ISBN: 1466842822 9781466842823

Category: Fiction / Science Fiction / Space Opera

Page count: 384

<p><b>An ancient starship from Earth reaches its destination after four hundred years of travel and makes a life-changing discovery in this compelling space opera.</b></p><p><b>“MacLeod . . . delivers perhaps the finest novel of first contact since Vernor Vinge’s <i>A Deepness in the Sky. . . . </i>This is contemporary SF at its best.”—<i>Publishers Weekly</i></b></p><p> Humanity has spread to every star within five hundred light-years of its half-forgotten origin, coloring the sky with a haze of habitats. Societies rise and fall. Incautious experiments burn fast and fade. On the fringes, less modified humans get on with the job of settling a universe that has, so far, been empty of intelligent life.<br><br> The ancient starship <i>But the Sky, My Lady! The Sky!</i> is entering orbit around a promising new system after a four-hundred-year journey. For its long-lived inhabitants, the centuries have been busy. Now a younger generation is eager to settle the system. The ship is a seed-pod ready to burst.<br><br> Then they detect curious electromagnetic emissions from the system’s Earth-like world. As the nature of the signals becomes clear, the choices facing the humans become stark.<br><br> On Ground, second world from the sun, a young astronomer searches for his system’s outermost planet. A moving point of light thrills, then disappoints him. It’s only a comet. His physicist colleague Orro takes time off from trying to invent a flying-machine to calculate the comet's trajectory. Something is very odd about that comet's path.<br><br> They are not the only ones for whom the world has changed . . . </p><p><b>“Highly entertaining.” —<i>Locus</i> </b></p><p><b>“MacLeod continues to dazzle readers with vividly rendered landscapes of technological splendor and fascinating yet plausible visions of humanity’s future.” —<i>Booklist</i></b></p>