Andromeda Nebula

Year 3000. The universe has been fully explored. Humanity has reached the next stage of development, and together with other highly developed civilizations created the “Great Ring”—a sort of alliance of intergalactic states, united by a common information network with a single system of signals and a database that helps further the development of science and art. Earth’s research group returns after successfully completing all tasks of the latest expedition to the planet Zird. Just two light-years from the Sun, Earth’s starship finds itself dangerously close to a previously unknown star and is forced to make an emergency landing on an unnamed planet, where it discovers a deserted spacecraft built by an unknown civilization—one that, apparently, poses a threat to all humankind.

The novel “Andromeda Nebula” became the first in the “space cycle” of Ivan Efremov’s works about the future of the Earth planet, which entered the Galactic community of civilizations of the “Great Ring.” The cycle continues with the novella “The Heart of the Serpent” and the novel “Hour of the Bull.”