The Long Sunset

Hutch has been the Academy’s top pilot for decades, renowned for her first contact encounters and minor celebrity status, yet a shift in world politics—from exploration to fear of encountering a more advanced alien race—leaves her with little to do despite participating in a groundbreaking scientific achievement that rejuvenates the human body and extends lifespan. When a mysterious message from an unexplored region of space arrives in the form of music, the program readies its last interstellar ship, knowing the aliens could pose a grave threat and that the message may have traveled for thousands of years. Amid rising paranoia, Hutch and her crew make an early departure—and what they discover at the edge of the galaxy is far beyond anything they could have imagined.