What do you think?
Rate this book
Venus
A hundred years from now on Earth, a world that has degenerated into a stark division between those who have financial wealth and security and those living in desperate poverty within wasteland settlements, George Armstrong, a multi billionaire head of a Space Station re-supply company embarks on a project to address the acute social problems by colonizing a planet.
He embarks on a literally epic earth-moving project to re-engineer a planet within our solar System and to physically re-locate it to a new orbit close to Earth by deliberately striking it with Asteroids that are towed out of their orbits by rockets to drive it into a new orbital path and then to alter the hostile environment so that it can sustain and be survivable for mankind.
The planet selected for relocation is Venus.
To ensure he remains in control of the project through to completion he needs to find a way to guarantee his personal survival through several lifetimes.
To do this he designs a virtual clone of himself called Network George, a copy of his consciousness captured electronically and stored as a distribute entity across any network it is attached to. During its creation, his wife becomes Mary becomes terminally ill with cancer. With her consent, George downloads her consciousness prior to her death and a combined new entity, a complete mixture of George and Mary, calling itself Avalon, is created
To acquire the Asteroids and Ice-Comets needed for the project a large clandestine fleet of pilots, the Asteroid and Ice Comet Collection Fleet , AICCF is assembled.
As their tasks are to ‘round up’ asteroids and Ice Comets, the fleet soon adopt the a nickname, The Space Cowboys.
They have to embark on a lengthy and dangerous mission across to the Asteroid belt to the distant Kuiper Belt to pick up some of the abundant Ice-Comets from that location and bring them back to Venus.
In an attempt to try to avoid importing the worst elements of Earth’s problems, Avalon controversially declares that any society on Venus will be one where no money, no organised religions and no political parties will be allowed.
The incumbent American president sees an opportunity to relieve the political and social pressures in his country caused by an ever increasing population and dwindling resources by taking ownership of Venus by force if necessary.
To do this he orders the use of the country’s military and intelligence agencies to track down and ‘eliminate’ the mysterious Avalon.
Venus itself presents many enormous challenges apart from the difficulty of moving it out of it orbit. It has a surface temperature that would melt lead, an atmospheric pressure ninety times that of Earth and a dense greenhouse gas cloud cover that is lethally toxic cocktail of Sulphur dioxide and Carbon Dioxide that has choked the planet for millions of years.
The road from Earth to Venus is long and fraught with obstacles that appear to be impossible to overcome in this truly titanic undertaking but, if mankind cannot go to the planets, he needs to bring one to mankind. It is a truly epic tale of hope, biblical scale plans, death, deceit and reincarnation.
He embarks on a literally epic earth-moving project to re-engineer a planet within our solar System and to physically re-locate it to a new orbit close to Earth by deliberately striking it with Asteroids that are towed out of their orbits by rockets to drive it into a new orbital path and then to alter the hostile environment so that it can sustain and be survivable for mankind.
The planet selected for relocation is Venus.
To ensure he remains in control of the project through to completion he needs to find a way to guarantee his personal survival through several lifetimes.
To do this he designs a virtual clone of himself called Network George, a copy of his consciousness captured electronically and stored as a distribute entity across any network it is attached to. During its creation, his wife becomes Mary becomes terminally ill with cancer. With her consent, George downloads her consciousness prior to her death and a combined new entity, a complete mixture of George and Mary, calling itself Avalon, is created
To acquire the Asteroids and Ice-Comets needed for the project a large clandestine fleet of pilots, the Asteroid and Ice Comet Collection Fleet , AICCF is assembled.
As their tasks are to ‘round up’ asteroids and Ice Comets, the fleet soon adopt the a nickname, The Space Cowboys.
They have to embark on a lengthy and dangerous mission across to the Asteroid belt to the distant Kuiper Belt to pick up some of the abundant Ice-Comets from that location and bring them back to Venus.
In an attempt to try to avoid importing the worst elements of Earth’s problems, Avalon controversially declares that any society on Venus will be one where no money, no organised religions and no political parties will be allowed.
The incumbent American president sees an opportunity to relieve the political and social pressures in his country caused by an ever increasing population and dwindling resources by taking ownership of Venus by force if necessary.
To do this he orders the use of the country’s military and intelligence agencies to track down and ‘eliminate’ the mysterious Avalon.
Venus itself presents many enormous challenges apart from the difficulty of moving it out of it orbit. It has a surface temperature that would melt lead, an atmospheric pressure ninety times that of Earth and a dense greenhouse gas cloud cover that is lethally toxic cocktail of Sulphur dioxide and Carbon Dioxide that has choked the planet for millions of years.
The road from Earth to Venus is long and fraught with obstacles that appear to be impossible to overcome in this truly titanic undertaking but, if mankind cannot go to the planets, he needs to bring one to mankind. It is a truly epic tale of hope, biblical scale plans, death, deceit and reincarnation.
226 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 16, 2010
1 person is currently reading
10 people want to read
About the author
John Dunn
300 books18 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads data base.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 5, 2016
The story line was interesting and quite enthralling.
However it was seriously marred by missed out words, duplicated words, poor grammar, and particularly a significant lack of punctuation. I was frustrated and confused by very long sentences (many over 70 words) with no commas, which resulted in losing the meaning intended. Also, the chapters expounding the political viewpoint of the story were decidedly confusing, and I found the ending too short and limiting.
Nevertheless, the novel had sufficient merit to keep me interested until the end, but it would really benefit from a proof-read rewrite.
However it was seriously marred by missed out words, duplicated words, poor grammar, and particularly a significant lack of punctuation. I was frustrated and confused by very long sentences (many over 70 words) with no commas, which resulted in losing the meaning intended. Also, the chapters expounding the political viewpoint of the story were decidedly confusing, and I found the ending too short and limiting.
Nevertheless, the novel had sufficient merit to keep me interested until the end, but it would really benefit from a proof-read rewrite.
Displaying 1 of 1 review