Bright Messengers

✍ Scribed by Gentry Lee

• Book ID: 112871691
• Publisher: Bantam Books
• Year: 1995
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 1 MB
• Series: Rama 5
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN: 0553090062

✦ Synopsis

In Rama II, The Garden of Rama, and Rama Revealed, Gentry Lee and Arthur C. Clarke combined talents to produce one of the greatest science fiction cycles of all time. Rama Revealed was a major New York Times bestseller and a thrilling finale to their epic story. Now comes Gentry Lee's long-awaited first solo novel, opening a brand-new chapter of adventure in the saga of alien contact.

Set just before the time of Rama II, Bright Messengers begins with humanity in the midst of a massive economic depression called the Great Chaos. Yet even as civilization seems on the verge of collapse, a strange vision appears to two people of vastly different backgrounds, holding out the promise of hope—and the threat of danger.

To Sister Beatrice, a priestess of the global Order of St. Michael, the cloud of tiny white particles is a message from God, the answer to the prayers of a suffering world. To Johann Eberhardt, a German systems engineer, it is an anomaly of physics, a puzzle just beyond the reach of his rational mind. But to the Rama Society, a group committed to the study of unexplained phenomena, it may be proof of the nonhuman intelligence they have been seeking ever since the brief and enigmatic appearance of a cylindrical spaceship of unknown origin ten years earlier.

On Mars, these two will meet: the priestess called by faith and devotion, the engineer drawn by the scientific challenge of terraforming the red planet, what brings them together is the apparent disappearance of an Inter-Asian polar expedition leaving behind nothing but a fabulous account of a vast city beneath the Martian landscape. Soon Beatrice and Johann-mystic and skeptic, woman of spirit and man of science—will embark on a courageous journey into the heart of the unknown.

Are the particles angels, as Sister Beatrice believes? Some rational—if unprecedented—natural phenomenon, as Johann argues? Or the harbingers of extraterrestrial life, as the Rama Society contends? Joined by nine Martian colonists, Beatrice and Johann will be chosen to board a strange craft that will hurtle them toward a startling revelation of humanity's ultimate place among the stars.

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GENTRY LEE has been chief engineer on Project Galileo, director of science analysis and mission planning for NASA's Viking mission to Mars, and partner with Carl Sagan in the design, development, and implementation of the television series Cosmos. He is co-author of Rama II, The Garden of Rama, and Rama Revealed. He lives in Texas, where he is currently at work on the sequel to Bright Messengers, entitled Double Full Moon Night.