This is the best science fiction I’ve read or listened to in years! Ray Porter is a great narrator, simple enough and with the perfect amount of emotion and inflections. He made it easy to listen to all the science that is referenced. The technical stuff is actually quite entertaining.

I started listening to this book, not really knowing any details. I was drawn right in when the story opens with our main character awakening in a strange place, unable to move, and not knowing who he is. It takes a while, and the discovery is well-paced, for Ryland Grace to figure out who he is and why he is in this place– a spaceship headed at near light-speed, to another star-system, Eridani.

Ryland is not some super-genius, or an especially talented figure. He was a junior high school science teacher who at one time wrote a paper on the theory that not all life needed water or to be in certain habitable zones. His paper was completely rejected by the science community. His knowledge is broad-based and luckily his ship’s computers have the compendium of all accumulated knowledge from earth.

The story, set in the very near future, is interlaced with flash-backs and Ryland’s memory slowly comes back and he realized how he got here and his purpose. Our sun is losing heat faster than predicted. Other stars in our galaxy are undergoing the same transformation. Ryland is brought into the science community to help identify the problem. It is a doozy of a problem.

As the sun is consumed, it is calculated that life on earth will be disappearing in approximately thirty years. Within the problem is also a solution. The cause of the sun’s deterioration can also power a spaceship to near light-speed and send it to the star-system where another sun-eating attack appears to be resistant.

And so starts our adventure. Ryland was never intended for this mission and he’s got a lot to learn. This was a great sixteen hours of entertainment! I can’t recommend it enough. Even my wife, who is not a Sci-fi fan, loved this audiobook.