Book excerpt: The time is the late 1980s. Once again the Russians have shaken the Americans with a space spectacular-one that far outstrips the launching of Sputnik in 1958. This time they have secretly lofted a full-scale space station that dwarfs the one the U.S. hopes to build in the '90s.The American response-as it was in the late 1950s-is a crash program to overtake and surpass the Soviet effort. And by 2010 their efforts have succeeded. Burgeoning space industry has resulted in an economic boom unprecedented in U.S. history-and man will never again be confined to Earth.But it is the people behind the U.S. space program that make it succeed-and that make THE MOON GODDESS AND THE SON so memorable."Man's journey to the stars will be no mere historical abstraction: it will take many specific steps by individual men and women. The key stepping-stone is Kingsbury's own invention, and a mind-boggler it is: as grandiose and daring as a transcontinental railroad might have seemed to the Mayflower crew-and just as possible."- Stanley Schmidt, editor, Analog"I admit with some envy that Kingsbury's epic reminds me of Michener's Space. The theme is similar: that talented cadre of hardnoses we follow to new frontiers, literally to new worlds. But Kingsbury's people remind me more of some I've met in our push to space: raffish, impatient, wonderfully human-and grasping for the superhuman."-Dean Ing, author of Mutual Assured Survival and The Future of Flight