The novel “The Medusa Chronicles” by Stephen Baxter and Alastair Reynolds was published for the first time in 2016. It’s the official sequel to the novella “A Meeting with Medusa” by Arthur C. Clarke.

The contact with Jupiter’s “medusae” was an extraordinary feat for Howard Falcon, but being a cyborg capable of doing things impossible for a normal human being leaves him even more isolated. Despite this, he’s sometimes considered useful to accomplish some very special missions, for example when some machines become sentient.

In 1968, the space race is a part of the cold war between the USA and the USSR and the Moon missions are an important part of it. When an asteroid is spotted en route to Earth, the hostility between the two superpowers must give way to a collaboration to save the world from catastrophe.