Synopsis
In the far future, Earth is just one planet inhabited by humanity, the capital of a long-abandoned interstellar empire. Having renounced the arrogance and pride of empire, the people of Earth have built a new society based on a rigid set of principles that stress environmental conservation and nonaggression. Slowly the planet is recovering from millennia of selfish exploitation and the destruction of wars.
Suddenly a former colony's fleet of twelve warships built of nearly indestructible adiamante appears in orbit and tries to intimidate the people of Earth into submission. The people of Earth will not surrender, but their principles also don't allow them to take defensive measures until the fleet actually attacks.
Ecktor deJanes is the newly appointed planetary coordinator and has the terrible responsibility of protecting the lives of all the Earth's inhabitants. Somehow he must maintain his society's principles while preventing the fleet from turning the planet into a lifeless ball of rock.
Reviews
In the far future, humanity is scattered among the stars and has divided into many subgroups. On Old Earth itself, after many wars and disasters, society is based on conservation and non-aggression. But the resilience of this culture is tested when a hostile fleet of 12 spaceships appears in orbit around the planet. Built of adiamante, a nearly indestructible material, the ships have been sent by a former colony bent on revenge. Narrator Ecktor deJanes, Earth's temporary coordinator, has to prevent the fleet from sterilizing the planet. He's not without resources, as it turns out. But he's bound by a code of honor that mandates that "those with great power must exercise equally great responsibility." Modesitt avoids the digressions and lingering scholarly points that sometimes slow his popular Recluce series, though his narrative here does get didactic at times ("For all our nets, for all our communications, humans... are aliens, aliens to each other and to the universe, and that is why we must trust"). If he doesn't always fully explain the technological distinctions and intricacies of his elaborate far-future Earth, he nevertheless paints an absorbing picture of this world and how it became what it is.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Far-future clash-of-empires yarn from the author of the Recluce fantasy series (most recently, Fall of Angels, p. 496) and The Parafaith War (1995), etc. Thousands of years ago, three types of humans lived on Old Earth: the draffs, or common people; cybs with their machine-enhanced bodies and senses; and the demis, whose godlike mental powers derived from various computer and energy nets. Following a dreadful war, the cybs were expelled. Old Earth then evolved a radically different sociopolitical system based on power and energy balances. The cybs founded various colonies, developed the Rebuilt Hegemony, and attempted to invade Old Earth, only to be blasted for their pains. Now, cybs from the Vereal Union arrive 12 two-kilometer-long spaceships built of an almost indestructible adiamante seeking revenge, conquest, or whatever technologies Old Earth has that they don't. Under Old Earth's Paradigms of Power, whoever exercises power must repay that power, usually in drudge labor, so nobody seeks to rule; a Co-ordinator must be appointed to handle the crisis. Demi Ecktor, however, must also abide by the Construct, which constrains Old Earth to do nothing until the Vereals open hostilities--the upshot being, since the cybs refuse to recognize reality, that Ecktor must choose either to sacrifice millions of demis and draffs in a needless showdown with the cybs, or allow the destruction of the only sustainable social system ever developed. Though the cybs and their lifestyle remain somewhat diffuse, this is thoughtful, persuasive, challenging, absorbing work: Modesitt's best so far. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
After a war over riches between cybernetic humans (cybs) and the humans whose thoughts ran outside their heads (demis) on the Earth of the near future, the cybs destroyed the economy and ecology and the demis fried the cybs' brains, then shipped the survivors out into space on The Flight. The earth-bound demis and the draffs (whose thoughts remained in their own heads) built a nonaggressive society. Now the cybs have returned millennia later to Old Earth to visit?or to seek revenge? Amid the technological terms and unfamiliar landmarks, Modesitt (Fall of Angels, Tor, 1996) weaves a story of differences, similarities, and, above all, trust. Recommended for sf collections.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
