Creation Node. Stephen Baxter. 2023.

In the year 2255, a woman named Salma, twenty years old, is the first fully to see - with her own eyes, albeit moderated by her ships instruments - the object called Planet Nine. See, but not recognise what it was. Not yet. 

Planet Nine wasn’t a planet, or the ‘ninth’ of anything. Briefly thought to be a black hole, it suddenly changes, expands and sends a message. There is something waiting on its surface. Something not quite human.

As the ramifications of this event spread across the elements of a fractured humanity, it is clear that the small crew on the spot at the centre of the most dramatic discovery in history. But this is not the only inexplicable event - impossibly, at exactly the same moment, a galaxy-centre quasar has appeared twenty-five thousand light years away, pouring heat into the solar system. 

If the enigma of the creation node is not solved quickly, there may be no one left to investigate it.