Voyage (novel)

Voyage is a 1996 hard science fiction novel by British author Stephen Baxter. The book depicts a crewed mission to Mars as it might have been in another timeline, one where John F. Kennedy survived the assassination attempt on him on 22 November 1963. Voyage won a Sidewise Award for Alternate History, and was nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1997.

In 1999, it was adapted as a radio serial for BBC Radio 4 by Dirk Maggs.

In the novel, John F. Kennedy was crippled in a failed assassination attempt in 1963, while the assassin managed to kill John's wife Jacqueline Kennedy. Still alive during the first Moon landing of 1969, John sets a new goal for the United States to send a crewed mission to Mars and convinces the then-President Richard Nixon to support his plan. Apollo 14 is the last crewed Moon landing in this timeline. Over the following two decades, NASA and contractor personnel devote most of their efforts on planning the exploration of Mars. By 1986, preparations are made for the first crewed landing on Mars. As a negative side-effect from the obsessive focus on Mars, there have been no major efforts to explore the rest of the Solar System and humanity's knowledge of the Outer Solar System has not improved since the 1960s.