Novel / Science fiction thriller

Falling Stars

One satellite breaks apart over Asia, the debris starts taking out everything else in orbit, and the people who make it home have to learn to live, and eventually fly, without the sky they built.

The Milky Way stretched across a dark, starry night sky.

Status: Early complete draft. A full rewrite is under way, and it will replace this text when it's done.
Length: 65,457 words · about 5 hours
This draft: Early draft, August 2025

Commander Jack Reynolds is watching from the Dragon capsule when a routine communications satellite comes apart and the pieces start hitting everything around it. Within hours the cascade is eating the orbits that run GPS, phones, banking and the power grid. His crew has one narrow channel through the wreckage and a twelve percent chance of getting through it alive.

Down in Denver, the lights are going out one neighborhood at a time. A hospital maintenance chief named Marcus Thompson keeps the generators turning on rationed diesel, a teenager named Lisa Park finds out what she's good for once her phone dies, and Colonel Michael Foster holds ten blocks of order together with checkpoints and bad choices. Then winter comes, and so do Chinese engineers with power, food and conditions attached. Everybody has to decide what they'll trade to get through it, and whether anyone will ever reach orbit again.

Heads up: this one deals with war, mass casualties, gun violence (including a teenager in a firefight), deaths from cold and hunger, grief.

Start reading: Chapter 1 Story guide · 69 cards Notes on the book

CONTENTS42 chapters

Revision notes7 open

The to-do list for the next draft: places where the book contradicts itself, where it drifted from the plan, and real-history slips. They get checked off here as they're fixed.

continuitySarah Williams becomes Sarah Harrison
Dragon's medic, Sarah Williams, disappears after ch 27. From ch 33 a Sarah Harrison, Jake's widow, takes her role, and Jake supposedly died on Dragon, but all four of Dragon's crew survive.
Chapter 27 Chapter 33 Chapter 35
continuityDavid Chen becomes Emily Chen
From ch 32, Emily Chen does David's Beijing role and has his history.
Chapter 32
continuityLisa Park and Lisa Chen
Separate through ch 40, then ch 41 gives Lisa Chen Mason Lisa Park's backstory.
Chapter 41
continuityToo many Harrisons and Zhous
Harrison is an aide, a hospital CFO (ch 10), the CIA Director (ch 22) and the Secretary of State (ch 30). General Zhou, Colonel Zhou Feng, Colonel Feng and General Zhou Ming ("not the Beijing Zhou", ch 34).
Chapter 10 Chapter 22 Chapter 30 Chapter 34
continuityTimeline and ages
Ch 33 "six months after" comes after ch 31 "one year after". Ch 40 is dated 2030. Emma Reynolds is 8 (ch 13) and 16 (ch 16). Jake Jr.'s age doesn't fit. Lisa's mother is a nurse (ch 4) and an ER doctor (ch 6).
Chapter 4 Chapter 6 Chapter 13 Chapter 16 Chapter 31 Chapter 33 Chapter 40
historyReal-world slips
The real Crew Dragon splashes down under parachutes, it doesn't land on a runway. Peterson isn't Space Force headquarters.
structureThe rewrite
The June 2026 bible follows a newer V4 (Lawson, Graves, Foster, Zhou) whose chapters aren't in the folder. This draft gets replaced when V4 is found or rewritten.

Version history1 draft

Current · August 2025

Early draft

The first complete draft: 42 chapters that follow the Dragon crew and the people of Denver from the cascade to a joint return to space ten years later. It came before the current rewrite, so some character names shift partway through.

This is the only draft posted so far. When the rewrite lands, this one moves down here.