Death Wave

by Ben Bova

Overview

Six-time Hugo Award winner Ben Bova chronicles the saga of humankind's expansion beyond the solar system in Death Wave

In the precursor to the Star Quest Trilogy, New Earth, Jordan Kell led the first human mission beyond the solar system. 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.

The Star Quest Trilogy
#1 Death Wave
#2 Apes and Angels

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250783547
Publisher:	Tor Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/02/2016
Series:	Star Quest Trilogy , #1
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

BEN BOVA is the author of more than a hundred works of science fact and fiction, including Able One, Leviathans of Jupiter and the Grand Tour novels, including Titan, winner of John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation in 2005, and in 2008 he won the Robert A. Heinlein Award "for his outstanding body of work in the field of literature." He is President Emeritus of the National Space Society and a past president of Science Fiction Writers of America, and a former editor of Analog and former fiction editor of Omni. As an editor, he won science fiction's Hugo Award six times. Dr. Bova's writings have predicted the Space Race of the 1960s, virtual reality, human cloning, the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars), electronic book publishing, and much more. He lives in Florida.

Editorial Reviews

11/23/2015
This unpolished sequel to New Earth brings space traveler Jordan Kell back to his native soil. Isolated on his return to Earth and protected by a World Council security team, Kell finds Earth changed in his absence, but not changed enough. The aged and wealthy still exert control over the young and aimless. As Kell urges his fellow humans to become interstellar heroes, the World Council tries to tighten its grip on humanity's destiny. Many of the characters are more types than individuals, representing ideals instead of fully developed people with their own consistent motivations. The settings and culture are vividly rendered, though the composition relies heavily on repetition. The last third of the book loses steam as Bova applies the brakes on adventure, instead using coincidence and absurdity to arrive at a risible conclusion. There is talk of grand space odysseys but none of the promised thrills. The reader who continues trudging through this final section will reach a satisfying but contrived and somewhat unearned conclusion. Agent: Barbara Bova, Barbara Bova Literary. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

2015-08-30
Sequel to New Earth (2013), in which humans explored a planet orbiting the star Sirius that turned out to be inhabited. By human-aliens. After a voyage lasting 80 years, diplomat Jordan Kell and his team reached New Earth to learn that the world was built by machine intelligences known as the Predecessors and populated by them with a human species created from Earth DNA. With their advanced science, the Predecessors learned of a vast explosion in the galactic core that has caused a lethal sphere of gamma radiation to expand through the galaxy, killing all life it touches. Jordan and his New Earther wife, Aditi, returned in cryogenic suspension to Earth. Though the Death Wave won't reach Earth for 2,000 years and New Earth scientists have developed shields against it, many other intelligent but pre-technological species won't survive—unless Jordan and Aditi can persuade the World Council to build starships and go help them. Unfortunately, Anita Halleck, the ruthless and more-or-less immortal Council chair, dreams of controlling all the far-flung, independent-minded settlements scattered throughout the solar system and ruling them forever. If Jordan swings public opinion to his side, Halleck's imperial ambitions will be finished. So, she reasons, she must find a way to shut the star travelers up. Permanently. Most of the book, then, details the twists and turns of a political battle that's several surprises short of intriguing and conducted in slow motion with rubber knives. Bova supplies sufficient fresh detail to keep things from going catatonic, but the jury's still out on whether he's showing us a human society that's finally beginning to mature or one that's yawning and stretching before bedtime. Not the best entry in this long and uneven series, but regulars won't want to give up the habit now.

Kirkus Reviews