When a nuclear missile launched by a rogue North Korean faction explodes in space, the resulting shock wave destroys most of the world’s satellites and all global communication. US military satellites, designed to withstand such an assault, reveal two more missiles on launch pads in North Korea, ready to be deployed. Faced with the threat of a thermonuclear attack, the United States has only one possible defense: Able One.

Able One, or ABL-1, is a modified 747 fitted with a high powered laser able to knock out missiles in flight. But both the laser’s technology and the jet’s crew are untested. What was originally a training flight with a skeleton crew turns into a desperate race to destroy the two remaining nukes. Will Able One’s experimental technology be enough to prevent World War III–especially when it becomes clear that a saboteur is on board?

Able Oneis a timely thrill-ride by one of science fiction’s most respected novelists.

Six-time Hugo Award winner Ben Bova chronicles the saga of humankind’s expansion beyond the solar system in Apes and Angels, the last installment in the Star Quest Trilogy.

Humankind headed out to the stars not for conquest, nor exploration, nor even for curiosity. Humans went to the stars in a desperate crusade to save intelligent life wherever they found it.

A wave of death is spreading through the Milky Way galaxy, an expanding sphere of lethal gamma radiation that erupted from the galaxy’s core twenty-eight thousand years ago and now is approaching Earth’s vicinity at the speed of light. Every world it touched was wiped clean of all life. But it’s possible to protect a planet from gamma radiation. Earth is safe.

Now, guided by the ancient intelligent machines called the Predecessors, men and women from Earth seek out those precious, rare worlds that harbor intelligent species, determined to save them from the doom that is hurtling toward them.

The crew of the Odysseus has arrived at Mithra Gamma, the third planet of the star Mithra, to protect the stone-age inhabitants from the Death Wave. But they’ll also have to protect themselves.

Seventeen hard science fiction tales by today’s top authors

Hard science fiction is the literature of change, rigorously examining the impact–both beneficial and dangerous–of science and technology on humanity, the future, and the cosmos. As science advances, expanding our knowledge of the universe, astounding new frontiers in storytelling open up as well.

In Carbide Tipped Pens, over a dozen of today’s most creative imaginations explore these frontiers, carrying on the grand tradition of such legendary masters as Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and John W. Campbell, while bringing hard science fiction into the twenty-first century by extrapolating from the latest scientific developments and discoveries. Ranging from ancient China to the outer reaches of the solar system, this outstanding collection of original stories, written by an international roster of authors, finds wonder, terror, and gripping human drama in topics as diverse as space exploration, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, climate change, alternate history, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, interplanetary war, and even the future of baseball.

From tattoos that treat allergies to hazardous missions to Mars and beyond, from the end of the world to the farthest limits of human invention, Carbide Tipped Pens turns startling new ideas into state-of-the-art science fiction.

This collection includes stories by Ben Bova, Gregory Benford, Robert Reed, Aliette de Bodard, Jack McDevitt, Howard Hendrix, Daniel H. Wilson, and many others!

In the future, everything is different–but nothing has changed.

“The Earth has been poisoned by pollution, choked by overpopulation, and ravaged by the mindless greed of power-hungry corporations. A fragile peace is threatened by landless revolutionaries, and global anarchy seems imminent.Yet a single ray of hope remains…”

Island One is a celestial utopia, and David Adams is its most perfect creation–a man with a brain as advanced as any computer and a body free of human frailties. But David is a prisoner–a captive of the colony that created him–destined to spend the days of his life in an island-sized cylinder that circles a doomed and desperate home planet. Thousands of miles below him, a world trembles; its people cringe in terror and despair in anticipation of an impending apocalypse. And fate has cast one extraordinary human in the role of savior. For David Adams has a plan–one that will ultimately ensure the salvation of his species … or its annihilation.

Six-time Hugo Award winner Ben Bova chronicles the saga of humankind’s expansion beyond the solar system.

In Ben Bova’s previous novel New Earth, Jordan Kell led the first human mission beyond the solar system, where they discovered the ruins of an ancient alien civilization. But one alien AI survived, and it revealed to Jordan Kell that an explosion in the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy has created a wave of deadly radiation, expanding out from the core toward Earth. Unless the human race acts to save itself, all life on Earth will be wiped out.

When Kell and his team return to Earth many years after their departure, they find that their world has changed almost beyond recognition. Not only has a second wave of greenhouse flooding caused sea levels to rise, but society has been changed by the consequences of the climate shift. Few people want to face Jordan Kell’s news. He must convince Earth’s new rulers that the human race is in danger of extinction unless it acts to forestall the death wave coming from the galaxy’s heart.

Earth is the latest science fiction novel from multiple Hugo Award winner Ben Bova, author of Apes and Angels and Survival

A wave of lethal gamma radiation is expanding from the core of the Milky Way galaxy at the speed of light, killing everything in its path. The countdown to when the death wave will reach Earth and the rest of the solar system is at two thousand years.

Humans were helped by the Predecessors, who provided shielding generators that can protect the solar system. In return, the Predecessors asked humankind’s help to save other intelligent species that are in danger of being annihilated.

But what of Earth? With the Death Wave no longer a threat to humanity, humans have spread out and colonized all the worlds of the solar system. The technology of the Predecessors has made Earth a paradise, at least on the surface. But a policy of exiling discontented young people to the outer planets and asteroid mines has led to a deep divide between the new worlds and the homeworld, and those tensions are about to explode into open war.

Dan Randolph never plays by the rules. A hell-raising maverick with no patience for fools, he is admired by his friends, feared by his enemies, and desired by the world’s loveliest women. Acting as a twenty-first privateer, Randolph broke the political strangle-hold on space exploration and opened the solar system to all mankind–becoming one of the world’s richest men in the bargain.

Now an ecological crisis threatens Earth, one that will exterminate billions in a few short years if it continues unchecked. And the same politicians that Randolph outwitted the first time want to impose a world dictatorship to deal with it. Dan Randolph knows that the answer lies in more human freedom, not less–and in the boundless resources of space. But can he stay free long enough to give the world that chance?

A daring tale of one man’s struggle against overwhelming odds, Empire Builders is a stunning near-future thriller by one of the most acclaimed science fiction writers of our time.

Farside, the side of the moon that never faces Earth, is the ideal location for an astronomical observatory. It is also the setting for a tangled web of politics, personal ambition, love, jealousy, and murder.

Telescopes on Earth have detected an Earth-sized planet circling a star some thirty light-years away. The race is on to obtain photographs and spectra that show whether or not the planet is truly like Earth–and if it bears life. Farside observatory will have the largest optical telescope in the solar system, as well as a vast array of radio antennas–the most sensitive radio telescope possible, insulated from the interference of Earth’s radio chatter by a thousand kilometers of the moon’s solid mass.

Building the Farside observatory is a complex and often dangerous task. On the airless surface of the moon–under constant bombardment by hard radiation and infalling micrometeoroids–builders must work in cumbersome spacesuits and use robotic machines as much as possible. Breakdowns, both mechanical and emotional, are commonplace. Accidents happen, some of them fatal. But what they ultimately find will stun everyone, and the human race will never be the same.

An exciting collection of SF stories by Hugo Award-winning author Ben Bova

No matter what strange forms the future takes, says Ben Bova in his introduction, crime and criminals will always be with us–and with them, the need for law enforcement. Included in this collection of short stories are the full-length novel City of Darkness and “Brillo”–the famous collaboration between Bova and Harlan Ellison.

A “leading light of hard SF and space advocacy” (Booklist) turns his sights to the largest planet in our solar system
Grant Archer merely wanted to study astrophysics, to work quietly as an astronomer on the far side of the Moon. But the forces of the “New Morality,” the coalition of censoriuous do-gooders who run 21st century America, have other plans for him. To his distress, Grant is torn from his young bride and sent to a research station in orbit around Jupiter, charged with the task of spying on the scientists who work there. What they don’t know is that his loyalty to science may be greater than his loyalty to “The New Morality.” But that loyalty will be tested in a mission as dangerous as any ever undertaken . . .

What secrets lurk in the depths of Jupiter’s oceans?

In Ben Bova’s novel Jupiter, physicist Grant Archer led an expedition into Jupiter’s planet-wide ocean, attempting to study the unusual and massive creatures that call the planet their home. Unprepared for the hostile environment and crushing pressures, Grant’s team faced certain death as their ship malfunctioned and slowly sank to the planet’s depths. However, one of Jupiter’s native creatures—a city-sized leviathan—saved the doomed ship. This creature’s act convinced Grant that they were intelligent, but he lacked scientific proof. Now, several years later, Grant prepares a new expedition to prove it once and for all. The new team faces dangers from both the hostile environment and from humans who will do anything to make sure the mission is a failure—even if it means murdering the entire crew.

This grand epic adventure from six-time Hugo Award–winning author Ben Bova tells the irresistible story of man’s first mission to that great unconquered frontier, Mars—a planet pocked by meteors, baked by ultraviolet light, and covered by endless deserts the color of dried blood. Technically plausible and compellingly human, Bova’s story explores the political, scientific, and social repercussions of our greatest quest yet: the search for evidence of life beyond Earth’s boundaries.

Half-Navajo geologist Jamie Waterman has been selected for the ground team of the first manned expedition to our mysterious neighbor planet. Joining an international team of twenty-five astronauts and scientists, he endures the rigors of training, the dangers of traveling an incredible distance in space, the challenges of an alien landscape, and the personal and political conflicts that arise when the team must face the most shocking discovery of all.

Mars is an unforgettable portrait of space, politics, science, and humanity that captures for all time the mystery and wonder of an alien frontier.

Jamie Waterman has made an important discovery on Mars. A cliff dwelling reveals the fact that an intelligent race lived on the red planet sixty-five million years ago, only to be driven into extinction by the crash of a giant meteor. But now the exploration of Mars is itself under threat of extinction, as the ultraconservative New Morality movement gains control of the United States government and cuts off all funding for the Mars program.

Meanwhile, Carter Carleton, an anthropologist who was driven from his university post by unproven rape charges, has started to dig up the remains of a Martian village. Science and politics clash on two worlds as Jamie desperately tries to save the Mars program and uncover who the vanished Martians were.

This is a compelling tale of adventure, political intrigue—and the possibility of life on other planets.

Bova, a six-time Hugo Award winner and past president of the National Space Society, returns to his most popular and bestselling subject: the quest for Mars!

How do you get to the Red Planet? Not via a benighted government program trapped in red tape and bound by budget constrictions, that’s for sure. No, what it will take is a helping of adventure, science, corporate power plays, a generous dollop of seduction–both in and out of the boardroom–and money, money, money!

Art Thrasher knows this. He is a man with a driving vision: send humans to Mars. The government has utterly failed, but Thrasher has got the plan to accomplish such a feat: form a “club” of billionaires to chip in one billion a year until the dream is accomplished. The problem is, these men and women are tough cookies, addicted to a profitable bottom-line and disdainful of pie-in-the-sky dreamers who want to use their cash to make somebody else’s dreams come true.

But Thrasher is different from the other dreamers in an important regard: he’s a billionaire himself, and the president of a successful company. Still, it’s going to take all his wiles as a captain of industry and master manipulator of business and capital to overcome setbacks and sabotage–and get a rocket full of scientists, engineers, visionaries, and dreamers on their way to the Red Planet.

The man for the job has arrived. Art Thrasher is prepared to do whatever it takes to put humans on Mars–or die trying!

A tale of revenge and technological endeavor set on our solar system’s most desolate stage

Despite Mercury’s desolateness, there are still those who hope to find diamonds in the rough. Saito Yamagata thinks Mercury’s position will make it an ideal orbit point for satellites that could someday create enough power to propel starships into deep space. He hires Dante Alexios to bring his dreams to life. Astrobiologist Victor Molina thinks the water at Mercury’s poles may harbor evidence of life, and hopes to achieve fame and glory by proving it. Bishop Elliot Danvers has been sent by the religious sect, “The New Morality,” to keep close tabs on their endeavors, which threaten to produce results that contradict biblical teachings.

There is a future of astonishing possibilities waiting on a lifeless world of surprising contrasts, where sub-frigid darkness abuts the blood-boiling light—a future threatened by greed and jealousy, insanity and murder.

A twenty-first-century US aerospace company has developed the first permanent human settlement on the moon. The settlement is made possible by major scientific breakthroughs, particularly in the practical use of nanotechnology—microscopic machines that can build structures on the moon using raw lunar materials, as well as correct damage done to the human body by illness and injury. But conflict within the company’s founding family and growing protests against the technology from radical environmentalists and religious fundamentalists on Earth put Moonbase in danger of closure. Former astronaut and brilliant visionary Paul Stavenger must prevent the project from falling into the wrong hands as a power struggle leads to murder and the near destruction of Moonbase.

Ben Bova’s extraordinary Moonbase Saga continues with a breathtaking near-future adventure rich in character and incident. Seven years after the indomitable Doug Stavenger has realized his cherished dream of establishing a colony on the inhospitable lunar surface, Moonbase is a thriving community, a marvel of scientific achievement created and supported by nanotechnology: virus-sized machines that can build, cure, and destroy. But nanotechnology has been declared illegal by the home planet’s leaders, and a powerful despot is determined to lay claim to Stavenger’s peaceful city—or obliterate it, if necessary. The people of Moonbase, a colony with no arms or military, must now defend themselves from earthborn aggression with the only weapon at their disposal: the astonishing technology that sustains their endangered home.

In this Martian adventure story, two men fly to the highest mountain on Mars, and in the process learn more about Mars and about themselves.

Bova’s work is premeated by the idea of space as a new frontier, and of SF settings as opportunities for explorers and entrepreneuers, the classic Heinlein thematics of American SF.

In this new collection, Ben Bova has compiled fourteen of his favorite short stories. Each story includes an all-new introduction with compelling insight into the narrative.

Exploring the boundaries of the genre, Bova not only writes of spaceships, aliens, and time travel in most of his titles, but also speculates on the beginnings of science fiction in “Scheherazade and the Storytellers,” as well as the morality of man in “The Angel’s Gift.” Stories such as “The Café Coup” and “We’ll Always Have Paris” dip into speculative historical fiction, asking questions about what would happen if someone could change history for the better. This expansive collection is a key addition for Bova fans and sci-fi lovers alike!

Stories included in this collection: “Monster Slayer,” “Muzhestvo,” “We’ll Always Have Paris,” “The Great Moon Hoax, or A Princess of Mars,” “Inspiration,” “Scheherazade and the Storytellers,” “The Supersonic Zeppelin,” “Mars Farts,” “The Man Who Hated Gravity,” “Sepulcher,” “The Café Coup,” “The Angel’s Gift,” “Waterbot,” and “Sam and the Flying Dutchman.”

Hugo Award winner Ben Bova continues his grand tour of the human-settled solar system with a look at life in the Outer Planets, among the moons of Neptune.

In the future, humanity has spread throughout the solar system, on planets and moons once visited only by robots or explored at a distance by far-voyaging spacecraft. No matter how hostile or welcoming the environment, mankind has forged a path and found a home.

In the far reaches of the solar system, the outer planets–billions of miles from Earth, unknown for millennia–are being settled. Neptune, the ice giant, is swathed in clouds of hydrogen, helium, and methane and circled by rings of rock and dust. Three years ago, Ilona Magyr’s father, Miklos, disappeared while exploring the seas of Neptune. Everyone believes he is dead–crushed, frozen, or boiled alive in Neptune’s turbulent seas.

With legendary space explorer Derek Humbolt piloting her ship and planetary scientist Jan Meitner guiding the search, Ilona Magyr knows she will find her father–alive–on Neptune.

Her plans are irrevocably altered when she and her team discover the wreckage of an alien ship deep in Neptune’s ocean, a discovery that changes humanity’s understanding of its future … and its past.

We’ve found another Earthlike planet, but what secrets does it hold?

The entire world is thrilled by the discovery of a new, Earthlike planet. Advance imaging shows that the planet has oceans of water and a breathable, oxygen-rich atmosphere. Eager to learn more, an exploration team is soon dispatched to explore the planet, now nicknamed New Earth.

All the explorers understand that they are essentially on a one-way mission. The trip takes eighty years each way, so even if they are able to get back to Earth, nearly two hundred years will have elapsed. They will have aged only a dozen years thanks to cryonic suspension, but their friends and family will be gone, and the very society they once knew will have changed beyond recognition. The explorers are going into exile, and they know it. They are on this mission not because they were the best available but because they were expendable.

Upon landing, the team discovers something unexpected: New Earth is inhabited by a small group of intelligent creatures who look very much like human beings. Who are these people? Are they native to this world or invaders from elsewhere? While they may seem inordinately friendly to the human explorers, what are their real motivations? What do they want?

Moreover, the scientists begin to realize that this planet cannot possibly be natural. They face a startling and nearly unthinkable question: Could New Earth be an artifact?

New Frontiers offers fourteen startling visions of yesterday, today, and tomorrow from Ben Bova, six-time winner of the Hugo Award.

Frontiers can be found in all directions–frontiers of time and space, as well as frontiers of courage, devotion, love, hate, and the outer limits of the human spirit. This outstanding collection of stories by one of science fiction’s premier talents spans the length and breadth of history and the universe while exploring thought-provoking new ideas and dilemmas.

From the Baghdad of The Arabian Nights to a vast interstellar empire thousands of years in the future, from the Vatican to a one-man vessel drifting in the vast emptiness of the asteroid belt, from virtual reality duels to the subtle intricacies of time travel and a golf tournament on the moon, here are tales of scoundrels and heroes, scientists and explorers, aliens and artificial intelligences, and even a young Albert Einstein. Each of them stands at the border of a new frontier and must venture out into unexplored territory–thanks to the limitless imagination of Ben Bova.

An exciting SF novel by Hugo Award-winning author Ben Bova

In the next century, the United States and Russia have joined forces to form the International Peacekeeping Force. The IPF is charged with controlling the satellite network and preventing nuclear missile launches. But many factions resent this orbital police force–and attempt to seize control of the satellites … and the IPF itself.

It is time to start colonizing the solar system. Ex-astronaut, current space advisor, and all-out troubleshooter for the President, Jake Ross, is determined to make it happen.

And what better way than to return to America’s glory by returning to the moon and setting up a permanent moon-base which can then serve as the launching pad for Mars and beyond.

But as usual, political intrigue and conflicting priorities are threatening the whole program. Add to that a President who is about to die, a strong contingent in the legislative body which thinks that money spent on a moon-base is money wasted, and the general apathy of the public, and you have an almost impossible task.

Even NASA, natural enthusiasts of a project like this, are dragging their feet because they have lost control of the top-spot in the project.

But none of those opposing forces have contended with the resolve and the skill of Jake Ross. He will create the base on the moon. He will send humans out to many worlds.

Award-winning writer Ben Bova returns with another tense political thriller starring Jake Ross, science advisor to Senator Frank Tomlinson, as they continue their complex power maneuvers they began in Power Play and Power Surge.

Dr. Jake Ross came to Washington to try to make a difference, but he’s learned the only way to get something done in Washington, assuming your ideals survive the corrosive atmosphere, is to gather power. Ross has gathered a great deal, riding in the wake of Frank Tomlinson. But now Tomlinson has decided to shoot for the moon. If they win, they get it all. If they lose, the game is over for Jake Ross.

The Power trilogy combines the political thriller with nuts-and-bolts near future science fiction. Bova’s vision of a future powered by solar satellite transmission is tantalizingly within reach.

Dr. Jake Ross, a university astronomer, wants nothing more than to teach a few classes each semester and continue his research. Instead, he finds himself aggressively recruited to be the science advisor to Frank Tomlinson, an ambitious politician with his eye on the US Senate. Tomlinson is in need of an edge that will allow him to defeat his opponent at the polls, and Dr. Ross can contribute just that: MHD. MHD, or magnetohydrodynamics, is a new innovation that will allow electricity to be generated efficiently and cheaply. The Senate seat is essentially guaranteed if Tomlinson can deliver unlimited energy to voters at less than half the price of nuclear power. But MHD is still in its infancy, and although the outlook is extremely promising there are great—and deadly—risks.

The incumbent senator will not give up his seat without a fight, and as Ross discovers, the world of politics carries its own dangers. Nothing has prepared him for the extreme tactics that desperate and powerful people are willing to use. Power Play is a timely thrill ride by Ben Bova, one of science fiction’s most respected novelists.

Six-time Hugo winner Ben Bova brings us a gripping political thriller on the cutting edge of science and technology.

Dr. Jake Ross came to Washington to make a difference. As the science advisor to a newly elected freshman senator, Jake has crafted a comprehensive energy plan that employs innovative new technologies to make America the world’s leader in energy production while simultaneously boosting the economy and protecting the environment. The facts—and the science—are on Jake’s side, but his plan soon runs afoul of entrenched special interests, well-funded lobbies, cynical bureaucrats, pork-barrel politics, and one very powerful US senator.

To keep his plan alive and secure a sustainable future for America, Jake needs a crash course in the way Washington really works. Everyone keeps telling him that his plan has no hope of succeeding, but Jake is determined to prove them wrong even if it kills him … something that certain hostile parties may be all too happy to arrange.

Two hundred thousand feet up, things go horribly wrong. An experimental low-orbit spaceplane breaks up on reentry, falling to earth over a trail hundreds of miles long. And in its wake is the beginning of the most important mission in the history of space.

America needs energy, and Dan Randolph is determined to give it to them. He dreams of an array of geosynchronous powersats, satellites that gather solar energy and beam it to generators on Earth, freeing America from its addiction to fossil fuels and breaking the power of the oil cartels forever. But the wreck of the spaceplane has left his company, Astro Manufacturing, on the edge of bankruptcy.

Worse, Dan discovers that the plane worked perfectly right up until the moment that saboteurs knocked it out of the sky. And whoever brought it down is willing—and able—to kill again to keep Astro grounded.

Now Dan has to thread a dangerous maze. The visible threats are bad enough: Rival firms want to buy him out and take control of his dreams. His former lover wants to co-opt his unlimited-energy idea as a campaign plank for the candidate she’s grooming for the presidency. NASA and the FAA want to shut down his maverick firm. And his creditors are breathing down his neck.

Making matters even more dangerous, an international organization of terrorists sees the powersat as a threat to their own oil-based power. And they’ve figured out how to use it as a weapon in their war against the West.

A sweeping mix of space, murder, romance, politics, secrets, and betrayal, Powersat will take you to the edge of space and the dawning of a new world.

America has ceded the heavens to the tyrants–and the renegades.

The US has abandoned its quest for the stars, and an old enemy has moved in to fill the void. The potential wealth of the universe is now in malevolent hands. Rebel billionaire Dan Randolph–possessor of the largest privately owned company in space–intends to weaken the stranglehold the new despotic masters of the solar system have on the lucrative ore industry. But when the mineral-rich asteroid he sets in orbit around the earth is commandeered by the enemy, and his unarmed workers are slaughtered in cold blood, the course of Randolph’s life is changed forever. Now cataclysm is aimed at the exposed heart of America–a potential catastrophe that Randolph himself inadvertently set in motion. And the maverick entrepreneur must use his skills, cunning, and vast resources to strike out at his foes hard, fast, and with ruthless precision–and wear proudly the mantle that fate thrust upon him: space pirate!

What Jamie Waterman discovered on Mars was astonishing. What he survived was remarkable—but it was only the beginning.

Six years after the first manned Martian expedition, a second has been announced, this one motivated purely by its profitable potential. Half-Navajo geologist Jamie Waterman, a veteran of the first mission, feels his conflicted soul beckoning him back to the eerie, unforgiving planet. As commander of the new exploratory team, he will have to contend with a bitter and destructive rivalry, a disturbing new emotional attraction, and deadly, incomprehensible “accidents” that appear to be sabotage—all of which could doom the mission to failure. But there are still great secrets to be uncovered on this cruel and enigmatic world, not the least of which is something he glimpsed in the far distance during his first Martian excursion: an improbable structure perched high in the planet’s carmine cliffs—a dwelling that only an intelligent being could have built.

The final completed novel by Ben Bova

Intergalactic explorer, venture capitalist, and Casanova Sam Gunn may be gone, but his legacy lives on in his son, Sam Gunn Jr.

In his first-ever adventure, Sam Gunn Jr. sets off to fulfill his father’s left-behind mission of interplanetary enterprising. He soon learns his father’s shoes are tough to fill, but he is up for the task. Junior takes a journey through the stars, falling in love with beautiful women and leaving his unique mark everywhere he ventures. Soon, however, this trip through the universe takes a dangerous turn when Junior lands on Saturn and learns about a recent scientific discovery that will change everything, possibly forever.

Will he be able to save the universe and live up to his father’s name? Take an unforgettable ride through space in master sci-fi author Ben Bova’s exciting novel!

Following the bestselling, widely-praised Venus and Jupiter, Ben Bova offers a new adventure of solar system discovery like nothing previously imagined

In the bestselling novels Venus and Jupiter, Ben Bova dramatized the latest discoveries about our own solar system in an epic tale of near-future exploration and development. Now Bova turns his attention to one of our system’s greatest mysteries–Saturn.
Earth groans under the thumb of fundamentalist political regimes. Crisis after crisis has given authoritarians the upper hand. Freedom and opportunity exist in space, for those with the nerve and skill to take it. Now the governments of Earth are encouraging many of their most incorrigible dissidents to join a great ark, a one-way expedition to
Saturn, the ringed planet that baffled Galileo and has fascinated astronomers ever since.
But humans will be human, so amidst the idealism permeating Space Habitat Goddard are many individuals with long-term schemes, each awaiting their moment. And hidden from them is the greatest secret of all–the real purpose of this expedition–known to only a few…

When an ultra-rich space tourist visits the orbiting International Space Station, NASA expects a $100 million win-win: his visit will bring in much needed funding and publicity. But the tourist venture turns into a scheme of terror. Together with an extremist cosmonaut, the tourist slaughters all the astronauts on board the million-pound ISS-and prepares to crash it into New York City at 17,500 miles an hour, causing more devastation than a hundred atomic bombs. In doing so, they hope to annihilate the world’s financial system.
All that stands between them and their deadly goal is the lone survivor aboard the ISS, Kimberly Hasid-Robinson, a newly divorced astronaut who has barricaded herself in a secure area.

When a human team is sent to scout a few hundred light-years in front of the death wave, it encounters a civilization far in advance of our own, a civilization of machine intelligences.

These sentient, intelligent machines have existed for eons and have survived earlier “death waves,” gamma-ray bursts from the core of the galaxy. They are totally self-sufficient, completely certain that the death wave cannot harm them, and utterly uninterested in helping to save other civilizations, whether organic or machine.

But now that the humans have discovered them, they refuse to allow them to leave their planet, reasoning that other humans will inevitably follow if they learn of their existence.

Earth has been devastated by a massive solar flare. Now a small group of survivors fights to rebuild civilization.

Cities became ovens, grasslands seas of flame. As the touch of dawn swept westward across the spinning planet, its fiery finger killed everything in its path. Glaciers in Switzerland began to melt; floodwaters poured down on burning Alpine villages. Paris became a torch, then London. North of the Arctic Circle, Laplanders in their summer furs burst into flame as their reindeer collapsed and roasted on the smoking tundra.

The line of dawn raced westward across the Atlantic, but as it did, the sun dimmed as quickly as it had flared.

The Americas escaped the sun’s wrath … almost.

Six-time Hugo Award winner Ben Bova chronicles the saga of humankind’s expansion beyond the solar system in The Aftermath.

In the wake of the Asteroid Wars that tore across the solar system, Victor Zacharius makes his living running the ore-carrier Syracuse. When the Syracuse stumbles into the middle of a military attack on the habitat Chrysalis, Victor flees in a control pod to draw the attacker’s attention away from his family. Now, as his wife and children plunge into the far deeps of space, Victor has been rescued by the seductive Cheena Madagascar. He must do her bidding if he’s to have a prayer of ever seeing his family again.

Elverda Apacheta, the solar system’s greatest sculptor, and the cyborg Dorn, the ruthless military commander responsible for the attack on Chrysalis, are linked by their joint discovery of an alien artifact. Similarly transformed by the artifact’s mysterious powers, Apacheta and Dorn now prowl the Belt, determined to find the bodies of the many victims of Harbin’s atrocities so that they can be given proper burials. Kao Yuan is the captain of Viking who’s determined to kill Dorn and Elverda because they know too much about the artifact and its power. But Viking’s second-in-command appears to have the real power on board ship. When Viking catches up to Apacheta and Dorn, their confrontation begins a series of events involving them, the Zacharius family, and the transformation of the human solar system…

The first volume in a sterling collection of stories from legendary hard science fiction master Ben Bova

These are selected stories from Bova’s amazing career at the center of science fiction and space advocacy. He is the creator of the New York Times bestselling Grand Tour series, a six-time Hugo Award winner, and past president of the National Space Society. The very best of Ben Bova, these stories span the five decades of Bova’s incandescent career.

Here are tales of star-faring adventure, peril, and drama. Here are journeys into the mind-bending landscapes of virtual worlds and alternate realities. Here you’ll also find stories of humanity’s astounding future on Earth, on Mars, and in the solar system beyond–stories that always get the science right. And Bova’s gathering of deeply realized, totally human characters are the heroic, brave, tricky, sometimes dastardly engineers, astronauts, corporate magnates, politicians, and scientists who will make these futures possible–and those who often find that the problems of tomorrow are always linked to human values and human failings which are as timeless as the stars.

The second volume of the best stories from legendary hard science fiction writer Ben Bova, the creator of the New York Times bestselling Grand Tour science fiction series, a six-time Hugo award winner, and past president of the National Space Society.

The stories included in this volume span the five decades of Bova’s incandescent career at the center of science fiction and space advocacy.

Here are tales of star-faring adventure, peril, and drama. Here are journeys into the mind-bending landscapes of virtual worlds and alternate realities. Here you’ll also find stories of humanity’s astounding future on Earth, on Mars, and in the Solar System beyond–stories that always get the science right. And Bova’s gathering of deeply realized, totally human characters are the heroic, brave, tricky, sometimes dastardly engineers, astronauts, corporate magnates, politicians, and scientists who will make these futures possible–and those who often find that the problems of tomorrow are always linked to human values, and human failings, that are as timeless as the stars.

The third and final volume of the very best of Ben Bova, creator of the New York Times bestselling Grand Tour science fiction series, six-time Hugo award winner, and past president of the National Space Society–a grand master of science fiction storytelling. These stories span the five decades of Bova’s incandescent career.

Here are tales of star-faring adventure, peril, and drama. Here are journeys into the mind-bending landscapes of virtual worlds and alternate realities. Here you’ll also find stories of humanity’s astounding future on Earth, on Mars, and in the Solar System beyond–stories that always get the science right. And Bova’s gathering of deeply realized, totally human characters are the heroic, brave, tricky, sometimes dastardly engineers, astronauts, corporate magnates, politicians, and scientists who will make these futures possible–and those who often find that the problems of tomorrow are always linked to human values, and human failings, that are as timeless as the stars.

Microbiologist Michael Cochrane has been murdered. His brother, Paul, wants to find out who did it and why. It’s clear that Michael was working with cyanobacteria, the bacteria that crack water molecules and release free oxygen. It’s less clear why this would get anybody killed.

Accompanied by a beautiful industrial spy, Elena Sandoval, Paul follows the trail from California to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Along the way, the truth emerges: Michael had found a way to get cyanobacteria to crack hydrogen out of simple water molecules, producing enough hydrogen to cleanly power the world, practically for free. No wonder everyone, from Middle-Eastern heavies to hired domestic muscle, suddenly seems to be trying to get in Paul and Elena’s way.

Ben Bova brings us an exciting new take on the timeless legend of Troy.

This is the tale of Lukka, the Hittite soldier who traveled across Greece in search of the vicious slave traders who kidnapped his wife and sons. He tracks them all the way to war-torn Troy, where he proves himself a warrior to rank with noble Hector and swift Achilles.

In this fascinating work of historical fiction, Lukka is also the man who builds the Trojan horse for the crafty Odysseus, who topples the walls of Jericho for the Israelites, and who steals the beautiful Helen–the legendary face that launched a thousand ships–from her husband Menaleus, fighting his way across half the known world to bring her safely to Egypt.

In this provocative, gripping, and startling novel, bestselling author Ben Bova delivers a knockout read with his trademark blend of cutting-edge science and unrelenting suspense.

Some see stem-cell research as mankind’s greatest scientific breakthrough; others, a blasphemous attempt to play God. Suddenly, the possibility of immortality exists. Two brothers, both doctors, stand on opposite sides of the controversy. To Arthur Marshak, his work is a momentous gift to humanity. To Jesse Marshak, it is a curse. And between them stands a beautiful, remarkable woman that both brothers will do anything to save.

Somehow, before it’s too late, Arthur and Jesse must bridge the gap that divides them…on an issue that could mean nothing less than life or death for millions.

Hero or killer?

In a startling future that’s coming closer every year, Chet Kinsman is an astronaut ace who has done everything one can in space–including commit the first murder. It’s a secret he can never escape, not even on the moon, where he’s head of the first US lunar colony.

A series of shocking yet strangely inevitable circumstances will force Kinsman to confront his hidden past and decide Earth’s destiny. In a desperate countdown to nuclear annihilation, Kinsman will struggle against a deadly dilemma: if he rescues the world, he risks destroying himself.

The first novel of the Asteroid Wars about earth’s near future from the “leading light of hard Science Fiction and space advocacy”*
Once, Dan Randolph was one of the richest men on Earth. Now the planet is spiralling into environmental disaster, with floods and earthquakes destroying the lives of millions. Martin Humphries, fabulously wealthy heir of the Humphries Trust, also knows that space-based industry is the way of the future. But unlike Randolph he does not care if Earth perishes in the process. As Randolph–accompanied by two brilliant women astronauts–flies out to the Asteroid Belt aboard a fusion-propelled spacecraft, Humphries makes his move. The future of mankind lies in Randolph’s hands.

*Booklist

In the 1980s, an alien starship visited Earth. While investigating what appeared to be a sarcophagus bearing the preserved body of its builder, astronaut Keith Stoner was trapped and cryogenically frozen. After his body was eventually returned to Earth and revived, Stoner discovered that he had acquired alien powers. Putting them to use, he built a new starship and left Earth. Now, after more than a century of exploring the stars, Keith Stoner returns to find that the world he has come back to does not match the one he left. The planet is suffering the consequences of disastrous greenhouse flooding. Most nations have been taken over by ultraconservative religion-based governments, such as the New Morality in the United States. With population ballooning and resources running out, Earth is heading for nuclear war. Stoner, the star voyager, wants to save Earth’s people, but first he must save himself from the frightened and ambitious zealots who want to destroy this stranger–and the terrifying message he brings from the stars.

Book Two in the Asteroid Wars-continuing the saga of the struggle for the wealth of the Solar System
Visionary space industrialist Dan Randolph is dead-but his protege, pilot Pancho Barnes, now sits on the board of his conglomerate. She has her work cut out for her-for Randolph’s rival, Martin Humphries, still wants to control Astro and still wants to drive independent asteroid miners like Lars Fuchs out of business. Humphries wants revenge against Pancho-and, most of all, he wants his old flame, Amanda, who has become Lars Fuchs’s wife. Before it ends, many will die-and many will achieve more than they ever dreamed was possible.

A hero without peer or scruples, Sam Gunn has a nose for trouble, money, and women, though not necessarily in that order. A man with the ego (and stature) of a Napoleon, the business acumen of a P. T. Barnum, and the raging hormones of a teenage boy, Sam is the finest astronaut NASA ever trained and dumped. But more than money, more than women, Sam Gunn loves justice—and he really does love money and women. Whether he’s suing the pope, helping twin sisters entangled in the virtual sex trade, or on trial for his life, charged with interplanetary genocide, you can be sure of one thing: this is one space jockey who’ll meet every challenge with a smile on his lips, an ace up his sleeve, and a weapon in his pocket.

Now, for the first time in one volume, Hugo-winner Ben Bova presents all the tales of Sam Gunn to date, including three never before collected in book form. Here is the entire chronicle of Sam Gunn, trailblazer and scoundrel, as he scams his way from one end of the solar system to the other, giving bold new meaning to the term venture capitalist.

Ben Bova’s The Silent War is the breakneck continuation to The Asteroid Wars series that can end only in earth’s salvation–or the annihilation of all that humankind has ever accomplished in space.

When corporations go to war, standard business practice goes out the window. Astro Corporation is led by indomitable Texan Pancho Lane, Humphries Space Systems by the rich and ruthless Martin Humphries, and their fight is over nothing less than resources of the Asteroid Belt itself. Fighting escalates and the lines between commerce and politics, boardroom and bedroom, blur–and the keys to victory will include physics, nanotechnology, and cold hard cash.

It’s a breakneck finale that can end only in earth’s salvation–or the annihilation of all that humankind has ever accomplished in space.

In the future as Bova here imagines it, Earth is an ecological nightmare, and humanity may well go the way of the dinosaurs. But overhead orbits salvation. A vast metallic island in space, the Trikon station conducts genetic research too risky to be done on earth—research that could save the planet.

Yet Commander Dan Tighe discovers that the Trikon’s major project is espionage. Its international crew is split into warring factions; its scientists—consumed by greed, lust, and drugs—run the lab for their own gain. Murder, intrigue, and romantic jealousy threaten to sabotage the station’s crucial work.

Only Commander Tighe can save the Trikon—and only Trikon can save the earth.

Earth is an old planet, and her teeming masses are running out of resources–and time. It is up to men such as Jeff Holman to discover a haven for Earth’s millions. Altair VI is one such planet, and Holman is determined to transform this world into one where the human race can survive.

Star probes long ago informed Earth that Altair VI had a flourishing ecology with one very tough beast at the top of the food chain, one that will have to be dealt with before the human colony ships arrive. The beast is not only tough, it is as smart as a man.

Holman is faced with a soul-wrenching decision–for to make Altair VI habitable for humans, all native life must die.

Master storyteller Ben Bova continues his multi-volume “Grand Tour” saga chronicling humanity’s exploration of near space with TITAN, a fast-paced thriller focused on the first manned mission to the Solar System’s most intriguing world. Skillfully blending high drama, passionate characters and daring speculation with the latest discoveries from the current Cassini/Huygens probe of Saturn’s moon, Bova has crafted a heart-stopping tale of epic adventure on mankind’s next frontier.

The gigantic colony ship Goddard has at last made orbit around the ringed planet Saturn, carrying a volatile population of more than 10,000 dissidents, rebels, extremists and visionaries seeking a new life among the stars. Chief scientist Edouard Urbain’s avowed mission is to study the enigmatic moon called Titan, which offers the tantalizing possibility that life may exist amid its windswept islands and chill black seas.

But when the exploration vessel Titan Alpha mysteriously fails after reaching the moon’s surface, long buried tensions surface among the colonists. Torn by political intrigue, suspicious accidents, and an awesome discovery that could threaten human space exploration, a handful of courageous men and women must fight for the survival of their colony, and the destiny of the human race.

A scientific thriller by six-time Hugo Award winner Ben Bova

Luke Abramson, a brilliant cellular biologist who is battling lung cancer, has one joy in life: his ten-year-old granddaughter, Angela. When Angela is diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor and given less than six months to live, Luke wants to try a new enzyme, Mortality Factor 4 (MORF4), that he believes will kill Angela’s tumor.

However, the hospital bureaucracy won’t let him do it because MORF4 has not yet been approved by the FDA. Knowing Angela will die before he can get the treatment approved, Luke abducts her from the hospital with plans to take her to a private research laboratory in Oregon.

But Luke is too old and worn-down to flee across the country with his sick granddaughter, especially with the FBI on their trail. So he injects himself with a genetic factor that stimulates his body’s production of telomerase, an enzyme that has successfully reversed aging in animal tests.

As the chase weaves across the country from one research facility to another, Luke begins to grow physically younger, stronger. He looks and feels the way he did thirty or forty years ago. Yet his lung cancer is not abating; if anything the tumors are growing faster.

And Angela is dying.

Ben Bova, author of Earth, continues his exploration of the future of a human-settled Solar System with the science fiction action adventure Uranus.

On a privately financed orbital habitat above the planet Uranus, political idealism conflicts with pragmatic–and illegal–methods of financing. Add a scientist who has funding to launch a probe deep into Uranus’s ocean depths to search for signs of life, and you have a three-way struggle for control.

Humans can’t live on the gas giants, making instead a life in orbit. Kyle Umber, a religious idealist, has built Haven, a sanctuary above the distant planet Uranus. He invites “the tired, the sick, the poor” of Earth to his orbital retreat where men and women can find spiritual peace and refuge from the world.

The billionaire who financed Haven, however, has his own designs: beyond the reach of the laws of the inner planets, Haven could become the center for an interplanetary web of narcotics, prostitution, and even hunting human prey.

Meanwhile a scientist has gotten funding from the Inner Planets to drop remote probes into the “oceans” of Uranus, in search of life. He brings money and prestige, but he also brings journalists and government oversight to Haven. And they can’t have that.

The surface of Venus is the most hellish place in the solar system, its ground hot enough to melt aluminum, its air pressure high enough to crush spacecraft landers like tin cans, its atmosphere a choking mix of poisonous gases. This is where the frail young Van Humphries must go—or die trying.

Years before, Van’s older brother perished in the first attempt to land a man on Venus. Van’s father has always hated him for being the one to survive. Now, his father is offering a ten-billion-dollar prize to the first person who lands on Venus and returns his oldest son’s remains. To everyone’s surprise, Van takes up the offer. But what Van Humphries will find on Venus will change everything—our understanding of Venus, of global warming on Earth, and his knowledge of who he is.

Ex-astronaut turned physicist Keith Stoner knew that the fiery object hurtling toward the Earth was an alien spacecraft—but the world might never know. He was trapped in an iron cordon of secrecy, for the discovery had set off a brutal power struggle among the elite, raging from the sacred halls of the Vatican to the corridors of the Kremlin and the Pentagon. Each nation wanted to be the first to contact the aliens, to learn their superior technology. The forces of fear and treachery would use any weapon at their command—from mind war to sabotage—to keep the world in darkness.

Aided by a brilliant Soviet linguist and a lovely young student, Stoner planned a desperate mission—a wild, heart-stopping gamble to preserve the legacy of the star voyager for all mankind.

When Keith Stoner awoke, he found himself in a world changed almost beyond recognition. Eighteen years before, Stoner had been the American member of a joint US-Soviet mission to capture an alien ship. The Soviets had to pull out, but Stoner persisted, and while on the strange ship, he fell into suspended animation.

Jo Camerata, the ambitious young student who fell in love with Stoner, is now head of Vanguard Industries, which has recovered the alien ship. As a result, her company is now in control of its vast new technology and the fortune it reaps–and in control of Keith Stoner. What Camerata doesn’t know, however, is that someone else has been awake, someone who dwells within Stoner’s mind. The alien presence that has kept Stoner alive all this time is now free and intends to explore our world, letting nothing stand in its way.

Astronaut Keith Stoner, member of a joint US-Soviet mission to capture an alien ship that had entered the solar system, was trapped alone aboard the spacecraft. But he didn’t die; he lay frozen in deep sleep for fifteen years, kept alive by alien biotechnology. Now Stoner is something more than just a man. While asleep he was inoculated with nanotechnology designed to repair his body, expand his brain, and let him live forever. Stoner also carries the knowledge and memories of the being whose body was enshrined in the alien craft. He now knows of many different intelligent races that destroyed themselves, battering themselves to death on the stony problems of war, famine, runaway population, and ill-planned technological breakthroughs. Stoner fears for mankind, and he will do everything in his power–his extensive, alien-enhanced power–to preserve humanity into the future. However, there are powerful leaders, both corporate and political, who are becoming aware of Stoner, and they want that power for themselves–and will do anything to gain it. Nothing Stoner can say or do will convince these ruthless men and women that what they seek may destroy them utterly.