Books with title Moonseed

It Eats Planets. And It's Here. It starts when Venus explodes into a brilliant cloud of dust and debris, showering Earth with radiation and bizarre particles that wipe out all the crops and half the life in the oceans, and fry the ozone layer. Days later, a few specks of moon rock kicked up from the last Apollo mission fall upon a lava crag in Scotland. That's all it takes . . . Suddenly, the ground itself begins melting into pools of dust that grow larger every day. For what has demolished Venus, and now threatens Earth itself, is part machine, part life-form: a nano-virus, dubbed Moonseed, that attacks planets.Four scientists are all that stand between Moonseed and Earth's extinction, four brilliant minds that must race to cut off the virus and save what's left of Earth--a pulse-stopping battle for discovery that will lead them from the Earth's inner core to a daredevil Moon voyage that could save, or damn, us all.

It started the night Geena and Henry broke up. What was that strange light in the sky? A new star? A comet? Neither. It was the death of Venus. As if to commemorate the end of NASA's golden couple, our neighbor planet exploded into a brilliant cloud of dust and debris, showering the Earth with radiation and bizarre particles as big as bacteria--wiping out all the crops and half the life in the oceans, frying the ozone layer, forcing survivors to wear protective suits on city streets. Days later, a few specks of moon rock kicked up from the last Apollo mission fell upon a lava crag in Scotland. That was all it took. The ground itself began to shimmer, forming pools of luminous, almost liquid dust. Pools that grow larger every day, as the cultists of Infinite Egress drum and chant with apocalyptic joy... So begins Stephen Baxter's most ambitious, most exciting, and ultimately most fascinating novel: Moonseed, the story of a menace that falls to Earth from an unimaginably distant past, pushing us to the brink of an extinction event unparalleled in our planet's history. For what has demolished Venus, and now threatens Earth itself, is part machine, part life form: a ten-dimensional superstring nanovirus that literally eats rock, transforming it into liquid, and then into molecule-size black holes that devour the very fabric of space time. Feasting on Edinburgh's primeval basalt, Moonseed is steadily eating its way toward Earth's core. The death toll rises by the hour as buildings collapse into streets that flow like water; as hundred-foot tsunamis obliterate Seattle and Vancouver; as volcanoes sprout like weeds across the planet's quickly decaying mantle. NASA "rock-jockey" Henry Meacher and his Japanese colleague, Blue, race to cut off the virus and save what is left of the Earth. Meanwhile Henry's ex, Geena, straps in with a Russian cosmonaut for a daredevil Moon voyage, ultimately reuniting with Henry and searching for the lunar ice deposits that might make possible the greatest evacuation since Noah braved the Flood. And a mother and her young son clamber for the last solid ground in the liquefying Scottish Highlands, under the baleful stars of a dying universe... Audacious beyond comparison, grand in conception, and gripping in execution, Moonseed is the first modern novel to do justice to the awesome terror and promise implicit in quantum physics. Like all of Baxter's work, it blazes new paths from which science fiction will surely follow in the years to come, and becomes required reading for anyone wishing to understand the awesome promise--and threat--revealed by modern science.

It Eats Planets. And It's Here. It starts when Venus explodes into a brilliant cloud of dust and debris, showering Earth with radiation and bizarre particles that wipe out all the crops and half the life in the oceans, and fry the ozone layer. Days later, a few specks of moon rock kicked up from the last Apollo mission fall upon a lava crag in Scotland. That's all it takes . . . Suddenly, the ground itself begins melting into pools of dust that grow larger every day. For what has demolished Venus, and now threatens Earth itself, is part machine, part life-form: a nano-virus, dubbed Moonseed, that attacks planets.Four scientists are all that stand between Moonseed and Earth's extinction, four brilliant minds that must race to cut off the virus and save what's left of Earth--a pulse-stopping battle for discovery that will lead them from the Earth's inner core to a daredevil Moon voyage that could save, or damn, us all.

In the 1970s astronauts brought rock samples back from the Moon. Many remained locked away for decades ! including one unique piece of bedrock, the Moonseed. At last exposed to daylight, it proves to be deadly, though not to people. It kills the Earth. In his new novel, Stephen Baxter, 'the best SF author in Britain' (SFX), contemplates rock -- living rock. Transported to Earth by Apollo astronaut Jays Malone in 1972, a single shard of bedrock from the Moon contains within its innocuous-looking shell the power to destroy worlds. Geologist Henry Meacher -- his career at JPL in ruins, his marriage over -- is given a sample of the Moon bedrock to analyse. He goes with it to Edinburgh University, the only place that will have him. There the deadly Moon rock accidentally comes into contact with the Earth's core in the form of lava from Edinburgh's famous extinct volcanoes. It turns solid rock to seething Moonseed dust. Soon perhaps the whole world will be infected. Inspired, terrified, Henry Meacher is a changed man. If the worst happens, his plan is to take Earth's displaced peoples from the Earth to the Moon. Baxter's stunning story is one of disaster, desperate measures and damage limitation, forcing humanity to an excess of ingenuity and courage. Ironically, it is a newly terraformed Moon that holds the key to our survival!