Solar Express

by L. E. Modesitt Jr. Narrated by Robert Fass

Overview

You can't militarize space. This one rule has led to decades of peaceful development of space programs worldwide. However, increasing resource scarcity and a changing climate on Earth's surface is causing some interested parties to militarize, namely India, the North American Union, and the Sinese Federation.


The discovery of a strange artifact by Dr. Alayna Wong precipitates a crisis. What appears to be a hitherto undiscovered comet is soon revealed to be an alien structure on a cometary trajectory toward the sun. Now there is a race between countries to see who can study and control the artifact dubbed the "Solar Express" before it perhaps destroys itself.


Leading the way for the North American Union is Alayna's friend Captain Christopher Tavoian, one of the first shuttle pilots to be trained for combat in space. But, as the alien craft gets closer to its destination, it begins to alter the surface of the sun in strange new ways, ways that could lead Alayna to revolutionary discoveries-provided that Chris can prevent war from breaking out as he navigates among the escalating tensions between nations.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

09/21/2015
Alayna Wong-Grant, lone astrophysicist at a telescopic array on the dark side of the Moon, spots an object moving in a cometary orbit but with unnatural properties, including high reflectivity and traces of silver. Capt. Chris Tavoian, a Moon-based military pilot and Alayna’s pen pal, volunteers for a hazardous mission to pilot a short-range spacecraft to the object. The object initially gets the unlikely official classification of asteroid, but as it gets closer to the sun—and speeds up, hence being named Solar Express—Alayna and Chris realize it is something much stranger. They need to join forces to figure out its secrets and keep Chris alive on his mission. Modesitt, better known for his epic fantasy (the Saga of Recluce), approaches the story slowly and methodically, revealing only tiny pieces at a time. The Solar Express itself is less interesting than Alayna and Chris’s letters to each other and their back-and-forth over the object, but there’s sufficient mystery and plenty of solid science. (Nov.)

From the Publisher

A tale set a century from now that is unlike anything he has written before...This is a quiet tale of normal scientists working with a strange object... I found the tale fascinating.” —Philadelphia Free Press

“Solid science and careful world-building.” —io9

“Anyone that enjoys a rousing tale of action and adventure will enjoy this tale. There is also a vibe of classic space adventure with a puzzle waiting to be solved and human nature and curiosity is as great a threat as the natural forces and rival nations.” —SF Revu

“A quick and enthralling read.” —Daily Kos

“Tor/Forge Books and NASA created NASA-Inspired Works of Fiction (NIWoF), a series of books centered on the concepts pertinent to the current and future work of NASA. ... They are encouraging space exploration and potential resource discoveries that exist a bit closer to home. Modesitt has a great ability for weaving real-life science into compelling adventures and understands the technology needed to turn dreams into reality. I cannot say enough about the author's writing and skill in drawing the reader into this book.” —The Nameless Zine

From the Publisher - AUDIO COMMENTARY

"Narrator Robert Fass takes a steady, deliberate approach in delivering the events that ensue when an apparently indestructible alien artifact dives like a comet towards the sun." —AudioFile

MARCH 2016 - AudioFile

With this audiobook, listeners will enjoy the long-distance love story as much as the technically savvy science fiction. Narrator Robert Fass takes a steady, deliberate approach in delivering the events that ensue when an apparently indestructible (but damaged) alien artifact dives like a comet towards the sun. His friendly, American, middle-range voice offers slight but recognizable differentiation between the characters. As newscasts are interspersed throughout the chapters, Fass treats them like any other text. Earth’s governments are in their usual uproar, and the militarization of space is a real possibility. The subplots have been done before, but here the science is current, with an extrapolation or two. But people are still people, and aliens are . . . something else, evidently. Or—are they? D.R.W. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2015-08-18
Prolific author Modesitt returns to science fiction with a tale of space exploration. On a version of Earth about a century from now, Dr. Alayna Wong-Grant, a researcher at a remote radio telescope site, discerns a distant object in the sky. Although she initially believes it to be a comet, as it approaches, she finds it's a massive asteroid, made of nickel and iron. On Earth, resources have dwindled to nearly nothing, and nations jostle for their share of what remains. Capturing and refining this asteroid would ensure the dominance of whoever reaches it first, and the North American Union selects Capt. Christopher Tavoian, Alayna's friend, for a solo space mission. But as the asteroid races toward our sun, Alayna discovers it's no naturally occurring phenomenon—whatever's coming was definitely created by someone, somewhere. Much of the novel unfolds in an almost epistolary style, relaying messages between Alayna on the ground and Tavoian in space, while the alien artifact draws ever closer and begins to affect life on Earth in unexpected ways. Even by the standards of hard science-fiction novels, which cherish the technical aspects of their worlds, every page of this book is heaving with needless details. From the opening paragraph, which recounts a radio telescope's full capabilities as well as its construction history, to the uninspired and unneeded epilogue, nothing about the world or how it works has been left to the reader's imagination. Even the spaces between chapters are taken over with fabricated news articles which impede the flow of the story far more than they add to it. For all the realistic detail, the people come across as inauthentic, barely human. Despite subplots centering on their families, characters' inner thoughts go largely unexplored, leaving them to express feelings through a baffling semaphore of facial expressions, such as "she smiled wryly, but fondly" or "she frowned for a moment, then smiled, if ironically." For fans only.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171125271
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	11/03/2015
Edition description:	Unabridged

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