Orbital Cloud

by Taiyo Fujii

Overview

The global war on terror has a new front—the very edge of outer space.

In the year 2020, Kazumi Kimura, proprietor of shooting star forecast website Meteor News, notices some suspicious orbiting space debris. Rumors spread online that the debris is actually an orbital weapon targeting the International Space Station. Halfway across the world, at NORAD, Staff Sergeant Daryl Freeman begins his own investigation of the threat. At the same time, billionaire entrepreneur Ronnie Smark and his journalist daughter prepare to check in to an orbital hotel as part of a stunt promoting private space tourism. Then Kazumi receives highly sensitive, and potentially explosive, information from a genius Iranian scientist. And so begins an unprecedented international battle against space-based terror that will soon involve the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, NORAD, and the CIA.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421592138
Publisher:	Haikasoru
Publication date:	03/21/2017
Series:	Orbital Cloud , #1
Pages:	528
Sales rank:	962,161
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Taiyo Fujii was born in Amami Oshima Island—that is, between Kyushu and Okinawa. He’s done work for stage design, desktop publishing, exhibition graphic design, and software development.

In 2012, Fujii self-published Gene Mapper serially in a digital format of his own design, and it became Amazon.co.jp’s number one Kindle best seller of that year. The novel was revised and republished in both print and digital as Gene Mapper—full build—by Hayakawa Publishing in 2013 and was nominated for the Nihon SF Taisho Award and the Seiun Award. His second novel, Orbital Cloud, won the 2014 Nihon SF Taisho Award and the Seiun Award, and took first prize in the “Best SF of 2014” in SF Magazine. His recent works include Underground Market and Bigdata Connect.

Editorial Reviews

05/08/2017
Fujii’s second novel (after Gene Mapper) disappoints by saddling a clever and inventive science fictional element with a cast of implausible characters and a poorly realized setting. In 2020, just as Elon Musk–like billionaire Ronnie Smark becomes the first private space tourist at his orbital hotel, an inexplicable cloud of debris begins to threaten objects in orbit. It’s first spotted by Kazumi Kimura, a meteor forecast blogger with a gift for calculating orbital trajectories in his head. The cloud sets off an international effort to discover its nature and protect the future of space exploration. The space tether technology at the center of the story is a compelling idea likely to appeal to fans of hard science fiction, but many readers will find it hard to endure the plot twists powered by inexplicable character actions, inaccuracies and implausibilities in setting details, and awkwardly cheesy inspirational speeches at the conclusion. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

This book will thrill and delight readers with its tight plotting and brilliant scientific speculation, and it describes the space enthusiast community with a level of authenticity and passion seldom seen in fiction. One of the best hard SF novels of the year."

Ken Liu

"Fujii challenges us to look into the future and consider how the Earth as a whole will confront space exploration and the possibilities of colonization and resource extraction on other planets. Orbital Cloud is the speculative fiction for the twenty-first-century that I look forward to reading."

Strange Horizons

"Taiyo Fujii has set the bar for all near-future sci-fi thrillers exceptionally high."

B&N Sci-Fi/Fantasy

"Fujii's science fiction tale is almost entirely low-orbit — rather than deep space — but he covers this fascinating terrain well, including all the issues of the objects circling up there, and the dangers of debris. The science — from the telescope work to the tethers and the functioning of the space hotel — is quite well-presented, Fujii's fascination with low and high tech and their possibilities fully pays off here."

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