The Killing Star
1995
First Published
3.80
Average Rating
340
Number of Pages
The Apocalypse occurs nine days prior to America's Tri-Centennial celebration - when relativistic bombs launched by an unknown alien civilization finally reach their destinations. One man sees them approaching - but by then, it is already too late. And in a brief, incomprehensible instant, every inhabited planetary surface in the solar system is wiped clean. Life has ceased to exist. Now all that is left of humanity is a handful of survivors hiding between the planets in mobile space research facilities and experimental habitats - a small, terrified remnant of civilization struggling to make some sense of the catastrophe that has obliterated their past and future...while searching desperately for a means of escape before the Intruders' doomsday technology can detect and destroy them. Astonishingly, on a dead and sterile Earth, two people remain alive - a Jesuit and a pilot aboard the deep-diving submersible, Alvin, protected from the devastation by the cold, enveloping waters. An historian and a scientist, it is they whom destiny has chosen to wander the surreal, empty wastes of a terrifying ghost planet - to battle fear, loneliness and encroaching madness...and to await the inevitable arrival of the annihilators from the stars.
Avg Rating
3.80
Number of Ratings
705
5 STARS
29%
4 STARS
35%
3 STARS
26%
2 STARS
8%
1 STARS
2%
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Author
Charles Pellegrino
Author · 11 books
Charles Pellegrino is a scientist working in paleobiology, astronomy, and various other areas; a designer for projects including rockets and nuclear devices (non-military propulsion systems), composite construction materials, and magnetically levitated transportation systems; and a writer. He has been affiliated with Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand National Observatory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Long Island, NY; taught at institutions including Hofstra University and Adelphi University Center for Creative Arts; a member of Princeton Space Studies Institute. Cradle of Aviation Museum, space flight consultant; Challenger Center, founding member. After sailing with Robert Ballard to the Galapagos Rift in the immediate aftermath of the discovery of the Titanic (in 1985), Pellegrino expanded from the field of paleontology “into the shallows of archaeological time.”
