The Last Astronaut
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2020!
"A terrifying tour de force." --James Rollins
"Readers will be riveted." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Sally Jansen was NASA's leading astronaut, until a mission to Mars ended in disaster. Haunted by her failure, she lives in quiet anonymity, convinced her days in space are over.
She's wrong.
A large alien object has entered the solar system on a straight course toward Earth. It has made no attempt to communicate. Out of time and out of options, NASA turns to Jansen.
But as the object reveals its secrets, Jansen and her crew find themselves in a desperate struggle for survival -- against the cold vacuum of space, and something far, far worse...
"Breathless, compulsive reading." --Christopher Golden
"A suspenseful, fast-paced story of first contact." --Kirkus
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
“We thought we no longer needed her,” reads the tagline of this terrifying near-future alien contact tale. Astrophysicist Sally Jansen has been lying low since her ill-fated mission to Mars essentially rendered NASA obsolete. But with a noncommunicative UFO heading straight for Earth, the fallen heroine is given an epic opportunity for redemption. Author David Wellington ingeniously frames the story as a nonfictional account, complete with snippets of the characters’ top-secret government debriefing. This heightens the realism and ratchets up the tension—by the time we got to the book’s terrifying climax, we had every light in the house on.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wellington's terrifying exploration of near-future alien contact layers a shocking "what if" on the bones of current science and space exploration. Presented as a 2057 publication, the novel documents the encounter between the crew of the Orion 7, led by Cmdr. Sally Jansen, and the object dubbed 2I/2044 D1. Following the tragic events of the abortive 2034 Orion 6 Mars mission and the shuttering of the American space program, Jansen is largely retired. Then astrophysicist Sunny Stevens, a deep space researcher for a private corporation, makes the hugely significant discovery of 2I/2044 D1, an object that has altered course in an unnatural way and will come into alignment with Earth's orbit in six months. He brings this knowledge to the remnants of NASA, and Jansen is called back into action as the most eminently qualified leader, despite her remaining guilt and trauma from Orion 6. Gritting her teeth, she gathers her crew and sets out to see what intelligence is driving 2I/2044 D1 and what it portends for Earth. Within its lightless depths, the crew encounter bizarre and nightmarish creatures, and the tension and body count ratchet up. Wellington (The Cyclops Initiative) creates a gripping story that reveals its horrors one inexorable, plausible detail at a time. Readers will be riveted and will want to keep all the lights on.
Customer Reviews
Blah
Don’t waste your money on this book
I thought this author was good
Guess they can’t all be winners. Bored by 5% of the way in and had to move in.
Author has other good books. This was not one of them
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