Hardsci-fi Stories

Earth has fallen. When the planet crosses its final climate tipping point, temperatures rise, crops fail, and billions are forced onto the move. Diplomacy gives way to ultimatums, then to war. From unassuming laboratories to streets drowning in heat and hunger, a fractured world stumbles toward its final reckoning. As famine and conflict spread, international order dissolves into violence and blame, and armies march north through ruins chasing a future that no longer exists. Yet amid the despair, a radical plan takes shape to move a fragment of humanity to the red sands of Mars. As Earth burns and the heavens fill with refugees, one truth becomes unavoidable: the future belongs only to those willing to sacrifice everything. In the chaos of the apocalypse, a new kind of security service is needed to enforce order where nations have failed. From the ashes of Old Earth, the Sunguard rises. Scorched Earth is a sweeping hard-science epic about collapse, survival, and the cost of choosing a future when the present is already lost.

The 2234 Universe gathers wild, thought‑provoking stories from every corner of a hard‑won Solar System. In the asteroid belt people struggle and strive. On Ariel's ice, a battered outpost fights to reboot its lungs and its conscience. In Caleb's Vein, a belt crew chases a river of living metal through the dark, trading sleep and skin for one shot at freedom. In Ethan's Saviour, a burned‑out responder on half‑pressured Mars gambles everything on a rescue that could redeem a city or expose its lie. These are hard science fiction tales built from real physics, ruthless economics, and stubborn hope. Mass drivers sing, contracts bite, robots keep score, and people still fall in love. From frost‑bright moons to dust‑red plains, every page asks the same question: what is a future worth if we forget the people in it? Facts, opportunities, and souls, all lit by the cold bright sun of 2234. Welcome to the World of 2234.

Empire of Stars is a sweeping space-opera epic that follows former soldier and disgraced movie star John Drayton after humanity's first contact with an ancient alien gateway-the Meridian Gate-catapults Earth into a brutal interstellar war. Elevated to the role of Arbiter, John commands the warship Hemingway as he navigates galaxy-spanning politics, devastating battles, and the terrifying emergence of the Hyperions: godlike beings who manipulate entire species as weapons. As worlds fall, secrets surface, and the line between heroism and exploitation blurs, John must reconcile his past, his hunger for meaning, and the crushing cost of leadership while racing to stop a calculated extinction that has been centuries in the making.

Set 300 years into the future and after nuclear war, where shadowy powers sought to destroy everything. They looked to remake the world to their world view, but did not count on betrayal from within. This thrilling sci-fi saga follows James Fong, a brilliant scientist, inventor, and visionary-as he battles through the ashes of humanity's past toward the stars. Expect intense world-building, gritty survival, and a classic good vs. evil struggle that fans of The Expanse or Fallout will love

"Hard Vacuum, Soft Skills." It's not just a motto; it's the only way to survive the Dailey Files. Ray Dailey is a professional problem-solver for the government's most "eclectic" department. But he's never dealt with a situation this volatile: The Mission: Impress a panel of U.S. Senators. The Reality: A major collision, zero power, and a station full of brilliant nerds who refuse to take orders from a soldier. With oxygen running out and the temperature rising, Ray has to lead a desperate, high-stakes operation to keep the station alive. But in the Dailey Files, the biggest threat isn't the vacuum of space-it's the people you're trapped with.

What happens when science stops being just knowledge and becomes something humanity fears? The world is at war. But this is not a war of soldiers alone. A mysterious strike has changed the sky itself. Nations believe a superweapon exists - one that may not be a weapon at all. Soraya is a scientist who once believed knowledge should protect humanity. The Architect believes knowledge should control it. Between grief, war, and forbidden physics, lies a discovery that may decide the future of civilization. Follow pilots, commanders, journalists, and a hidden scientist as the world stands on the edge of technological mystery. Because sometimes the greatest danger is not what humanity creates... But what humanity understands too late. 🌌 The sky remembers everything. #TheHorizonEngine

Sunguard Special Agent Rehema Nyasi has upheld peace in the Terran Federation for over five centuries. But when an anti-insurgency mission on Jerr ends in a civilian massacre, she faces a question she can no longer ignore: What if loyalty itself is a kind of betrayal? Amid the chaos, she finds Myan Lami - a five-day-old biotic soldier, engineered to obey, now paralyzed by guilt. Haunted by the lives he was built to take, Lami is the perfect weapon beginning to think for himself. As Nyasi challenges corrupt leaders and rising racial injustice, Lami wrestles with guilt and the hope of redemption. Together, they must choose whether to follow orders, defy them, or forge a new path entirely. This story takes place in my Lords of the Stars shared universe. See my profile for other stories set in the same universe.

In the post-apocalyptic, post-capitalistic future, conflicts between communes are handled via Flower Wars: pretend wars where artists of combat engage in spectacular battles. When ancient machines enter a Flower War uninvited, famous mech pilot Eshe Kollontai decides to follow the trail of a fallen automated border agency, uncovering the ghosts of a long-buried past...and the political machinations of the present.

Three Speculative Science Fiction Stories of W. J. Manares

Joseph Williams died in no particular way at the age of 72. Stubbornly driven, he was only a minuscule part of an outer space mission far greater than him. Yet as the others are forgotten in their demise, he remains. This is a scifi story about a colonization ship that gets stranded in space, with six desperate crew members looking for solutions. Set hundreds of years in the future, it follows Dr. Essen, a young woman who just gained a PhD before joining other researchers and scientists on a mission to the Sun's closest star system, Proxima Centauri.

𝗔𝗠𝗕𝗬𝗦 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟮 𝗪𝗜𝗡𝗡𝗘𝗥 · A collection of short stories of the sci-fi, fantasy and quirky kind. Take a quick spin around the clouds of Olympus to the frozen wastes of Jupiter's icy moon | The very first story, The Goddess of Door Hinges, is my winning entry to the Legends in Love contest hosted by WattpadShortStory, MythandLegend and YARomance profiles. The Kraken of Europa is a piratepunk/oceanpunk story that won The Ambys 2022 under the Short Story category. © 2021 Su Vida | Exclusively on Wattpad *** Cover art and graphics are my original work--except for the image displayed in The Kraken of Europa, which was produced by Midjourney AI.

In the near future, humanity discovers that time is not a continuous, smooth flow, but is organized into infinitesimally small, discrete units called Chronons-the actual, measurable "pixels" of existence. A global, secretive agency, the Bureau of Chronometric Stability (BCS), is established to monitor and, more critically, ration these Chronons. The problem: Due to accelerating ecological and cosmic pressures, the total Chronon count available to Earth is shrinking. To prevent the collapse of reality itself, the BCS institutes Temporal Triage: the poor and chronically ill are systematically assigned fewer Chronons, causing them to experience life at a subtly slower speed (i.e., days feel longer, healing takes more subjective time), while the elite have their Chronon allotment boosted, granting them effectively more life.

Usually, they say not to judge a book by its cover but....

A story of first contact, the dawn of a new era, and the political ramifications which come alongside a a new superpower entering the field of globalism.

The universe is ancient, old, and most importantly, dead. The heat death of the universe has taken it's toll, and not only have the last stars died out long before, but the remainder of the black holes that had formed the centers of the ancient galaxies have also evaporated completely. One lone starship floats through the vastness of space collecting the stray particles that litter the now otherwise empty void of space, but even the atomic nuclei are now beginning to break down and succumb to entropy. Can one lone scientist find a way to reverse the flow of entropy and save trillions of lives in an act that cannot be accomplished without defying the laws of physics?

-Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs and Fairies...trapped in the secondary effect of Corporate Activism.

In 2276, Earth's elite set their sights on a new galaxy. Galactic Corp promises a fresh start-but only for the chosen few. Onboard the Hope Expedition are scientists, soldiers, and an AI designed to safeguard humanity's future. But time, silence, and secrets change everything.

Henry Mackay and his dog regularly walk alongside an ancient convent wall. Today, as he passes the green door, he glances at its peeling paint. Moments later he stops dead in his tracks. He returns to the spot, and all he sees is an ivy-covered wall. The door has vanished! He unwittingly embarks on an exciting trail of events with twists, turns, quantum entanglement and temporal anomalies. It becomes an unbelievable adventure to save humanity. Green Door is the latest science fiction mystery from the pen of Tony Harmsworth, the First Contact specialist who writes in the style of the old masters. Discover the secrets being hidden behind the Green Door today! (C) 2016/7 Tony Harmsworth - All Rights Reserved. For the avoidance of doubt, anyone using this storyline, characters or copying prose or dialogue without written permission, will be prosecuted under international intellectual property laws.

Set after three years after the Frontier Trilogy. Galaxy Reformed follows The Crew trying to adjust to peacetime. But a Rebellion begins in the Planet Of Ad Victoria. What will our heroes do in this crisis. Join the rebellion or keep fighting with the Earth Alliance.

| WATTPAD EDITOR'S CHOICE | Major Aula Reed is a Canadian fighter pilot, veteran astronaut, and closeted bisexual. She's stationed on the second International Lunar Base or ILUB-2 with seven other crewmates. To be separated from Earth means facing radiation, meteorites, and equipment failure while under constant public scrutiny. For Aula, it also means struggling with memories of ILUB-1: the worst disaster in space exploration since the shuttle era. While she tries not to let her first mission overshadow her second, the Moon is an unforgiving place. It only takes one mistake, no matter how small, for history to repeat itself. This is a story of the near future informed by the lives of today's astronauts, whose triumphs and tragedies are immortalized in the public eye.