New Zealand farmer Bruce Harwood has just married the love of his life. The happy couple are on the way to their wedding reception when Bruce learns that a huge asteroid is on a collision course with earth. This asteroid is bigger than the one that killed off the dinosaurs so if it impacts anything living above ground will likely be annihilated, life as we know It will be at an end. While Bruce is still processing this news they encounter a road block set up by a secret government agency trying to make contact with an alien from the planet Skid. The alien is known to be lurking on or above earth in his spaceship and the agency is desperate to make contact and enlist its assistance to somehow save the planet from the asteroid. The alien they are searching for happens to be a passenger in the limousine with Bruce and his new wife Sue, who are about to become collateral damage in this desperate hunt. However, Bruce isn't just any farmer from New Zealand and it appears the alien isn't really much of an alien either. Furthermore, as it turns out the asteroid has been sent on its way by the Skidian first people who have uploaded themselves to a celestial version of the cloud and now define themselves as Transcendents. In other words; real aliens and the Transcendents have a plan for earth that does not include a catastrophic asteroid strike that will end life on the planet earth. The Lifeboat takes us on a journey that ultimately not only fulfils the Transcendents requirements but also goes a long way to explaining the true meaning of life on earth and 'everything'. While this novel is nominally a work of science fiction, it is also a discourse on topics ranging from the rise and fall of civilization to the state of world politics, in a fantastically humorous and thoroughly entertaining fashion.