Sunstorm: a Time Odyssey: book two. Arthur C. Clarke & Stephen Baxter. 2005.

2037: a restless sun.

The sun flares. Thousands die. Suddenly our high technology civilisation seems terribly vulnerable. We recover. We rebuild. But this is just the precursor.

He is a maverick, not yet 25. But his calculations are irrefutable, his prediction solid. It is going to happen again. In April 2042, in just five years, the sun will flare once more.

But this time the sun will hurl out in one day the energy it would normally spend in a year. This time nothing on Earth will survive. As plans are drawn up to save mankind, as all Earth’s resources are mobilised for one unimaginable engineering effort, one question nags:

Why now?