Mission to Methone
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3.9 • 10 Ratings
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
The year is 2065 and an accidental encounter in space leads to the discovery that we are not alone in the universe—and that our continued existence as a species may be in jeopardy.
Chris Holt, working in his office at the Space Resources Corporation, discovers that one of the asteroids he is surveying for mining is actually not an asteroid at all but a derelict spaceship. The word gets out and soon the world's powers are competing to explore and claim for themselves the secrets that it holds.
What they don't know is that across the galaxy, a war has been underway for millennia. A war between alien civilizations that have very different ideas about what should be done about emerging spacefaring civilizations like our own. The artificial intelligence resident in the derelict Holt discovered has been in our solar system since before the dawn of human civilization, watching, waiting and keeping quiet lest the interstellar war return and wipe out the sentient race that now resides there—humanity.
And that war might soon be again coming to our front door. The truth can only be discovered on Methone, a tiny, egg-shaped moon of the planet Saturn. Who will get there first? And will it be in time?
At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).
About Rescue Mode by Ben Bova and Les Johnson:
"... a suspenseful and compelling narrative of the first human spaceflight to Mars."—Booklist
Les Johnson is a NASA physicist and author. By day, he serves as the Senior Technical Assistant for the Advanced Concepts Office at the NASA George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. In the early 2000s, he was NASA’s Manager for Interstellar Propulsion Research and later managed the In-Space Propulsion Technology Project. He was technical consultant for the movie Lost in Space and has appeared on the Discovery Channel series, Physics of the Impossible in the “How to Build a Starship” episode. He has also appeared in three episodes of the Science Channel series Exodus Earth. He is the author of Rescue Mode, coauthored with Ben Bova, as well as Back to the Moon and On to the Asteroid, both coauthored with Travis S. Taylor. He is the coeditor of the science/science fiction collection Going Interstellar.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The spirit of Arthur C. Clarke and his contemporaries is alive and well in Johnson's old-fashioned first-contact novel, set in 2068. After Dr. Chris Holt discovers an anomalous object in the solar system, he is swept into a multinational mission, first to the artifact and then to Saturn's tiny moon Methone , where alien intelligences dwell. The aliens, drawn to both his knowledge of science and his "difference in thinking" (clearly described but never named as autism), deliberately select him as the human ambassador and teach him about the ancient makers and destroyers who roam the universe to support or obliterate sentient life. Humans, on edge from the discovery of extraterrestrial life, may end up doing the destroyers' work for them. What begins as a straightforward and fairly predictable story eventually becomes more developed. Johnson, a NASA space scientist, includes plenty of realistic detail and puts fun new spins on familiar alien concepts, though it takes a while to get through the familiar material and on to the more novel elements. There's a great deal here for fans of early hard SF.
