Curiosity · The Crossing
Record 01 / 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.
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About this book
The star at the centre of the book is real. WR 104 is a Wolf-Rayet binary in Sagittarius, roughly eight thousand light years from Earth, and it is genuinely discussed as a gamma-ray burst candidate. The observatory console on this site lets you point an array at it and listen to the transmission the novel is built around.
The whole of chapter one is free to read on this site, in the browser, with no signup — and you can listen to it read aloud.
Questions readers ask
Do I need to read The Crossing first?
Yes. The Crossing is book one of two and ends at the arrival at WR 104. The Descent picks up directly from there. Both were published on the same day, so there is no wait between them.
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. WR 104 is a real Wolf-Rayet binary in Sagittarius, sometimes discussed as a gamma-ray burst candidate. Readers who want plausible science without a physics lecture tend to be the right audience.
What kind of first contact story is it?
One in which the signal is a warning rather than an invitation, and humanity has been ignoring it for two centuries. There is no war fleet and no diplomacy: the intelligence at WR 104 has already decided what to do about our species before the crew arrives.
Is the series finished?
Yes. Curiosity is a complete two-book duology with a finished ending. Both books are available now, so the story can be read start to finish today.
Details
- Series
- Curiosity, book one of two
- Format
- Kindle edition · 366 pages
- Length
- 91,558 words · 76 chapters
- Genre
- Science fiction · Space opera · First contact
- Published
- 29 July 2026 · Right Elements Press
- Language
- English
- ASIN
- B0GY983RQM