 
Awards Hugo, Novel, August 2006
Spin, February 2005
Paperback (reprint)
Tor
February 2005
On Sale: February 7, 2005
Featuring: Tyler Dupree; Jason Lawton; Diane Lawton
464 pages
ISBN: 076534825X
EAN: 9780765348258
Paperback (reprint)
$7.99
Science Fiction, Thriller
One night in October when he was ten years old, Tyler Dupree
stood in his back yard and watched the stars go out. They
all flared into brilliance at once, then disappeared,
replaced by a flat, empty black barrier. He and his best
friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, had seen what became known
as the Big Blackout. It would shape their lives. The effect is worldwide. The sun
is now a featureless disk--a heat source, rather than an
astronomical object. The moon is gone, but tides remain. Not
only have the world's artificial satellites fallen out of
orbit, their recovered remains are pitted and aged, as
though they'd been in space far longer than their known
lifespans. As Tyler, Jason, and Diane grow up, a space probe reveals a
bizarre truth: The barrier is artificial, generated by huge
alien artifacts. Time is passing faster outside the barrier
than inside--more than a hundred million years per year on
Earth. At this rate, the death throes of the sun are only
about forty years in our future. Jason, now a promising young scientist, devotes his life to
working against this slow-moving apocalypse. Diane throws
herself into hedonism, marrying a sinister cult leader who's
forged a new religion out of the fears of the masses. Earth sends terraforming machines to Mars to let the onrush
of time do its work, turning the planet green. Next they
send humans...and immediately get back an emissary with
thousands of years of stories to tell about the settling of
Mars. Then Earth's probes reveal that an identical barrier
has appeared around Mars. Jason, desperate, seeds near space
with self-replicating machines that will scatter copies of
themselves outward from the sun--and report back on what
they find. Life on Earth is about to get much, much stranger.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
| 
