Firstborn

Overview

The Firstborn-the mysterious race of aliens who first became known to science fiction fans as the builders of the iconic black monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey-have inhabited legendary master of science fiction Sir Arthur C. Clarke's writing for decades. With Time's Eye and Sunstorm, the first two books in their acclaimed Time Odyssey series, Clarke and his brilliant co-author Stephen Baxter imagined a near-future in which the Firstborn seek to stop the advance of human civilization by employing a technology indistinguishable from magic.

Their first act was the Discontinuity, in which Earth was carved into sections from different eras of history, restitched into a patchwork world, and renamed Mir. Mir's inhabitants included such notables as Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and United Nations peacekeeper Bisesa Dutt. For reasons unknown to her, Bisesa entered into communication with an alien artifact of inscrutable purpose and godlike power-a power that eventually returned her to Earth. There, she played an instrumental role in humanity's race against time to stop a doomsday event: a massive solar storm triggered by the alien Firstborn designed to eradicate all life from the planet. That fate was averted at an inconceivable price. Now, twenty-seven years later, the Firstborn are back.

This time, they are pulling no punches: They have sent a "quantum bomb." Speeding toward Earth, it is a device that human scientists can barely comprehend, that cannot be stopped or destroyed-and one that will obliterate Earth.

Bisesa's desperate quest for answers sends her first to Mars and then to Mir, which is itself threatened with extinction. The end seems inevitable. But as shocking new insights emerge into the nature of the Firstborn and their chilling plans for mankind, an unexpected ally appears from light-years away.

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Author Information

Bio of Arthur C. Clarke

A sense of the cosmic underlies much of Arthur C. Clarke's (1917-2008) fiction and manifests in a variety of forms: the computer accelerated working out of prophecy in "The Nine Billion Names of God," the sentient telecommunications network given the spark of life in "Dial F for Frankenstein"; and the mysterious extraterrestrial overseers guiding human destiny in the novelization of his screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey. Clarke's best known story, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and its sequels 2010: Odyssey Two; 2061: Odyssey Three and 3001: Final Odyssey represents the culmination of ideas on man's place in the universe introduced in his 1951 story, "The Sentinel," and elaborated more fully in Childhood's End, his elegiac novel on humankind's maturation as a species and ascent to a greater purpose in the universal scheme. Clarke grounds the cosmic mystery of these stories in hard science. Degreed in physics and mathematics, Clarke was contributor to numerous scientific journals and first proposed the idea for the geosynchronous orbiting communications satellite in 1945. Some of his best known work centers around the solution of a scientific problem or enigma. A Fall of Moondust tells of efforts to rescue a ship trapped under unusual conditions on the lunar surface. The Fountains of Paradise concerns the engineering problems encountered building an earth elevator to supply orbiting space stations. His Hugo and Nebula Award winning A Rendezvous with Rama extrapolated his solid scientific inquiry into provocative new territory, telling of the human discovery of an apparently abandoned alien space ship and human attempts to understand its advanced scientific principles. Clarke's other novels include Prelude to Space, The Sands of Mars, Earthlight, Imperial Earth, and The Deep Range, a futuristic exploration of undersea life in terms similar to his speculations on space travel. He has written the novels Islands in the Sky and Dolphin Island for young readers, and his short fiction has been collected in Expedition to Earth, Reach for Tomorrow, Tales from the White Hart, The Wind from the Sun, and others. His numerous books of non fiction include his award winning The Exploration of Space, and the autobiographical Astounding Days. Clarke was officially knighted by the Queen of England in 2000.

Bio of Stephen Baxter

Stephen Baxter is a trained engineer with degrees from Cambridge and Southampton Universities. Baxter is the acclaimed author of the Manifold novels and Evolution. He is the winner of the British Science Fiction Award, the Locus Award, the John W. Campbell Award, and the Philip K. Dick Award, as well as being a nominee for an Arthur C. Clarke Award.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Del Rey

Filesize

1.34 MB

Number of Pages

384

eBook ISBN

9780345504487