"THAT PLANET HAS NO RIGHT TO BE THERE!"
Among the Saturnian moons, farsighted individuals, working without help or permission from any government, have established a colony. They call themselves the Kronians, after the Greek name for Saturn. Operating without the hidebound restrictions of bureaucratic Earth, the colony is a magnet, attracting the best and brightest of the home world, and has been making important new discoveries. But one of their claims — that they have found proof that the Solar System has undergone repeated cataclysms, and as recently as a few thousand years ago — flies in the face of the reigning dogma, and is under attack by the scientific establishment.
Then the planet Jupiter emits a white-hot protoplanet as large as the Earth, which is hurtling sunwards like a gigantic comet that will obliterate civilization….
Being a fan of Mr. Hogan since the 80s (Giant's Trilogy is amazing), I originally picked this book up in the early 00s. I could never get through it. The men-of-rational-thought banging their heads against the established political and scientific orthodoxy in an attempt challenge the common belief of how the solar system formed, coupled with another disaster-film end-of-the-world storyline was more than I could slog through.
But times change. The current social and political reality we find ourselves in—and my not wholly unserious desire to have a cosmic impact reset Earth—has caused me to revisit the book, and now—nearly 20 years later—it resonates.
Hogan does his homework. Everything he calls upon in his writing is based on established scientific fact, and his gift is being able to tie together disparate observations and theories to explain some of the fundamental unanswered questions in science. It was true in Giants, and it's true in Cradle.
That being said, he does tend to get a bit…wordy at times, but ultimately it pays off.
Recommended.