A science-fiction heist thriller
STEALING
FOR THE
SKY
Some thieves rob banks. Starman steals rockets.
STEALING
The thief
Every job brings him closer to leaving Earth.
His name is Fosse. People call him Starman. If you need space technology and can’t afford to build it, he can get it for you.
Shuttle components. Satellite hardware. Entire rockets. He plans carefully, moves fast and does whatever the job requires.
For his clients, space is a business opportunity. For Starman, it’s an escape. Every fee goes towards getting himself off the planet.
The discovery
He wasn’t hired to steal this.
On a routine job, Starman finds a black sphere threaded with blue-green light. It weighs almost nothing—until he tries to move it.
The technician can’t explain it. Starman takes it anyway.
He doesn’t know what he has. But somebody wants it back. And they already know who took it.
The commission
An antique rocket.
A million-dollar job.
A separatist group wants a shortcut into the space race. Starman’s assignment: steal an old Soviet rocket from a Russian museum.
He brings in Cavell, a trusted accomplice with the haulage connections to move something that big.
The rocket is a problem he can solve. His employers are another matter. They insist on adding their own man to the crew.
The double-cross
They hired the right thief.
Then they double-crossed him.
Starman knows how to work for people he doesn’t trust. He charges extra.
But this job takes him from the museum into a fight for survival: wounded allies, armed pursuers and a prison built to keep men like him inside.
His employers have made one serious mistake. Starman is not the kind of man you sell out.
For film and television
The score of a lifetime:
an antique Soviet rocket.
In a near future where nations, corporations and criminals compete for orbital power, professional spaceship thief Starman steals a mysterious sphere—then accepts a commission to swipe an antique Soviet rocket, unaware how far his new employers will go to betray him.
Science fiction with the hardboiled edge of Richard Stark’s Parker series.
For film and television
Built around Starman.
- A commanding lead. A resourceful, ruthless professional thief with an obsessive private ambition.
- Physical action. Infiltration, a rocket heist and a prison escape driven by ingenuity and sudden violence.
- Earth-bound science fiction. Labs, hotels, roads and industrial spaces carry a story with much bigger ideas.
- Adam Roberts. Award-winning science fiction with a crime writer’s eye for process, pressure and betrayal.
A novella by Adam Roberts
Read the book.
A spaceship thief. A mysterious stolen sphere. A million-dollar rocket heist.
Adam Roberts is a winner of the BSFA Award for Best Novel and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. His books include Salt, Gradisil and Yellow Blue Tibia.
