"Signs of life have been found on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.
A group of visionaries led by NASA’s Paula Benacerraf plan a daring one-way mission that will cost them everything. Taking nearly a decade, the billion-mile voyage includes a ‘slingshot’ transit of Venus, a catastrophic solar storm, and a constant struggle to keep the ship and crew functioning.
But it is on the icy surface of Titan itself that the true adventure begins. In the orange methane slush, the astronauts will discover the secrets of life’s origins and reach for a human destiny beyond their wildest dreams."
"It started the night Geena and Henry broke up. What was that strange light in the sky? A new star? A comet? Neither. It was the death of Venus.
As if to commemorate the end of NASA’s golden couple, our neighbor planet exploded into a brilliant cloud of dust and debris, showering the Earth with radiation and bizarre particles as big as bacteria—a ten-dimensional superstring nanovirus that literally eats rock, transforming it into liquid, and then into molecule-size black holes that devour the very fabric of spacetime.
Feasting on Edinburgh’s primeval basalt, Moonseed is steadily eating its way toward Earth’s core. The death toll rises by the hour as buildings collapse into streets that flow like water, as hundred-foot tsunamis obliterate Seattle and Vancouver, and as volcanoes sprout like weeds across the planet’s quickly decaying mantle.
NASA “rock-jockey” Henry Meacher and his Japanese colleague, Blue, race to cut off the virus and save what is left of the Earth. Meanwhile Henry’s ex, Geena, straps in with a Russian cosmonaut for a daredevil Moon voyage, ultimately reuniting with Henry and searching for the lunar ice deposits that might make possible the greatest evacuation since Noah braved the Flood.
And a mother and her young son clamber for the last solid ground in the liquefying Scottish Highlands, under the baleful stars of a dying universe …
Audacious beyond comparison, grand in conception, and gripping in execution, Moonseed is the first modern novel to do justice to the awesome terror and promise implicit in quantum physics. Like all of Baxter’s work, it blazes new paths from which science fiction will surely follow in the years to come, and becomes required listening for anyone wishing to understand the awesome promise—and threat—revealed by modern science."
"The space mission of a lifetime
An epic saga of America’s might-have-been, Voyage is a powerful, sweeping novel of how, if President Kennedy had lived, we could have sent a manned mission to Mars in the 1980s. Imaginatively created from the true lives and real events, Voyage returns to the geniuses of NASA and the excitement of the Saturn rocket, and includes historical figures from Neil Armstrong to Ronald Reagan who are interwoven with unforgettable characters whose dreams mirror the promise of a young space program that held the world in thrall. There is: Dana, the Nazi camp survivor who achieves the dream of his hated masters; Gershon, the Vietnam fighter jock determined to be the first African American to land on another planet; and Natalie York, the brilliant geologist/astronaut who risks a career and love for the chance to run her fingers through the soil of another world."
"An alternative history of the US space programme, dramatised by Dirk Maggs.
After the moon, Mars… What if John F. Kennedy survived the assassination attempt and developed the space programme?
President Nixon, with the help of former president JFK, has just green-lit NASA’s first manned expedition to Mars. Aboard the expedition is Natalie York, a geologist who risks everything she loves for the chance to go to space; Phil Stone, former X-15 test pilot; and Ralph Gershon, a Vietnam War hero intent on being the first African American to reach another planet.
Exploring mankind’s ambitions in space, Voyage chronicles the incredible story of what could have been.
Also included is an one-hour bonus programme featuring Dirk Maggs in conversation with Stephen Baxter, 20 years after Voyage was recorded. This wonderful, intimate conversation between the two friends is peppered with memories of the recording, the production process, and what inspired Stephen to pen such a well-loved story.
Cast:
Natalie York...Laurel Lefkow
Mike Conlig...William Dufris
Gregory Dana...Michael Roberts
Joe Muldoon...Vincent Marzello
Chuck Jones...Frank Lazarus
Jim Dana...Russell Bentley
Ben Priest...William Roberts
Ralph Gershon...Mel Taylor
Phil Stone...Rolf Saxon
Based on the novel by Stephen Baxter
Produced and directed by Dirk Maggs
Music by Wilfredo Acosta"
"2070-71. Nearly six decades after Step Day and in the Long Earth, the new Next post-human society continues to evolve.
For Joshua Valienté, now in his late sixties, it is time to take one last solo journey into the High Meggers: an adventure that turns into a disaster. Alone and facing death, his only hope of salvation lies with a group of trolls. But as Joshua confronts his mortality, the Long Earth receives a signal from the stars. A signal that is picked up by radio astronomers but also in more abstract ways – by the trolls and by the Great Traversers. Its message is simple but ts implications are enormous:
JOIN US.
The super-smart Next realise that the Message contains instructions on how to develop an immense artificial intelligence but to build it they have to seek help from throughout the industrious worlds of mankind. Bit by bit, byte by byte, they assemble a computer the size of a continent – a device that will alter the Long Earth’s place within the cosmos and reveal the ultimate, life-affirming goal of those who sent the Message. Its impact will be felt by and resonate with all – mankind and other species, young and old, communities and individuals – who inhabit the Long Earths…"
"2045-2059. After the cataclysmic upheavals of Step Day and the Yellowstone eruption humanity is spreading further into the Long Earth, and society, on a battered Datum Earth and beyond, continues to evolve.
Now an elderly and cantankerous AI, Lobsang lives in disguise with Agnes in an exotic, far-distant world. He’s convinced they’re leading a normal life in New Springfield – they even adopt a child – but it seems they have been guided there for a reason. As rumours of strange sightings and hauntings proliferate, it becomes clear that something is very awry with this particular world.
Millions of steps away, Joshua is on a personal journey of discovery: learning about the father he never knew and a secret family history. But then he receives a summons from New Springfield. Lobsang now understands the enormity of what’s taking place beneath the surface of his earth – a threat to all the worlds of the Long Earth.
To counter this threat will require the combined efforts of humankind, machine and the super-intelligent Next. And some must make the ultimate sacrifice . . ."
"2040-2045: In the years after the cataclysmic Yellowstone eruption there is massive economic dislocation as populations flee Datum Earth to myriad Long Earth worlds. Sally, Joshua, and Lobsang are all involved in this perilous work when, out of the blue, Sally is contacted by her long-vanished father and inventor of the original Stepper device, Willis Linsay. He tells her he is planning a fantastic voyage across the Long Mars and wants her to accompany him. But Sally soon learns that Willis has ulterior motives ...
Meanwhile U. S. Navy Commander Maggie Kauffman has embarked on an incredible journey of her own, leading an expedition to the outer limits of the far Long Earth.
For Joshua, the crisis he faces is much closer to home. He becomes embroiled in the plight of the Next: the super-bright post-humans who are beginning to emerge from their 'long childhood' in the community called Happy Landings, located deep in the Long Earth. Ignorance and fear are causing 'normal' human society to turn against the Next - and a dramatic showdown seems inevitable . . ."
"A generation after the events of The Long Earth, mankind has spread across the new worlds opened up by Stepping. Where Joshua and Lobsang once pioneered, now fleets of airships link the stepwise Americas with trade and culture. Mankind is shaping the Long Earth – but in turn the Long Earth is shaping mankind ... A new ‘America’, called Valhalla, is emerging more than a million steps from Datum Earth, with core American values restated in the plentiful environment of the Long Earth – and Valhalla is growing restless under the control of the Datum government...
Meanwhile the Long Earth is suffused by the song of the trolls, graceful hive-mind humanoids. But the trolls are beginning to react to humanity’s thoughtless exploitation ... Joshua, now a married man, is summoned by Lobsang to deal with a gathering multiple crisis that threatens to plunge the Long Earth into a war unlike any mankind has waged before."
"1916: the Western Front. Private Percy Blakeney wakes up. He is lying on fresh spring grass. He can hear birdsong, and the wind in the leaves in the trees. Where has the mud, blood and blasted landscape of No Man's Land gone?
2015: Madison, Wisconsin. Cop Monica Jansson is exploring the burned-out home of a reclusive - some said mad, others dangerous - scientist when she finds a curious gadget: a box containing some wiring, a three-way switch and a...potato. It is the prototype of an invention that will change the way Mankind views his world for ever.
And that's an understatement if ever there was one...
The Long Earth is the first novel in an exciting new collaboration between the creator of Discworld Terry Pratchett and the acclaimed SF writer Stephen Baxter"
"The Firstborn-the mysterious race of aliens who first became known to science fiction fans as the builders of the iconic black monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey-have inhabited legendary science fiction master Sir Arthur C. Clarke's writing for decades. With Time's Eye and Sunstorm, the first two books in the acclaimed Time Odyssey series, Clarke and his brilliant coauthor, Stephen Baxter, imagined a near future in which the Firstborn seek to stop the advance of human civilization by employing a technology indistinguishable from magic.
Their first act was the Discontinuity, in which Earth was carved into sections from different eras of history, re-stitched into a patchwork world, and renamed Mir. Mir's inhabitants included such notables as Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and United Nations peacekeeper Bisesa Dutt. For reasons unknown to her, Bisesa entered into communication with an alien artifact of inscrutable purpose and godlike power-a power that eventually returned her to Earth. There, she played an instrumental role in humanity's race against time to stop a doomsday event: a massive solar storm triggered by the alien Firstborn, designed to eradicate all life from the planet. That fate was averted at an inconceivable price. Now, twenty-seven years later, the Firstborn are back.
This time, they are pulling no punches. They have sent a "Q-bomb." Speeding toward Earth, it is a device that human scientists can barely comprehend, that cannot be stopped or destroyed-and that will obliterate Earth.
Bisesa's desperate quest for answers sends her first to Mars and then to Mir, which is itself threatened with extinction. The end seems inevitable. But as shocking new insights emerge about the nature of the Firstborn and their chilling plans for mankind, an unexpected ally appears from light-years away."
"Returned to the Earth of 2037 by the Firstborn, mysterious beings of almost limitless technological prowess, Bisesa Dutt is haunted by the memories of her five years spent on the strange alternate Earth called Mir, a jigsaw-puzzle world made up of lands and people cut out of different eras of Earth's history. Why did the Firstborn create Mir? Why was Bisesa taken there and then brought back on the day after her original disappearance?
Bisesa's questions receive a chilling answer when scientists discover an anomaly in the sun's core-an anomaly with no natural cause, evidence of alien intervention over two thousand years before. Now, plans set in motion millennia ago by inscrutable watchers light-years away are coming to fruition in a sunstorm designed to scour Earth of all life through a bombardment of deadly radiation.
Thus commences a furious race against a ticking solar time bomb. But even now, as the apocalypse looms, cooperation is not easy for the peoples and nations of Earth. Religious and political differences threaten to undermine every effort, and all the while, the Firstborn are watching."
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