DrNefario
7/21/2015
I enjoyed this short novel more than I expected. Put plainly, it's the story of four men whose starship has an accident, and their attempts to get back home.
Quite a lot of background work is thrown away in an introductory section - there is instantaneous matter transmission, but only to existing receivers, so the starships still have to travel the slow way but the crews can be rotated back home regularly. One particular ship, at the edge of human exploration, is diverted for a scientific mission, with a crew of four, when things go wrong.
There are lots of numbers, and what looks like decent scientific backing for the speculation, but in the end it's a straightforward survival story, not so different from The Martian. And at only 140 pages, it's a nice quick, easy read.
I've given it 3.5/5.