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End in Fire
Advance praise for End in Fire"Syne Mitchell writes with the knowledgability, assurance, courage, and deceptively simple style of Ben Bova, Arthur C. Clarke or Tom Clancy. Like them at their best, she's aiming for a far broader audience than just the usual genre fans, here—because she wants END IN FIRE's urgent message to spread further and faster than the fire itself. With luck, it will. Those who think the spectre of nuclear apocalypse has receded forever need to read this extraordinary, thoughtful, eloquent book. Mitchell is able to ask the hard questions, squarely face the horrifying answers, and still find reason (and need) to hope. And she understands the heart as thoroughly as the hardware; her characters are as real, as commonplace and fascinating, as my own family and neighbors." —Spider Robinson,, Author of Very Bad Deaths
"End in Fire is a lean, tense thriller set in a very plausible future. Real characters, real science, and lightspeed pace." —Greg Bear
Back Cover Okay, this isn't the real the back cover copy, since that hasn't been written by the publisher yet, but if it were up to me, it would go something like this... Dwindling oil reserves have brought Earth to the brink of war. World leaders brace themselves for conflict over the last productive oil field in Assam, India. Claire Logan, an astronaut on EVA three-hundred miles above the earth's surface sees a flash planetside. China begun the invasion of Assam with a high-altitude nuclear blast. Soon the conflict spreads to China, the U.S., and Europe. With increasing radiation in orbit from the nuclear bombs, no hope of support from Mission Control, Claire and the other astronauts of Reliance Station must find a way home. When their lifeboat is destroyed by debris, they must turn to the other space stations in low-earth orbit, the largest of which is Shenzhou IX, operated by the Chinese government. Joining forces with their enemy may be the astronauts only hope of returning to Earth and the war-torn families which so desperately need them. Author's Notes I grew up a child of the 1970's when the news was full of cold-war predictions about nuclear war. In my early teens I read a chilling book called The Cold and the Dark, a non-fiction book about the environmental effects of nuclear war. Those rolled around in the back of my subconscious until, mixed with news about the impending oil crash and new nuclear powers like India, Pakistan, and North Korea they ignited a spark that eventually grew into End in Fire. Well, that and it gave me a great excuse to interview NASA astronauts. In some ways I think of this book as Murphy's Gambit with more research. Readers who know about my personal life know that I wrote this book in my son's first nine months of life. My experiences as a first-time parent definately played a role in Claire Logan's characterization. The title comes from a Robert Frost poem I memorized quite by accident. Go back Read the first chapter Order the book |
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Content updated 3 January 2005 |