Cosmonaut Keep - Softcover

Ken MacLeod

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1841490679 ISBN 13: 9781841490670

Publisher: Orbit, 2001

Synopsis

After the Ural Caspian Oil War, nobody really trusted the EU government. So why should their extraordinary announcement of first contact with alien intelligence be believed? Matt Cairns thinks he can discover the truth. It is out there, but much, much further away than he could have imagined. Thousands of light-years from Earth, a human colony is struggling for survival. The world on which they have settled, however, has already been inhabited by humans - and other intelligent species from Earth - for millennia. In that ancient division of labour, humans do have a place. But where is it? Twenty-first-century political intrigue becomes space opera on an epic scale in Ken MacLeod's first book in a dazzling new series. His most ambitious novel to date, it will take one of Britain's most exciting new science fiction authors to even greater heights of success and critical acclaim. More information on this book and others can be found on the Orbit website at www.orbitbooks.co.uk

About this title

Review

Like a British--specifically, Scottish--counterpart of Bruce Sterling, Ken MacLeod is an SF author who has thought hard about politics and delights in making unlikely alternatives plausible, grippingly readable, and often downright funny.

Cosmonaut Keep swaps between two timelines whose characters share the ultimate goal of interstellar travel. In an uncertain future on the far world of Mingulay, human colonists live in the title's ancient, alien-built Keep--coexisting with reptilian "saurs," trading with visiting ships piloted by krakens, and hiding their laborious "Great Work" of developing human-guided navigation between the stars.

Meanwhile, alternate chapters present a mid-21st-century Earth whose EU is (to America's horror) Russian-dominated with a big red star in the middle of its flag. Rumors of alien contact abound, and computer whiz kid Matt Cairns finds himself carrying a data disk of unknown origin that offers antigravity and a space drive.

Clearly, the later storyline's Gregor Cairns is Matt's descendant. There are ingenious connections and surprises, with witty resonances between their wild careers, their travels, and their bumpy love lives. The foreground action adventure points to a bigger picture and a master plan known only to the godlike hive-minds who built the "Second Sphere" of interstellar culture, and who regard traditional SF dreams of unlimited human expansion through space as precisely equivalent to floods of e-mail spam polluting the tranquil galactic net.

Cosmonaut Keep opens MacLeod's new SF sequence, Engines of Light. It's highly entertaining and intelligent, promising more good things to come. --David Langford

About the Author

Since graduating from Glasgow University in 1976, Ken MacLeod has worked as a computer analyst in Edinburgh. He now writes full time.

Edition details

• Publisher: Orbit
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1841490679
• ISBN 13: 9781841490670
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400