VOYAGE.

UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn.[Complete number line 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2.] NMINT/NMINT.Wrapped+protected from day of issue/ purchase - so no owner inscrptn and no price-clip to dw/dj.Bright,crisp,clean,glossy laminated,part wrap-around (front+spine only) colour pictorial artwork by Chris Moore, illustrated dw/dj,with blue-grey+ white lettering to front+ spine,rear panel with critics' yellow,white+red reviews; with negligible shelf-wear,bumping or creasing to edges and corners - no nicks or tears present.Top+fore-edges bright; contents bright,tight,clean - pristine - no dog-ear reading creases to any pages' corners - unread,apart from my own collation.Publisher's bright,crisp,clean,sharp-cornered original,dark blue cloth boards with bright,crisp,blocked silver gilt letters to spine/backstrip and immaculate plain white endpapers.UK,thick 8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn,vii-viiipp+ 1-591pp [paginated] includes author's note,Books 1-6 and an afterword;plus [unpaginated] half-title+title pages,a dedication and to the rear b/w diagram ARES Mission Profile (rocket's journey and orbital path) followed by 2pp b/w diagrams of space-craft's rendezvous,separation, docking etc., manoeuvres.
Baxter's novel tells the story of space exploration as it so easly might have been,had we not lost the desire to look for new frontiers.
'VOYAGE' takes place in a world that almost existed but never was.Here John F. Kennedy survived the assassination attempt in Dallas.From his wheelchair,in 1969,the former president sets NASA a new,daunting challenge: 'At this moment of Apollo's triumph,I would like to set my country a new challenge: to go further and farther than most of us have dreamed - to continue the building of our great ships,and to fly them onward to Mars.'
Though Kennedy has no power and President Nixon hates him,his voice carries beyond the clamour of military and industrial lobbies keen to develop the Space Shuttle. Instead,Apollo flights continue,boosted by Wernher von Braun's cherished nuclear rocket.Both are high-risk technologies. . .
And when the first ARES mission lifts off for Mars in 1986, it is both a triumphant climax and the end of a long saga of technical and human over-ambition.ARES carries three dedicated people, one of them a woman,who have sacrificed everything to achieve the single goal of reaching another planet: their stories weave through a decade of political drama leading to the transfiguring experience of a year-long journey away from earth.
Stephen Baxter is the acknowledged heir to the visionary legacy of Clarke and Wells.In this,his most ambitious novel yet (then 1996),he creates a compellingly believable story of our conquest of space as it should have happened.
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