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Uma is a young astrophysicist in New York City, eager to leave behind her early modeling career and to prove she finally converted into a true scientist. Good intro. We can infer a lot about Uma from this single sentence. However maybe a different word than "converted?" That implies a change, whereas Uma was likely intelligent all along. She knows she hit missing "the?"jackpot when she detects a new extrasolar planet with good potentials for terraformation. Maybe an explanation of what terraformation means. Does that mean it can support human life? The problem is, she soon realizes that what she has found is in fact not a planet: its orbit around its companion star follows an unnatural pattern, and the only logical conclusion is that it is actually an artificial object. Uma had discovered, for the first time in human history, an alien megastructure. Great so far! I understand our main character's need to prover herself, the magnitude of what she's discovered, and can infer the genre without you stating it. With the support of her senior mentor Paula, an accomplished physicist with Martian heritage, Screech of brakes. So is having Maritan heritage just a normal, unquestioned thing in this ficitonal world? You just kind of throw it in there as an aside. Is Paula's DNA a secret? Uma gradually unveils a mysterious mathematical sequence hidden in the pattern of the megastructure’s orbits. Is "unveils" the right word? That implies sharing it with others, usually quite a few. Does this need to be kept secret? What's the tension here? What are the ramifications of the exitence of this thing? Meanwhile, the reader meets Abdo, I would get rid of "the reader meets" an agronomist in the North-West territories of the African Federation. He balances his life between programming his agro-bots working in the crop fields and his girlfriend Aisha, who is working in a large company contracted to develop bots for an international mission to Titan, one of Saturn’s moon.Missing "s" on moons. When the discovery of the alien megastructure hits the news, the global scientific priorities shift and the Titan program is canceled. Abdo and Aisha’s lives are shaken and paranoia creeps in. They will end up hacking the raw data, digging into the true nature of the signal from the megastructure and traveling to New York to meet Uma. What they discover is beyond their most cynical imagination, and their next actions will change Uma’s future for ever, again.
Right now this is in pretty good shape as far as conveying information, but you're not setting up any kind of struggle, beyond Uma's need to prove herself as more than just a pretty face. Are there people trying to keep this information hidden? Is there a danger somewhere? What is actually at stake here? I don't know. I'm sure there's something, but right now this just seems to read like a series of discoveries with no real fallout.
PUSHING PLANETS (83,600 words) is my debut novel: an adult science fiction story in the close future, split between New York City, Africa and Mars, and with two POVs. Developed as a stand-alone, Pushing Planets contains many hooks for a potential sequel. It will appeal to readers of hard science fiction’s authors such as Asimov and Sagan, although the ending will surprise most of them.
Good info here, but if there's a Mars setting that should probably be made clear in the query. I'm not seeing it here, currently.
I am an academic at a prestigious university in London (UK), with a background in physics and biology. I have published a good number of research papers in scientific journals and written about science for most of my career. Before moving to London I lived for 15 years in NYC, where some of the inspiration for the book comes from. I have always been a sci-fi fan, and I finally decided to write the story I always wanted to read.
Great bio! You're clearly qualified to write this story. Get the tension into the query and some clarification about setting, such as the Mars element, and Paula's DNA.