Firestar
In the early years of the 21st century humanity has advanced step by slow step into space, but has discovered through constant monitoring of the heavens that certain asteroids have changed their orbits and are headed for horrifying impact with Earth. Urgent action is required, but politics and a worldwide financial crash get in the way. The members of the van Huyten family, led by matriarch Mariesa who heads the vast space industry complex she has spent her life developing, the Pooles with their computer and security expertise, many political movers and shakers and dedicated pilots and space travelers of all stripes must pull together to save humanity from disaster. From the government offices and factories of Earth, to the Low Earth Orbit station, to manufacturing facilities on the moon, all of space-going humanity is united in an epic effort to save the planet from certain destruction and a new Dark Age, or perhaps even the extinction of all life on Earth.
“At heart a romance of the high frontier, and its most gripping – and moving – parts depict the satisfactions, beauties, complexities, difficulties, and especially the dangers, of working in space . . . . Falling Stars is, even more than the earlier books of the series, a reworking of some of the motifs of Heinlein’s ‘The Man Who Sold the Moon,’ and like its illustrious ancestor, it is about not only vision but heroism and sacrifice. It’s old-fashioned, sentimental, and moving.” —Locus
