Moonseed: Book 3 (The Nasa Trilogy) - Softcover

Baxter, Stephen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0008134537 ISBN 13: 9780008134532

Publisher: HarperVoyager, 2015

Synopsis

Venus has exploded.

Showering Earth with radiation and bizarre particles that wipe out all the crops and half the life in the oceans.

Suddenly, the ground itself begins melting into pools of dust that grow larger every day. For what has demolished Venus, and now threatens Earth itself, is part machine, part life-form – a nano-virus, dubbed Moonseed.

Four scientists are all that stand between Moonseed and Earth’s extinction, four brilliant minds that must race to cut off the virus and save what’s left of the planet.

About this title

Review:

Stephen Baxter established himself as a major British sci-fi author with tales of exotic, far-future technology. More recently, in Voyage, Titan and now Moonseed, he shows his love for the hardware of the real world's space programme. (Comparisons with Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff have been frequent.) Moonseed is a spectacular disaster novel whose threat to Earth comes from a long-forgotten Moon rock sample carrying strange silver dust that seems to be alien nanotechnology-- molecule-sized machines. Accidentally spilt in Edinburgh, this "Moonseed" quietly devours stone and processes it into more Moonseed. Geology becomes high drama: when ancient mountains turn to dust, the lid is taken off seething magma below. Volcanoes return to Scotland, and Krakatoa-like eruptions spread Moonseed around the world. A desperate, improvised US/Russian space mission heads for the Moon to probe the secret of how our satellite has survived uneaten. Baxter convincingly shows how travel costs could be cut, with a hair-raising descent on a shoestring lunar lander that makes Apollo's look like a luxury craft. The climax brings literally world-shaking revelations and upheavals. Moonseed is a ripping interplanetary yarn. -- David Langford

Review:

‘The most important living science-fiction writer in the country’
THE TIMES

‘The best SF writer in Britain’
SFX

Praise for The NASA Trilogy:

‘VOYAGE is, quite simply, a brilliant book . . . skilfully constructed and enthrallingly told’
SFX

‘Baxter handles a complex and gripping plot with his customary aplomb... The ending will blow your mind. Buy TITAN, read it – and then go out and buy everything else that Baxter has ever written’
NEW SCIENTIST

‘A plausible tale of America’s last gasp at interplanetary exploration... Stephen Baxter proves what a cosmic thinker he is’
WASHINGTON POST

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperVoyager
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0008134537
• ISBN 13: 9780008134532
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 544