The Patterns of Chaos is a 1972 science fiction novel by British writer Colin Kapp. It originally appeared in If magazine, serialized in three parts.
It combines grand space operatic themes of battle between space empires and intergalactic alien invasion with philosophical themes of predestination and destiny, and detailed character development of a tight set of central characters.
Earth's Stellar Commando has placed their secret agent Commander Bron on a planet where they hope he will be able to find out the coordinates of a rival space empire, the Destroyers. Bron is there to impersonate a famous scientist of interest to the Destroyers, and has been given implants through which a monitoring team can see what he sees, hear what he hears and talk to him, even when separated by interstellar distances. The plot hinges on a fictional science, the study of the entropic "patterns of Chaos", which allows predictions of events with an accuracy that was not before possible. Both Earth and the Destroyers—and specifically Bron himself—are discovered to be the target of an extraterrestrial interstellar murder campaign that was hatched 700 million years ago. He succeeds in joining together the Earth and Destroyer fleets and confronts the aliens, to discover that his destiny is inextricably entangled with theirs.
Traveller is a science fiction role-playing game first published in 1977 by Game Designers' Workshop. Marc Miller designed Traveller with help from Frank Chadwick, John Harshman, and Loren Wiseman. Editions were published for GURPS, d20, and other role-playing game systems. From its origin and in the currently published systems, the game relied upon six-sided dice for random elements. Traveller has been featured in a few novels and at least two video games.
The alien invasion or space invasion is a common feature in science fiction stories and film, in which extraterrestrials invade the Earth either to exterminate and supplant human life, enslave it under an intense state, harvest people for food, steal the planet's resources, or destroy the planet altogether.
Military science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction that features the use of science fiction technology, mainly weapons, for military purposes and usually principal characters who are members of a military organization involved in military activity, usually during a war; occurring sometimes in outer space or on a different planet or planets. It exists in literature, comics, film, and video games.
CoDominium is a series of future history novels written by American writer Jerry Pournelle, along with several co-authors, primarily Larry Niven.
Macroscope is a science fiction novel by British-American writer Piers Anthony. It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1970.
The Songs of Distant Earth is a 1986 science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, based upon his 1958 short story of the same title. He stated that it was his favourite of all his novels. Clarke also wrote a short step outline with the same title, published in Omni magazine and anthologized in The Sentinel in 1983.
Xenoarchaeology, a branch of xenology dealing with extraterrestrial cultures, is a hypothetical form of archaeology that exists mainly in works of science fiction. The field is concerned with the study of the material remains to reconstruct and interpret past life-ways of alien civilizations. Xenoarchaeology is not currently practiced by mainstream archaeologists due to the current lack of any material for the discipline to study.
Catch the Lightning is a novel by Catherine Asaro in the Saga of the Skolian Empire, also known as Tales of the Ruby Dynasty. The novel won the 1998 Sapphire Award for Best Science Fiction Romance and the UTC Readers Choice Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.
Edward M. Lerner is an American author of science fiction, techno-thrillers, and popular science.
Question and Answer is a science fiction novel by American writer Poul Anderson. It originally appeared in the June and July 1954 issues of magazine Astounding Science Fiction, and was later reprinted in 1956 as part of Ace Double D-199 under the title Planet of No Return, and again as a stand-alone Ace novel in February 1978 under the original title.
The planetary systems of stars other than the Sun and the Solar System are a staple element in many works of the science fiction genre.
X is a science fiction space trading and combat simulator series created by German developer Egosoft. The series is set in the X-Universe where several races populate a number of worlds connected by jumpgates. The games feature free roaming gameplay with trading, combat, empire building, and missions; leading to the series' phrase: "Trade, Fight, Build, Think". The series, which was launched in 1999 on the Windows platform, consists of five base games: X: Beyond the Frontier, X2: The Threat, X3: Reunion, X Rebirth, and X4: Foundations. X Rebirth introduced a new rendering engine as well as a new plot, one which X4: Foundations now extends the storyline beyond ten years after the events in X Rebirth.
Science fictional space warfare is main theme and central sub-genre of science fiction that can trace its roots back to classical times, and to the "future war" novels of the 19th century. With the Modern Age, directly with franchises as Star Wars and Star Trek, it's considered one of the most popular general sub-genres and themes of science fiction. An interplanetary, or more often an interstellar or intergalactic war, has become a staple plot device. Space warfare, represented in science fiction, has a predominant role, it's central theme and at the same time it's considered parent, overlapping genre of space opera, military science fiction and Space Western.
The Viagens Interplanetarias series is a sequence of science fiction stories by L. Sprague de Camp, begun in the late 1940s and written under the influence of contemporary space opera and sword and planet stories, particularly Edgar Rice Burroughs's Martian novels. Set in the future in the 21st and 22nd centuries, the series is named for the quasi-public Terran agency portrayed as monopolizing interstellar travel, the Brazilian-dominated Viagens Interplanetarias. It is also known as the Krishna series, as the majority of the stories belong to a sequence set on a fictional planet of that name. While de Camp started out as a science fiction writer and his early reputation was based on his short stories in the genre, the Viagens tales represent his only extended science fiction series.
Robert Buettner is an American author of military science fiction novels. He is a former military intelligence officer, National Science Foundation Fellow in Paleontology, and has been published in the field of natural resources law. He has written five volumes of the Jason Wander series, three volumes of the Orphan's Legacy series, the stand-alone novel The Golden Gate, numerous short stories and novellas, and the afterword to an anthology of stories by the late Robert Heinlein. Buettner currently lives in Georgia.
Ancient astronauts have been addressed frequently in science fiction and horror fiction. Occurrences in the genres include:
Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes science fictional space warfare, with use of melodramatic, risk-taking space adventures, relationships, and chivalric romance. Set mainly or entirely in outer space, it features technological and social advancements in faster-than-light travel, futuristic weapons, and sophisticated technology, on a backdrop of galactic empires and interstellar wars with fictional aliens, often in fictional galaxies. The term has no relation to opera music, but is instead a play on the terms "soap opera", a melodramatic television series, and "horse opera", which was coined during the 1930s to indicate a clichéd and formulaic Western film. Space operas emerged in the 1930s and continue to be produced in literature, film, comics, television, video games and board games such as Twilight Imperium.
Suspended animation in fiction is the temporary halting of life processes of fictional characters followed by their later revival.
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