An astronaut with suicidal tendences from having spent too much time in suspended animation. Machine descendants of human technology, trying to understand what their creators were thinking. Virtual and atomic spins on apocalypse. Mystics (one Martian, one mathematician) who succeed by failing and fail by succeeding. Cutting-edge science fiction by a modern master.

A plausibly mad "mushroom messiah" and a lost tribe--soon to be more lost than ever as humanity's first ambassadors to the stars. Three fighter pilots on a secret mission involving the Roswell cover story's surprising truth. An early astronomer discovers the macrocosm of which our universe is just a part. A trip backwards from 1999 to the 1939 World's Fair, and a meeting with Einstein. More strange yet compelling characters encountering the challenges of a technological world.

With his astonishing future vision, Howard V. Hendrix has emerged as one of the new masters of science fiction, drawing extraordinary praise for his debut novel, Lightpaths, "a taut...space-age slice of life" (Publishers Weekly), and its "brilliant" (Locus) follow-up, Standing Wave. Now he meshes virtual reality, deep-space exploration, and human nature in a novel starkly breathtaking in its portrayal of the quest for meaning against a backdrop of scientific and spiritual chaos. Spanning the first part of the twenty-first century, Better Angels revolves around the mystery of an ancient, alien artifact resembling an angel's shoulder blade, and the transcendent effect it has on five people, whose lives and relationships lead to--and are forever altered by--its discovery. A novel of unparalleled brilliance from the author leading the way into the new millennium. Kim Stanley Robinson has named Howard V. Hendrix as "One of the very best of the new science fiction writers."

Roger Cortland came to the Orbital Complex to continue his life's work in virtual reality, Marissa Correa to observe this Utopian society up close, and Jhana Meniskos to student the "Orbital Park," the station's biodiversity preserve. But no utopia is safe—from corruption, from sabotage, from corporate greed. And when this "perfect" world begins to unravel, all three will have to fight to protect their work—and their lives! Writer Michael Bishop says: "An exhilarating intellectual tour of both an amazing orbital habitat and a dizzying complex of ideas."

What was the light that mazed every mind's eye? What has brought a flying mountain top home from the stars, and sent investigators into the orbital habitats floating above Earth? How is this connected to a "living fossil" fungus—or to a dead madman—or to the fate of the planet? Whoever discovers the answers to these questions—FIRST!—will decide the ultimate fate of the Earth—and all humanity! An imaginative tour de force.