The starship Proxima is on a twenty-five-trillion mile journey. Icarus was born on the ship as was his father and his father’s father, but there will be two more generations before the Proxima reaches its destination. As the tale begins, the Proxima is making an emergency diversion to avoid a black hole. Icarus wants to get a closer look. Although his father explains that when something goes into a black hole it never comes out, Icarus is confident that he can journey to the black hole’s edge and still make it back. He sneaks one of the Runabout ships out of the docking station and sets off to explore the black hole on his own. The result is unexpected and startling. Icarus returns to find his world profoundly and forever transformed.

In Icarus at the Edge of Time Brian Greene has given us a fable about fathers and sons, curiosity and wisdom, and the complexity of the universe as only a physicist of his range and lucidity could. Designed by Chip Kidd—with full-color images from the Hubble Space Telescope—it is destined to be a classic for all ages.

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