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The Winds of Altair Paperback – January 15, 1988

3.8 out of 5 stars 36

Earth is an old planet, and her teeming masses are running out of resources . . . and time. It is up to men such as Jeff Holman to discover a haven for Earth’s millions. Altair VI is one such planet, and Holman is determined to transform this world into one where the human race can survive.

Star probes had long before informed Earth that Altair VI had a flourishing ecology with one very tough beast at the top of the food chain, a beast that will have to be dealt with before the human colony ships arrive. The beast is not only tough, it is as smart as a man.

Holman is faced with a soul-wrenching decision—for to make Altair VI habitable for humans, all native life must die.


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About the Author

Born in Philadelphia, Ben Bova worked as a newspaper reporter, a technical editor for Project Vanguard (the first American satellite program), and a science writer and marketing manager for Avco Everett Research Laboratory, before being appointed editor of Analog, one of the leading science fiction magazines, in 1971. After leaving Analog in 1978, he continued his editorial work in science fiction, serving as fiction editor of Omni for several years and editing a number of anthologies and lines of books, including the "Ben Bova Presents" series for Tor. He has won science fiction's Hugo Award for Best Editor six times.

A published SF author from the late 1950s onward, Bova is one of the field's leading writers of "hard SF," science fiction based on plausible science and engineering. Among his dozens of novels are
Millennium, The Kinsman Saga, Colony, Orion, Peacekeepers, Privateers, and the Voyagers series. Much of his recent work, including Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, The Precipice, and The Rock Rats, falls into the continuity he calls "The Grand Tour," a large-scale saga of the near-future exploration and development of our solar system.

A President Emeritus of the National Space Society and a past president of Science-fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, in 2001 Dr. Bova was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He lives in Naples, Florida.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tor Books (January 15, 1988)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0812532279
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0812532272
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4 x 1 x 6.75 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.8 out of 5 stars 36

About the author

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Ben Bova
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The author of more than 100 futuristic novels and nonfiction books,

Dr. Ben Bova has been involved in science and high technology since the very beginnings of the space age. President Emeritus of the National Space Society and a past president of Science Fiction Writers of America, Dr. Bova received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation in 2005, “for fueling mankind’s imagination regarding the wonders of outer

space.” His 2006 novel TITAN received the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year. Earlier, he was an award-winning editor of ANALOG and OMNI and an executive in the aerospace industry.

Dr. Bova is a frequent commentator on radio and television and popular lecturer.

His website is: http://www.benbova.com

Customer reviews

3.8 out of 5 stars
3.8 out of 5
36 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on July 3, 2012
...and the wolfcats of Altair VI - aka Windsong. I first read this novel while in college in the 70s and I am glad I re-read it again recently because there were a lot of subtle nuances to this book I hadn't noticed before. It just proves that sometimes an old "friendship", like fine wine, only gets better with age. And while "The Winds of Altair" isn't exactly like the plot of James Cameron's "Avatar" there are enough similarities between the two to make me appreciate both of them a lot more.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2013
I liked this book. It's not great, but it's enjoyable. It grabbed me pretty quickly but then never really took off - reading it on my iPad, I didn't even realize I was at the end until I was on the last page. It does stay interesting, but once it gets to the climax and resolution, rather than the characters actually resolving the core issue (as part of the story), they just TELL you how they are going to resolve it, and then it ends - but not before also introducing another possible story line that doesn't go anywhere since the book ends. I still give the boom 4 stars (3.5 if I could) because I did like it and wish there had been a follow up.
Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2011
It's not giving away the ending, but you should know the ending is WAY too pat. I ended the book with, "you gotta be kidding me."
2 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2020
Interesting story. I remember reading this as a teen. Kind of horrifying, in a way. A story about environmentalism and fundamentalist religion. The ending is just a little too neat and tidy to me. The rest was good.
Reviewed in the United States on February 10, 2005
Light years from Earth a conglomeration of modules bunched together forms what its inhabitants have dubbed the "Village". The Church of Nirvan runs the Village...it is the Church's mission...a mission to terraform the savage planet of Altair VI. But the pre-sentient inhabitants of Altair VI -- large "wolfcats" and giant "apes" thoroughly...dislike...the human incursion. But the humans have an advantage...electronic probes surgically implanted in the brains of the animals of Altair VI enable humans to control them from the comforts of the Village...if they can get things to work correctly. Several scientists have already gone mad trying to operate the devices. This is where Jeff Holman comes in. He's a student aboard the Village...one of hundreds of devout followers of the Church...and the only person able to operate the electronic probes and literally link minds with a wolfcat on the planet below. But as the weeks and then months pass, Jeff finds himself facing a dilemma. For it is the task of every person living aboard the Village to help eliminate the harsh methane atmosphere of Altair VI and create a human friendly oxygen/nitrogen environment. But doing this will mean they must destroy the current ecosystem...including every animal now existing on the planet. It falls to Jeff Holman to manipulate the animals of Altair VI to help destroy their very home. A task that Jeff finds he can no longer perform. When this happens, he will not only clash with his fellow students living aboard the Village, but also the leader of the Village, the man who not only heads the terraforming effort, but also heads the Church Jeff Holman is sworn to.

As a big fan of Bova, I was eagerly looking forward to picking up this book. In all honesty, I was pretty disappointed. There are some interesting ideas in this book -- manipulating other beings through electronic devices for instance -- but the concepts just weren't enough to get past some pretty shallow writing. Jeff Holman is a somewhat interesting character, one that Bova seems to try and give some depth to, but he never succeeds very well. (This is a departure from both some of his earlier [e.g. Colony, City of Darkness] and his later works [e.g. Mars, Moonrise, Moonwar], where his characters are bright, vibrant, and provide an extremely enjoyable read.) The rest of the characters surrounding Holman come off mostly flat...with the troubled inventor of the brain probes that are used to control the animals on Altair VI involved in a romance with an African princess (who's also his laboratory aide). Even the "bad guy", Bishop Foy, just isn't really all that bad, showing some common ground with Holman towards the end of the book.

It wasn't just the characters that came off kind of shallow. The big moral dilemma of the book -- whether or not the wolfcats are "intelligent" enough to warrant a halting of the terraforming process -- comes off as...not particularily well thought through. Bova's arguments, through Holman just aren't all that persuasive. Bova doesn't present an argument for wolfcat intelligent much beyond the chimpanzee level. And according to the rules set down by the far off World Government, Bishop Foy must only halt the terraforming process if human level intelligence is detected on Altair VI.

What it all boils down to is that Altair VI is a rare (though not unheard of) fluke for Bova...a story that does not grab you and force you to turn page after page, a story that does not make you want to stay up into the wee hours of the morn just so you can find out what happens next. Personally, a rare dud for an author I usually truly enjoy will not turn me away from other stuff he has written...nor will I hope it will do the same to all who read this review...but Altair VI, standing by itself, should probably only be picked up by those who've really enjoyed Bova in the past, or those who simply want a quick read.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 25, 2003
A disappointing book by an accomplished writer.
"The Winds of Altair" portrays a future where the Earth teems with 17 billion mainly poor inhabitants. Crime and vice are rife on a world running out of resources. After making the leap to local space travel, humans discover a mechanism for faster-than-light travel A search begins for planets in other star systems that can be terraformed to allow some of the Earth's masses to be transported elsewhere, thereby alleviating terrestrial crowding. An expedition to the 6th planet surrounding the star Altair sponsored by a strict doctrinaire church and sanctioned by the World Government begins the preliminaries to terraforming a world that is occupied by alien life forms. The church leaders of the expedition see no problem with exterminating the existing life forms that could not survive in an earth-like atmosphere. The problem is complicated by the discovery that one of the species there may be intelligent.
The writing style is surprisingly simplistic for someone like Bova. The prose and structure is more appropriate for a "juvenile" level work than an adult novel. The characters are not well developed and appear shallow. For instance, the protagonist is a member of the church that sponsored the mission. The church has no black members, although it preaches racial tolerance. On meeting an African female member of the scientific team, he is initially perturbed by her black skin and exotic appearance. Soon, he comes to feel that she is beautiful despite being black. She is kind and friendly to him, and he then comes to believe that he is in love with her. Nothing is wrong with this evolution of events. The problem is that the development is sophomoric. A more fundamental problem that strains credibility is the idea sending Earth's unwanted away to terraformed planets at enormous expense. A few thousand or a few million people transported to another planet will not help when the problem is billions of poor. A flawed plot combined with puerile writing makes for an uninspiring novel.
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