Pushing Ice

First contact with extraordinary aliens, glittering technologies that could destroy the universe in a nanosecond, huge sweeping space operas: Alastair Reynolds is back!

Some centuries from now, the exploration and exploitation of the Solar System is in full swing. On the cold edge of the system, Bella Lind, captain of the huge commercial spacecraft Rockhopper IV, helps fuel this new gold rush by attaching mass-driver motors to organic-rich water-ice comets to move them back to the inner worlds. Her crew are tough, blue-collar miners, engineers and demolition experts.

Around Saturn, something inexplicable happens: one of the moons leaves its orbit and accelerates out of the Solar System. The icy mantle peels away to reveal that it was never a moon in the first place, just a parked spacecraft, millions of years old, that has now decided to move on.

Rockhopper IV, trapped in the pull, is hurled across time and space into the deep, distant future, arriving in a vast, alien-constructed chamber. And the crew are not alone, for each chamber contains an alien culture dragged into this cosmic menagerie at the end of time.

The crew of the Rockhopper IV know a lot about blowing up comets, but not much about first contact with ultra-advanced aliens. They have two things to worry about: can they (and their new alien allies) negotiate their way through each harrying contact? And can they assimilate the avalanche of knowledge about their own future - including all the glittering, dangerous technologies that are now theirs for the taking - without destroying themselves in the process?

Praise for Alastair Reynolds:

'The span here is mind-boggling, cosmos-spanning concepts, a breath-taking journey' Good Book Guide on Chasm City

'[A] wonderfully entertaining puzzle wrapped inside an adventure story' The Guardian on Eversion

'A fabulous and satisfying novel' SF Crowsnest on Revenger

'An excellent adventure that's sure to keep readers on their toes' Publishers Weekly on Revenger

'A fun, character focused bottle mystery that shifts settings like a chameleon walking across a rainbow carpet' The Quill to Live on Eversion

'Entertaining and thought-provoking' Locus on Revelation Space

'Pirates in space, full of peril and high-jinks . . . This is a novel that's elegantly plotted, full of surprises and, as first time round, rip-roaring fun' SFX on Revenger

'Reynolds is one of the modern masters of science fiction' Starburst

'This is a story to break hearts and make you turn pages. It's great stuff; pick it up, you'll want to know what happens next' SF&F Reviews on Century Rain

'Much of the fun of these books comes from the construction of a far, far-future space-opera . . . the mapping of Age of Sail tropes onto space travel is just the start . . . Nevertheless, at the centre of this baroque masquerade party resides a sober consideration of what it might mean to go off adventuring, what it might cost' Locus on Revenger

'Reynolds is a master singer of the Space Opera' The Times