Equipped with the entirety of human knowledge, a sentient ship is launched on a last-ditch journey to find a new home for civilization. Trillions of miles. Tens of thousands of years. In the space between, the AI has plenty of time to think about life, the vastness of the universe, everything it was meant to do, and—with a perspective created but not limited by humans—what it should do.

With his debut novel, The Grace of Kings, taking the literary world by storm, Ken Liu now shares his finest short fiction in The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories. This mesmerizing collection features all of Ken's award-winning and award-finalist stories.

Colonial Union Ambassador Ode Abumwe and her team are used to life on the lower end of the diplomatic ladder. But when a high-profile diplomat goes missing, Abumwe and her team are last minute replacements on a mission critical to the Colonial Union’s future. As the team works to pull off their task, CDF Lieutenant Harry Wilson discovers there’s more to the story of the missing diplomats than anyone expected... a secret that could spell war for humanity.

The colony on Haven-7 has gone rogue. The colonists have split into two factions: the Techborn and the Dusters. The Techborn have always ruled the planet. They control the remnants of the crashed starship that brought humanity to this new world. The Dusters… they eat Techborn dust. Now, the Techborn strength is waning. Their weapons are getting old, and radiation leaks from the aging reactors have created mutations. Some of these, like their brutish troops known as Tuskers, have proven useful—but others are abominations.

In 1954, the Swedish government ordered the construction of the world’s largest particle accelerator. The facility was complete in 1969, located deep below the pastoral countryside of Mälaröarna. The local population called this marvel of technology The Loop. These are its strange tales.

The Pandominion: a political and trading alliance of a million worlds–except that they’re really just the one world, Earth, in many different realities. And when an AI threat arises that could destroy everything the Pandominion has built, they'll eradicate it by whatever means necessary, no matter the cost to human life.

Beyond the Aquila Rift: It's shorthand for the trip no one ever hopes to make by accident. The one that will screw up the rest of your life, the one that creates the ghosts you see haunting the shadows of company bars across the whole Bubble. Men and women ripped out of time, cut adrift from families and lovers by an accident of an alien technology we use but rarely comprehend.

Look outward beyond the stars with six stories from bestselling visionary authors. An AI awakens to its purpose. A researcher seeds a thousand new worlds for one more chance at love. A murder rocks the crew of an interstellar ship. With a sweeping sense of wonder, these stories explore the galaxy . . . and the horizons of humanity’s potential.

Take a trip to a terrifying carnival and uncover the secrets within, solve a mysterious puzzle box and await your reward, join a travelling circus and witness the strangest ventriloquist act you've ever seen. In this follow-up to the bestselling Cursed: An Anthology, you'll unearth curses old and new. From a very different take on Snow White, to a new interpretation of The Red Shoes, the best in fantasy spin straw into gold, and invite you into the labyrinth.

Go to war or go to jail. For small-time street hustler Cam Alvarez, the choice is simple.... He has no family, no friends, no place in the world...nothing to lose. When his latest con results in the death of a cartel hit man, Cam opts to join the Marines and leave Earth to fight a vicious alien enemy. Drafted into the Marine Drop-Troopers, Cam discovers there’s one thing he’s even better at than running street-con games, and that’s killing the enemy.

A vast conflict, one that has encompassed hundreds of worlds and solar systems, appears to be finally at an end. A conscripted soldier is beginning to consider her life after the war and the family she has left behind. But for Scur - and for humanity - peace is not to be.

The ex-planet Pluto has a few choice words about being thrown out of the solar system. A listing of alternate histories tells you all the various ways Hitler has died. A lawyer sues an interplanetary union for dangerous working conditions. And four artificial intelligences explain, in increasingly worrying detail, how they plan not to destroy humanity. Welcome to Miniatures: The Very Short Fiction of John Scalzi.

New York Times best-selling and Hugo Award-winning author John Scalzi gift-wraps 15 short takes on the holiday season - interviews with holiday notables, "informational" articles about TV specials and Christmas carols, short stories and poems, and even a couple of nods to Thanksgiving and New Year’s - and puts them all into a stocking stuffer-sized package that makes the perfect gift for friends, family, or yourself.

The planet of Kiln is where the tyrannical Mandate keeps its prison colony, and for inmates, the journey there is always a one-way trip. One such prisoner is Professor Arton Daghdev, xeno-ecologist and political dissident. Soon after arrival, he discovers that Kiln has a secret. Humanity is not the first intelligent life to set foot there. In the midst of a ravenous, chaotic ecosystem are the ruins of a civilization, but who were the vanished builders and where did they go?

Humans have reached the stars. There is no evidence any other species survived its own sentience long enough to do the same. Until now, when the Magellanix deep-space scout Accipiter discovers the Artifact, a million-year-old alien construct resting in a dormant volcano on a faraway world.

The nine narrative episodes of Volume Four of the Emmy® Award–winning Netflix Original series Love, Death + Robots. Featuring bestselling authors and screenwriters from all over the globe, curated by filmmakers Tim Miller and David Fincher, and Supervising Director Jennifer Yuh Nelson. Introduction by John Scalzi, with stories by John Scalzi, Stant Litore, Siobhan Carroll, Bruce Sterling, John McNichol, Dave Hutchinson, Marc Laidlaw, and Robert Bisi & Andy Lyon.

After damaging climate change, humanity is divided, torn into the technophobic nature-worshippers on Earth and the banished children of science on the new worlds. Jaruss awakens, drifting 300 light-years from Earth, trapped, memoryless, and alone. Who is he, where does he come from, and what are these recurring nightmares that trouble his sleep? To find out, he must outwit an efficiency-obsessed AI and join the dangerous crew of the stealth ship, Pangolin.

For some it’s an opportunity. For others it’s a moment to question their faith: In God, in science, in everything. Still others try to keep the world running in the face of absurdity and uncertainty. And then there are the billions looking to the sky and wondering how a thing that was always just there is now... something absolutely impossible.

When genetic scientist Macallan Orsel discovers an ancient secret hidden beneath the Pacific Ocean—a city called Leviathan inhabited by immortal humans—her carefully constructed life in New York City is suddenly thrown into turmoil. Drawn into a clandestine struggle she never knew existed, Macallan is thrust into the middle of a dangerous conflict between Leviathan’s immortal residents and the ruthless Blackdoor Group, a covert government agency determined to exploit the immortals’ powerful technology for its own ends.

Ralph could be described as a rogue on a good day. A bad day involved a lot of cursing, calling him a pirate, or sometimes even having a shoot-out. It wasn't really his fault of course, or so he would have you believe. It was the fault of those who wanted to get in his way of making as much money as possible as a smuggler. His family had been gifted with a letter of marque for the Terran Confed, one that is inherited and has been passed down to him. Essentially, it gives him a lot of loopholes and ways through regulations to be a fantastic smuggler. Or as a legal pirate, a Privateer.

Dive into the captivating world of Frank Herbert beyond Dune with this immersive audiobook edition of 'Missing Link.' A brilliant exploration of humanity's evolution and potential, Herbert's masterful novella challenges listeners with profound questions about our species' future. Follow the expedition of Lewis Orne as he investigates an emerging civilization that may hold the key to mankind's next evolutionary step.

It is the beginning of 1918, the last year of the greatest war in human history, to date. All the belligerents stagger on their feet. Starvation is an ever present reality, while disease waits in the wings. In Russia, no longer a belligerent but, instead, rapidly descending into civil war and chaos, a lone family—Father, Mother, four beautiful young girls, and a brave but sickly boy—await their own fate, shivering and hungry in the dark, hoping and praying for salvation. Their relatives in England have turned their backs. The guards set over them do little but torment them.

Captain Ean Tephe is a man of faith, whose allegiance to his lord and to his ship is uncontested. The Bishopry Militant knows this — and so, when it needs a ship and crew to undertake a secret, sacred mission to a hidden land, Tephe is the captain to whom the task is given....

This collection includes Survival, Hunted, and Frequency. Survival: When one of the men in charge of storing food for the town of Shadow Ridge is found murdered execution style, it's up to Jace McQuaid to find the killer. Hunted: Levi McQuaid searches for the sister of an old friend, Ava Solomon, but the situation takes a deadly turn when the search leads them on a dangerous trek across the west Texas desert. Frequency: Four deaths, likely tied to arsenic-tainted water, leave the town of Shadow Ridge frantic for answers. But that isn't the only nightmare Tess McQuaid is facing.

For a decade, peace has reigned in interstellar space. A tripartite agreement between the Colonial Union, the Earth, and the alien Conclave has kept the forces of war at bay, even when some would have preferred to return to the fighting and struggle of former times. For now, more sensible heads have prevailed. But now, there is a new force that threatens the hard-maintained peace: The Consu, the most advanced intelligent species humans have ever met, are on the cusp of a species-defining civil war. This war is between Consu factions ... but nothing the Consu ever do is just about them.

In Rip-Off!, 13 of today’s best and most honored writers of speculative fiction face a challenge even they would be hard-pressed to conceive: Pick your favorite opening line from a classic piece of fiction (or even non-fiction) - then use it as the first sentence of an entirely original short story.

They just stood there. In the dark. On his grass. Three punks. They were always there, roaming the streets, kicking over trash cans, spray painting the train underpass, throwing eggs on Halloween, a stain on his otherwise bucolic Ridgewood, New Jersey neighborhood. Once they left a bag of dog crap on his front porch and set it on fire. He almost stepped in it. But for some reason this new thing, the just standing there, pissed him off even more. Like they owned his lawn. Pot-smoking punks.

In the 1800s, a sailing ship crashes off the coast of Norway. In the 1900s, a Zepellin explores an icy canyon in Antarctica. In the far future, a spaceship sets out for an alien artifact. Each excursion goes horribly wrong. And on every journey, Dr. Silas Coade is the physician, but only Silas seems to realize that these events keep repeating themselves. And it's up to him to figure out why and how. And how to stop it all from happening again.

Stories of the Trader and his convoy of war wagons endure in the badlands of post-holocaust America. A dealer in Deathlands' most precious commodities - weapons and fuel - Trader takes note of a young Ryan Cawdor. Surrounded in myth and rumor, Trader sets into motion the beginnings of legend at a place called Virtue Lake...At Spearpoint, the ultimate redoubt housing a valuable cache of predark technology, two opposing wills clash. Levi Shabazz intends to carve his own empire out of the vast wastelands, but the Trader intends to thwart him and end his bloody siege of power.

En route to far-off stars, Toby’s consciousness has a crucial mission: inhabit his clone long enough to repair a spaceship, then zip back to Earth. He’s done it a million times, more or less. OK, twelve times. It should only take a few hours. Until he wakes up in jail. And he’s not alone. His fellow prisoners: a cadre of alien soldiers. His prison: an ethereal boundary that will imprison their spirits until their bodies die. His jailers can’t even see him. But their pet cat (er, iguana cat?) can—and it’s got a serious case of the zoomies.