Cosmonaut Keep: 1st in the 'Engines Of Light' series of books

MacLeod, Ken

ISBN 10: 1857239865 / ISBN 13: 9781857239867

Published by Little, Brown & Co / Orbit, 2000

About this Item

© 2000: 1st in the 'Engines Of Light' series of books. 1st edition, 1st printing:- Synopsis: After the Ural-Caspian Oil War, the Russians quit stalling. Their troops reached the Atlantic, their cosmonauts reached the asteroids, and now they are claiming first contact. Matt Cairns knows they are being economical with the truth. But even he doesn't know what's really out there. Thousands of light-years from Earth, human colonists have learned to live among other intelligent species. For Gregor and his fellow students of marine biology, the arrival of an interstellar merchant ship sets their research on a new course - where an alien past encounters a human future, at the speed of light:- (original cost £16.99).

Seller Inventory # 21.006.00004

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Cosmonaut Keep: 1st in the 'Engines Of Light' series of books
• Publisher: Little, Brown & Co / Orbit
• Publication Date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1857239865
• ISBN 13: 9781857239867
• Binding: Hardback: 9½" x 6¼"
• Illustrator: Cover Art: Lee Gibbons
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Near Fine: Small signs of wear
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Science Fiction

About this title

Synopsis

Book by MacLeod, Ken

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