Farside, the side of the moon that never faces Earth, is the ideal location for an astronomical observatory. It is also the setting for a tangled web of politics, personal ambition, love, jealousy, and murder.
Telescopes on Earth have detected an Earth-sized planet circling a star some thirty light-years away. The race is on to obtain photographs and spectra that show whether or not the planet is truly like Earth--and if it bears life. Farside observatory will have the largest optical telescope in the solar system, as well as a vast array of radio antennas--the most sensitive radio telescope possible, insulated from the interference of Earth's radio chatter by a thousand kilometers of the moon's solid mass.
Building the Farside observatory is a complex and often dangerous task. On the airless surface of the moon--under constant bombardment by hard radiation and infalling micrometeoroids--builders must work in cumbersome spacesuits and use robotic machines as much as possible. Breakdowns, both mechanical and emotional, are commonplace. Accidents happen, some of them fatal. But what they ultimately find will stun everyone, and the human race will never be the same.
Ben Bova (1932-2020), American author of more than one hundred books of science fact and fiction, was awarded posthumously the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award. His work earned six Hugo Awards. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation in 2005, and his novel Titan won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for the best science fiction novel of 2006. In his early career, he was a technical editor for Project Vanguard, the United States's first effort to launch a satellite into space in 1958. He then was a science writer for Avco Everett Research Laboratory, which built the heat shields for the Apollo 11 module. He held the position of president emeritus of the National Space Society and served as president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
Stefan Rudnicki first became involved with audiobooks in 1994. Now a Grammy-winning audiobook producer, he has worked on more than five thousand audiobooks as a narrator, writer, producer, or director. He has narrated more than nine hundred audiobooks. A recipient of multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards, he was presented the coveted Audie Award for solo narration in 2005, 2007, and 2014, and was named one of AudioFile's Golden Voices in 2012.
