The Aftermath: Book Four of the Asteroid Wars

Written by Ben Bova

Narrated by Emily Janice Card, Gabrielle de Cuir, Stefan Rudnicki and Stephen Hoye

Six-time Hugo Award winner Ben Bova chronicles the saga of humankind's expansion beyond the solar system in The Aftermath.

In the wake of the Asteroid Wars that tore across the solar system, Victor Zacharius makes his living running the ore-carrier Syracuse. When the Syracuse stumbles into the middle of a military attack on the habitat Chrysalis, Victor flees in a control pod to draw the attacker's attention away from his family. Now, as his wife and children plunge into the far deeps of space, Victor has been rescued by the seductive Cheena Madagascar. He must do her bidding if he's to have a prayer of ever seeing his family again.

Elverda Apacheta, the solar system's greatest sculptor, and the cyborg Dorn, the ruthless military commander responsible for the attack on Chrysalis, are linked by their joint discovery of an alien artifact. Similarly transformed by the artifact's mysterious powers, Apacheta and Dorn now prowl the Belt, determined to find the bodies of the many victims of Harbin's atrocities so that they can be given proper burials. Kao Yuan is the captain of Viking who's determined to kill Dorn and Elverda because they know too much about the artifact and its power. But Viking's second-in-command appears to have the real power on board ship. When Viking catches up to Apacheta and Dorn, their confrontation begins a series of events involving them, the Zacharius family, and the transformation of the human solar system…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio
• Release date: Aug 1, 2007
• ISBN: 9781427201072

Ben Bova

Ben Bova (1932-2020) was the author of more than a hundred works of science fact and fiction, including Able One, Transhuman, Orion, the Star Quest Trilogy, and the Grand Tour novels, including Titan, winner of John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year. His many honors include the Isaac Asimov Memorial Award in 1996, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation in 2005, and the Robert A. Heinlein Award “for his outstanding body of work in the field of literature” in 2008. Dr. Bova was President Emeritus of the National Space Society and a past president of Science Fiction Writers of America, and a former editor of Analog and former fiction editor of Omni. As an editor, he won science fiction’s Hugo Award six times. His writings predicted the Space Race of the 1960s, virtual reality, human cloning, the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars), electronic book publishing, and much more. In addition to his literary achievements, Bova worked for Project Vanguard, America’s first artificial satellite program, and for Avco Everett Research Laboratory, the company that created the heat shields for Apollo 11, helping the NASA astronauts land on the moon. He also taught science fiction at Harvard University and at New York City’s Hayden Planetarium and worked with such filmmakers as George Lucas and Gene Roddenberry.

Reviews for The Aftermath

[utbw42 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The fourth book in the Asteroid Wars picks up after the third, where the Zacharias family ends up fighting for their lives after their ship, the Syracuse, is attacked by Dorn, who has changed after his exposure to an artifact found in the third book. The mother and her two kids are left stranded on the ship and drifting basically in orbit for many months while the father, who narrowly escaped in an attempt to lure Dorn away from his family, must deal with first the knowledge that his family is lost and possibly gone, then the realization that they may be alive as he discovers Dorn's plan to claim all the bodies from the previous conflicts, and an eventual rendezvous with the Zacharias family again. This one is not as good as the previous Asteroid War books, but still an enjoyable read in Bova's Grand Tour stage.

[buffalogr · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Bova space-opera of the imaginative kind. Kept my interest, even if it started off like" Leave it to Beaver" in space. Then, it got interesting as all the story lines came together in the last hour of the listen. The male macho was somewhat distracting but balanced by some aggressive female characters. Number 4 of 4 in the Asteroid Wars series and #9 of 21 in the Grand Tour series, this book would have been really annoying if read alone because the characters and the context would be unknown. Overall, a good read and I'm looking forward to the next one.