Kings of the High Frontier — Hardcover 1st Edition
Prometheus Award-Winner! Numbered! Signed! Rare!
576pp, 9¼″ x 6¼″, Autographed, Near Mint —
$49.95
This is the hardcover first edition, limited to 1,250 signed and numbered copies, published by Final Frontier Books in 1998 (ISBN 0-9665662-0-3). Includes an introduction by Gregory Benford, PhD, and dust jacket art by Rob Prior. Long out of print, the novel differs in numerous ways from the recent KoPubCo ePub edition, so Koman Kompletists will want this rarity in their collection. The number on your copy depends on our extremely limited stock.
Tammy Reis, NASA Space Shuttle commander, works for the most highly funded, technologically advanced space program in the world. So why do nightmares of the Challenger disaster haunt her sleep? And why does her beloved NASA seem no longer capable of matching the stunning successes of its glorious past?
Billionaire Laurence Poubelle wants to build his own orbital X-15 spaceplane. Can his keen marketing skills overcome a decadent culture hostile to wealth and contemptuous of adventure? Can he single-handedly launch the greatest Space Race in history?
Russian nuclear missile commander Col. Vladimir Tuchapski subverts a disarmament treaty to attempt an impossible theft. Can he hijack the abandoned space station Mir and restore the glory of the crumbled Soviet Union?
The great-great-great-great grand nephew of Davy Crockett and his cadre of college students secretly build a single-stage-to-orbit rocket-copter in an abandoned warehouse in the South Bronx. Can anyone stop them before their low-rent launch attempt sets the New York skyline ablaze?
NSA operative Montgomery Barron fights to construct his agency’s response to clandestine launch-vehicle efforts: the orbital killer-spaceplane Huntress. Will he achieve the goal of Project Stark Fist to control the spaceways?
Rocket engineer Gerry Cooper struggles in a tiny spacecraft-design company in the Mojave Desert. Who wants him stopped — or dead?
Shadowy black-marketeer Marcus Grant — hidden from scrutiny in a failed equatorial African state — concocts an ambitious conspiracy more daring than anyone can imagine. Tammy Reis — recruited to infiltrate Grant’s inner circle — discovers his deepest secret and faces an impossible choice: duty to her government or loyalty to her heart, mind, and soul.
Kings of the High Frontier — first published in digital form on the Internet in mid-May, 1996 — anticipated the X-Prize, which Peter Diamandis publicly announced on May 18, 1996, the same week as the novel was made available. Koman also predicted a second Space Shuttle disaster and the “True Dawn” of space travel instigated by free-market launch efforts.
“In case you, like others, have forgotten the
Future, Victor Koman remembers it. He grew up there and now,
with total recall, wakes us to jog our memories and rebirth
Tomorrow. Would that there were a dozen more writers like him, in
the field.”
“Kings of the High
Frontier is an intriguing, exhilarating, thought-provoking, and — yes — sprawling novel that brings back the sense of wonder that drew so many of us into science-fiction in the first place.”
“An exciting, bracing look at a future some of us hope for, yet many fear. Hard-edged, tough-minded sf indeed!”
“Victor Koman has done something amazing. In Kings of the High
Frontier he has captured all the hopes and dreams of the space migration movement, detailed the glories of its finest efforts, identified the pernicious enemies who keep it grounded, and shown a myriad of possibilities for breaking free from Earth. As these
dreams continue to be realized, and as the destruction of NASA comes to pass in our world, Koman will be heralded not only as a science fiction visionary with prophetic ability, but as the man who issued the call to arms.”
“It has a story to tell on the same scale as Atlas Shrugged or Dune.”
