A hard SF novel with a romantic cast; interspecies first contact, non-human communication and morality as the Human Team joins the interplanetary Concordat. Redirection of comets allows the terraforming of Mars and the planning for an orbitat at L5, using Banderat shuttles and later Earth-built spaceplanes.
About the Author: the Author George Pinneo, an army-brat, lived in 4 states and 8 different locations during WWII. He grew up in NW Ohio, graduating from Case Institute of Technology with a B.S.Ch.E. in 1959. His technical career spans 55 years of experience: front-end wafer fab microelectronics, diode laser and hybrid packaging with a focus on fully hermetic package design and manufacture. Along the way he was the fourth founder in a successful article surveillance startup in Hollywood Florida. This entrepreneur loves to the phrase: "you can't do that!" - and then to do it, of course! One of his specialties is fluxless hard soldering, which is hermetic. Family vacations have taken the Pinneos from Canada to Alaska, to Hawaii, into Mexico and the Caribbean with sojourns to Western Europe and to New Zealand and parts of Australia. A recent trip took them into the Baltic region to the cities of the Hanse. So far, they've visited 18 Caribbean islands, 7 Canadian provinces, 49 of the 50 States and 11 Mexican estados. He has no intention of visiting North Dakota. The family lives up on the Mogollon Rim of Arizona near the White Mountains. At the age of 55, he earned a private pilot's license and then built an all-metal 2-seat experimental homebuilt airplane, which he has spent 19 years "refining". He has twice flown cross-country to the annual EAA fly-in in Oshkosh WI. Other hobbies include woodturning, sailing, canoeing, black powder cannons, hiking and jewelry making. A glimpse into his notions of what constitutes "good SF" includes solid engineering principles based on hard scientific fact, extended in a linear manner to anticipate ongoing work not yet published. First contact interaction is especially prized. Although they can be entertaining, magic and fantasy have no place in hard SF; they demonstrably don't "work"! Philosophically, SF should teach not only new words, but also new concepts. "Good SF" should be uplifting, positive; Bujold has shown SF can also be romantic in her "A Civil Campaign".