Pushing Ice (GOLLANCZ S.F.) - Softcover

Reynolds, Alastair

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0575078154 ISBN 13: 9780575078154

Publisher: Gollancz, 2006

Synopsis

Some centuries from now, the exploration and exploitation of the Solar System is in full swing. On the cold edge of the system, Bella Lind, captain of the huge commercial spacecraft Rockhopper IV, helps fuel this new gold rush by attaching mass-driver motors to organic-rich water-ice comets to move them back to the inner worlds. Her crew are tough, blue-collar miners, engineers and demolition experts.
Around Saturn, something inexplicable happens: one of the moons leaves its orbit and accelerates out of the Solar System. The icy mantle peels away to reveal that it was never a moon in the first place, just a parked spacecraft, millions of years old, that has now decided to move on.
Rockhopper IV, trapped in the pull, is hurled across time and space into the deep, distant future, arriving in a vast, alien-constructed chamber. And the crew are not alone, for each chamber contains an alien culture dragged into this cosmic menagerie at the end of time.
The crew of the Rockhopper IV know a lot about blowing up comets, but not much about first contact with ultra-advanced aliens. They have two things to worry about: can they (and their new alien allies) negotiate their way through each harrying contact? And can they assimilate the avalanche of knowledge about their own future - including all the glittering, dangerous technologies that are now theirs for the taking - without destroying themselves in the process?

About this title

Review:

Hard SF doesn't come much harder. Classic Reynolds. (Jon Courtenay Grimwood THE GUARDIAN)

Welding hard SF scenarios to deft characterisation, to create a wholly convincing vision. Arthur C Clarke in his prime couldn't have done a better job. (Jonathan Wright SFX)

As usual in an Alastair Reynolds book there are big ideas here, played out but not belaboured. A strong tale. (Anthony Brown STARBURST)

"Pushing Ice is an excellent stage on which to investigate more rounded characters. Reynolds has a firm grasp of the wider opportunities of the genre." (EDGE)

Book Description:

First Contact with extraordinary aliens, glittering technologies that could destroy the universe in a nanosecond, huge sweeping space operas: Alastair Reynolds is back!

About this edition

• Publisher: Gollancz
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0575078154
• ISBN 13: 9780575078154
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 528