Moonfall - Softcover

McDevitt, Jack

3.8

2,333 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006511708 ISBN 13: 9780006511700

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1999

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The ultimate disaster novel. IT’S TIME TO PANIC...

A comet is coming. It’s going to hit the moon. And the moon is going to fall.

On us.

Out of the blindside of a total solar eclipse comes a fundamental threat to life on our planet. Moonbase, the NASA project establishing at last permanent human activity on the moon, has been up and running for precisely five days. If it’s knocked out, it’ll be a hell of a blow to the US President, Henry Kolladner, who came to office riding high on the space ticket.

And it’ll be a bit of a blow to his deputy, VP Charlie Haskell, who’s actually up there. If the comet fully impacts, there’ll be no more moon at all. Billions of tons of lunar rock will crash to Earth. There’ll be tidal waves, quakes, global destruction.

It’s a tough call for the President. Does he declare a state of emergency and start evacuating the entire coastal population of America? Imagine the chaos, the looting, the riots...

Does he panic?

Wouldn’t YOU?

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Review:

Gigantic meteor impacts have been a familiar SF clich� for decades. Jack McDevitt (whose first SF novel appeared in 1986) rings the changes with a two-stage disaster. A sun-grazing comet from deep space becomes visible only during the 2024 eclipse: it's a planet-killer, too big and fast for interception, and impact is in just five days. The twist is that it's going to hit the Moon. Lashings of drama follow as our lunar base--just opened by the US Vice-President, who's still there--is desperately evacuated by a Dunkirk flotilla of moonbuses, spaceplanes and a prototype Mars ship. At last the incoming monster, 180 km across, smashes into the Moon: as though this were a violent first break in snooker, random fragments fly everywhere. With grim plausibility, McDevitt shows the US government initially spin-doctoring the problem as nothing much to worry about. Then the sky begins to fall ... 37 chunks of Moon spawning fireballs and floods, and a massive 38th that threatens global extinction. The last-ditch effort to tackle this--not using nukes--attracts a sabotage strike from US militia loons who reckon it's all a government plot. McDevitt mercilessly cranks up the tension, and the pages turn faster and faster. A highly competent technothriller. --David Langford

Review:

"A full-speed-ahead tale of a comet's collision with the moon...the "Titanic" in space."-- "Booklist

"Big, bursting, medium-future, global disaster yarn...another solidly engrossing entry from the dependable McDevitt."-- "Kirkus Reviews"

Breathlesss...a fine-tuned disaster to remember."-- "Publishers Weekly

"The Heir to Asimov"-- Michael Swanwick

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