More speculative fiction from Kevin J. Anderson
Game — (1989-1990) Gamearth: It was supposed to be just another Sunday night fantasy role-playing game for David, Tyrone, Scott, and Melanie. But after years of playing, the game had become so real that all their creations — humans, sorcerers, dragons, ogres, panther-folk, cyclops — now had existences of their own. And when the four outside players decide to end their game, the characters inside the world of Gamearth — warriors, scholars, and the few remaining wielders of magic — band together to keep their land from vanishing. Now they must embark on a desperate quest for their own magic — magic that can twist the Rules enough to save them all from the evil that the players created to destroy their entire world.
Craig Kreident — (1996-1998) With Doug Beason. Publisher: At the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California — one of the nation’s premier nuclear-weapons design facilities — high-level physicists operate within heavy security to model and test new warhead designs. But politics can be just as dangerous as the weapons they design, and with gigantic budgets on the line, scientific egos, and personality clashes, research can turn deadly. When a prominent and abrasive nuclear-weapons researcher is murdered inside a Top Security zone, FBI investigator Craig Kreident is brought in on the case — but his FBI security clearance isn’t the same as a Department of Energy or Department of Defense clearance, and many of the clues are “sanitized” before he arrives. Kreident finds that dealing with red tape and political in-fighting might be more difficult than solving a murder. Written by two insiders who have worked at Lawrence Livermore, Virtual Destruction is not only a gripping thriller and complex mystery, but a vivid portrayal of an actual US nuclear-design facility.
Titan A E — (2000) With Rebecca Moesta. Publisher: Akima, a refugee from Earth living in a Drifter colony, risks everything to become the best possible starship pilot, so she can go in search of the legendary ship called Titan, which may enable the human race to regain its freedom.
Crystal Doors — (2006-2008) Young adult. With Rebecca Moesta. Publisher: Fourteen-year-old cousins Gwen and Vic have lived together ever since the mysterious deaths of Gwen’s parents and disappearance of Vic’s mother — until Vic’s scientist father accidentally transports them through a magical crystal door to the island of Elantya. Cobblestone streets and silver towers mark the picturesque island, a trading hub and center of knowledge that functions with a combination of advanced physics and sorcery. Vic and Gwen are soon caught in a tempest of ancient magic, vicious creatures, and fierce battles — all connected to a territorial feud with the sea-dwelling merlons, an age-old conflict between the bright and dark sages… and the cousins’ own mysterious roots.
Star Challengers — (2010-2011) With Rebecca Moesta. Publisher: After an exhilarating space simulation field trip at the local Challenger Center, a group of students are hand-picked by the mysterious Commander Zota for a special adventure: to travel to the future and a real moonbase in trouble, where they will learn skills to save the human race!
Stand-alones:
Resurrection, Inc. — (1988) Publisher: In the future, the dead walk the streets — Resurrection, Inc. found a profitable way to do it. A microprocessor brain, synthetic heart, artificial blood, and a fresh corpse can return as a Servant for anyone with the price. Trained to obey any command, Servants have no minds of their own, no memories of their past lives. Supposedly. Then came Danal. He was murdered, a sacrifice from the ever-growing cult of neo-Satanists who sought heaven in the depths of hell. But as a Servant, Danal began to remember. He learned who had killed him, who he was, and what Resurrection, Inc. had in mind for the human race.
Lifeline — (1990) With Doug Beason. Publisher: Lifeline by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason. In shock and grief the last remnants of the human race watches from space as the holocaust of war rages across the face of the Earth. Now the future rests in the hands of three fragile space colonies: Aguinaldo — The Philippine L-5 colony whose brilliant biochemist engineered a limitless supply of food. Kibalchich — The Soviet space exploration platform that harbors a deadly secret. Orbitech 1 — The American space factory whose superstrong weavewire could be a lifeline to link the colonies — or a cutting-edge weapon of destruction. As allies, they could unite to rebuild a better world. As enemies, they could destroy mankind’s last hope for survival.
The Trinity Paradox — (1991) With Doug Beason. Publisher: Activist Elizabeth Devane wished for an end to nuclear weapons. Surely, she thought, if they’d known what they were unleashing, the scientists of the Manhattan Project would never have created such a terrible instrument of destruction. But during a protest action, the unthinkable happened: a flash of light, a silent confusion, and Elizabeth awakes to find herself alone in a desolate desert arroyo… and almost fifty years in the past. June 1944. Los Alamos, New Mexico. While the Allies battle in the Pacific and begin the Normandy invasion in Europe, Nazi Germany deviates from the timeline Elizabeth knows and uses its newfound nuclear arsenal against America. Somehow, someway, Elizabeth has been given the chance to put the genie back in the bottle… yet could she — should she — attempt the greatest sabotage in history?
Assemblers of Infinity — (1993) With Doug Beason. Publisher: Nebula Award Nominee. The crew of Moonbase Columbus make an amazing discovery on the far side of the Moon — a massive alien structure is erecting itself, built up atom by atom by living machines, microscopically small, intelligent, and unstoppable, consuming everything they touch. The mysterious structure begins to expand and take shape, and its creators begin to multiply. Is this the first strike in an alien invasion from the stars? Or has human nanotechnology experimentation gone awry, triggering an unexpected infestation? As riots rage across a panicked Earth, scientists scramble to learn the truth before humanity’s home is engulfed by the voracious machines.
Climbing Olympus — (1994) Publisher: They were prisoners, exiles, pawns of a corrupt government. Now they are Dr. Rachel Dycek’s adin, surgically transformed beings who can survive new lives on the surface of Mars. But they are still exiles, unable ever again to breathe Earth’s air. And they are still pawns. For the adin exist to terraform Mars for human colonists, not for themselves. Creating a new Earth, they will destroy their world, killed by their own success. Desperate, adin leader Boris Tiban launches a suicide campaign to sabotage the Mars Project, knowing his people will perish in a glorious, doomed campaign of mayhem — unless embattled, bitter Rachel Dycek can find a miracle to save both the Mars Project and the race she created.
Born of Elven Blood — (1994) With John Gregory Betancourt. Publisher: Escaping into the world of Faery when her own home begins to fall apart, Maria Blanca joins in the fight against the savage trogs that threaten the great elven cities.
Ill Wind — (1995) With Doug Beason. Publisher: It is the largest oil spill in history: a supertanker crashes into the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco Bay. Desperate to avert environmental damage (as well as the PR disaster), the multinational oil company releases an untested designer oil-eating microbe to break up the spill. What the company didn’t realize is that their microbe propagates through the air… and it mutates to consume anything made of petrocarbons: oil, gasoline, synthetic fabrics, plastics of all kinds. And when every piece of plastic begins to dissolve, it’s too late…
Blindfold — (1995) Publisher: Atlas is a struggling colony on an untamable world, a fragile society held together by the Truthsayers. Parentless, trained from birth as the sole users of Veritas, a telepathy virus that lets them read the souls of the guilty. Truthsayers are Justice — infallible, beyond appeal. But sometimes they are wrong. Falsely accused of murder, Troy Boren trusts the young Truthsayer Kalliana… until, impossibly, she convicts him. Still shaken from a previous reading, Kalliana doesn’t realize her power is fading. But soon the evidence becomes impossible to ignore. The Truthsayers’ Veritas has been diluted and someone in the colony is selling smuggled telepathy. Justice isn’t blind — it’s been blinded. From an immortal’s orbital prison to the buried secrets of a regal fortress, Kalliana and Troy seek the conspiracy that threatens to destroy their world from within. For without truth and justice, Atlas will certainly fall…
Ignition — (1996) With Doug Beason. Publisher: NASA — you have a problem. In this high-tech action adventure from Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason, terrorists seize control of the Kennedy Space Center and hold the shuttle Atlantis and its crew hostage on the launchpad. But astronaut “Iceberg” Friese, grounded from the mission because of a broken foot, is determined to slip through the swamps and rocket facilities around Cape Canaveral and pull the plug on the terrorists. With their years of experience in the field, Anderson and Beason have packed Ignition with insider information to create an extremely plausible, action-packed thriller.
Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius — (2001) Publisher: Most readers know Capain Nemo only as the enigmatic protagonist of Jules Verne’s classic novel “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. But what if Nemo was a real man, whose actual life was more fantastic and adventurous than all the fictions it inspired? Here is the epic tale of Andre Nemo, the man behind the myth. The free-spirited and inventive son of a French shipbuilder, Nemo goes to sea as a cabin boy, faces marauding pirates and bloodthirsty sharks, is marooned for years on a mysterious island, battles prehistoric monsters long believed extinct, journeys to the center of the Earth, balloons across Africa, escapes from Arab slavers, discovers the fabled city of Timbuktu, endures a plague of locusts, survives the Charge of the Light Brigade, tends to the wounded with Florence Nightingale, is pressed into service by the ruthless Robert the Conqueror, and, ultimately, wages war on War itself as the captain of his greatest creation: the legendary underwater vessel known as the “Nautilus. “Captain Nemo is also the story of Nemo’s childhood friend, Jules Verne, who would bestow immortality upon the captain’s exploits, and of the remarkable woman they both loved to the very end.
Dogged Persistence — (2001) Publisher: This short story collection is from the bestselling author well known for his novels based on Star Wars and The X-Files. The title story is a gritty tale of the ultimate use of nanotechnology — immortality. “Human, Martian — One, Two, Three” is a novella-length story about the terraforming of Mars. In addition to Anderson’s original fiction, this collection features his shared writing, including the first new Dune fiction, the story “A Whisper of Caladan Seas,” cowritten with Brian Herbert. Also included are the horrific tale “Drumbeats,” written with drummer Neal Peart of the band Rush, and “Prisoner of War,” a sequel to Harlan Ellison’s classic Outer Limits teleplay, “Soldier.”
Fantastic Voyage: Microcosm — (2001) Publisher: An unidentified flying object has been shot down from the sky-and a single strange pod has survived intact. Now Team Proteus-a U.S.-Russian crew of scientists, doctors and technicians-will be reduced in size using new miniaturization techniques and injected through the surface of the pod. So begins the most startling voyage of exploration in human history… Inside the body of an alien.
Hopscotch — (2002) Publisher: Suppose you could switch bodies with another person? What exciting new experiences would you choose to explore? What forbidden desires would you indulge? Suppose someone stole your life–how far would you go to get it back? From New York Times bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson comes a pure adrenaline thriller of hijacked identities, elusive motives, and deeply buried secrets–a disturbing, thought-provoking excursion into a sleek, hedonistic society where nothing is your own… not even your soul. Hopscotch. For a fee, Eduard Swan will swap bodies with people in distress–those facing surgeries, emotional crises, moments of unpleasantness or discomfort they can’t or would rather not deal with. Eduard will experience the suffering for them. It’s a lucrative business, and in a world in which no one is required to feel any pain, there is no end of clients. But someone doesn’t want to play by the rules. Someone doesn’t want to return his body. And, unfortunately for Eduard, that someone is one of the world’s most powerful men. Now Eduard has no choice but to steal back his life. He has the perfect alibi–or so he thinks. For even in a world where you can hopscotch from body to body, you always leave a trail. And following that trail is a relentless dispenser of “justice” named Daragon, a childhood friend, now a zealous and ambitious agent of state security, who won’t let old friendships stand in the way of doing his duty. When Eduard goes on the run, hounded at every turn by Daragon, his only hope is two other childhood friends: Garth, a tormented artist who gains success beyond his wildest dreams, only to discover the terrible price of fame; and Teresa, a spiritual seeker who risks losing her own body to a fanatical religious cult as she embarks on a harrowing quest to find her true identity. Moving from underground hopscotch pleasure bars to the highest enclaves of power to a seamy underworld of illegal Phantoms, ancient minds who steal younger bodies in a quest for eternal life, Eduard and his friends seek the meaning of identity in a society in which appearances mean everything–and nothing–and where everything is relative… even murder.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow — (2004) Publisher: A BRAVE NEW WORLD. New York City, 1939. Crack investigative reporter Polly Perkins unearths plans to create a violent new World of Tomorrow. A BRASH NEW THREAT. Soon after, gigantic mechanical robots are unleashed upon New York and other major cities of the world, meting out death and destruction in their wake. A BOLD NEW HERO. The call goes out to Joe Sullivan, leader of the heroic Flying Legion, to save the day. As Joe and Polly circle the globe, encountering mutant creatures, monstrous mechanical machines, and dangerous tentacled robots, they are drawn ever closer to the lair of evil genius George Totenkopf. Together, they must battle the forces of the World of Tomorrow in order to savethe world of today.
Landscapes — (2006) Publisher: Bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson is best known for his epic science fiction novels such as Hidden Empire, Dune: House Atreides (with Brian Herbert), and Star Wars: Jedi Search. This collection of twenty-two tales and two essays displays the range of his imagination, from science fiction to fantasy to horror; from alien landscapes in the far future to cutting-edge technological developments that could happen tomorrow. The first five stories take readers to parallel universes next door, on expeditions for Alternitech. Other tales put a humorous twist on classic fantasy scenarios of kissing frogs and slaying dragons. Readers will see cloned mammoths, the dark side of early Hollywood, attorneys wrestling with the legalities of time paradoxes, and backpackers on an alien planet.
Slan Hunter — (2007) With A.E. van Vogt. Publisher: This startling SF adventure novel is a collaboration between the classic SF Grand Master, A. E. van Vogt, and contemporary master Kevin J. Anderson. At the time of his death in 2000, van Vogt left a partial draft and an outline for the sequel to his most famous novel, Slan. van Vogt’s jam-packed, one-damn-thing-after-another story technique makes his active plots compulsively readable. Now the story is completed by Anderson, and is sure to be one of the most popular SF novels of the year. Slans are a race of superior mutants in the far future, smarter and stronger than Homo sapiens and able to read minds. Yet they are a persecuted minority, survivors of terrible genocidal wars, who live in hiding from the mass of humanity. Slan Hunter tells of this towering conflict in the far future, when a new war among the races of mankind bursts out, and humanity — all types of humanity — struggles to survive, and of course of the heroic Jommy Cross, mutant hero of Slan.
The Last Days of Krypton — (2007) Publisher: Everyone knows how Kal-El — Superman — was sent to Earth just before his planet exploded. But what led to such a disaster? Now, in The Last Days of Krypton, Kevin J. Anderson presents a sweeping tale of the pomp and grandeur, the intrigue and passion, and the politics and betrayals of a doomed world filled with brave heroes and cruel traitors. Against the spectacular backdrop of Krypton’s waning halcyon days, there is the courtship and marriage of Kal-El’s parents, the brilliant scientist Jor-El and his historian wife, Lara. Together they fight to convince a stagnant, disbelieving society that their world is about to end. Jor-El’s brother, Zor-El, leader of the fabled Argo City, joins the struggle not only to save the planet but also to fight against the menace of the ruthless and cunning General Zod. The diabolical Zod, future archenemy of Superman, avails himself of a golden opportunity to seize power when the android Brainiac captures the capital city of Kandor. As Zod’s grip on the populace tightens and his power grows, he too is blind to all the signs that point to the death of the very civilization he is trying to rule. Through all of this, Jor-El and Lara’s love for each other, their history, and their son allows for Krypton to live on even as the planet is torn apart around them. For in the escape of their baby lies Krypton’s greatest gift — and Earth’s greatest hero. The Last Days of Krypton is a timeless, ground-breaking exploration of a world that has never been fully defined, and reveals the extraordinary origins of a legend that has never ceased to amaze and astound generation after generation.
Enemies & Allies — (2009) Publisher: It was a time of international tensions, a time of hope and fear — when Elvis, Howdy Doody, UFOs, and the Communist menace preoccupied America. It was the first time in history when human beings had the power to destroy their world. A time when heroes were needed more than ever. Evil is loose in the world. As the United States and the Soviet Union race to build their nuclear stockpiles, two extraordinary men are called upon to form an uneasy alliance. Studies in opposites — shadow and light — a Dark Knight and a Man of Steel must overcome their mutual distrust to battle a darkness that threatens humankind. And when the paths of these titans cross, a bold and exciting new chapter of history will be written… and nothing will ever be the same. 
Drumbeats — (2012) With Neil Peart. Publisher: A chilling story cowritten with Rush drummer and lyricist Neil Peart. A rock drummer bicycling through the African wilderness encounters a village that makes very special drums. This one will make your heart skip a beat. With essays by Kevin J. Anderson and by Neil Peart.
Tau Ceti: The Stellar Guild — (2011) With Steven Savile. Publisher: Jorie Taylor has lived her whole life on the generation ship Beacon. Fleeing an Earth tearing itself apart from its exhaustive demand for resources, the Beacon is finally approaching Sarbras, the planet circling Tau Ceti they hope to make humanity’s new home. But Earth has recovered from its near-death experience and is now under the control of a ruthless dictator whose sights are set on Tau Ceti as well. President Jurudu knows how to get what he wants — and he wants Sarbras. With Sequel Novelette by Steven Savile.
Tucker’s Grove — (2012) Publisher: The rise and fall of a cursed town in rural Wisconsin, Tucker’s Grove, where legends and nightmares lurk in the shadows, a place where the dead don’t necessarily stay dead, where preachers collect demons rather than cast them out, where haunted trains and a shadowy circus exist side by side with ancient gods and prehistoric echoes seeping up from the ground.
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Kevin J. Anderson (born in 1962) has written 46 national bestsellers and has over 20 million books in print worldwide in thirty languages. He has been nominated for the Nebula Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the SFX Readers’ Choice Award. Kevin J. Anderson is married to author Rebecca Moesta. Learn more at their 
