On mankind's last mission to the moon, a killer comes along for the rideSince the first manned spaceflight in 1944, NASA has conquered the outer atmosphere, explored Mars, and placed nuclear missiles on the moon. But funding for interstellar adventures—military or otherwise—has dried up. Now, NASA is planning a final lunar mission to pack up the remnants of man's first extraterrestrial colony. The nuclear missiles are meant to be shot into the sun, but someone onboard the USS Conestoga would prefer to see them fired toward Earth.The night before the mission launch, one of the astronauts is kidnapped from his hotel room and replaced with a surgically altered body double. By the time the other astronauts uncover the deception, the Conestoga is too far from home for NASA to help. On the surface of the Moon, a decades-old conspiracy has reached its final stage, and Earth's fate hangs in the balance.

With a gift for visionary fiction that �would make Robert A. Heinlein proud” (Entertainment Weekly) three-time Hugo Award-winning author Allen Steele now imagines an alternate history rooted in an actual historical possibility: what if the race to space had occurred in the early days of WWII?It's 1941, and Wernher von Braun is ordered by his Fuehrer to abandon the V2 rocket and turn German resources in a daring new direction: construction of a manned orbital spacecraft capable of attacking the U.S. Work on the rocket—called Silbervogel—begins at Peenemunde. Though it is top secret, British intelligence discovers the plan, and brings word to Franklin Roosevelt. The American President determines that there is only one logical response: the U.S. must build a spacecraft capable of intercepting Silbervogel and destroying it. Robert Goddard, inventor of the liquid-fuel rocket, agrees to head the classified project. So begins a race against time—between two secret military programs and two brilliant scientists whose high-stakes competition will spiral into a deadly game of political intrigue and unforeseen catastrophes played to the death in the brutal skies above America.

In a broken city, a newspaper editor risks everything for the story of a lifetimeIt takes only minutes for the earthquake to demolish St. Louis. The city's oldest structures crumble, its finest bridge collapses into the Mississippi, and the observation deck of the famous arch falls to earth, killing five. Seven months later, all those who can afford to leave have gone, abandoning the poor, sick, and desperate to scrap for survival. Gerry Rosen, a reporter for the Big Muddy Inquirer, isn't going anywhere. Whether thriving or ruined, this is his town.After months of reporting on the earthquake's aftermath, with electricity, security, and food in short supply, Rosen stumbles on something that takes his breath away. Beneath the rubble of old St. Louis lurks a stunning government conspiracy, the details of which are almost too dangerous to print. Rosen goes underground, running from the army in a desperate attempt to save his city—and his life.

On Mars, a research team encounters an ancient puzzle that only a guitarist can solveIn 2029, an American research team ventures to Mars to investigate an astounding find: a labyrinth older than humanity itself, whose maze of rooms conceals the deepest secrets of the red planet. In the final chamber, strange music plays, as chilling as it is beautiful. It will be the last thing the scientist who discovers it ever hears. As the music rises to a climax, the chamber door closes, leaving him to die in the pitch dark.Where one explorer has failed, Ben Cassidy must not. An internationally famous guitarist, his music is the closest thing on Earth to Mars's deadly hymn. The government sends him into space to solve a planetary mystery, but what Cassidy encounters is a team of researchers whose jealous competition is every bit as dangerous as the secrets of Mars.

Fifteen stories and essays from a modern master of Heinleinian science fiction In Rude Astronauts, Allen Steele presents some of his finest stories—including the Diamondback Jack Trilogy and his first published story, “Live from the Mars Hotel”—along with excerpts of the nonfiction science writing with which he made his name. In Steele’s universe, the stars are cold, space is big, and it’s the normal people who make things interesting. 

Written by a highly regarded expert on space travel and exploration, Allen Steele's Arkwright features the precision of hard science fiction with a compelling cast of characters. In the vein of classic authors such as Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke, Nathan Arkwright is a seminal author of the twentieth century. At the end of his life he becomes reclusive and cantankerous, refusing to appear before or interact with his legion of fans. Little did anyone know, Nathan was putting into motion his true, timeless legacy. Convinced that humanity cannot survive on Earth, his Arkwright Foundation dedicates itself to creating a colony on an Earth-like planet several light years distant. Fueled by Nathan's legacy, generations of Arkwrights are drawn together, and pulled apart, by the enormity of the task and weight of their name.This is classic, epic science fiction and engaging character-driven storytelling, which will appeal to devotees of the...

Winner of the Locus Award for Best First Novel: At work aboard a battered space station, a team of blue-collar laborers stumbles upon a surveillance plot of unprecedented scopePopeye Hooker knows that space isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. A former fisherman who takes a job building low orbital stations to escape a failed relationship, he finds that in space, construction work is still a grind. And when they aren’t building the space stations that will usher humanity into the stars, Sam Sloane and the rest of the beamjacks get high, blast the Grateful Dead, and stare through telescopes at the world they left behind. But life in orbit is about to get much more interesting.Nestled among the life support equipment that keeps them alive and the entertainment systems that keep them happy, the beamjacks find something astonishing. Turns out, their home isn’t just a space station—it’s a giant antenna designed to spy on every inhabitant of Earth. It’s the greatest privacy invasion ever perpetrated, and the beamjacks won’t stand for it. They may not be pioneers, but these roughnecks are about to become revolutionaries. Amazon.com ReviewThe beamjacks are the builders of the future: the zero-G workers who are assembling satellites in the vacuum of space. Management and the military think they have the beamjacks under control -- but they're wrong. From Publishers WeeklySteele's debut is an ambitious science fiction thriller somewhat marred by amateurish technique. The central story is skillfully plotted and written with gusto: narrator Sam Sloane and a group of 21st-century hard hats called "beamjacks" foil an Orwellian venture into global wiretapping by the U.S. National Security Agency. The author uses a familiar device effectively by setting his story in the near future, 2016, with the culture of the 1980s serving as a believable past. But his straightforward adventure tale is encumbered by two unconvincing and poorly integrated complications: a clumsy narrative framework consisting of memoirs dictated by Sloane, stranded in space without the likelihood of rescue; and a series of flashbacks recounting a crime of passion committed by Sloane's buddy, who eventually becomes part of the space-station work crew. In addition, the narration alternates confusingly between the first and third person. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.