The Sky So Big and Black

John Barnes

Macmillan, Oct 19, 2003 - Fiction - 320 pages

Terpichore Murray is growing up on Mars. She wants to quit school and become an eco-prospector like her father. He has other ideas; not only does he want her to stay in school, he wants her along on his next long trip conducting a group of younger kids from the highlands at Mars's equator back to school in Wells City.

Early in the trip, disaster strikes-and it's up to Terry, without adult help, to get the survivors to safety, through several hundred miles of Martian wilderness. In the process, she will encounter the self-engineered "Mars-form" humans, usually shunned by the regular colonists-and One True, the collective intelligence that dominates Earth and from whom the Mars colonists are all separated. In the process she may well come of age and change the course of human history in the solar system . . . if Mars doesn't kill her first.

About the author

John Barnes is the award-winning author of "Orbital Romance," "A Million Open Doors," "Mother of Storms," "Earth Made of Glass," "The Merchants of Souls," "Candle," and many other novels. With Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, he wrote the novels "Encounter with Tiber" and "The Return." He lives in Colorado.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Sky So Big and Black; Book 4 of Century next door, John Barnes; Issue 4 of Meme Wars; TOR science fiction
• Author: John Barnes
• Edition: revised
• Publisher: Macmillan, 2003
• ISBN: 0765342227, 9780765342225
• Length: 320 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Fantasy / General; Fiction / Science Fiction / General