Spider Wars Books

Adam Christopher's dazzling first novel, Empire State, was named the Best Book of 2012 by SciFi Now magazine. Here he explores new dimensions of time and space in The Burning Dark. Back in the day, Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland had led the Fleet into battle against an implacable machine intelligence capable of devouring entire worlds. After saving a planet, and getting a bum robot knee in the process, he finds himself relegated to one of the most remote backwaters in Fleetspace, overseeing the decommissioning of a semi-deserted space station. The station's reclusive commandant is nowhere to be seen. Persistent malfunctions plague the station's systems while interference from a toxic purple star makes even ordinary communications problematic. Alien shadows and whispers seem to haunt the lonely corridors and airlocks, fraying the nerves of everyone aboard. Isolated and friendless, Cleveland reaches out to the universe via an old-fashioned space radio, only to tune in to a strange, enigmatic signal: a woman's voice that echoes across a thousand light-years of space. But is the transmission just a random bit of static from the past―or a warning of an undying menace beyond mortal comprehension? "Builds tension expertly. Claustrophobic in mood but with the scope of great space opera, this is SF you will want to read with the light on."― Library Journal, starred review, on The Burning Dark

Dropped on a frozen planet under suspicious circumstances, a group of marines struggles to discover the true objective of their mission. "Cold War" is a Tor.com Original novelette, set in the same Spider War universe as Adam Christopher's novel The Burning Dark . “Smart, intricate, and viscerally gripping… Christopher carves a place for himself among the stars of his genre.” — V.E. Schwab, author of Vicious At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Adam Christopher's The Machine Awakes is a far future space opera set in the Spider War universe of Burning Dark. In the decades since the human race first made contact with the Spiders―a machine race capable of tearing planets apart―the two groups have fought over interstellar territory. But the war has not been going well for humankind, and with the failure of the Fleet Admiral's secret plan in the Shadow system, the commander is overthrown by a group of hardliners determined to get the war back on track. When the deposed Fleet Admiral is assassinated, Special Agent Von Kodiak suspects the new guard is eliminating the old. But when the Admiral's replacement is likewise murdered, all bets are off as Kodiak discovers the prime suspect is one of the Fleet's own, a psi-marine and decorated hero―a hero killed in action, months ago, at the same time his twin sister vanished from the Fleet Academy, where she was training to join her brother on the front. As Kodiak investigates, he uncovers a conspiracy that stretches from the slums of Salt City to the floating gas mines of Jupiter. There, deep in the roiling clouds of the planet, the Jovian Mining Corporation is hiding something, a secret that will tear the Fleet apart and that the Morning Star, a group of militarized pilgrims searching for their lost god, is determined to uncover. But there is something else hiding in Jovian system. Something insidious and intelligent, machine-like and hungry. The Spiders are near.

When the test flight of the U-Star Manhattan - the first of a new class of starship - goes wrong, the seven-person crew find themselves shipwrecked, trapped in the interstitial nothingness that separates our universe from the next. But as the crew start to disappear one by one and the true purpose of their secret mission is uncovered, the survivors make a startling discovery about the eternal void they are lost in forever. They are not alone.