Synopses & Reviews
A New Golden Age... or the Apocalypse?
The moon has suddenly acquired its own satellite: a two-mile-across starship that represents a hitherto unsuspected Galactic Commonwealth. The Fthk, a vaguely centaur-like member species for whom Earths ecology is hospitable, have been sent to evaluate humanity for prospective membership.
The Fthk are overtly friendly but very private -- Information is a trade good. As Earths scientists struggle to understand their secretive appraisers, odd inconsistencies emerge. As troubling as those anomalies is the re-emergence of a bit of insanity humanity thought it had outgrown: Cold War and nuclear saber-rattling.
The Galactics arrival may signify the start of a glorious new era, or it may presage the cataclysmic end of human civilization. Which outcome do the aliens really desire ...
And what will they do if humanity refuses to play its assigned role?
About the Author
Edward M. Lerner has degrees in physics and computer science. That education gained him access to such unsuspecting techie havens as Bell Labs and Hughes Aircraft, and even onto the space shuttle simulator at NASAs Johnson Space Center.
Probe, his first novel, was a space-oriented techno-thriller. His hard SF novel Moonstruck will be released in February 2005.
Hes made more than a dozen appearances in leading science fiction magazines. (A fan of Analog magazines Probability Zero department, with three contributions of his own, he claims the distinction of the first-and-only Probability One story: Unplanned-for Flying Object.)
His SF/mystery/telecom novelette Creative Destruction was anthologized in Years Best SF 7 and was the sole work of speculative fiction published in association with Telecom World 2003 (an event sponsored by the International Telecommunications Union, a UN agency).