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Starquake: Hard Science Fiction at the Edge of Survival
The closest magnetar ever discovered is sitting in our cosmic backyard. And there is no way to know if it has already fired.
Solar physicist James Chen's life is stable, if not exactly thrilling, teaching undergraduates, reviewing papers, sharing custody of his fifteen year old daughter Lily. Then a grad student walks into his office with X-ray data that doesn't make sense. A neutron star with a magnetic field a quadrillion times stronger than Earth's, an object capable of releasing more energy in a tenth of a second than the Sun emits in a quarter million years, has been found just twenty eight light-years away. Hidden in the dust of the galactic plane. Unnoticed until now.
If it quakes, the gamma radiation will shred the ozone layer. And the warning travels at the same speed as the weapon.
Starquake is a hard science fiction story about the collision between cosmic indifference and human love. Grounded in real magnetar physics, real atmospheric chemistry, and real neutrino detection science, it follows one man caught between the knowledge that the sky might already be falling and the ordinary, irreplaceable mornings he spends with his daughter.
A standalone novelette (approx. 18,000 words) in the Cosmic Thresholds collection, Volume I. Each story is a complete narrative, designed to be read in about two hours.
Solar physicist James Chen's life is stable, if not exactly thrilling, teaching undergraduates, reviewing papers, sharing custody of his fifteen year old daughter Lily. Then a grad student walks into his office with X-ray data that doesn't make sense. A neutron star with a magnetic field a quadrillion times stronger than Earth's, an object capable of releasing more energy in a tenth of a second than the Sun emits in a quarter million years, has been found just twenty eight light-years away. Hidden in the dust of the galactic plane. Unnoticed until now.
If it quakes, the gamma radiation will shred the ozone layer. And the warning travels at the same speed as the weapon.
Starquake is a hard science fiction story about the collision between cosmic indifference and human love. Grounded in real magnetar physics, real atmospheric chemistry, and real neutrino detection science, it follows one man caught between the knowledge that the sky might already be falling and the ordinary, irreplaceable mornings he spends with his daughter.
A standalone novelette (approx. 18,000 words) in the Cosmic Thresholds collection, Volume I. Each story is a complete narrative, designed to be read in about two hours.
95 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 24, 2026
About the author
Alan Voss
7 books11 followersAlan Voss is a veteran technology architect and lifelong astronomy enthusiast who writes hard science fiction grounded in real physics.
His COSMIC THRESHOLDS collection puts working scientists in front of the universe's most extreme phenomena and asks what happens next. A solar physicist discovers a magnetar close enough to sterilize Earth's atmosphere. A governor leads 2,000 colonists onto a tidally locked planet where the wind never stops. An astrobiologist descends through twenty one kilometers of ice into an ocean on a rogue planet drifting between the stars. An astrophysicist builds a telescope to peer into the one region of the sky no one has ever seen, and the data starts looking back. Each story starts with a real object, a real process, a real piece of physics, and follows it to its human consequences.
The stories are standalone novelettes, each about 18,000 words, designed to be read in a single sitting and in any order. The science is accessible. The physics is real. The protagonists are professionals who understand exactly what they are facing, which tends to make things worse.
Alan grew up reading Arthur C. Clarke, Gregory Benford, and Peter Watts, and their fingerprints are all over this work.
His COSMIC THRESHOLDS collection puts working scientists in front of the universe's most extreme phenomena and asks what happens next. A solar physicist discovers a magnetar close enough to sterilize Earth's atmosphere. A governor leads 2,000 colonists onto a tidally locked planet where the wind never stops. An astrobiologist descends through twenty one kilometers of ice into an ocean on a rogue planet drifting between the stars. An astrophysicist builds a telescope to peer into the one region of the sky no one has ever seen, and the data starts looking back. Each story starts with a real object, a real process, a real piece of physics, and follows it to its human consequences.
The stories are standalone novelettes, each about 18,000 words, designed to be read in a single sitting and in any order. The science is accessible. The physics is real. The protagonists are professionals who understand exactly what they are facing, which tends to make things worse.
Alan grew up reading Arthur C. Clarke, Gregory Benford, and Peter Watts, and their fingerprints are all over this work.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 14, 2026
This is just incredible. I love this series. The author is so good at taking real events in science and pushing them up one step to examine what probably will happen someday when things go bad for us. But he does it with a very strong sense of humanity and genuine emotion.
He is also able to come up with amazingly fresh and unique descriptive phrases. My only complaint is that, as fun as they are, he does it a bit too much, and wears out the novelty.
The books are short, but the right length for the story. If you like science fiction at all, you owe it to yourself to read these.
He is also able to come up with amazingly fresh and unique descriptive phrases. My only complaint is that, as fun as they are, he does it a bit too much, and wears out the novelty.
The books are short, but the right length for the story. If you like science fiction at all, you owe it to yourself to read these.
Displaying 1 of 1 review