Titan
From the six-time Hugo Award–winning author—humanity’s future rests in the hands of team of Earth colonists orbiting Saturn in this science fiction saga.

2095. After long months of travel, the gigantic colony ship Goddard has at last made orbit around Saturn, carrying a population of more than 10,000 dissidents, rebels, extremists, and visionaries seeking a new life. Among Goddard’s missions is the study of Titan, which offers the tantalizing possibility that life may exist amid its windswept islands and chill black seas.

When the exploration vessel Titan Alpha mysteriously fails after reaching the moon’s surface, long buried tensions surface among the colonists. Eduoard Urbain, the mission’s chief scientist, is wracked with anxiety and despair as he sees his life’s work unravel. Malcolm Eberly, Goddard’schief administrator, takes ruthless measures to hold onto power as a rash of suspicious incidents threaten to undermine his authority. Holly Lane, the colony’s human-resources director, must confront the station’s powerful leaders to protect the lives of its people. And retired astronaut Manuel Gaeta is forced to risk his life in a last, desperate attempt to salvage the lost probe.

Torn by intrigue, sabotage, and an awesome discovery that could threaten human space exploration, a handful of courageous men and women must fight for the survival of their colony, and for the future of humanity. . . .

Praise for Titan

“Clicks along like a well-oiled machine: smooth, precise and reliable, inching Bova’s grand design forward another notch or two.” —Kirkus Reviews

“The solidly hypothesized science enthralls.” —Publishers Weekly
1100357787
Titan
From the six-time Hugo Award–winning author—humanity’s future rests in the hands of team of Earth colonists orbiting Saturn in this science fiction saga.

2095. After long months of travel, the gigantic colony ship Goddard has at last made orbit around Saturn, carrying a population of more than 10,000 dissidents, rebels, extremists, and visionaries seeking a new life. Among Goddard’s missions is the study of Titan, which offers the tantalizing possibility that life may exist amid its windswept islands and chill black seas.

When the exploration vessel Titan Alpha mysteriously fails after reaching the moon’s surface, long buried tensions surface among the colonists. Eduoard Urbain, the mission’s chief scientist, is wracked with anxiety and despair as he sees his life’s work unravel. Malcolm Eberly, Goddard’schief administrator, takes ruthless measures to hold onto power as a rash of suspicious incidents threaten to undermine his authority. Holly Lane, the colony’s human-resources director, must confront the station’s powerful leaders to protect the lives of its people. And retired astronaut Manuel Gaeta is forced to risk his life in a last, desperate attempt to salvage the lost probe.

Torn by intrigue, sabotage, and an awesome discovery that could threaten human space exploration, a handful of courageous men and women must fight for the survival of their colony, and for the future of humanity. . . .

Praise for Titan

“Clicks along like a well-oiled machine: smooth, precise and reliable, inching Bova’s grand design forward another notch or two.” —Kirkus Reviews

“The solidly hypothesized science enthralls.” —Publishers Weekly
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Titan

Titan

by Ben Bova
Titan

Titan

by Ben Bova

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Overview

From the six-time Hugo Award–winning author—humanity’s future rests in the hands of team of Earth colonists orbiting Saturn in this science fiction saga.

2095. After long months of travel, the gigantic colony ship Goddard has at last made orbit around Saturn, carrying a population of more than 10,000 dissidents, rebels, extremists, and visionaries seeking a new life. Among Goddard’s missions is the study of Titan, which offers the tantalizing possibility that life may exist amid its windswept islands and chill black seas.

When the exploration vessel Titan Alpha mysteriously fails after reaching the moon’s surface, long buried tensions surface among the colonists. Eduoard Urbain, the mission’s chief scientist, is wracked with anxiety and despair as he sees his life’s work unravel. Malcolm Eberly, Goddard’schief administrator, takes ruthless measures to hold onto power as a rash of suspicious incidents threaten to undermine his authority. Holly Lane, the colony’s human-resources director, must confront the station’s powerful leaders to protect the lives of its people. And retired astronaut Manuel Gaeta is forced to risk his life in a last, desperate attempt to salvage the lost probe.

Torn by intrigue, sabotage, and an awesome discovery that could threaten human space exploration, a handful of courageous men and women must fight for the survival of their colony, and for the future of humanity. . . .

Praise for Titan

“Clicks along like a well-oiled machine: smooth, precise and reliable, inching Bova’s grand design forward another notch or two.” —Kirkus Reviews

“The solidly hypothesized science enthralls.” —Publishers Weekly

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781429910620
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group
Publication date: 05/01/2024
Series: Grand Tour Series , #10
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 433
Sales rank: 139,217
File size: 725 KB

About the Author

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.

Read an Excerpt



Titan




By Bova, Ben


Tor Books



Copyright © 2006

Bova, Ben

All right reserved.


ISBN: 0765304139




Chapter One
 
24 DECEMBER 2095:
ON THE SHORE OF THE METHANE SEA
 
It was nearly dawn on Titan. The thick listless wind slithered like an oily beast slowly awakening from a troubled sleep, moaning, lumbering across the frozen land. The sky was a grayish orange, heavy with sluggish clouds; the distant Sun was nothing more than a feeble ember of dull red light smoldering faintly along the horizon. No stars in that smog-laden sky, no lightning to break the darkness; only the slightest hint of a faint glow betrayed where the giant planet Saturn rode high above.
 
The ice-covered sea was dark, too, with a brittle, cracked coating of black hydrocarbon slush that surged fitfully against the low bluffs that hemmed it in. At their bases the bluffs were ridged, showing where the feeble tides had risen and then fallen back: risen and ebbed, in the inexorable cadence that had persisted for eons. In the distance a methane storm slowly marched across the sea, scattering crystals of black hydrocarbon tholins like a blanket of inkdrops swirling closer, closer.
 
A promontory of ice suddenly crumbled under the relentless etching of the sea, sliding into the black waves with a roar that no ear heard, no eye saw. Slabs of frozen water slid into the sea, smashing the thin sheet of blackened ice atop it, frothing and bobbing in the water for a few moments beforethe open water began to freeze over once again. All became still and quiet once again, except for the low moan of the unhurried wind and the ceaseless surging of the waves. It was as if the promontory had never existed.
 
Titan rolled slowly in its stately orbit around the ringed planet Saturn just as it had for billions of years, as dark and benighted beneath its shroud of ruddy auburn clouds as a blind beggar groping his unlit circuit through a cold, pitiless universe.
 
But this slow dawn was different. A new kind of day was beginning.
 
A sudden thunderclap boomed across the ice-topped sea, so sharp and powerful that shards of ice snapped off the frozen bluffs and tumbled splashing into the dark crust below. A flash of light lit the clouds, casting an eerie orange glimmer over the shore of the sea.
 
Through the clouds descended a thing utterly alien, a massive oblong object that swayed gently beneath a billowing canopy. It descended slowly toward the rounded hillocks that edged the dark, turbid sea. As it neared the icy surface another flash of brilliant, searing light burst from beneath it with a roar that echoed off the ice mounds and across the wavelets of the murky sea. Then it settled slowly onto the uneven surface of one of the knolls, squatting heavily on four thick caterpillar treads as its parachute canopy sagged down to droop over its edge and halfway to the black encrusted sea.
 
The creatures living in the ice burrowed deeper to escape the alien monster. They had neither eyes nor ears but they were delicately sensitive to changes in pressure and temperature. The alien was hot, lethally hot, and so heavy that it sank through the soft surface mud and even cracked and powdered the underlying ice beneath its bulk. The ice creatures moved pitifully slowly; those directly beneath the massive alien were not fast enough to avoid being crushed and roasted by its residual heat. The others nearby wormed deeper into the ice as quickly as they could, blindly seeking to escape, to survive, to live.
 
Then the black tholin storm reached the cliffs and swirled over the alien monster. Silence returned to the shore of Titan's frigid sea.
 
Copyright 2006 by Ben Bova


Continues...




Excerpted from Titan
by Bova, Ben
Copyright © 2006 by Bova, Ben.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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