Proxima

"If you succeed, no, when you succeed in taming this wilderness, this world of Proxima Centauri, you will have proven that mankind can colonise this ultimate frontier, a planet of a red dwarf star. And because there are hundreds of billions of red dwarf stars, and because they'll last trillions of years, suddenly mankind's future in this Galaxy is all but infinite. And it will all be because of you." "But there's a catch." "Everybody wants to be a pioneer, you see.
The first on the moon, like Armstrong. The first on Mars, like Cao Xi. Or they want to be a citizen of the tamed worlds of the future. Nobody wants to be a settler. Labouring to break the ground and build a farm. Their children growing up in a cage of emptiness." "Which is where you corne in .. Proxima is an awe-inspiring planetary romance from the co-author of the long Forth sequence of novels. It is the amazing story of how we colonise a new world, and the discovery of an ancient secret that will change our understanding of our place in the Universe for ever.
Proxima shows Stephen Baxter to be at the height of his powers. But it also shows him creating an extraordinary world and a bizarre alien ecology that will live in our imaginations for yecirs.