Glitch

by Kate Rauner

At Spaceport America in the desert southwest, Rob Shay is a controller for Xplore, the world's premiere space exploration company. On a mission for an international consortium of universities, routine calibrations on the spacecraft's imagers lead Rob and his mission control crew to an incredible discovery. They find a glitch in space that opens an impossible path to an unknown star, which they dub Helios, and its planetary system.
Serendipity led to the discovery and serendipity may stop its exploration. All Rob wants to do is be part of exploring the Helios system, but unexpected problems keep getting in his way. The Board of Directors for the consortium that owns the mission believes Rob found a glitch in the spacecraft's instruments rather than a glitch in space. The control crew must convince them the glitch in space is real, and that they must divert one of their spacecraft to a new mission to create a sentry at the glitch, before hopelessly losing track of it somewhere out among uncataloged asteroids. Only then international spacecraft can begin to explore the Helios system.
Support and opposition come from unexpected sources. Although the Helios mission is sustained by many subscribers to the universities' missions, not everyone in the world wants to see humanity travel beyond Earth. Space exploration is a private industry, but governments try to claim control. Xplore is in the business of exploration and business concerns come first. Rob struggles in a world he can't control, trying to stay employed at Xplore while even bigger problems rock the nation. At least Rob can find some sympathy from his once-girlfriend who runs a telescope-for-hire business in Australia.
Glitch is a hard science fiction story in a futurist world, rooted in today's trends and technologies.

325 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 21, 2013

About the author

Kate Rauner is a retired Cold War Warrior. She worked for over twenty years at the Rocky Flats Plant, once part of the nation's nuclear weapons complex. She helped decommission the site, which is now a National Wildlife Refuge.

Kate moved to southwest New Mexico and worked at the copper mines around Silver City, including the historic Santa Rita mine. Santa Rita has been mined since Native Americans collected copper there before the Spaniards entered Mexico.

Today she lives outside Silver City on the edge of the Gila National Forest with her husband and cat. She enjoys hiking and bird-watching, and, as a volunteer firefighter, has fought wildland and home fires. "I'm well on my way to my life's goal," Kate says. "To become an eccentric old woman."

Reviews

[Sudharsan srinivasan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Firstly sorry for reading it very late after promising to do so(I can sense that author's feel).Secondly,kudos for the author who choosed an tougher dimension/sub-genre under sci-fi genre,which many author dare not to touch.The plot of the story is nicely carried out throughout the book. The Story kick off slowly with formal introduction about the protagonist and his environment. I deeply envy the house of rob shay,I would never leave that house if I had one. Once rob's team found a strange thing in space called Glitch in space, book tempts to turn pages.Then at one stage I thought there would be some ugly aliens who gonna be part of this book and even I thought this story is heading like commercial alien type sci-fi movie. Thanks to author,she proved me wrong. The story turns to be harsh undeniable reality.The author holds the grip of readers by not making readers to easily predict the end. Coming to characterisation,starting from rob to yuan's cat author has done a good job. Every character has been justified.I thought What significance would rachel have, which was answered in the end. The author's anger for avoidance of rural development was ousted via senator cox. Thanks to author,who gave greater significance for Indian space scientists.On lighter note punarnava moorthy sounds more masculine name than feminine. Scientific explanation could have been with some metaphor,because of this reason the author has tagged GLITCH as hard sci-fi I think.
So 'GLITCH'- A different dimension/sub-genre in sci-fi.