Winds of Altair

Earth is an old planet, and her teeming masses are running out of resources . . . and time. It is up to men such as Jeff Holman to discover a haven for Earth’s millions. Altair VI is one such planet, and Holman is determined to transform this world into one where the human race can survive.

Star probes had long before informed Earth that Altair VI had a flourishing ecology with one very tough beast at the top of the food chain, a beast that will have to be dealt with before the human colony ships arrive. The beast is not only tough, it is as smart as a man.

Holman is faced with a soul-wrenching decision—for to make Altair VI habitable for humans, all native life must die.

Jeff Holman is determined to terraform Altair VI into a home for the people of dying Earth. But he discovers that Altair VI hides a terrible secret, and he is faced with a soul-wrenching decision--for to make Altair VI habitable for humans, all native life must die. Including a race as intelligent as Man.

Earth is an old planet, and her teeming masses are running out of resources . . . and time. It is up to men such as Jeff Holman to discover a haven for Earth’s millions. Altair VI is one such planet, and Holman is determined to transform this world into one where the human race can survive.

Star probes had long before informed Earth that Altair VI had a flourishing ecology with one very tough beast at the top of the food chain, a beast that will have to be dealt with before the human colony ships arrive. The beast is not only tough, it is as smart as a man.

Holman is faced with a soul-wrenching decision—for to make Altair VI habitable for humans, all native life must die.

Born in Philadelphia, Ben Bova worked as a newspaper reporter, a technical editor for Project Vanguard (the first American satellite program), and a science writer and marketing manager for Avco Everett Research Laboratory, before being appointed editor of Analog, one of the leading science fiction magazines, in 1971. After leaving Analog in 1978, he continued his editorial work in science fiction, serving as fiction editor of Omni for several years and editing a number of anthologies and lines of books, including the "Ben Bova Presents" series for Tor. He has won science fiction's Hugo Award for Best Editor six times.

A published SF author from the late 1950s onward, Bova is one of the field's leading writers of "hard SF," science fiction based on plausible science and engineering. Among his dozens of novels are Millennium, The Kinsman Saga, Colony, Orion, Peacekeepers, Privateers, and the Voyagers series. Much of his recent work, including Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, The Precipice, and The Rock Rats, falls into the continuity he calls "The Grand Tour," a large-scale saga of the near-future exploration and development of our solar system.

A President Emeritus of the National Space Society and a past president of Science-fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, in 2001 Dr. Bova was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He lives in Naples, Florida.