Near-space series

Latest release: September 3, 2013
Series
2
Books

About this ebook series

Winner of the Locus Award: Space-station workers discover a shocking global surveillance plot in this novel from “the master of science-fiction intrigue” (The Washington Post).

Popeye 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.
 
Timely—and with Orwellian undertones, Allen Steele’s debut won the Locus Award for Best First Novel. Perfect for fans of Robert Heinlein, Robert J. Sawyer, and Greg Bear, Orbital Decay blends fantasy and science fiction with a prescient attention paid to the dangers of government surveillance.
 
Orbital Decay
Book 1 · Sep 2013 ·
4.7
Winner of the Locus Award: Space-station workers discover a shocking global surveillance plot in this novel from “the master of science-fiction intrigue” (The Washington Post).

Popeye 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.
 
Timely—and with Orwellian undertones, Allen Steele’s debut won the Locus Award for Best First Novel. Perfect for fans of Robert Heinlein, Robert J. Sawyer, and Greg Bear, Orbital Decay blends fantasy and science fiction with a prescient attention paid to the dangers of government surveillance.
 
Labyrinth of Night
Book 4 · Sep 2013 ·
0.0
DIVDIVOn Mars, a research team encounters an ancient puzzle that only a guitarist can solve/divDIV/divDIV
In 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./div
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.  /div