Past Kindle Book Deals but Still Must Read Books!
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125 past books matching Hard Sci-Fi
Ideal for readers looking for large-scale space opera with alien civilizations, mysterious origins, and an immense starship at its center.
Marrow
Sci-Fi · First Contact · Hard Sci-Fi · Space Exploration · Space Opera
Our take
Called “an exhilarating ride” by The New York Times Book Review, Marrow follows the near-immortal crew of an enormous starship as they discover a hidden planet at its center and send their best captains to investigate. Trapped on Marrow, the team must build a new civilization and seek a way back, with a 4.3-star rating from more than 400 Amazon reviewers. Ideal for readers looking for large-scale space opera with alien civilizations, mysterious origins, and an immense starship at its center.
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About the book
The Ship has traveled the universe for longer than any of the near-immortal crew can recall, its true purpose and origins unknown. It is larger than many planets, housing thousands of alien races and just as many secrets.
Now one of those secrets has been discovered: at the center of the Ship is . . . a planet. Marrow. But when a team of the Ship's best and brightest are sent down to investigate, will they return with the origins of the Ship--or will they bring doom to everyone on board?
Robert Reed, whose fantastic stories have been filling all the major SF magazines for the past several years, spins a captivating tale of adventure and wonder on an incredible scale in this novel based on his acclaimed novella.
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Time becomes a battlefield where loyalty has no fixed point.
The Corridors of Time
Sci-Fi · Hard Sci-Fi · Space Opera · Time Travel
Our take
Time becomes a battlefield where loyalty has no fixed point. In The Corridors of Time, imprisoned ex-marine Malcolm Lockridge accepts a mysterious offer that thrusts him into a war waged across centuries between rival factions. As he moves through shifting historical eras, the lines between good and evil blur. A classic science fiction adventure of temporal conflict, destiny, and moral uncertainty.
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About the book
A young man from the twentieth century is recruited to fight in a war that rages throughout time in this classic science fiction adventure from a multiple Hugo and Nebula Award–winning master.
College student, ex-marine, and martial artist Malcolm Lockridge is in prison awaiting his trial for murder when he receives an unexpected visit from an extraordinarily beautiful woman named Storm. Claiming to be a representative of the Wardens, a political faction from two thousand years in the future, Storm offers the astonished young man a proposition: freedom in return for his assistance in recovering an unspecified lost treasure. But it is not long before Malcolm realizes that, in truth, he's been recruited as a soldier in the Wardens' ongoing war against their rivals, the Rangers. And this war is different from any that has ever been fought, because the battlefield is not a place but time itself.
Traveling backward and forward through corridors connecting historical epochs separated by thousands of years, Malcolm is soon embroiled in a furious conflict between the forces of good and minions of evil. But the deeper he is pulled into this devastating time war, the clearer Malcolm's ultimate role in humankind's destiny becomes, causing the troubled young soldier from the twentieth century to question whether he's been chosen to fight on the side of good or evil . . . and if such a distinction even exists.
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A war without a visible enemy forces soldiers to question what they are truly fighting.
Androne
Dystopian · Sci-Fi · Hard Sci-Fi · Military Sci-Fi
Our take
A war without a visible enemy forces soldiers to question what they are truly fighting. Androne follows Sergeant Paxton Arés, a remote pilot deployed after a catastrophic global attack rewrites modern warfare. As rumors, loyalty, and fear collide in an unknowable desert conflict, Paxton’s search for truth becomes personal. This is near-future military science fiction centered on uncertainty, duty, and the consequences of fighting a war no one understands.
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About the book
Humanity’s new war is an enigma, with an enemy threat beyond all imagination, in this near-future novel of mind-blowing adventure where the fate of the world rests in the choices of one ordinary soldier.
In one terrifying event called the Ninety-Nine, all major military installations on earth were eviscerated. But by whom? Foreign powers, AIs, ETs? Every conceivable adversary was ruled out. Reeling from massive casualties and amid hundreds of conspiracy theories, humanity creates Andrones: bipedal android drones piloted remotely by soldiers who will never again need to be on the field of battle. Newly minted Androne pilot Sergeant Paxton Arés has now been deployed into a fight against an enemy no one understands or has ever seen.
Passing mostly uneventful days patrolling an unidentified desert, Paxton spends time communicating with his pregnant girlfriend back home and reflecting on his impending fatherhood. But as he is drawn deeper into military camaraderie and begins quickly rising up the ranks on the strength of his father’s military legacy, Paxton starts to question the swirling rumors about the nature of the conflict. What he’s encountered in the shifting dunes—something inexplicable, indomitable—fills him with the fear that whatever is out there is destined to win.
Whether it’s curiosity, ambition, or a newfound paternal instinct, Paxton has a driving need to understand the dangerous truths of this strange, invisible war. And the choices he must make have the power to change everything.
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After first contact collapses into fear, three lives are trapped inside a militarized future shaped by human control and alien silence.
The Collapsing Wave
Sci-Fi · Alien Invasion · Hard Sci-Fi
Our take
After first contact collapses into fear, three lives are trapped inside a militarized future shaped by human control and alien silence. As hope resurfaces, escape leads toward a confrontation that could redefine survival itself. The Collapsing Wave is an epic, emotionally driven sequel with 4.4 stars on Amazon and wide critical praise.
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About the book
Six months since the earth-shattering events of The Space Between Us, the revelatory hope of the aliens' visit has turned to dust and the creatures have disappeared into the water off Scotland' s west coast.
Teenager Lennox and grieving mother Heather are being held in New Broom, a makeshift US military base, the subject of experiments, alongside the Enceladons who have been captured by the authorities.
Ava, who has given birth, is awaiting the jury verdict at her trial for the murder of her husband. And MI7 agent Oscar Fellowes, who has been sidelined by the US military, is beginning to think he might be on the wrong side of history.
When alien Sandy makes contact, Lennox and Heather make a plan to escape with Ava. All three of them are heading for a profound confrontation between the worst of humanity and a possible brighter future, as the stakes get higher for the alien Enceladons and the entire human race…
Sequel to the bestselling The Space Between Us, The Collapsing Wave is an exquisite, epic first-contact novel, laced with peril and populated by unforgettable characters, and the awe-inspiring book we all need right now…
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Good for readers who like generational space missions, cloning, artificial intelligence, and big questions about human knowledge.
Noumenon
Sci-Fi · Hard Sci-Fi · Space Exploration
Our take
A “spectacular epic” sci-fi novel by Kirkus, In 2088, a deep-space mission of nine ships carrying cloned crews embarks on a multi-generational journey to explore a mysterious star that defies physics. Noumenon has a 4.0-star rating from more than 1,500 Amazon reviewers. Good for readers who like generational space missions, cloning, artificial intelligence, and big questions about human knowledge.
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About the book
A centuries-long mission to reach a mysterious star unfolds through a series of vignettes across generations in this "spectacular epic" sci-fi novel (Kirkus, starred review).
In 2088, humankind is finally able to explore beyond Earth's solar system. The interstellar missions will depend on cloning technology that allows a single crew to replicate itself across eons, and astrophysicist Reggie Straifer knows exactly where to send them. Having discovered an anomalous star that appears to defy the laws of physics, he proposes a deep-space mission to determine if the star is a natural phenomenon, or something manufactured.
Reggie himself is among the hundreds of elite experts cloned for the convoy. But a clone is not an exact copy, and each new generation has its own quirks, desires, and neuroses. As the centuries fly by, the society living aboard the nine ships changes and evolves, but their mission remains the same: to reach Reggie's mysterious star and explore its origins—and implications.
A mosaic novel of discovery, Noumenon—in a series of vignettes—follows the men and women, and even the AI, as they are born again and again into a thousand new lives. With the stars their home and the unknown their destination, they are on an odyssey to understand what lies beyond the limits of human knowledge and imagination.
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In a war-torn multiverse, truth arrives through blood, betrayal, and a weapon that remembers its dead.
Outlaw Planet
Sci-Fi · Hard Sci-Fi · Space Opera
Our take
In a war-torn multiverse, truth arrives through blood, betrayal, and a weapon that remembers its dead. In Outlaw Planet, Bess moves from teacher to outlaw as she uncovers how deeply her world has been manipulated and what it will cost to fight back. The result is a hard-driving space opera with revenge, unraveling realities, and a heroine pushed past the point of return.
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About the book
From one of genre fiction’s most original and revolutionary voices comes a space opera adventure like no other. Sometimes the fate of entire worlds can be decided by a woman with nothing to lose, and the smartest gun in the multiverse in her hand . . .
“The production of a brilliant imagination . . . His best novel yet.”—SFX
This is the story of Bess - or Dog-Bitch Bess as she came to be known. It's the story of the gun she carried, whose name was Wakeful Slim. It's the story of the dead man who carried that gun before her and left a piece of himself inside it. And it's the tale of how she turned from teacher, to renegade, and ultimately to hero.
This is also the tale of the last violent engagements in an inter-dimensional war - one of the most brutal the multiverse had ever seen.
This is how Bess learned the truth about her world. Came to it the hard way, through pain and loss and the reckless spilling of blood, and carried it with her like a brand on her soul. And once she knew it - knew for sure how badly she'd been used - she had no option but to do something about it.
Discover this thrilling standalone science fiction adventure from the million-copy bestselling M. R. Carey, author of The Girl With All the Gifts and the Philip K. Dick Award-shortlisted Infinity Gate (a New York Times Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Book of the Year).
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Earthbound follows climatologist Phil Bright as wormholes tear through Saturn’s rings and signal an extinction-level threat to Earth.
Earthbound
Sci-Fi · First Contact · Galactic Empire · Hard Sci-Fi · Space Exploration
Our take
Earthbound follows climatologist Phil Bright as wormholes tear through Saturn’s rings and signal an extinction-level threat to Earth. Salvation arrives from an alien kingdom ruled by an AI sovereign, but at the cost of human independence. As Phil uncovers the truth behind this power, he must weigh survival against surrender in a choice that will define humanity’s future.
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About the book
Earth faces annihilation. A tear in spacetime. An impossible choice.
Dr. Phil Bright's specialty was weather patterns, not existential threats. But when mysterious wormholes begin to appear near Saturn, carving massive, inexplicable gaps in the planet's rings, the impossible becomes terrifyingly real. Humanity is unprepared, grappling with a phenomenon that defies all known science.
Salvation arrives from an unknown galactic kingdom, heralded by a human professor with advanced technology and an offer of help. Yet, the price is steeper than any could imagine: Earth must surrender its sovereignty and pledge allegiance to King Manay XII, an artificial intelligence sovereign ruling trillions.
As Phil navigates a world of skeptical governments, alien wonders, and the truth behind the kingdom's ancient power, he's forced to confront the ultimate dilemma: sacrifice humanity's freedom for survival, or watch the planet he loves be consumed by cosmic ruin.
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Ideal for readers who enjoy military science fiction, interstellar politics, and advanced technology.
The Risen Empire
Sci-Fi · Galactic Empire · Hard Sci-Fi · Space Opera
Our take
Called “exceptionally smart and empathetic” by Publishers Weekly, this space opera follows Captain Laurent Zai as he attempts to rescue the Child Empress from the Rix, machine-augmented rebels challenging an immortal emperor's rule. Meanwhile, Senator Nara Oxham faces political conflict that could determine the empire's future. Ideal for readers who enjoy military science fiction, interstellar politics, and advanced technology.
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About the book
"Westerfeld's blend of traditional space opera and cutting-edge speculation makes this a truly twenty-first-century SF novel." —Karl Schroeder, author of Pirate Sun
The undead Emperor has ruled his mighty interstellar empire of eighty human worlds for sixteen hundred years. Because he can grant a form of eternal life, creating an elite known as the Risen, his power has been absolute. He and his sister, the Child Empress, who is eternally a little girl, are worshiped as living gods. No one can touch them.
Not until the Rix, machine-augmented humans who worship very different gods: AI compound minds of planetary extent. The Rix are cool, relentless fanatics, and their only goal is to propagate such AIs throughout the galaxy. They seek to end, by any means necessary, the Emperor's prolonged tyranny of one and supplant it with an eternal cybernetic dynasty of their own. They begin by taking the Child Empress hostage. Captain Laurent Zai of the Imperial Frigate Lynx is tasked with her rescue.
Separated by light-years, bound by an unlikely love, Zai and pacifist senator Nara Oxham must each in their own way, face the challenge of the Rix, and they each will hold the fate of the empire in their hands. The Risen Empire is the first great space opera of the twenty-first century.
"In the tradition of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series and Frank Herbert's Dune books." —The New York Times
"Confirms the buzz that space opera is one of the most exciting branches of current SF." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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Long after Humanity’s fall from power, ancient artifacts resurface and reignite a galactic race for control.
Apex
Sci-Fi · Galactic Empire · Hard Sci-Fi · Space Opera
Our take
Long after Humanity’s fall from power, ancient artifacts resurface and reignite a galactic race for control. As rival factions close in on a discovery that could reshape the stars, the past threatens to repeat itself. This epic standalone space opera holds 4.5 stars on Amazon and is praised for its scale and worldbuilding.
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About the book
An epic space adventure, Aer-ki Jyr's Apex is a breathless race to the ultimate prize, with the very fate of the stars hanging in the balance.
A new dawn is coming . . .
It's been eons since Humans controlled the universe. Defeated by a mysterious enemy, the downfall of Humanity brought about a virtual dark age. Culture and technology stagnated in their absence. But now, trade is once again flourishing as Human artifacts resurface throughout the galaxy, resurrecting long forgotten advancements.
And one such discovery might very well alter the course of the future forever.
From the author of the epic Star Force Origin series, Aer-ki Jyr's impressive galactic world-building is on full display in this stand-alone space opera adventure reminiscent of Ryk Brown, Christopher Nuttall, B.V. Larson, and Evan Currie.
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A failed physicist stumbles into a discovery that turns consciousness, reality, and belief into something far more dangerous than theory.
The Flicker Men
Sci-Fi · Thriller · Hard Sci-Fi · Suspense
Our take
A failed physicist stumbles into a discovery that turns consciousness, reality, and belief into something far more dangerous than theory. In The Flicker Men, Eric Argus revisits a foundational quantum experiment and uncovers implications that draw scrutiny from both the scientific world and forces operating in the shadows. It fits readers looking for hard science fiction that blends high-concept ideas with paranoia and existential dread.
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A scientist's discovery puts him the crosshairs of dangerous people determined to silence him—and his findings—in this hard science fiction thriller.
"A high-speed thriller. . . . The pages turn rapidly with well-orchestrated suspense." —New York Times
A quantum physicist shocks the world with a startling experiment, igniting a struggle between science and theology, free will and fate, and antagonizing forces not known to exist
Quantum physicist Eric Argus is a washout. His prodigious early work clouded his reputation and strained his sanity. But an old friend gives him another chance, an opportunity to step back into the light.
With three months to produce new research, Eric replicates the paradoxical double-slit experiment to see for himself the mysterious dual nature of light and matter. A simple but unprecedented inference blooms into a staggering discovery about human consciousness and the structure of the universe.
His findings are celebrated and condemned in equal measure. But no one can predict where the truth will lead. And as Eric seeks to understand the unfolding revelations, he must evade shadowy pursuers who believe he knows entirely too much already.
"If Stephen Hawking and Stephen King wrote a novel together, you'd get The Flicker Men. Brilliant, disturbing, and beautifully told." —New York Times–bestselling author Hugh Howey
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A good pick for readers who like time-travel science fiction built around alternate history, cultural collisions, and mystery.
Last Year
Sci-Fi · Hard Sci-Fi · Time Travel
Our take
Jesse Cullum lives in an alternate nineteenth-century Ohio connected to the future by a time-travel passage that will soon close forever. In love with a woman from the future, he plans to follow her home even if it means exposing dangerous secrets, with a 4.2-star average from more than 400 Goodreads ratings. A good pick for readers who like time-travel science fiction built around alternate history, cultural collisions, and mystery.
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About the book
The Hugo Award–winning author of Spin, praised as "a hell of a storyteller" by Stephen King, gives time travel his own mind-bending twist . . .
Two events made September 1st a memorable day for Jesse Cullum. First, he lost a pair of Oakley sunglasses. Second, he saved the life of President Ulysses S. Grant.
In the near future of Robert Charles Wilson's Last Year, the technology exists to open doorways into the past—but not our past, not exactly. Each "past" is effectively an alternate world, identical to ours but only up to the date on which we access it. And a given "past" can only be reached once. After a passageway is open, it's the only road to that particular past; once closed, it can't be reopened.
A passageway has been opened to a version of late 19th-century Ohio. It's been in operation for most of a decade, but it's no secret, on either side of time. A small city has grown up around it to entertain visitors from our time, and many locals earn a good living catering to them. But like all such operations, it has a shelf life; as the "natives" become more sophisticated, their version of the "past" grows less attractive as a destination.
Jesse Cullum is a native. And he knows the passageway will be closing soon. He's fallen in love with a woman from our time, and he means to follow her back—no matter whose secrets he has to expose in order to do it.
"Wilson's prose is beautifully constructed in this intelligent and gripping novel." —Chicago Review of Books
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Interstellar repo man Fergus Ferguson travels to the remote colony of Cernee to steal back a ship from a ruthless trade boss—but a sudden explosion plunges the settlement…
Finder
Sci-Fi · First Contact · Hard Sci-Fi · Space Opera
Our take
Interstellar repo man Fergus Ferguson travels to the remote colony of Cernee to steal back a ship from a ruthless trade boss—but a sudden explosion plunges the settlement into chaos. Forced to ally with rebels, dodge mercenaries, and contend with unsettling alien ships, Fergus discovers this “simple” job may demand more heroism than he ever planned. Suzanne Palmer launches a sharp, high-energy sci-fi caper.
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About the book
HUGO AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR: The first “wicked, fast-paced, and fun” sci-fi caper about an interstellar repo man and professional finder (Elizabeth Bear, author of Ancestral Night).
“The zippier, zanier side of space opera.” —B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog
Fergus Ferguson has been called a lot of names: thief, con artist, repo man. He prefers the term finder. His latest job should be simple. Find the spacecraft Venetia's Sword and steal it back from Arum Gilger, ex-nobleman turned power-hungry trade boss. He’ll slip in, decode the ship’s compromised AI security, and get out of town, Sword in hand.
Fergus locates both Gilger and the ship in the farthest corner of human-inhabited space, a backwater deep space colony called Cernee. But Fergus’ arrival at the colony is anything but simple. A cable car explosion launches Cernee into civil war, and Fergus must ally with Gilger’s enemies to navigate a field of space mines and a small army of hostile mercenaries. What was supposed to be a routine job evolves into negotiating a power struggle between factions. Even worse, Fergus has become increasingly—and inconveniently—invested in the lives of the locals.
It doesn’t help that a dangerous alien species Fergus thought mythical prove unsettlingly real, and their ominous triangle ships keep following him around.
Foolhardy. Eccentric. Reckless. Whatever he’s called, Fergus will need all the help he can get to take back the Sword and maybe save Cernee from destruction in the process.
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