The Killing Star

Book excerpt: A near-future thriller of a devastating alien invasion from the paleontologist who inspired Jurassic Park and the award-winning science fiction author. There were always those who disagreed with broadcasting signals into the deepest reaches of outer space, because our mere existence could be taken as a threat. They were right to be concerned . . . In the spring of 2076, just days short of America’s tricentennial celebrations, every inhabited surface in the solar system gets wiped out by a catastrophic storm of relativistic bombs, flaming swords that pierced the sky. The only two survivors left on Earth exist in a submersible that had been exploring the Titanic’s final resting place on the bottom of the North Atlantic. In space, only the settlers in small, asteroid-based colonies have gone unnoticed by the aliens—for now. But any sign of life, any call for help, might bring the Intruders straight to them. These far-flung survivors are now on their own, stalked by a ruthless, faceless enemy straight out of the nightmares of humanity’s greatest minds—those lone voices whose warnings went ignored. “[A] novel of such conceptual ferocity and scientific plausibility that it amounts to a reinvention of that old Wellsian staple, [alien invasion].” —The New York Times Book Review “Relentless . . . The ultimate disaster novel . . . A thought-experiment and warning.” —The Denver Post “A whirlwind of ideas . . . full of action and danger . . . Pellegrino and Zebrowski are working territory not too far removed from Arthur C. Clarke’s, and anywhere Clarke is popular, this book should be, too.” —Booklist