Showing results by author "Ben Bova" in All Categories

A group of scientists and other space travelers face life-or-death decisions after their spacecraft is damaged by fire.

A powerful world government has scientists transported from an overpopulated earth to a satellite on the eve of their discovery of a method to modify the human embryo.

The surface of Venus is the most hellish place in the solar system, its ground hot enough to melt aluminum, its air pressure high enough to crush spacecraft landers like tin cans, its atmosphere a choking mix of poisonous gases. This is where the frail young Van Humphries must go—or die trying.

We’ve found another Earthlike planet, but what secrets does it hold? The entire world is thrilled by the discovery of a new, Earthlike planet. Advance imaging shows that the planet has oceans of water and a breathable, oxygen-rich atmosphere. Eager to learn more, an exploration team is soon dispatched to explore the planet, now nicknamed New Earth.

Dr. Jake Ross came to Washington to make a difference. As the science advisor to a newly elected freshman senator, Jake has crafted a comprehensive energy plan that employs innovative new technologies to make America the world's leader in energy production while simultaneously boosting the economy and protecting the environment.

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.

Telescopes on Earth have detected an Earth-sized planet circling a star some 30 light-years away. Now the race is on to get pictures of that distant world that show whether or not the planet is truly like Earth - and if it bears life. Farside observatory will have the largest optical telescope in the solar system and the most sensitive radio telescope, insulated from the interference of Earth’s radio chatter by a thousand kilometers of the moon’s solid body. But building Farside is a complex, dangerous task. And what they ultimately find stuns everyone, and humanity will never be the same.

At the end of the Cretaceous Period, Earth is in the grip of the dinosaurs. Their leader is a reptile, worshipped by the Egyptians as a powerful god for thousands of years. His mission is to destroy the Creators - Orion's masters - and rule the planet.

Dr. Jake Ross came to Washington to try to make a difference, but he's learned the only way to get something done in Washington, assuming your ideals survive the corrosive atmosphere, is to gather power. Ross has gathered a great deal riding in the wake of Frank Tomlinson. But now Tomlinson has decided to shoot for the moon. If they win, they get it all. If they lose, the game is over for Jake Ross.

John O'Ryan is Orion - more than human, less than a god, cast away on the seas of Time to do battle among the Creators for the future of mankind. Now the eternal warrior finds himself separated from his great love, Anya, and marooned in Macedonia under the reign of Phillip - fighting alongside the young Alexander, and at the mercy of a Queen Olympias who is far more than she seems.

Island One is a celestial utopia, and David Adams is its most perfect creation - a man with a brain as advanced as any computer and a body free of human frailties. But David is a prisoner - a captive of the colony that created him - destined to spend the days of his life in an island-sized cylinder that circles a doomed and desperate home planet. Thousands of miles below him, a world trembles; its people cringe in terror and despair in anticipation of an impending apocalypse. And fate has cast one extraordinary human in the role of savior.

With the Death Wave no longer a threat to humanity, humans have spread out and colonized all the worlds of the solar system. The technology of the Predecessors has made Earth a paradise, at least on the surface. But a policy of exiling discontented young people to the outer planets and asteroid mines has led to a deep divide between the new worlds and the homeworld, and those tensions are about to explode into open war.

In his first-ever adventure, Sam Gunn Jr. sets off to fulfill his father’s left-behind mission of interplanetary enterprising. He soon learns his father’s shoes are tough to fill, but he is up for the task. Junior takes a journey through the stars, falling in love with beautiful women and leaving his unique mark everywhere he ventures. Soon, however, this trip through the universe takes a dangerous turn when Junior lands on Saturn and learns about a recent scientific discovery that will change everything, possibly forever.

Imagine a machine that would end all wars and bloodshed. A machine that can create a virtual world so real, so complete, where all conflicts are waged, but where no one ever dies or gets hurt. The dueling machine is just that...until a madman dictator of a small empire finds a way to bend virtual reality to his will - and uses the dueling machine to take over the galaxy! It's up to the machine's creator and a rather inept Star Watchman to discover the plan and stop it.

When a nuclear missile launched by a rogue North Korean faction explodes in space, the resulting shock wave destroys most of the world’s satellites, throwing global communication into chaos. U.S. military satellites, designed to withstand such an assault, show that two more missiles are sitting on launch pads in North Korea, ready to be deployed. Faced with the threat of a thermonuclear attack, the United States has only one possible defense: Able One.

In the future as Bova here imagines it, Earth is an ecological nightmare, and humanity may well go the way of the dinosaurs. But overhead orbits salvation. A vast metallic island in space, the Trikon station conducts genetic research too risky to be done on earth - research that could save the planet.

Some see stem-cell research as mankind’s greatest scientific breakthrough; others, a blasphemous attempt to play God. Suddenly, the possibility of immortality exists. Two brothers, both doctors, stand on opposite sides of the controversy. To Arthur Marshak, his work is a momentous gift to humanity. To Jesse Marshak, it is a curse. And between them stands a beautiful, remarkable woman that both brothers will do anything to save.

Here are tales of star-faring adventure, peril, and drama. Here are journeys into the mind-bending landscapes of virtual worlds and alternate realities. Here you'll also find stories of humanity's astounding future on Earth, on Mars, and in the solar system beyond - stories that always get the science right. And Bova's gathering of deeply realized, totally human characters are the heroic, brave, tricky, sometimes dastardly engineers, astronauts, corporate magnates, politicians, and scientists who will make these futures possible.

Frontiers can be found in all directions - frontiers of timeand space, as well as frontiers of courage, devotion, love, hate, and the outer limits of the human spirit. This outstanding collection of stories by one of science fiction's premier talents spans the length and breadth of history and the universe while exploring thought-provoking new ideas and dilemmas.

In Carbide Tipped Pens,over a dozen of today's most creative imaginations explore these frontiers, carrying on the grand tradition of such legendary masters as Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and John W. Campbell, while bringing hard science fiction into the 21st century by extrapolating from the latest scientific developments and discoveries.