book cover of Kings of the High Frontier
 

Kings of the High Frontier

(1998)
A novel by

 
 
Awards
Prometheus Award Best Novel
Three-time Prometheus Award winner Victor Koman (Millennium: Weeds), who sicced an assassin on God in The Jehovah Contract and imploded the abortion controversy in Solomon's Knife, brings us his epic novel of humanity's next stage of evolution: the jump into Space.

Tammy Reis, beautiful NASA Space Shuttle commander, works for the most highly funded, technologically advanced space program in the world. So why do nightmares of the Challenger disaster haunt her sleep? And why is NASA incapable of recapturing the stunning successes it once achieved?

Visionary spacecraft designer Gerry Cooper struggles at his tiny rocket company in the Mojave Desert. Who in the world wants him stopped -- or dead?

One-armed billionaire playboy Laurence Poubelle hopes to build his own orbital X-15. Can his keen marketing skills overcome a nation hostile to wealth and contemptuous of adventure?

Meanwhile, the horror of the Challenger tragedy threatens to repeat itself on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. Standing at ground zero, NASA engineer Jack Lundy races the countdown to prevent the deadliest space disaster of all.

While bureaucrats and businessmen publicly battle for the high ground, a young descendant of the legendary Davy Crockett secretly constructs a single-stage-to-orbit rocket deep inside an abandoned warehouse in the South Bronx. Will he and his NYU classmates survive when NORAD detects the launch that blows the lid off the greatest conspiracy in the history of mankind?

Tammy Reis -- stripped of her astronaut wings for defending herself against a congressman's zero-gravity rape -- is recruited by the National Security Agency to infiltrate the stronghold of a er-rich smuggler who schemes to place a massive space station into orbit with a single, spectacular launch. When she discovers the true nature of his secret plan, she faces an impossible choice between duty to her government or freedom from her -- and humanity's -- nightmare.

Genre: Science Fiction

Praise for this book

"An exciting, bracing look at a future some of us hope for, yet many fear. Hard-edged, tough-minded SF indeed!" - Gregory Benford

"In case you, like others, have forgotten the Future, Victor Koman remembers it. He grew up there and now, with total recall, wakes us to jog our memories and rebirth Tomorrow. Would that there were a dozen more writers like him in the field." - Ray Bradbury

"The various spacecraft are lovingly detailed, utilizing both contemporary technology and classic designs, and we watch each of them being built under such a close eye that we feel we have as much stake in them as do the book's characters. There are any number of plot twists and turns -- far too many to properly convey in the space we have here -- but if you ever shared the dream of manned space flight, imagined it could be you heading up there into orbit and beyond, then you'll love this book." - Charles de Lint


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