What if First Contact doesn't come the way we expect it—or with the sort of aliens we expect? When both sides have secrets within secrets to keep, how is anyone supposed to know the truth—or live long enough to tell it? Will it turn out to be the greatest discovery of all time... or the biggest hoax?

Bob Hanson, the chief scientist of a major aerospace corporation, has made an incredible discovery: a wrecked alien spacecraft adrift in the Asteroid Belt. The evidence is compelling—video images from the Prospector space probe he himself had created. The military enthusiastically embraces an investigation of the extraterrestrials, remarkably indifferent to the inconsistencies that begin to appear.

Undeterred, Hanson keeps digging... and finds much more than he had ever bargained for. Soon on the lam, he, and everyone to whom he turns, is hunted. Before long only one conclusion remains unassailable—that his mysterious opponents play for keeps. Are aliens manipulating events on Earth? Did unscrupulous corporate executives invent the aliens in search of giga-buck government contracts? Has the Pentagon fabricated an alien menace for its own purposes?

Or is the truth something really unimaginable?

About the Author

Author of fifteen SF novels (five of them collaborations with Larry Niven) and dozens of shorter works, Edward M. Lerner won the inaugural Canopus Award for fiction "honoring excellence in interstellar writing." His stories have also been nominated for Locus, Prometheus, and Hugo awards.

"Edward M. Lerner is the quintessential Analog writer, combining well-researched scientific and technological speculation with compelling characters and thought-provoking plots."
— Analog Science Fiction and Fact

"Here's an author you definitely need to check out."
— Asimov's Science Fiction

"Leave it to Edward M. Lerner to take a notion, run with it, squeeze every ramification out of it, and put it altogether in an irresistible page-turner."
— Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of Red Planet Blues

"Edward M. Lerner ... is one of the best kept secrets in SF."
— Tangent Online

"When people talk about good hard SF—rigorously extrapolated but still imbued with the classic sense-of-wonder—they mean the work of Edward M. Lerner, the current master of the craft."
— Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of Red Planet Blues

"One of the leading global writers of hard science fiction."
— The Innovation Show

"Lerner's world-building and extrapolating are top notch."
— SFScope

"He is science fiction down to the bone, but he very often takes the `serious' stuff not so seriously. Or he does, but he still squeezes a modicum of wit and whimsy into his subjects. He can catch a salient point in a couple of pages or explore a well-trodden road like AI with new insight."
— Galaxy's Edge

"Regardless of the theme, subject matter, or treatment, a Lerner novel never fails to intrigue, engage the intellect, or offer pure entertainment for its own sake. He can do it all, and well."
— Tangent Online

PROBE

"A fast-paced, hold-on-to-the-edge-of-your-seat thriller."
— Illinois Quarterly

"A fast-paced thriller sure to please techno-junkies, sci-fi lovers, and anyone who simply enjoys an exciting yarn."
— Pete Earley, author of Family of Spies

"Good old-fashioned flight and chase and murder, abetted and enhanced by futuristic technology."
— The Journal (newspaper of Fairfax, VA)

MOONSTRUCK

"MOONSTRUCK fizzes with ideas and surprises. Classic science fiction with 21st Century appeal."
— David Brin, Winner of Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards for best novel Author of the Uplift series

"Take one part Tom Clancy, one part Hal Clement, and one part Larry Niven, shake well, and you've got Edward Lerner's edge-of-your-seat day-after-tomorrow just-what-ARE-the-aliens up to thriller, MOONSTRUCK. It's a rollicking good read, in which the puzzles all go snick-snick at just the right moment, and the suspense never lets up. Highly recommended."
— Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of Rollback

"Moonstruck is a rapid fire technothriller that puts fresh thrills into the first contact tale. Fast, original, and will keep you guessing to the very last page."
— Robert A. Metzger, Best Novel Nebula Award nominee for Picoverse

"With MOONSTRUCK, Ed Lerner has presented alien contact the way it most likely will happen; not with benevolent super-beings who save us from ourselves in the nick of time, nor with super-conquerors who enslave us all. No, Lerner's aliens are deceptive, conniving manipulators with their own agendas and their own self-serving definition of right and wrong. In other words, they're a lot like us. Be very afraid."
— Jerry Oltion, Author of The Getaway Special

"An alien invasion tale like none you've ever read, yet chillingly relevant to our times."
— Stanley Schmidt, Hugo- and Nebula-nominated author of Argonaut

"Moonstruck is inventive, original and ingenious, filled with well-thought-out detail which gives it scientific credibility and political plausibility. The plot pulls you in and the writing keeps you hooked right to the end."
— John G. Hemry, Author of Burden of Proof

"A great, classic first-encounter novel for the 21st century: think Childhood's End, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and To Serve Man, served up with the cutting-edge media savvy of The Apprentice. Lerner writes with grace, surety, humor, and political wisdom that draws on sources ranging from Damocles to Churchill. I snapped up this novel on Cape Cod Bay, and learned anew why I relish science fiction."
— Paul Levinson, author of The Pixel Eye

"In his novel Moonstruck, physicist Edward M. Lerner operates proudly in the classic hard-SF tradition of John W. Campbell and Robert A. Heinlein. ... SF fans weary of tech-moronic Hollywood movies will find much to enjoy and admire in Moonstruck's hard-SF evocation of what might really happen if Earth made first contact with an alien intelligence."
— Scifi.com / Science Fiction Weekly

"Moonstruck is not just another alien invasion novel, but truly an original performance."
— Science Fiction Book Club