To Fear the Light - Hardcover

Bova, Ben; Austin, A. J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312854498 ISBN 13: 9780312854492

Publisher: Tor Books, 1994

Synopsis

Two hundred years after beginning a quest to revive Earth's dying sun and thus preserve the base genetic stock from which galactic humanity sprang, Dr. Adela awakens from stasis and encounters the stagnant Empire government.

About this title

About the Author:

Born in Philadelphia, Ben Bova worked as a newspaper reporter, a technical editor for Project Vanguard (the first American satellite program), and a science writer and marketing manager for Avco Everett Research Laboratory, before being appointed editor of Analog, one of the leading science fiction magazines, in 1971. After leaving Analog in 1978, he continued his editorial work in science fiction, serving as fiction editor of Omni for several years and editing a number of anthologies and lines of books, including the "Ben Bova Presents" series for Tor. He has won science fiction's Hugo Award for Best Editor six times.

A published SF author from the late 1950s onward, Bova is one of the field's leading writers of "hard SF," science fiction based on plausible science and engineering. Among his dozens of novels are Millennium, The Kinsman Saga, Colony, Orion, Peacekeepers, Privateers, and the Voyagers series. Much of his recent work, including Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, The Precipice, and The Rock Rats, falls into the continuity he calls "The Grand Tour," a large-scale saga of the near-future exploration and development of our solar system.

A President Emeritus of the National Space Society and a past president of Science-fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, in 2001 Dr. Bova was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He lives in Naples, Florida, with his wife, the well-known literary agent Barbara Bova.

From Publishers Weekly:

This weak sequel to the authors' To Save the Sun tries to invoke the look and feel of old-time science fiction. Adela de Montgarde, creator of the prequel's eponymous project, is revived after 200 years of "cryosleep" to find that her son Eric is emperor of an intergalactic empire that has been rendered obsolete by "instantaneous communication" (which is a recurrent mantra of today's hard SF). Meanwhile, a man calling himself "Jephthah" disseminates hateful, chauvinistic propaganda through the increasingly balkanized human colonies. He targets first the alien Sarpans (who assisted on the project to save the dying Sun) and then another, apparently more primitive, alien race. There is a curious subplot about Aborigines and the need of their allegedly homogeneous society to maintain old ways. Billy Woorunmarra's attempt at an ethereal form of multiculturalism is, however, undermined by being presented with the same presumptuous narrative voice as the rest of the novel. There is little doubt where the authors' politically correct sympathies lie-the characters are more mouthpieces than beings-and the renderings, especially of Jephthah, make pedestrian several scenes that should have been interesting. It must be granted that the two authors have melded their voices well: the narrative has a single, strident tone.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Tor Books
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0312854498
• ISBN 13: 9780312854492
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352