Hailed by Arthur C. Clarke as "a major new talent,"
Stephen Baxter is one of the most gifted writers to appear
in the last decade. His stunning novels combine state-of-
the-art scientific speculation with nonstop adventure on a
cosmic scale, continuing the grand tradition of science
fiction pioneered by such giants as Isaac Asimov and
Robert E. Heinlein.
Now the multi-award-winning
author gives us his most ambitious and accomplished novel
yet. Audaciously conceived, brilliantly executed, it is
nothing less than a masterpiece--an unforgettable race
through and against time itself, with the fate of the
universe and all mankind hanging in the
balance.
The year is 2010. More than a century of
ecological damage, industrial and technological expansion,
and unchecked population growth has left the Earth on the
brink of devastation. But as the world's governments turn
inward, one man dares to gamble on a bolder, brighter
future. That man--Reid Malenfant--has a very different
solution to the problems plaguing the planet: the
exploration and colonization of space.
Battling
national sabotage and international outcry, Malenfant's
bootstrap company builds a spacecraft, plots its course,
and trains the genetically enhanced Sheena 5 for her one-
way journey. As apocalyptic riots sweep the globe,
Malenfant launches the rocket. But Sheena has plans of her
own. And even as she sets them in motion, the situation on
Earth grows more desperate and violent.
Now
Malenfant--together with a brilliant but disturbed
mathematician, a child prodigy, and his ex-wife--must
gamble the very existence of time and space on a single
desperate throw of the dice. The odds are a trillion to
one against him . . . Or are they?