Sunstorm

by Stephen Baxter; Arthur C. Clarke

This hard SF collaboration between Sir Arthur Clarke and Stephen Baxter, set in Clarke's 2001 series universe, is the second and final volume in the Time Odyssey duology. Bisesa Dutt has spent five years on an alternate version of Earth, a bizarre patchwork of people and places snatched from different time periods. Now, in the year 2037, the aliens known as the Firstborn have returned her to her London home. Meanwhile, a massive solar flare strikes the Earth, and scientists realize that it is merely the precursor of a far more devastating outpouring of solar energy that will destroy all life. Can the nations of the world unite in time to protect themselves from the flare? And will the Firstborn let them do it?

Editions of Sunstorm

	ISBN 9780345452511	Binding/Format Paperback	Publisher Del Rey	Date 2006	Price $1.00	Good
	ISBN 9780345452504	Binding/Format Hardcover	Publisher Ballantine Books	Date 2005	Price $1.00	Good

Publisher Notes

When Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the greatest science fiction writer ever, teams up with award-winning author Stephen Baxter, who shares Clarke’s bold vision of a future where technology and humanism advance hand in hand, the result is bound to be a book of stellar ambition and accomplishment. Such was the case with Time’s Eye. Now, in the highly anticipated sequel, Clarke and Baxter draw their epic to a triumphant conclusion that is as mind-blowing as anything in Clarke’s famous Space Odyssey series.

SUNSTORM

Returned to the Earth of 2037 by the Firstborn, mysterious beings of almost limitless technological prowess, Bisesa Dutt is haunted by the memories of her five years spent on the strange alternate Earth called Mir, a jigsaw-puzzle world made up of lands and people cut out of different eras of Earth’s history. Why did the Firstborn create Mir? Why was Bisesa taken there and then brought back on the day after her original disappearance?

Bisesa’s questions receive a chilling answer when scientists discover an anomaly in the sun’s core–an anomaly that has no natural cause is evidence of alien intervention over two thousand years before. Now plans set in motion millennia ago by inscrutable watchers light-years away are coming to fruition in a sunstorm designed to scour the Earth of all life in a bombardment of deadly radiation.

Thus commences a furious race against a ticking solar time bomb. But even now, as apocalypse looms, cooperation is not easy for the peoples and nations of the Earth. Religious and political differences threaten to undermine every effort.

And all the while, the Firstborn are watching...

Media Reviews

"[W]ill especially appeal to fans of hard SF who appreciate well-grounded science and a humans with a can-do attitude to problem solving....[T]he focus on the enormously challenging task at hand will keep readers turning the pages."

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