Orbital Cloud

Description

The global war on terror has a new front-the very edge of outer space. In the year 2020, Kazumi Kimura, proprietor of shooting star forecast website Meteor News, notices some suspicious orbiting space debris. Rumors spread online that the debris is actually an orbital weapon targeting the International Space Station. Halfway across the world, at NORAD, Staff Sergeant Daryl Freeman begins his own investigation of the threat. At the same time, billionaire entrepreneur Ronnie Smark and his journalist daughter prepare to check in to an orbital hotel as part of a stunt promoting private space tourism. Then Kazumi receives highly sensitive, and potentially explosive, information from a genius Iranian scientist. And so begins an unprecedented international battle against space-based terror that will soon involve the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, NORAD, and the CIA.

Taiyo Fujii was born in Amami Oshima Island-that is, between Kyushu and Okinawa. He's done work for stage design, desktop publishing, exhibition graphic design, and software development. In 2012, Fujii self-published Gene Mapper serially in a digital format of his own design, and it became Amazon.co.jp's number one Kindle best seller of that year. The novel was revised and republished in both print and digital as Gene Mapper-full build-by Hayakawa Publishing in 2013 and was nominated for the Nihon SF Taisho Award and the Seiun Award. His second novel, Orbital Cloud, won the 2014 Nihon SF Taisho Award and the Seiun Award, and took first prize in the "Best SF of 2014" in SF Magazine. His recent works include Underground Market and Bigdata Connect.

"Fujii's science fiction tale is almost entirely low-orbit -- rather than deep space -- but he covers this fascinating terrain well, including all the issues of the objects circling up there, and the dangers of debris. The science -- from the telescope work to the tethers and the functioning of the space hotel -- is quite well-presented, Fujii's fascination with low and high tech and their possibilities fully pays off here."--The Complete Review "Taiyo Fujii has set the bar for all near-future sci-fi thrillers exceptionally high."--B&N Sci-Fi/Fantasy "This book will thrill and delight readers with its tight plotting and brilliant scientific speculation, and it describes the space enthusiast community with a level of authenticity and passion seldom seen in fiction. One of the best hard SF novels of the year."--Ken Liu, author of The Grace of Kings and The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories "Fujii challenges us to look into the future and consider how the Earth as a whole will confront space exploration and the possibilities of colonization and resource extraction on other planets. Orbital Cloud is the speculative fiction for the twenty-first-century that I look forward to reading."--Strange Horizons