Test of Fire
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Earth has been devastated by a massive solar flare. Now a small group of survivors fights to rebuild civilization.
Cities became ovens, grasslands seas of flame. As the touch of dawn swept westward across the spinning planet, its fiery finger killed everything in its path. Glaciers in Switzerland began to melt; floodwaters poured down on burning Alpine villages. Paris became a torch, then London. North of the Arctic Circle, Laplanders in their summer furs burst into flame as their reindeer collapsed and roasted on the smoking tundra.
The line of dawn raced westward across the Atlantic, but as it did, the sun dimmed as quickly as it had flared.
The Americas escaped the sun's wrath ... almost.
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Ben Bova (1932â2020), American author of more than one hundred books of science fact and fiction, was awarded posthumously the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award. His work earned six Hugo Awards. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation in 2005, and his novel Titan won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for the best science fiction novel of 2006. In his early career, he was a technical editor for Project Vanguard, the United Statesâs first effort to launch a satellite into space in 1958. He then was a science writer for Avco Everett Research Laboratory, which built the heat shields for the Apollo 11 module. He held the position of president emeritus of the National Space Society and served as president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
Dean Sluyter has spent a lifetime learning authentic methods of natural meditation from Eastern and Western sages and sharing them with thousands of students, including prisoners, tech innovators, filmmakers, high school students, and entrepreneurs. He has completed numerous retreats and pilgrimages in Tibet, India, Nepal, and Europe, and for decades has led workshops throughout the United States.
