James P. Hogan's writing career started out with a bet in a pub that he could write a better story than 2001: A Space Odyssey. Or something like that. The result of this heresy was Inherit the Stars, and it was a pretty good book, though I'm not sure he won the bet. It was also the first of his novels about the origins of humanity on a planet called Minerva, reduced to rubble (we call it the asteroid belt) tens of thousands of years ago. Along the way, though not recently there have been several titles in this series, including one that takes place there but doesn't actually move the storyline along. Now there's Mission to Minerva, which is a pretty confusing title considering Minerva was blown to bits by the over aggressive types that lived there. Go ahead and worry about that until the book comes out this May.

(Source: Baen)