Moonfall - Hardcover

McDevitt, Jack

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0061050369 ISBN 13: 9780061050367

Publisher: Harper Voyager, 1998

Synopsis

Arriving on the moon to initiate the first Moonbase, Vice President Charlie Haskell must fend for his life when the comet Tomiko heads straight for the moon, and after stating that he will be the last person to evacuate the moonbase, he desperately tries to find a means of escape before it is too late.

About this title

About the Author

Jack McDevitt is the author of A Talent for War, The Engines of God, Ancient Shores, Eternity Road, Moonfall, and numerous prize-winning short stories. He has served as an officer in the U.S. Navy, taught English and literature, and worked for the U.S. Customs Service in North Dakota and Georgia.

Reviews

Racing neck and neck with doomsday, this breathless near-future thriller pits young, single and politically hopeful U.S. V.P. Charlie Haskell and a gigantic international cast of heroic helpers against an interstellar comet that blows the Moon to lethal smithereens and threatens to wipe out life on Earth. Just before the comet is spotted, cancer-riddled President Kolladner dispatches Charlie to the ceremonial opening of the U.S.-led commercial Moonbase, setting Charlie up for a spacewalk into destiny. Loaded with flaming action and fortified with characters from today's headlines, the novel hurtles cinematically from one point of view to another so rapidly that the characters, except for Charlie, tend to blur into one another. After McDevitt explodes the Moon midway through the novel, fearsome tsunamis wreak havoc on both American coasts. With a murderous gang of rocket-hating backwoods militants thrown in for a whisker too much good measure, U.S. know-how and rough-riding true American grit save the day on the ground. In space, Charlie faces more perils than Pauline did?and loses some of his credibility as a result. Overall, though, McDevitt's scrupulous research and ability to bring the arcane intricacies of space engineering within the grasp of the earthbound make this a fine-tuned disaster to remember.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Big, bustling, medium-future global disaster yarn from the author of Eternity Road (1997). In 2024, just as the first manned flight to Mars is about to be launched, astronomers detect a strange new comet far out in space. Comet Tomiko is large, moving very fastand in only three days' time itll smack into the Moon! If Tomiko shatters the Moon, as seems likely, at least some of the debris will rain down on the Earth, but dying US President Henry Kolladner chooses to disregard this possibility to avoid sparking a general panic. Meanwhile, Moonbase's owner, Evelyn Hampton, orders the Moon evacuated; among the last to leave, mere minutes before impact, are Evelyn herself and US Vice-President Charlie Haskell. Within hours, fragments of the Moon pound the Earth, triggering tidal waves and earthquakes. President Kolladner, fleeing doomed Washington, dies in an accident; he'd ordered a nuclear strike against one Moon fragment huge enough to devastate the entire Earthbut would the resulting cloud of radioactive wreckage prove just as lethal? At last, working closely with astronomers and space pilots, new President Haskell comes up with a better alternative: A fleet of space planes, operating in concert, might be able to nudge the fragment into a stable orbit. Plausible, panoramic, and sometimes exciting: another solidly engrossing entry from the dependable McDevitt. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

McDevitt follows Eternity Road with a full-speed-ahead tale of a comet's collision with the moon. In 2024, after exhaustive efforts and draining expenditures, Earth has at last built a colony on the moon and stands poised to launch the first manned mission to Mars. U.S. Vice President Charlie Haskell, who has risen far but knows he has really never done anything, comes to the moon for the ribbon cutting, and then a comet is spotted, its trajectory deduced, and a panicky evacuation begins. McDevitt takes the reader down to the last second, when the six who have elected to stay on the base may or may not be able to get out. He intercuts the suspense with events on Earth: doomsayers who make a religious event of the comet; hordes of citizens fleeing inland, fearful that half the moon will fall into the sea; and New York party animals who lie back on a roof to watch the possible end not just of the moon but of Earth. McDevitt's care with characterization and research and his irresistible story line take Moonfall out of the thriller genre into the classic territory of When Worlds Collide. John Mort

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper Voyager
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0061050369
• ISBN 13: 9780061050367
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 480