Synopses & Reviews
Five intrepid humans are paid one billion dollars each to risk a voyage into the upper atmosphere of Saturn in an attempt to convert atmospheric chemicals into fuel. The explorers make a shocking discovery when their ship crashlands on one of the huge flying creatures that live in Saturnian skies.
"One of science fiction's most imaginative authors and the most consistently amazing". -- Greg Bear
"He has fashioned an intellectual puzzle, pure and simple, with a wonderfully clever solution that blew my own tentative hypothesis sky-high". -- The New York Times on Camelot 30K
"The farthest-out concepts of science fiction may turn out to be scientific fact -- except that, as physicist Robert L. Forward shows us, the realities beggar the imagination". -- Poul Anderson
"This is a classic of the meticulous working out in story form of a highly sophisticated scientific concept -- a form of which Forward, at his best, is one of the outstanding exemplars. He is at his best here". -- Booklist on Camelot 30K
Review
"If you like hard SF in the Clement mode, you'll love this one."--
Analog"No one can beat Bob Forward at hard-core SF in the best Smith/Campbell tradition."--Arthur C. Clarke
"Forward's technological detail is imaginative, and as always, impeccable....This story engages with its strong science and fetching aliens."--Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
In the near future five intrepid men and women have been paid a billion dollars each to risk the first voyage into the upper atmosphere of Saturn. The goal: to convert atmospheric chemicals into fuel to power interplanetary spaceships.
But no one anticipates a crash landing on one of the enormous flying creatures known as rukhs that live in Saturn's atmosphere.