Winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
When a giant meteor crashes into the earth and destroys all life, the small group of human survivors manage to leave the barren planet and establish a new home on the moon. From Tycho Base, men and women are able to observe the devastated planet and wait for a time when return will become possible.
Generations pass. Cloned children have had children of their own, and their eyes are raised toward the giant planet in the sky which long ago was the cradle of humanity. Finally, after millennia of waiting, the descendants of the original refugees travel back to a planet they've never known, to try and rebuild a civilization of which they've never been a part.
The fate of the earth lies in the success of their return, but after so much time, the question is not whether they can rebuild an old destroyed home, but whether they can learn to inhabit an alien new world—Earth.
Jack Williamson published his first short story in 1928, and he's been producing entertaining, thought-provoking science fiction ever since. The second person named Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America--the first was Robert A. Heinlein--Williamson has always been in the forefront of the field, being the first to write fiction about genetic engineering (he invented the term), anti-matter, and other cutting-edge science. A renaissance man, Williamson is a master of fantasy and horror as well as science fiction. He lives in Portales, New Mexico.