Marrow

The Ship has travelled the universe for longer than any of the near-immortal crew can recall, its true purpose and origins unknown. It is larger than many planets, housing thousands of alien races and just as many secrets. Now one of those secrets has been discovered: at the centre of the Ship is ...a planet. Marrow. But when a team of the Ship's best and brightest are sent down to investigate, will they return with the origins of the Ship - or will they bring doom to everyone on board? 'MARROW is an extraordinary and extraordinarily intelligent novel stuffed with wonder and wit ...should elevate him to the ranks of the very best writers of the genre' INTERZONE For more information on this and other Orbit books, visit the website at www.orbitbooks.co.uk

The Ship is a rock larger than worlds. The Ship is a world full of vast hollows in which live thousands of alien races. The Ship is a mysterious starship, billions of years old, crewed by the near-immortal humans who discovered it, empty, at the fringes of the galaxy. And, as a select inner circle of the crew is astonished to discover, there is a planet at the center of the Ship. They descend to the surface of the planet, Marrow, hoping to discover the origin of the Ship--only to find themselves trapped on that hellish world and abandoned by their fellow captains, even as tremendous, inexplicable changes in Marrow may doom the Ship and everyone aboard.

Robert Reed's Marrow is high-concept, epoch-spanning SF in the tradition of Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men, Camille Flammarion's Omega, and Greg Egan's Diaspora. Unlike Last and First Men and Omega, Marrow features a continuing cast of well-drawn, believable characters in addition to the brain-busting big ideas and sense of wonder. --Cynthia Ward