Ben Bova
1) Moonrise
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In the twenty-first century, the world is on the brink of a scientific renaissance, about to birth a future where space has become privatized and the moon transforms into a fertile commercial ground. As former astronaut Paul Stavenger works to turn a handful of abandoned government moon shelters into a full-fledged moonbase, powerful corporate lobbies align against him. Against the neo-Luddites is Masterson Aerospace, a company funding and creating...
2) Mars
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Grand tour of the solar system volume 4
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Jamie Waterman is a young Navaho geologist who is picked for the ground team of the first manned expedition to Mars. He will be joining an international team of astronauts and scientists. But once the crew land on the red planet, they soon discover they must battle not only the alien land on which they have invaded but earthbound bureaucrats as well. When they come face to face with a chasm ten times as deep and large as the Grand Canyon, all twenty-five...
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Jamie Waterman is returning to the Red Planet, this time in charge of an expedition in which he hopes to demonstrate that one can study Martian life not only for the sake of the pursuit but more, that it can be profitable. Waterman also hopes to revisit a part of the canyon where he thought he spied a primitive cliff dwelling during the first Martian mission. But this second voyage to Mars brings trouble right away as Waterman clashes with Dex Trumball,...
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At first, the dueling machine seemed like a benign or even a helpful invention, allowing people to blow off steam and solve conflicts in a virtual reality-like environment. But before long, an evil tyrant discovers a way to use the device to inflict real and lasting harm on participants. Will the intrepid scientist who invented the technology be able to stop him before it's too late?
5) Moonwar
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Moonwar, the sequel to Moonrise, is a fast-paced high-tech adventure that tells the story of the fledgling lunar colony--Moonbase--and how it is now in jeopardy as political forces seek to control or destroy it. This book is the continuation of the story of Douglas Stavenger, the Kennedy-esque scion of Moonbase's founding dynasty. While Moonbase has been flourishing under Stavenger's management, it's existence, and even Stavenger's life, both depend...
6) Voyagers
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Voyagers (Ben Bova) volume 1
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Ex-astronaut turned physicist Keith Stoner knows that the signals he's picking up at his space station are anything but random. The fiery object heading toward Earth is an alien spacecraft. Yet the world may never know for Ketih is trapped in an iron cordon of secrecy: his discovery had shattered the world power balance, setting off a brutal struggle for supremacy that raged within the sacred halls of the Vatican to the corridors of the Kremlin and...
7) Transhuman
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"Luke Abramson, a brilliant cellular biologist who is battling lung cancer, has one joy in life, his ten-year-old granddaughter, Angela. When he learns that Angela has an inoperable brain tumor and is given less than six months to live, Abramson wants to try a new enzyme, Mortality Factor 4 (MORF4), that he believes will kill Angela's tumor. However, the hospital bureaucracy won't let him do it because MORF4 has not yet been approved by the FDA. Knowing...
8) Farside
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Grand tour of the solar system volume 19
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"The discovery of an Earth-sized planet 30 light years from Earth sparks a race to develop a telescope to create a photographic record of the new world. The far side of the moon, with its "clear" view of space, seems an ideal location, but the project's planners must contend with rivalries from the existing moon colony of Selene. Sent from Earth to assist Dr. Ulrich, director of Angel Observatory, Dr. Trudy Yost immediately becomes involved in the...
9) Earth
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Grand tour of the solar system volume 21
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"A wave of lethal gamma radiation is expanding from the core of the Milky Way galaxy at the speed of light, killing everything in its path. The countdown to when the death wave will reach Earth and the rest of the solar system is at two thousand years. Humans were helped by the Predecessors, who provided shielding generators that can protect the solar system. In return, the Predecessors asked humankind's help to save other intelligent species that...
10) Neptune
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"In the outer settlements of the human-occupied solar system, there are rumors about what was found deep under Neptune's frozen seas when a Hungarian billionaire's ship was lost with all hands. But the rumors are far more tame than the reality. When the billionaire's daughter mounts a mission to find the truth, her discoveries will up-end humanity's understanding of our origins on Earth"--
In the far reaches of the solar system, the outer planets--...
11) Mercury
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Grand tour of the solar system volume 14
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The closest planet to our Sun, Mercury is a rocky, barren, heat-scorched world. But there are those who hope to find wealth in its desolation.
Saito Yamagata thinks Mercury's position will make it an ideal orbit point for satellites that could someday create enough power to propel starships into deep space. He hires Dante Alexios to bring his dreams to life. Astrobiologist Victor Molina thinks the water at Mercury's poles may harbor evidence of...
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In the near future: Earth is an ecological nightmare, and humanity may well go the way of the dinosaurs. But overhead orbits salvation. A vast metallic island in space, Trikon conducts research too risky to be held on earth--research which could save the planet.
Yet Commander Dan Tighe discovers that the Trikon's major project is espionage. Its crew is split into warring factions; its scientists--consumed by greed, lust and drugs--run the lab for...
13) Saturn
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Grand tour of the solar system volume 11
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On a future Earth where fundamentalist politicians rule, the planet's dissidents are boarded on a space arc destined for Saturn, a journey that is further challenged by the schemes of corrupt individuals.
14) Challenges
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Bova offers a new collection of wide-ranging science fiction stories, essays about the onrushing future, and observations about the craft of SF itself.
15) Triumph
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In a gripping alternative history, Winston Churchill hatches a daring plot to assassinate Josef Stalin as World War II comes to a close and the Allies battle over the future of the globe.
16) The Hittite
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This is the tale of Lukka, the Hittite soldier who traveled across Greece in search of the vicious slave traders who kidnapped his wife and sons. He tracks them all the way to war-torn Troy. There he proves himself a warrior to rank with noble Hector and swift Achilles. Lukka is the man who built the Trojan horse for crafty Odysseus, who toppled the walls of Jericho for the Israelites, who stole beautiful Helen-the legendary face that launched a thousand...
17) Future Crime
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Future Crime is a collection of six short stories and two novels by reknowned science fiction author Ben Bova!
From the Foreword: "Will crime always be with us? Yes, in the sense that every society sets down rules of conduct, and there will be members of every society who are not content to live within those rules. The important question is: How do we deal with such criminals? Execute them? Freeze them for future generations to consider? Or use our...
18) Venus
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Grand tour of the solar system volume 16
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The surface of Venus is the most hellish place in the solar system. The ground is hot enough to melt aluminum. The air pressure is so high it has crushed spacecraft landers as though they were tin cans. The sky is perpetually covered with clouds of sulfuric acid. The atmosphere is a choking mixture of carbon dioxide and poisonous gases.
This is where Van Humphries must go. Or die trying.
His older brother perished in the first attempt to land a...
19) Survival
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Ben Bova continues his hard SF Star Quest series which began with Death Wave and Apes and Angels.
Best New Science Fiction and Fantasy Books for December-io9
Science Fiction and Fantasy Books to Read This December-The Verge
Best SFF of December-Unbound Worlds
In Surivival, a human team sent to scout a few hundred lightyears in front of the death wave encounters a civilization far in advance of our own, a civilization of machine intelligences....
20) The Alien Within
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Keith Stoner had been in a state of suspended animation for eighteen years. It was eighteen years earlier that Stoner had been an American member of a joint U.S. - Soviet venture to capture an alien ship, but when the Soviets had to pull out, Stoner willfully persisted and it was then, during that time on the strange ship that Stoner fell into the strange state that was neither here, nor there. Jo Camerata, the ambitious young student who fell in...