Starfire (Bantam Spectra Book) - Softcover

Sheffield, Charles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553378945 ISBN 13: 9780553378948

Publisher: Bantam Books, 1999

Synopsis

The end draws nigh....

Earth has been ravaged by galactic disaster--but the real devastation is yet to come.

The year is 2053, and Earth has barely recovered from the Alpha Centauri supernova that destroyed much of the planet's infrastructure. Now the supernova's residual effect--a storm of high-energy particles--is racing toward Earth, and an international effort has been launched out of the Sky City space colony to save the planet. But the controversial plan--to build a giant protective shield for Earth--is falling dangerously behind schedule. A series of unexplained murders has disrupted the Sky City workforce, so much so that a brilliant but monstrous criminal has been enlisted to track down the Sky City killer.

Then comes more startling news. Evidence indicates that the original supernova was caused deliberately, and that the lethal particle storm will arrive sooner than anyone expected. But who--or what--tried to destroy the Earth? And will the answer come in time to save it from its final apocalypse?

About this title

Review:

The sky is falling--again. Following up on 1998's excellent Aftermath, Starfire subjects planet Earth to yet another cosmic blast from the Alpha Centauri supernova. But while the blast that hit Earth in Aftermath simply cooked the Southern hemisphere and knocked out unshielded technology with a flash of gamma rays, this wave promises to do some real damage, with a sleet of trillion-nuclei bundles moving at one-tenth the speed of light.

Warned by the first catastrophe, Earth began building an electromagnetic shield out of the orbiting Sky City station to divert the incoming apocalypse. But not only will the storm come earlier than expected, the carnage may be worse than anyone imagined--preliminary data shows that the supernova was no accident, and that the wave of particles may in fact be a beam. Crackerjack hard-SF author Charles Sheffield brings back much of the cast of Aftermath for this suspenseful, well-paced follow-up, the two most satisfying returnees being sociopath-savant Oliver Guest and his former patient Seth Parsigian. In the book's subplot, the brilliant Guest and gruff Parsigian must team up to solve a string of grisly child murders on Sky City that threatens to push the shield project even further behind schedule. --Paul Hughes

From the Back Cover:

"Stunning extrapolations and tense maneuvers; an engrossing high-tech apocalypse."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Charles Sheffield is one of the very best hard science fiction writers in the world."
--Kim Stanley Robinson

"Sheffield clothes the most advanced speculations of modern science in alluring forms of beauty and danger."
--The Washington Post Book World

Be sure not to miss Charles Sheffield's previous novels:

Tomorrow and Tomorrow:

"This is science fiction in the grand tradition: ambitious, elegiac and ultimately satisfying."
--San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle

"Shares Verne's spirit of scientific adventure that has taken men and women to the bottom of the sea and the other side of the moon and will someday take them to the end of the universe...This is truly a love story of the ages."
--The Orlando Sentinel

Aftermath:

"One of Sheffield's most cleverly plotted and vigorously entertaining works to date."
--Locus

"A major novel from one of the most consistently entertaining writers in the field."
--Science Fiction Chronicle

"Professionally handled and ingeniously extrapolated."
--Kirkus Reviews

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam Books
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0553378945
• ISBN 13: 9780553378948
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416