Island of Clouds The Great 1972 Venus Flyby

April, 1972. Three legendary astronauts embark on man's boldest space voyage yet--a yearlong mission to fly past our nearest planetary neighbor, Venus. Island of Clouds, the first full-length novel in the Altered Space series, is a gripping space epic based on NASA mission proposals from the late 1960s. Touching on literary and cultural influences ranging from Borges and Bukowski to Solaris and Star Trek, this story of exploration also offers a literary probing of the dark reaches of human nature: alcoholism, capitalism, authority, fatherhood, and the ephemeral nature of desire. Each entry in the Altered Space series is a wholly separate narrative, but all deal with the mysteries of space and time, progress and circularity. Every title is an ensō of words in which orbits of spacecraft, moons, planets and people allow us fresh perspectives on the cycles of our own lives.