Neptune

by Ben Bova

Overview

Hugo Award winner Ben Bova continues his grand tour of the human settled solar system with a fan-pleasing look at life in the Outer Planets, among the moons of Neptune.

In the future, humanity has spread throughout the solar system, on planets and moons once visited only by robots or explored at a distance by far-voyaging spacecraft. No matter how hostile or welcoming the environment, mankind has forged a path and found a home.

In the far reaches of the solar system, the outer planets—billions of miles from Earth, unknown for millennia—are being settled. Neptune, the ice giant, is swathed in clouds of hydrogen, helium, and methane and circled by rings of rock and dust. Three years ago, Ilona Magyr’s father, Miklos, disappeared while exploring the seas of Neptune. Everyone believes he is dead—crushed, frozen, or boiled alive in Neptune’s turbulent seas.

With legendary space explorer Derek Humbolt piloting her ship and planetary scientist Jan Meitner guiding the search, Ilona Magyr knows she will find her father—alive—on Neptune.

Her plans are irrevocably altered when she and her team discover the wreckage of an alien ship deep in Neptune’s ocean, a discovery which changes humanity’s understanding of its future…and its past.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250296641
Publisher:	Tor Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/17/2021
Series:	Outer Planets Trilogy , #2
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	370,639
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Ben Bova (1932-2020) was the author of more than a hundred works of science fact and fiction, including Able One, Transhuman, Orion, the Star Quest Trilogy, and the Grand Tour novels, including Titan, winner of John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year. His many honors include the Isaac Asimov Memorial Award in 1996, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation in 2005, and the Robert A. Heinlein Award “for his outstanding body of work in the field of literature” in 2008.

Dr. Bova was 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. His writings predicted the Space Race of the 1960s, virtual reality, human cloning, the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars), electronic book publishing, and much more.

In addition to his literary achievements, Bova worked for Project Vanguard, America’s first artificial satellite program, and for Avco Everett Research Laboratory, the company that created the heat shields for Apollo 11, helping the NASA astronauts land on the moon. He also taught science fiction at Harvard University and at New York City’s Hayden Planetarium and worked with such filmmakers as George Lucas and Gene Roddenberry.

Ben Bova (1932-2020) was the author of more than a hundred works of science fact and fiction, including Able One, Transhuman, Orion, the Star Quest Trilogy, and the Grand Tour novels, including Titan, winner of John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year. His many honors include the Isaac Asimov Memorial Award in 1996, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation in 2005, and the Robert A. Heinlein Award “for his outstanding body of work in the field of literature” in 2008.

Dr. Bova was 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. His writings predicted the Space Race of the 1960s, virtual reality, human cloning, the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars), electronic book publishing, and much more.

In addition to his literary achievements, Bova worked for Project Vanguard, America’s first artificial satellite program, and for Avco Everett Research Laboratory, the company that created the heat shields for Apollo 11, helping the NASA astronauts land on the moon. He also taught science fiction at Harvard University and at New York City’s Hayden Planetarium and worked with such filmmakers as George Lucas and Gene Roddenberry.

Editorial Reviews

06/07/2021

Hugo Award–winner Bova (1932–2020) isn’t at his best in the second novel of his Outer Planets trilogy (after 2020’s Uranus); the inventiveness that marked the author’s strongest books is absent in a volume that ends up feeling like a lengthy tease. Ilona Magyr is determined to travel to Neptune on a deeply personal mission: her father, Baron Miklos Magyr, embarked on an expedition to explore that planet’s oceans, and after three years of silence, he’s been presumed dead by everyone but Ilona. She finances a trip to search for him, accompanied only by two men who both have a romantic interest in her, scientist Jan Meitner and capt. Derek Humbolt, “known throughout the worlds as the most fearless, most competent, boldest explorer of them all.” Their journey to the bottom of Neptune’s oceans proves unexpectedly hazardous as they encounter new life-forms that consider them potentially edible. What they discover about Ilona’s father sets the stage for an even greater challenge, but Bova doesn’t make humanity’s response to that challenge plausible, and his imagined Neptunian life isn’t particularly creative. The same plotline has been done better by authors like Jack McDevitt. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly