Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama and Larry Niven's Ringworld will love this novel. Reynolds (Century Rain) is occasionally clumsy in his character interactions, but he has a genius for big-concept SF and fans of Arthur C.

Eventually, the castaways reach the Spica artifact, encounter several very alien species and discover that their fate is even stranger than they could have imagined. The ice mining ship Rockhopper is the only ship that can intercept Janus, so they are dispatched to carry out a flyby before the moon leaves the solar system forever. In the year 2057 Saturn 's moon Janus powers up and begins exiting the solar system in the direction of the Spica system. Janus soon proves itself to be an incredibly strange and ever changing environment. Pushing Ice is a hard Space Opera novel by Alastair Reynolds. Determining that Janus is heading toward an even more gigantic artifact orbiting the star Spica, the comet miners settle down to form their own castaway civilization, a process marred by the bad blood between those who support Captain Lind and those who blame her for their fate. As this spectacular, large-scale space opera opens, Janus, a moon of Saturn, now revealed. Though a short exploration is all that's planned, the Rockhopper soon finds itself trapped in Janus's time- and distance-distorting slipstream. Bella Lind, is the only spacecraft in the solar system positioned to catch the huge alien machine.

The Rockhopper, a comet miner commanded by Capt. As this spectacular, large-scale space opera opens, Janus, a moon of Saturn, now revealed as an alien artifact, has suddenly left orbit and headed for interstellar space.

Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds