Starfire

by Dale Brown Narrated by William Dufris

Overview

New York Times bestselling author Dale Brown-“the best military writer in the country” (Clive Cussler)-is back with Starfire, a masterful military thriller that explores a future all too possible and all too close: the weaponization of space.

With the death of his heroic father, bomber and space warfare veteran Patrick McLanahan, Bradley McLanahan must now fly solo, leading a team of young engineers designing Starfire, the world's first orbiting solar power plant.

Starfire will not only deliver unlimited and inexpensive electricity anywhere on planet Earth, it can also transmit power to the moon, and even to spacecraft and asteroids. It's a crucial first step in the exploration of the solar system, and Bradley and his team are on the cutting edge.

But U.S. president Kenneth Phoenix's plans to militarize and industrialize Earth's orbit sparks an arms race in space that eclipses the darkest and most terrifying days of the Cold War. Before he can prevent it, Bradley and his team are caught at the center of a battle that threatens to become an all-out global conflict for control of space.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

07/28/2014
Bestseller Brown's exciting 19th entry in his loosely connected techno-thriller series (after 2012's Tiger Claw) focuses on Bradley McLanahan. As a precocious and well-connected engineering student at California Polytechnic State University, Bradley devises, with the help of his brilliant team of young scientists and fellow classmates, the blueprint for Starfire, an unparalleled source of solar energy in Earth's spatial orbit. The project at first sounds like a teenager's imaginative daydream, yet President Kenneth Phoenix's intention to turn the Armstrong Space Station into a weapon of mass destruction suddenly puts Bradley in the crosshairs of the dangerous Russian government. Entangled in a potentially catastrophic war stretching to the outer reaches of space, Bradley and his friends must formulate a new plan—one that could potentially save all mankind. While encumbered by too much jargon and a dizzying number of characters and plot developments, the novel does manage in its descriptions of spaceships, warfare, and the so-called "final frontier." (May)

Kirkus Reviews

2014-05-22
The development of an orbiting solar-power plant leads to conflict between American and Russian military forces.The newest military thriller from Brown (Tiger’s Claw, 2013, etc.) continues the saga of the late, legendary fighter pilot Patrick McLanahan and his rapidly maturing son, Bradley. In the not-too-distant future of 2016, Kenneth Phoenix is the first American president to fly in space, and he implements a plan to expand the U.S. space program. This decision infuriates the Russian president, who's still recovering from emotional wounds inflicted during the battle between American and Russian forces a decade prior. To complicate matters further, college freshman Bradley McLanahan is leading a team of gifted scientists and engineers working on an orbiting solar plant, which would be a boon to America’s interstellar presence. With his father dead, however, Bradley is left vulnerable to Russian agents under orders to settle an old score with his family. To protect himself—and the future of his cutting-edge project—Bradley hooks up with his father’s old allies while developing the skills necessary for his own emergence as a first-rate fighting man. In a world where old vendettas merge with global tensions, Bradley learns that every step could be his last and political intrigue can quickly turn into an outright war. With no room for extraneous character development or expansive narrative details, this story rests on the author’s deep knowledge of flying and the space program.A page-turner filled with an insider’s knowledge of military aircraft.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170411948
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/06/2014
Series:	Patrick McLanahan Series , #19
Edition description:	Unabridged

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