful life, built in accomplishment. But it’s not enough. Hell-bent on getting his name in the history books to satisfy a deep sense of childhood inadequacy, Drew knows his golden ticket is to be the first to set foot within the Enigma. And he is no stranger to competing against his brother.
With space law granting ownership of any unclaimed craft to the first man to arrive on it, the Kovaks brothers, bitter rivals, find themselves in a race against both the clock and each other, with futures on the line. Can Storm make enough money to regain custody of his daughter? Or will Drew possess the object and fend off all others?


Wise-cracking, corporate bounty hunter Malcolm Graves has a knack for finding trouble. After twenty years working for Pervenio Corp chasing bounties and extinguishing rebellions throughout the solar system, he is on a routine pickup job hunting a wealthy offworlder heir who ran away from home. But when a mad scientist gets his hands on the boy, Malcolm finds himself caught up in a twisted plot to develop working androids.


On a savage, outlying planet an enclave of psionically-trained humans have built a utopian, matriarchal society that lives in harmony with all life. Leaving behind the polluted and corrupt world in which they lived, they colonized a new home far from the eyes of the galactic empire. Shielded from the rest of the galaxy by the dangerous beasts that inhabit their lush, forested world, the village lives a simple life under their Home Dome.
Under the direction of the ruling mothers, each child of the Windfall Dome is tested at a young age to asses their abilities - a test which can plot the course for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, Cheobawn - the daughter of the ruling First Mother to the dome - is marked with the Black Bead on her Choosing Day, a symbol of bad luck and shame. It seems the child the mothers had placed so much hope in would not be the future ruler they had hoped for. Yet there is something powerful about her that the elders don’t understand.
Finally of age, Cheobawn is chosen to join a pack to act as the psychic Ear on a foraging mission outside the dome. She knows this is her chance to prove herself. But something sinister stalks them and each member of the pack must draw on their unique strengths and a lifetime of training if they want to survive to see another day.


Set in the Amazonian jungles of South America, M.Black weaves an action-packed tale in this original YA Amazonian Eco-Fic Dystopia set forty-two years after a nuclear war. Jin—a prisoner of King Borran—and Adan—another Graphed—have to fight for their survival in a utopia gone wrong. In a world where animal cells and neural tissue have been grafted into humans, and humans are connected by brain waves to chosen animals from the Amazon, will Jin and Adan survive? Will they ever find their Animal Graph counterparts? Can the Earth find harmony with humanity and the animals or will those wanting to destroy it all win?


A sensible young nobleman, Leaf Watson, and his sister, Willow Oak, live a rustic medieval life rich in traditions and chivalry. Sealed inside an experimental biodome since infancy, they have been groomed by The Code to build a sustainable community devoid of Outsider interference.
They are unwitting pioneers on a path toward confined interplanetary homesteading.
Life within their walled garden is predictable and peaceful until the unthinkable happens. With his dying breath, Leaf and Willow’s noble father bequeaths a family secret, placing an invisible crown of power on Leaf’s head. Grief-stricken and afraid for their lives, the siblings defy their upbringing by connecting with Fillion Nichols, a punk hacker who, unbeknownst to them, is linked to their lives in shocking ways. Their encounter launches Fillion into a battle with his turbulent past as he urgently decodes the many secrets that bind them together, a necessity for each to survive.


The year is 1799 (Gregorian calendar) and no one on Earth knows the seeds of the world's destruction have just fallen from space in this story of an alternate history alien war.
When Tiana, captain of the Freedom Confederacy’s Corvette Valishnu, pursues the enemy’s ship into tunnel space, both ships crash on an uncharted planet.. Now, with the vampiric niiaH loose in a new ecosystem, she must find them and wipe them out before they reproduce or a primitive sentient species will be enslaved and the Tyrant Empire will rise again, this time starting on a planet called Earth.
But, Tiana’s ship and all its technology are at the bottom of the ocean; all her symbiont partners are dead, and she is the Valishnu’s only survivor.


Welcome to Rust Valley.
The Wild North is full of nasty places, but there are some places you just don’t go. One of them is that scrapyard desert known as Rust Valley. It’s where vehicles go to die. That’s why you don’t go in after them.
The bounty hunter Nox made a promise to himself that he’d never be caught dead there. Yet, when a couple of kids end up wandering inside that metal maze, he finds himself with no other choice.
He decks himself out in his finest armour. He’ll need it. That land is where the rust-covered Clockwork Commune live, and if they don’t scavenge the metal off you, they’ll scavenge the flesh instead.
Nox is used to being called the Coilhunter, but this time he’s saddling up with a new, more fitting title: the Rustkiller.
Pre-release


Jaya Romanov is an independent star ship shaman. She studies the energy flows of the universe and—for a price—will harness them to her employer’s purpose. Wormholes are a whole lot safer to travel when a shaman guides the jump.
Vulf Trent is a bounty hunter. It was that or join the family business, piracy, and Vulf is too much the lone wolf to tolerate the demands of a large pirate crew. Where his family enjoys the bonds of pack, he prefers the freedom of ranging the universe, alone.
Seven generations ago, humanity evacuated Earth and the shifter clans’ ability to transform into their animal forms was one of the most terrible losses of that time. Now, the werewolves, werebears and other shifters are trapped in their human bodies and slowly losing the essence of their primal souls. Jaya is determined to heal their torn transformational abilities, but Vulf doesn’t believe her.
He didn’t kidnap her for her healing abilities.


Friends and Enemies are made in war... But sometimes... it’s hard to make the distinction.
Don O'Hara was lucky. At least, that’s what everyone else said. Born the son of a General, with a guaranteed ticket to Commander's School, Don had his future laid out for him. Only, he didn't want that future. All he ever wanted was to be a Space Jumper. Lucky for him, he never lacked guts. Defying his father and sneaking off to Basic is an easy decision; a decision that forever changes the course his life will take.


Fifteen hundred years after the Catastrophe, Inventor Benjamin Kerr built the domed neo-Edwardian city-state of Bridges in the center of the former U.S. Three hundred years later, Bridges is in trouble. King Taylor Kerr is elderly, the economy is struggling, and corruption is rampant.
Forty years ago, a fence was built outside of the "Pot of Gold" — the city proper — to keep out the growing numbers of homeless. This number has increased to over a hundred thousand, whole generations knowing nothing else but life in the tent camps.
Acevedo Spadros is a high school Bridges history teacher. His former student Xavier Alcatraz is head of the Guard. When King Taylor is assassinated by his son Polansky Kerr, who then plans to slaughter everyone outside the fence, Acevedo and Xavier plan the unthinkable: to bring down the Mad King.


Dr. Albert Snowden just wanted to be there for his niece, Emily, after the loss of her father. Being abducted by aliens, and then rescued by a mysterious being known as Evaran, has made that difficult. Despite their situation, they try to make the best of it while traveling through space, time, and beyond with Evaran and V, Evaran’s trusty mobile artificial intelligence. With the use of Evaran’s time-traveling ship, the Torvatta, they will try to maintain timeline integrity while dealing with the challenges that brings.


"A hot, stinking, dumpster fire. And most days I don’t know if the legionnaires are putting out the flames, or fanning them into an inferno."
A hostile force ambushes Victory Company during a reconnaissance-in-force deep inside enemy territory. Stranded behind enemy lines, a sergeant must lead a band of survivors against merciless insurgents on a deadly alien world somewhere along the galaxy’s edge. With no room for error, the Republic’s elite fighting force must struggle to survive under siege while waiting on a rescue that might never come.






This post first appeared on Alasdair Shaw - Science Fiction, Physics And Archa, please read the originial post: here

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The June Round-up of Scifi Books

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