eBook
English language
Published Jan. 3, 2003 by Random House Publishing Group.
The year is 2010. More than a century of ecological damage, industrial and technological expansion, and unchecked population growth has left the Earth on the brink of devastation. As the world's governments turn inward, one man dares to envision a bolder, brighter future. That man, Reid Malenfant, has a very different solution to the problems plaguing the planet: the exploration and colonization of space. Now Malenfant gambles the very existence of time on a single desperate throw of the dice. Battling national sabotage and international outcry, as apocalyptic riots sweep the globe, he builds a spacecraft and launches it into deep space. The odds are a trillion to one against him. Or are they?
What started off as a pretty dull, sub-Crichton, Space Cowboy type story turned into something much more compelling half way through. You need to persist past the near future 2010 and initially clunky technobabble but then pay-off is worth it; the same mind-bending stuff that Bear and Simmons regularly trade in.
