Books by Ben Bova
COMBAT SF
by Gordon R. (Arthur C. Clarke Dickson (editor), Keith Laumer, Ben Bova, Myron R.
Abducted by the alien Catteni, Kristin Bjornsen was one of many humans brought to the planet Botany as part of an experiment to see if it could support life. Enslaved and forced to colonize a world not their own, the settlers have accepted Botany as their home—a home worth fighting for…
Kristin’s people have learned that the aliens responsible for their imprisonment are merely mercenaries, subjugated by the parasitic Eosi Race, and that Botany is being farmed remotely by some unknown species—a species that may be sympathetic to the colonists’ struggle for freedom.
The “Farmers” refuse to join the humans in their rebellion against the Catteni, but they agree to use their technological skills to shield Botany and hide it from its enemies—buying Kristin and the settlers time to build up their forces and liberate their world…
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Nebula Awards Showcase 2008
by Ben Bova
This annual tradition from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America collects the best of the year's stories, as well as essays and commentary on the current state of the genre and predictions for future science fiction and fantasy films, art, and more.
This year's award-winning authors include Jack McDevitt, James Patrick Kelly, Peter S. Beagle, Elizabeth Hand, and more. The anthology also features essays from celebrated science fiction authors Orson Scott Card and Mike Resnick.
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Return to Mars
by Ben Bova
Six years after the first manned Martian expedition, a second has been announced -- one motivated purely by its profitable potential -- and half-Navajo, half-Anglo geologist Jamie Waterman's conflicted soul is beckoning him back to the eerie, unforgiving planet. As commander of the new exploratory team, he will have to contend with a bitter and destructive rivalry, a disturbing new emotional attraction, and deadly, incomprehensible "accidents" that appear to be sabotage, all of which could doom the mission to failure. But there is much more at stake than Waterman's personal redemption and the safety of his crew. For there are still great secrets to be uncovered on this cruel and enigmatic world -- not the least being something he glimpsed in the far distance during his first Martian excursion: an improbable structure perched high in the planet's carmine cliffs; a dwelling that only an intelligent being could have built.
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Faint Echoes, Distant Stars: The Science and Politics of Finding Life Beyond Earth
by Ben Bova
In this fascinating and cutting-edge work, Dr. Ben Bova explores one of the most thrilling and elemental questions humanity has ever posed: Are we alone? From Copernicus to the advent of SETI and beyond, Bova takes his readers on a tour of the scientific and political battles fought in the pursuit of knowledge and speculates on what the future may hold.
Can life exist outside the planet Earth? The first question one should ask is: How is it possible for life to exist within Earth's brutal confines? On our own world, creatures exist -- and thrive -- in environments first thought to be completely alien and inhospitable. From the rare air of the upper atmosphere to the depths of the oceans, life persists amid crushing pressures, crippling heat, and absolute darkness. Bacteria brought to the moon have survived for years without water, at temperatures near absolute zero, and in spite of radiation levels that would kill human observers. With such resilient and tenacious creatures, it seems that life could spring up, and survive, anywhere.
Many skeptics believe that finding life outside our solar system will never occur within our lifetime -- but perhaps it's unnecessary to look that far. Our neighboring planets may already serve as havens for extraterrestrial life. Scientists have already identified ice caps on Mars and what appears to be an enormous ocean underneath the ice of Jupiter's moons. The atmosphere on Venus appeared harsh and insupportable of life, composed of a toxic atmosphere and oceans of acid -- until scientists concluded that Earth's atmosphere was eerily similar billions of years ago. An extraterrestrial colony, in some form, may already exist, just awaiting discovery.
With the development of new technology, such as the space-based telescopes of NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF), we may not have to leave the comfort of our home world to discover proof of life elsewhere. But the greatest impediment to such an important scientific discovery may not be technological, but political. No scientific endeavor can be launched without a budget, and matters of money are within the arena of politicians. Dr. Bova explores some of the key players and the arguments waged in a debate of both scientific and cultural priorities, showing the emotions, the controversy, and the egos involved in arguably the most important scientific pursuit ever begun.
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Mars Life (The Grand Tour)
by Ben Bova
Jamie Waterman discovered the cliff dwelling on Mars, and the fact that an intelligent race lived on the red planet sixty-five million years ago, only to be driven into extinction by the crash of a giant meteor. Now the exploration of Mars is itself under threat of extinction, as the ultraconservative New Morality movement gains control of the U.S. government and cuts off all funding for the Mars program.
Meanwhile, Carter Carleton, an anthropologist who was driven from his university post by unproven charges of rape, has started to dig up the remains of a Martian village. Science and politics clash on two worlds as Jamie desperately tries to save the Mars program and uncover who the vanished Martians were.
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Power Play
It was the perfect retreat for a troubled company. No cell phones. No BlackBerrys. No cars. Just a luxurious, remote lodge surrounded by thousands of miles of wilderness.
All the top officers of the Hammond Aerospace Corporation are there. And one last-minute substitute -- a junior executive named Jake Landry. He's a steady, modest, and taciturn guy with a gift for keeping his head down and a turbulent past he's trying to put behind him.
Jake's uncomfortable with all the power players he's been thrown in with, with all the swaggering and the posturing. The only person there he knows is the female CEO's assistant--his ex-girlfriend, Ali.
When a band of backwoods hunters crash the opening-night dinner, the executives suddenly find themselves held hostage by armed men who will do anything, to anyone, to get their hands on the largest ransom in history. Now, terrified and desperate and cut off from the rest of the world, the captives are at the mercy of hard men with guns who may not be what they seem.
The corporate big shots hadn't wanted Jake there. But now he's the only one who can save them.
Power Play is a non-stop, pulse-pounding, high-stakes thriller that will hold the reader riveted until the very last page.
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Power Play
An off-site corporate event gone disastrously wrong. The largest ransom in history. The price-tag: dead or alive. Now, in Joseph Finder's explosive thriller Power Play, it's up to Jake Landry-a modest, steady guy with a dark, hidden past-to save them all...
It was the perfect retreat for a troubled company. No cell phones. No BlackBerrys. No cars. Just a deluxe lodge surrounded by thousands of miles of wilderness and a desolate seacoast.
Jake Landry is a junior executive at the Hammond Aerospace Corporation, a steady, modest, and taciturn guy with a gift for keeping his head down-and a turbulent past he prays he's put behind him. Ordered to fill in for his boss at the annual offsite, he's out of his element. He's uncomfortable with the lavish accommodations and especially with the arrogant, swaggering men who run the company and the only person he knows there is the new special assistant to the CEO-who happens to be Jake's ex.
Then a band of hunters, apparently lost in the woods, crash the opening-night festivities. Soon the execs of a billion-dollar company, cut off from the rest of the world, find themselves at the mercy of a group of men with guns...and a cunning plan to take Hammond Aerospace for all it's worth.
But the hostage takers aren't who they appear to be and neither is Jake Landry. The high flyers hadn't wanted Jake to come along. Now he's the only one who can save them.
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Power Play
Nothing has prepared Dr. Ross for the extreme tactics that desperate and powerful people are willing to use. Power Play is a timely thrill ride by Ben Bova, one of science fiction's most respected novelists
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$24.99
The Precipice (Asteroid Wars)
by Ben Bova
Once, Dan Randolph was one of the richest men on Earth. Now the planet is spiraling into environmental disaster, with floods and earthquakes destroying the lives of millions. Randolph knows the energy and natural resources of space can save Earth's economy, but the price may be the loss of the only thing he has left--the company he founded, Astro Manufacturing.
Martin Humphries, fabulously wealthy heir of the Humphries Trust, also knows that space-based industry is the way of the future. But unlike Randolph, he doesn't care if Earth perishes in the process. And he knows that the perfect bait to ensnare Dan Randolph--and take control of Astro--is his revolutionary new fusion propulsion system.
As Randolph--accompanied by two fascinating women who are also brilliant astronauts--flies out to the Asteroid Belt aboard a fusion-propelled spacecraft, Humphries makes his move. The future of mankind lies in Randolph's hands.
The Asteroid Wars have begun.
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Jupiter: A Novel (The Grand Tour)
by Ben Bova
Grant Archer only wanted to study astrophysics. But the forces of the "New Morality," the coalition of censorious do-gooders who run 21st-century America, have other plans for him.
To his distress, Grant is torn from his young bride and sent to a research station in orbit around Jupiter, to spy on the scientists who work there. Their work may lead to the discovery of higher life forms in the Jovian system-with implications the New Morality doesn't like at all.
What Grant's would-be controllers don't know is that his loyalty to science may be greater than his desire for a quiet life. But that loyalty will be tested in a mission as dangerous as any ever undertaken-a mission to the middle reaches of Jupiter's endless atmosphere, a place where hydrogen flows as a liquid, and cyclones larger than planets rage for centuries at a time.
What lurks there is more than anyone has counted on...and stranger than anyone could possibly have imagined.
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War of the Worlds: Mars' Invasion of Earth, Inciting Panic and Inspiring Terror from H.G. Wells to Orson Welles and Beyond
by Ray Bradbury, Ben Bova, Inc. Sourcebooks
Winner of the 2001 Book of the Year Award by Foreword Magazine for Pop Culture, The War of the Worlds has been revised and updated for this new paperback edition. The audio CD includes the complete 1938 Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast, along with Orson Welless press conference from the next day, a rare interview between Orson Welles and H.G. Wells and clips from a later version of "War of the Worlds." The book includes the story behind the "Panic Broadcast," the radio play script, biographical information on H.G. and Orson and the complete text of H.G. Wellss classic, "The War of the Worlds"in addition, the book features lavish black-and-white and color photographs and illustrations.
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Carbide Tipped Pens: Seventeen Tales of Hard Science Fiction
Seventeen hard science fiction tales by today's top authors
Hard science fiction is the literature of change, rigorously examining the impact-both beneficial and dangerous-of science and technology on humanity, the future, and the cosmos. As science advances, expanding our knowledge of the universe, astounding new frontiers in storytelling open up as well.
In Carbide Tipped Pens, over a dozen of today's most creative imaginations explore these frontiers, carrying on the grand tradition of such legendary masters as Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and John W. Campbell, while bringing hard science fiction into the 21st century by extrapolating from the latest scientific developments and discoveries. Ranging from ancient China to the outer reaches of the solar system, this outstanding collection of original stories, written by an international roster of authors, finds wonder, terror, and gripping human drama in topics as diverse as space exploration, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, climate change, alternate history, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, interplanetary war, and even the future of baseball.
From tattoos that treat allergies to hazardous missions to Mars and beyond, from the end of the world to the farthest limits of human invention, Carbide Tipped Pens turns startling new ideas into state-of-the art science fiction.
Includes short stories by Ben Bova, Gregory Benford, Robert Reed, Aliette de Bodard, Jack McDevitt, Howard Hendrix, Daniel H. Wilson, and many others!
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Transhuman: A Novel
by Ben Bova
Six-time Hugo Award-winner Ben Bova presents Transhuman.
Luke Abramson, a brilliant cellular biologist 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 an experimental new therapy that he believes will kill Angela's tumor.
Her parents object and the hospital bureaucracy blocks the experimental procedure because it has not been approved by the FDA. Knowing that Angela will die before he can get approval, Abramson abducts Angela from the hospital. He plans to take her to a private research laboratory in Oregon.
Luke has turned his old SUV into a makeshift medical facility, treating Angela as best he can while they are on the road, desperately trying to keep his granddaughter alive long enough to give her the treatment he believes will save her life.
Abramson realizes that he's too old and decrepit to flee across the country with his sick granddaughter, so he injects himself with a genetic factor that has successfully reversed aging in animal tests.
As the chase weaves across the country from one research facility to another, Luke begins to grow physically younger, stronger. He looks and feels the way he did thirty or forty years ago.
But will he be able to save Angela?
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Apes and Angels (Star Quest Trilogy, 2)
by Ben Bova
Six-time Hugo Award winner Ben Bova chronicles the saga of humankind's expansion beyond the solar system in Apes and Angels, the second book of the Star Quest Trilogy which began with Death Wave.
Humankind headed out to the stars not for conquest, nor exploration, nor even for curiosity. Humans went to the stars in a desperate crusade to save intelligent life wherever they found it.
A wave of death is spreading through the Milky Way galaxy, an expanding sphere of lethal gamma radiation that erupted from the galaxy's core twenty-eight thousand years ago and now is approaching Earth's vicinity at the speed of light. Every world it touched was wiped clean of all life. But it’s possible to protect a planet from gamma radiation. Earth is safe.
Now, guided by the ancient intelligent machines called the Predecessors, men and women from Earth seek out those precious, rare worlds that harbor intelligent species, determined to save them from the doom that is hurtling toward them.
The crew of the Odysseus has arrived at Mithra Gamma, the third planet of the star Mithra, to protect the stone-age inhabitants from the Death Wave. But they’ll also have to protect themselves.
The Star Quest Trilogy
#1 Death Wave
#2 Apes and Angels
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