Book by MacLeod, Ken
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
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
Since graduating from Glasgow University in 1976, Ken MacLeod has worked as a computer analyst in Edinburgh. He now writes full time.
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Seller: Dark Hollow Books®, Member NHABA, IOBA, Wolfeboro Falls, NH, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. Lee Gibbons (illustrator). 1st Edition. NF/F dj; now in archival Brodart. Pages beginning to tone as typical from this publisher. First in the Engines of Light series. From the Glynn and Suzanne Crain Collection. Seller Inventory # 004719
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Seller: Top Shelf Books, Santa Rosa, CA, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. Gibbons, Lee (illustrator). First Edition. Hardcover UK, first printing and true first edition. (The US edition was published in 2001.) Not a book club, remainder or an ex-library copy. Very fine (unread) copy in very fine jacket. A clean, straight copy without price-clipping. Best Novel Nominee for the 2002 Hugo Award. (Lost to American Gods by Gaiman.) First Contact novel, and first in the Engines of Light, a new series that is both near-future political intrigue and space opera. Macleod, the Scottish equivalent of Bruce Sterling, is the author of the The Star Fraction (a 1996 runner-up for the Arthur C. Clarke Award), and like Sterling focuses his writing in the realm of political SF. He was nomiated for the 1998 British Science Fiction Award (BSFA) for The Cassini Division, and won it in 1999 for The Sky Road. "MacLeod's original and subversive way of imagining his futures easily overshadows the formulaic elements of his narrative." - Locus, May 2001. "Cosmonaut Keep opens MacLeod's new SF sequence Engines of Light. It is highly entertaining and intelligent, promising more good things to come." - David Langford. "[T]he greatest living Trotskyist libertarian cyberpunk science-fiction writer." - Salon website. Both panels for the excellent full color, wrap-around dustjacket illustration by Lee Gibbons are pictured here. Award History: 2002 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel; 2001 Arthur C. Clarke Award Nominee (lost to Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler.). Seller Inventory # 001778
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