Outer Planets Trilogy

Ben Bova, author of Earth, continues his exploration of the future of a human-settled Solar System with the science fiction action-adventure Uranus. On a privately financed orbital habitat above the planet Uranus, political idealism conflicts with pragmatic - and illegal - methods of financing. Add a scientist who has funding to launch a probe deep into Uranus's ocean depths to search for signs of life, and you have a three-way struggle for control. Humans can't live on the gas giants, making instead a life in orbit. Kyle Umber, a religious idealist, has built Haven, a sanctuary above the distant planet Uranus. He invites "the tired, the sick, the poor" of Earth to his orbital retreat where men and women can find spiritual peace and refuge from the world. The billionaire who financed Haven, however, has his own designs: beyond the reach of the laws of the inner planets, Haven could become the center for an interplanetary web of narcotics, prostitution, and even hunting human prey. Meanwhile a scientist has gotten funding from the Inner Planets to drop remote probes into the "oceans" of Uranus, in search of life. He brings money and prestige, but he also brings journalists and government oversight to Haven. And they can't have that.

Hugo Award winner Ben Bova continues his grand tour of the human-settled solar system with a look at life in the Outer Planets, among the moons of Neptune. In the future, humanity has spread throughout the solar system, on planets and moons once visited only by robots or explored at a distance by far-voyaging spacecraft. No matter how hostile or welcoming the environment, mankind has forged a path and found a home. 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. With legendary space explorer Derek Humbolt piloting her ship and planetary scientist Jan Meitner guiding the search, Ilona Magyr knows she will find her father—alive—on Neptune. Her plans are irrevocably altered when she and her team discover the wreckage of an alien ship deep in Neptune's ocean, a discovery that changes humanity's understanding of its future... and its past.