[Manifold 02] • Space

Few writers can combine mind bending scientific speculation with breathtaking adventure like award-winning author Stephen Baxter. In Manifold: Time, Baxter told a thrilling story in which the fate of the universe hung in the balance. It followed visionary Reid Malenfant, a man who willed humankind to explore space, and ultimately was faced with a harrowing choice between a past that never was and a future that must never be. Now, in Manifold: Space, Reid Malenfant is back. But this is a different Malenfant. And a different universe.

Fueled by an insatiable curiosity, Malenfant ventures to the far edge of the solar system, where he discovers a strange artifact left behind by an alien civilization: A gateway that functions as a kind of quantum transporter, allowing virtually instantaneous travel over the vast distances of interstellar space. What lies on the other side of the gateway? Malenfant decides to find out.

Yet as Malenfant embarks on a grand tour of the universe, back on Earth the Japanese scientist Nemoto fears her worst nightmares are coming true. Startling and chilling discoveries reveal that the Moon, Mars, Venus, even the Jovian moons, once thrived with life . . . life that was snuffed out in the distant past by starfaring races. Snuffed out not just once but many times, in cycles of birth and destruction as plain as they are inexplicable.

One fact is clear. The recent, Earthbound arrival of the Gaijin portend the first alien visitors in a new cycle. And behind them, looms another--a species with an ominous predilection for blowing up suns. In desperation, Nemoto searches for a means of survival. Or failing that, revenge.

Meanwhile Malenfant, having traveled millions of light years, is once more faced with a choice both impossible and necessary--a choice that will push him beyond terror, beyond sanity, beyond humanity itself.