Steele has stated that he wrote Spindrift because he was "tired of the militaristic sort of space opera that says that any contact between humans and aliens will necessarily be hostile".

[2] In 2288 A.D. Jared Ramirez is serving a life sentence on the moon for his role in an attempt to reduce the human population by one-third.

John Shillinglaw, Associate Director of the European Space Agency arranges for him to be a member of the science team aboard the spaceship Galileo which will explore the source of the transmission, an object that has been dubbed "Spindrift".

"[5] BookReporter.com praised Spindrift, calling it "a fill-in, but it is worthy mortar in the monument of Steele's great future-history epic about daring deep space exploration and world-building.

"[6] Publishers Weekly cited that the book was "a gripping saga of humanity on the verge of exploring the larger universe".