other novels
Re-entry follows biologist Phil Holder back to the planet Darwin, where entire continents have been made over as simulacra of a prehistoric Earth, complete with megafauna. Wormholes access the multiverse and can be used for a kind of time travel: Holder arranges to arrive in Darwin in a parallel universe, decades earlier than his personal present, where he intends to become his own tutor and prevent himself—in that universe, at least—from becoming the self he despises.
“Swift and ingenious.” — Theodore Sturgeon
The Gates of Heaven describes a similar wormhole, which leaves the spaceship Actis stranded on an Earthlike planet orbiting Tau Ceti. Laura McCord commands the rescue ship. Turns out the survivors don’t want to be rescued. (The title is from Milton’s Paradise Lost, but if I’d known while writing that Errol Morris would use it for his first documentary—about pet cemeteries!—I would have found a different one.)
“Preuss never slackens his pace from this amazing beginning to the very last page of his solid SF adventure.” — In Print
“Very well done…. I had thought some time ago that double black holes were the coming science fiction convention.” — Carl Sagan
in collaboration with Arthur C. Clarke
The Venus Prime series consists of six novels – Breaking Strain, Maelstrom, Hide and Seek, The Medusa Encounter, The Diamond Moon, and The Shining Ones – based on stories by Arthur Clarke and developed in consultation with him. The protagonist is a young woman who calls herself Sparta, after the program that bioengineered her extraordinary abilities. When we first meet her, her memory has been erased; a sympathetic doctor reverses the damage and Sparta begins to remember bits of her past. She escapes imprisonment and begins a journey to every inhabited planet and moon in the solar system in search of the full story.
(Breaking Strain) “Preuss’s world-building, technology, and characterizations are first-rate fulfillments of the spirit of Clarke’s worlds. Highly recommended.” — Booklist
(Maelstrom) “Science fiction as it should be, mixing equal parts of adventure and human interest against a scientifically accurate background.” — Inside Books
(Hide and Seek) “Clarke and Preuss merge almost seamlessly, in one of the best shared-world projects currently underway and one of the best ever combinations of mystery and science fiction.” — Chicago Sun-Times
Current editions of Venus Prime are available from ibooks, Inc. (use the search box, upper right). Prior editions of all these novels are available at Powell’s Books, Amazon, and other outlets.