Publishers Lunch reports that Spider Robinson sold Orphan Stars to Pat LoBrutto at Tor via agent Eleanor Wood of the Spectrum Literary Agency for a low six-figures deal. The book is “set in the world of Variable Star, [in which] a genius inventor and a handful of fellow survivors of a cosmic disaster must race time itself to warn the Orphan Stars, the scattered outposts of humanity, so that the human race can safely navigate its way to survive the forthcoming onslaught triggered by the explosion of Earth’s sun.” Variable Star was Robinson’s posthumous collaboration with Robert A. Heinlein, based on extensive notes for the unwritten novel that had been found among Heinlein’s papers.