Suppose your descendants – people of the future – reach back in time to ask for your help. Would you go? 24th Century humanity has created a Utopia. No more War. Disease. Prejudice. Crime. But no heroes! And suddenly they need gritty, brave heroes, fast. So they reach out across time… for you. Would you go? And what if only teens can survive the trip? In the first Out of Time novel, Nebula Award winning author Nancy Kress takes you on an adventure, with a 10th Century Viking girl, a New Jersey high school basketball star and a young thief from Shakespeare’s London who are yanked into a future of both promise and peril and asked achieve what adults of that time cannot… rescue a lost star-colony. But even if they succeed, will they ever make it back home?

In the year 2345, humanity's descendents live in a utopia in peril. They reach back through time to the late 20th century for help to save the Earth. Teens from Earth's troubled times have a chance to become true heroes when they are "yanked" out of time. Tough-minded Nan and brainy Jerry have it hard enough in 1999. Then they find themselves yanked into the future to join with "team members" Ailee, from 2234, and Will, from 1579, on a mission to Oort One, a small scientific base on the edge of the solar system. The base is overrun with alien pests that cause mysterious electrical disturbances and threaten the station's very life-support systems. The Thogmags are furry, they're cute, they're no bigger than gerbils, and they're breeding like crazy. They might seem harmless, but with their strange mental effect on humans, they have the power to destroy everything—even the Earth itself—unless the team's final desperate plan turns out to be the cat's meow ....

A young troublemaker is yanked to the future, in 2345, to lead a historic meeting between humans and the warlike K'lugu and Devlins. Will he display the grit that only a select few in his generation possess? Will he become the hero he is destined to be?