Tethys Ocean by E. Amélio

Dr Bryant Laux needs the universe to make sense.

A brilliant but troubled physicist, Bryant has built his life around patterns, equations, and the comforting certainty that nature obeys its laws. When he is drawn into an audacious scientific project, he joins an exceptional team attempting to turn the impossible into engineering reality: a spacecraft capable of carrying humanity farther than it has ever travelled.

Years of research, sacrifice, and preparation culminate in the launch of the Magellan and its crew on an eight-year mission beyond the familiar reaches of the Solar System. Alongside them is Micah, an artificial intelligence whose developing awareness may prove as consequential as the discoveries awaiting them.

Then something goes catastrophically wrong.

The mission they trained for is gone. Cut off from everything they know and faced with circumstances no simulation could have anticipated, twelve scientists, engineers, soldiers, and explorers must rely on one another, on the technology they brought with them, and on the laws of nature they thought they understood.

For Bryant, survival brings a deeper challenge. The universe still follows its rules, but those rules are leading him somewhere he never expected.

Blending hard science fiction with the character depth and philosophical concerns of literary fiction, Tethys Ocean is a story of exploration, survival, intelligence, consciousness, mortality, and humanity's need to make sense of the unknown.

Tethys Ocean is the first book in The Ghosts in the Palimpsest of Time.