Mammoth Books presents Fermi and Frost

Book 413: Mammoth Books

by Frederik Pohl

Genres: Science Fiction

Synopsis

Astronomer Harry Malibert is at an airport when nuclear war breaks out. Having been recognised by a fan, he is offered a seat on a plane to Iceland. Though most of Reykjavík has been destroyed by a thermonuclear weapon, the rest of the Iceland has been left untouched. Malibert and the remaining survivors must take advantage of Iceland's geology in preparing for the nuclear winter ahead of them, all the while calculating their chances of survival and contemplating the Fermi paradox: given the size and age of the universe, there ought to be many extraterrestrial civilisations, yet none has so far been found. Will Malibert and his group survive, and will they or their successors live to see proof of extraterrestrial civilisation?

Release date: September 27, 2012

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 160

Sample

Frederik Pohl



Frederik Pohl is one of the grand masters of science fiction with a career spanning over sixty years, both as a writer and an editor. He is adept whether writing on his own or in collaboration. His partnership with Cyril M. Kornbluth, which produced such classics as The Space Merchants (1953) and Wolfbane (1959), is legendary. He has also collaborated with Jack Williamson, whose work is also present in this anthology, and I believe he is the only writer to have collaborated with both Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. For much of the 1960s Pohl was tied up editing several SF magazines, most notably Galaxy and Worlds of If, but when he returned to writing fiction in the 1970s he produced a series of memorable books, including the Heechee series, which began with Gateway (1977), as well as Man Plus (1976), The Coming of the Quantum Cats (1986) and The World at the End of Time (1990). His work has won him many awards and accolades, including the following which won the Hugo in 1986. It takes us into the depths of the nuclear winter.

ON TIMOTHY CLARY’S ninth birthday he got no cake. He spent all of it in a bay of the TWA terminal at John F. Kennedy airport in New York, sleeping fitfully, crying now and then from exhaustion or fear. All he had to eat was stale Danish pastries from the buffet wagon and not many of them and he was fearfully embarrassed because he had wet his pants. Three times. Getting to the toilets over the packed refugee bodies was just about impossible. There were 2,800 people in a space designed for a fraction that many, and all of them with the same idea. Get away! Climb the highest mountain! Drop yourself splat, spang, right in the middle of the widest desert! Run! Hide!—

And pray. Pray as hard as you can, because even the occasional plane-load. . .