John Barnes Books in Order

Undercover agent Saul Pareto tries to prevent the independent asteroids from being absorbed by a larger power. His dangerous strategy is to provoke conflict between Earth and the Orbital Republics, risking wider war to preserve the worlds he wants to protect.

Religious missionaries and their military protectors arrive on Randall intending to bring faith and civilisation to its inhabitants. Faced with three alien species and a growing threat to their own survival, they discover how little they understand their new world.

Growing up aboard an asteroid colony, Melpomene faces familiar adolescent concerns alongside an extraordinary burden. Adults have prepared her generation to rescue a damaged Earth, but her own desires may not fit the future they designed.

Leaving his proud, isolated home culture, Giraut joins a diplomatic mission to a society he expects to dislike. New travel technology is bringing distant worlds together, and his arrival exposes tensions that challenge both cultures and himself.

Time-traveling Vietnam veteran Daniel Samson finds himself caught in the Mexican-American War. Delivering urgent orders to the United States cavalry requires a thousand-mile journey through unfamiliar dangers, making his military experience essential to surviving another era’s conflict.

Vietnam veteran Dan Samson travels into the American Civil War and discovers that his actions may influence its battles. Caught inside a conflict whose outcome shapes history, he must confront the consequences of becoming more than an observer.

A decorated Vietnam veteran is transported to Italy in February 1944, landing amid the Allied campaign. Caught in another era's fighting, he joins a desperate effort to prevent Germany from deploying a weapon that could alter the course of battle.

A series of nuclear explosions unleashes an immense Pacific hurricane and a chain of devastating storms. As a virtual reality network carries the catastrophe around the world, humanity confronts both civilization’s collapse and the emergence of a shared consciousness.

Waking in a youthful body in 2109, Joshua has no memory of the long life behind him. Records left by his earlier self draw him through a violent history as a pursuer closes in on dangerous secrets.

Engineer Chris Terence grows up inspired by the Moon landing, only to watch human space exploration retreat. A discovery linking Earth to ancient visitors from Tiber draws him and his son into a renewed quest beyond the Moon.

After drinking forbidden wine as a child, Prince Amatus loses the left half of his body. Growing up with this strange affliction, he undertakes a succession of adventures through which the missing parts may gradually be restored.

Mark Strang’s work as a time agent takes him into an altered ancient Rome. There he must confront the Closers, whose campaign to control parallel worlds threatens to turn the many possible histories of Earth into an empire of slaves.

After losing his family to terrorists, Mark Strang finds himself in an alternate America where the Nazis won World War II. Joining an underground resistance draws him into a wider struggle against enemies threatening multiple versions of Earth.

Time agent Mark Strang enters an alternate 1775 where Britain controls Boston with advanced flying machines. He must work with a very different George Washington while confronting an enemy whose unexpected weapon is another version of himself.

John Barnes gathers science-fiction short stories, many originally published in magazines during the late 1980s, in a collection bringing together his shorter work.

Diplomats Giraut and Margaret arrive on a harsh planet whose human societies hate each other more fiercely than their environment threatens them. Restoring contact with the wider civilization forces the pair into dangerous cultural and political conflicts.

Professor Lyle Peripart accepts a mysterious industrialist's offer and discovers that people around him remember incompatible versions of history. As contradictions multiply and danger closes in, his group must investigate why even thinking about the United States has become difficult.

Retired hunter Currie is called back to capture the last man resisting the networked intelligence governing Earth. When his quarry turns the tables, he must confront life without the system that has shaped his thoughts for decades.

A fatal shuttle accident costs former astronaut Scott Blackstone his career and leaves him facing a massive lawsuit. As he investigates possible sabotage, a nuclear crisis strands a space station crew, making an experimental rescue their only hope.

Giraut reluctantly returns to diplomatic work when a movement seeks to exploit recorded human personalities as entertainment. Carrying a second consciousness himself, he must confront personal history while trying to prevent an interstellar moral crisis.

After his girlfriend is kidnapped, Jak discovers that she is a princess and his wealthy uncle a spymaster. Sent to rescue her from a powerful interplanetary aristocrat, he enters a world of espionage far beyond his carefree expectations.

Raised on a Mars still being terraformed, Terpsichore wants to follow her father into ecoprospecting instead of remaining in school. An assignment escorting younger children across the planet brings changes with consequences far beyond her own future.

Spy trainee Jak Jinnaka receives an appeal for help from his former girlfriend, Princess Shyf, and heads off to rescue her. The mission promises adventure and political opportunity, but Shyf has plans for Jak that complicate his heroic intentions.

Jak Jinnaka enjoys two comfortable jobs on Deimos until his absent boss leaves him responsible for keeping order. The discovery of a revered historical figure's lifelog triggers a race for control, drawing Jak into rivalries with far-reaching consequences.

Industrial spy Travis Bismark tells his writer friend John Barnes an increasingly improbable story about a stolen machine that enables teleportation and time travel. Telepathy, eccentric scientists, and alien bargains make separating fact from fiction ever more difficult.

Targeted for assassination as he approaches fifty, agent Giraut returns to his home world amid rising political tensions. An underground movement holds a recording filled with dangerous secrets, drawing him into conflict between human and artificial consciousnesses.

Government analyst Heather O’Grainne investigates scattered signs of a movement called Daybreak. As coordinated attacks threaten modern civilization and its leaders, emergency plans become the last framework for preserving a country facing systemic collapse.

On a Mars still being transformed for human life, a self-sufficient loner encounters a woman more concerned with meanings than appearances. Violent storms, explosions, and the demands of survival force the two into difficult choices across an alien landscape.

A year after Daybreak devastated civilization, surviving communities struggle with mass death, destroyed institutions, and competing governments. Efforts to rebuild the United States face a continuing threat from the forces that triggered its collapse.

A ghost story unfolds amid relativistic star travel in the distant future. The conditions of life aboard interstellar ships and the immense reaches of time beyond familiar human history give an unsettling encounter a setting far removed from Earth.

Amy discovers her soul in a sock drawer, a waif in her cabin, and an unexpected connection within a homicide squad. This fantasy story brings ordinary relationships into a world where magic resists tidy explanations.

A brain scientist and a policeman investigate why a gifted biologist engineered the destruction of Earth’s multicellular life. Clues buried in badly written boys’ adventure stories lead them toward a disturbing explanation for an apparently incomprehensible catastrophe.

Con artist Aurigar makes his living convincing poor young women that they are missing princesses. In a galaxy divided by wealth and status, a powerful aristocrat’s interest in his work draws him into increasingly dangerous deceptions.

A quiet man’s unusually active romantic life becomes a way to explore how medical technology can change desire. This speculative short story considers possibilities for human relationships that would not exist without scientific intervention.

This science-fiction story explores memories that no longer match a changing world. Alterations to history gradually reshape reality, raising questions about the people erased by correcting the past and whether preventing terrible events justifies the lives that never follow.

Dissatisfied Republicans seek an alternative to Mitt Romney at their 2012 convention and resurrect Ronald Reagan. Their returning candidate is a zombie, turning the election into a political horror satire involving alien schemes and supernatural interference.

Heather O’Grainne works to reunite the shattered United States under constitutional government after Daybreak. With technology drastically reduced and rival powers consolidating control, restoring a national future means confronting those who prefer the fragmented present.