Enables archive audio · press ESC to skip
CURIOSITY LINKSTABLE UEA ARCHIVE--:--:-- SIG

Curiosity A First Contact
Science Fiction
Series

Eight thousand light years from Earth, a dying star has been transmitting for two hundred years. Nobody answered.

Two novels by Martin Cosgrove — The Crossing and The Descent — about the crew nobody would have chosen, the message everybody ignored, and a species that finds out too late it was being warned rather than threatened. Both books are available now, so there is no wait between them.

Open the file Read Book One

Mission designation

VESSELUEA CURIOSITY · RESEARCH
DECKS03
DESTINATIONWR 104 · SAGITTARIUS
RANGE8,000 LY
CROSSING53 DAYS
SOURCE AGE200 YRS TRANSMITTING
PRIOR WARNINGS341 · ALL DECLINED
CREW RETURNEDINCOMPLETE
◉ INCOMING AUDIO TRANSMISSION ORIGINAL SCORE · MP3 · STEREO
Play

Incoming audio transmission

The Warning at Kappa

Theme from Curiosity · Martin Cosgrove

SIGNAL DORMANT — PRESS PLAY TO DECODE
0:00
2:55
VOL

Archive contents · 02 records

The Series

RECORD 01 / BOOK ONE91,558 WORDS · 76 CH
Book cover of Curiosity: The Crossing, Book One of the first contact science fiction series by Martin Cosgrove — a copper spiral nebula and a research ship in deep space

Book One

The Crossing

Eight thousand light years away, something is transmitting. Nobody on Earth wants to answer it. Jennifer Starzek lost her ship and two hundred and fifty-three of her crew. The United Earth Agency wants her back — to take a twenty-five-year-old research vessel to the far side of the galaxy and find out who is calling. The crew she assembles is nobody's first choice. They have fifty-three days to cross. Behind them, the outpost they left falls to pirates. And when the Curiosity finally arrives, it does not negotiate. It asks for one of them by name.

53DAY CROSSING
06CREW ABOARD
200YRS OF SIGNAL
Buy on Amazon
RECORD 02 / BOOK TWO77,678 WORDS · 52 CH
Book cover of Curiosity: The Descent, Book Two of the first contact science fiction series by Martin Cosgrove — a vast green alien ring structure with a ship descending into it

Book Two · Conclusion

The Descent

Four hundred years before the Curiosity ever left dock, something else came to WR 104 asking the same question. It never left. The away team goes into a structure the size of a world to find out what lives inside it, how long it has been there, and what it's aimed at. One of them does not come out. The rest come home to a planet the colour of ash — and to an archive proving that three hundred and forty-one warnings reached Earth before theirs, and that every single one was read, filed and declined. And in a cell that is not quite a cell, a man nobody is coming for begins to count.

341WARNINGS SENT
11MIN TO EARTH
03WORLDS LEFT
Buy on Amazon
DELIVERY STORE DETECTED: · links route to your local Amazon

Archive systems · partial availability

SEALED
MOD-01

Mission Log

The full timeline, from the first intercept to the descent. Entries unlock at your clearance level.

SEALED
MOD-02

Personnel Files

Service records for every crew member aboard. Some fields will stay redacted until you have read Book Two.

SEALED
MOD-03

The Curiosity

Three decks, one reactor, twenty-five years old. Deck plans drawn from the manuscript itself.

SEALED
MOD-04

Chapter One

The opening of The Crossing, readable in full. No account, no cost, no catch.

Transmission relay

Open a Channel

One message when the next book is close, and nothing else. No schedule, no filler, no forwarding your address to anyone. Unsubscribe in a click.

Reader profile · matching

Is This Your Kind of Science Fiction?

Curiosity sits on the shelf between hard science fiction and space opera. If the following describe books you finish in two sittings, it will suit you.

First contact that isn't an invasion

No war fleets and no diplomacy. The intelligence at WR 104 has already decided what to do about our species before anyone arrives, and the crew's problem is comprehension rather than combat. If you like first contact novels where the horror is being understood, this is that.

A small crew, a long way out

Six people, one ageing research vessel, fifty-three days of crossing and nowhere to put anybody who breaks. A found-family crew story in the claustrophobic tradition rather than the fleet-battle one.

Astronomy that checks out

WR 104 is a real Wolf–Rayet binary roughly eight thousand light years away in Sagittarius, occasionally discussed as a gamma-ray burst candidate. The physics is load-bearing, not decorative — but you are never asked to do homework.

A complete story, available today

A finished duology, not an open-ended series. Both books published together, so The Crossing ends on the arrival and The Descent is already waiting. No cliffhanger you have to wait a year to resolve.

Common queries · archive responses

Questions

Has Martin Cosgrove written anything else?

Yes — the Universal Matter series came first: The Destiny of Ethan King (2012) and its sequel KARA (2014). Both are science fiction and both are available on Amazon. Curiosity is a separate story and needs no knowledge of them.

What order should I read the Curiosity books in?

Read Curiosity: The Crossing first, then Curiosity: The Descent. The two books are one continuous story split into two volumes — The Crossing ends at the arrival at WR 104, and The Descent picks up immediately after. Both were published on the same day, so there is no wait between them.

Is the series finished, or will there be more books?

Curiosity is a complete two-book duology with a finished ending. You can read the whole story today. The universe leaves room for more, but nothing about these two books is unresolved.

Is this hard science fiction or space opera?

Both, deliberately. It has the scale, crew focus and momentum of space opera, with astronomy and engineering that hold up to scrutiny. Readers who want plausible science without a physics lecture tend to be the right audience.

How long are the books?

The Crossing is roughly 91,500 words across 76 chapters. The Descent is roughly 77,700 words across 52 chapters plus an epilogue. Together, about 169,000 words — a full-length novel each, not novellas.

Where can I buy them?

Both books are available as Kindle ebooks on Amazon. The buy buttons on this page route automatically to your local Amazon store, and you can override the choice from the store selector above if it guesses wrong.

Is there any content I should know about before reading?

The books contain strong language, scenes of violence and peril, on-page character death, and a siege sequence involving a child in danger. There is no sexual violence.

Origin

Martin
Cosgrove

Martin Cosgrove writes science fiction from Merseyside, England. Curiosity is his second series, following the Universal Matter books — The Destiny of Ethan King and its sequel KARA.

Curiosity is two novels about first contact that arrives as a warning rather than an invitation, and a crew assembled from everyone else's rejects. It is built on real astronomy: WR 104 is a genuine Wolf–Rayet binary roughly eight thousand light years away in Sagittarius, occasionally discussed as a gamma-ray burst candidate. Everything the Curiosity flies towards is where the sky says it is.

Also by Martin Cosgrove · Universal Matter

Get the next book