Winner of the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novelette.

What will become of our self-destructed planet? The answer shatters all expectations in this subversive speculation from the Hugo Award–winning author of the Broken Earth trilogy.

An explorer returns to gather information from a climate-ravaged Earth that his ancestors, and others among the planet’s finest, fled centuries ago. The mission comes with a warning: a graveyard world awaits him. But so do those left behind—hopeless and unbeautiful wastes of humanity who should have died out ages ago. After all this time, there’s no telling how they’ve devolved. Steel yourself, soldier. Get in. Get out. And try not to stare.

N. K. Jemisin’s Emergency Skin is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.

Audible narration by Jason Isaacs (Star Trek: Discovery)

In a Las Vegas hotel room, a man awakes to confront his destiny

Dreaming, Jack hears voices: a frightened child in a hospital, a woman cheating on her husband, a death-row inmate. When he wakes, the voices recede, but they do not vanish. He is in a luxurious hotel room on the Vegas strip, and his body is covered in scars. Jack Strong is a patchwork man, his flesh melded together from dozens of men and women, and his mind is the same way. Countless lifetimes are contained within him: people whose time was cut short, and who see their place in Jack as a chance to make things right.On behalf of one of them, Jack reignites a feud with corrupt casino bosses. Drawing on the skills of another, he beats the life out of two bodyguards. Jack fights for control as he lurches from impulse to impulse, certain that somewhere within him exists a soul. The answers may lie with whomever is tailing him in a sleek black car—if Jack can somehow confront him.

An astronaut’s interstellar mission is a personal journey of a thousand second chances in an exhilarating short story by James S. A. Corey, the New York Times bestselling author of The Expanse series.

Roy Court and his crew are taking the trip of a lifetime—several lifetimes in fact—duplicated and dispatched across the galaxies searching for Earthlike planets. Many possibilities for the future. Yet for Roy, no matter how many of him there are, there’s still just one painful, unchangeable past. In what world can a broken relationship be reborn? The universe is so vast, there’s always room for hope.

James S. A. Corey’s How It Unfolds is part of The Far Reaches, a collection of science-fiction stories that stretch the imagination and open the heart. They can be read or listened to in one sitting.

A legendary enemy attacks....
Galactic peace is threatened....
Unless one man can find and stop the Atlantis ship.

Carson Mach, a former war hero turned freelancer, seeks the biggest payday of his life when he's tasked to hunt down a ghost ship that has echoed through the centuries. The legendary Atlantis ship has become a reality, appearing at the Commonwealth frontier and obliterating an orbital station.

Facing a lack of resources, a ragtag crew, and aliens who want him dead, Mach must use all his leadership skills and experience if he's to beat the overwhelming odds. His mission will take him across the galaxy and to uncharted dark areas of space.

Failure to stop the Atlantis ship will mean not only the death of Mach and his crew but the end of the Commonwealth and all of humanity. Somehow Mach must find a way to solve an ancient mystery if he's to succeed where everyone else before him has failed.

All Carson Mach books can be read in any order.

Other Carson Mach books:

The Terminal War.

The Lost Voyager.

"Carson Mach is one of the best space opera adventures I've read." --

P. Marshall, Amazon Reviewer.