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The Eternity Artifact |
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Author:
L. E. Modesitt
By Tor Science Fiction
Average Customer Rating:  
List Price: $7.99
Our Price: $1.86
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Product Description
Five thousand years in the future, humankind has spread across the galaxy and more than a dozen different planetary and system governments exist in an uneasy truce. Human beings have found no signs of other life anywhere approaching human intelligence. Until scientists discover a sunless planet they name Danann.
Moving at unnaturally high speed, Danann travels the void just beyond the edge of the galaxy. Its continents and oceans have been sculpted and shaped and there is but a single, almost perfectly-preserved megaplex upon the surface--with tens of thousands of near-identical metallic-silver-blue towers set along curved canals. Yet, Danann has been abandoned for so long that even the atmosphere has frozen solid.
Orbital shuttle pilot Jiendra Chang, artist Chendor Barna, and history professor Liam Fitzhugh are recruited by the Comity government and its Deep Space Service as part of an unprecedented and unique expedition to unravel Danann's secrets. And there are forces that will stop at nothing to prevent them, even if it means interstellar war.
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Too wordy..., 2008-12-18
Good writer, but he is more concerned with his choice of words than just writing and putting together a good and entertaining story.
I read words he used that I could not even find their definition of over the Internet. This writer needs to sit down before he writes his next book and determine what is most important.
Impress the reader with fancy words or write a good story.
Can he do it???
When sufficiently advanced technology appears like magic..., 2008-12-17
It's the future. Humanity has spawned a number of civilizations, with their central organizing themes revolving around the presence or absence of religious beliefs. When a strange artifact is discovered in deep space, one that may provide answers to fundamental religious questions, how much will these civilizations gamble to protect their way of life? "' As has been quoted so often in history, there is little difference between miracles ascribed to deities, magic, and sufficiently advanced technology'" (p. 293).
In The Eternity Artifact, by L. E. Modesitt, Jr., this story is told through the first person experiences of four people: Professor Liam Fitzhugh, who may be much more than a history scholar; artist Chendor Barna, who sees things differently than other people; shuttle pilot Jiendra Chang, extremely competent but possessing a short fuse; and assassin Goodman/Bond, who is charged by his government to sabotage the efforts of the Comity government to investigate this artifact.
The story, through these four sets of eyes, revolves around the trip to the mysterious artifact, the attempts to interpret what they find, and ,,,sabotage.
Modesitt takes many opportunities to discuss, I assume, his views toward religion. It's not flattering:
- "The election has made it clear that the Middle Kingdom must be run on principles of enlightened humanism and secularism, and not by the dead hands of ancient prophets and barbaric gods" (p. 2)
- "Religious implications? What did aliens have to do with religion? If someone believed in an all-powerful god - or goddess - the damned deity had to have power over aliens and us. Who believed in a deity that wasn't all-powerful? Didn't say anything, though. Never did understand why people believed that crap. Life after death? Even the words were a contradiction" (p. 120).
- "'All truth comes from the Lord,' countered Tomas. 'If science, or a secular thinker, challenges what their imams declare as their God's truth, they will follow the imam. In a technological society, being a true believer tends to create a certain schizoid behavior'" (p. 142).
- "Science had found no proof of gods or angels, and so most who believed truly in the superiority of intellect and reason had drifted away from belief in a supreme deity who created the universe. We believed - for I was certainly among that group - that with time and sufficient knowledge human beings could eventually unlock all the secrets of the universe, from the smallest components of fermions and bosons to the vastness of the universe itself" (p. 294).
- "It's not precisely a question of intelligence, but of beliefs. We all have beliefs. Certain sets of beliefs enhance intelligence while others restrict the scope of its application. true believers, theocratic or otherwise, are those whose beliefs limit their applied intelligence. Throughout history, they've always been so" (p. 450).
It's gotta be personal!
This story had interesting character development, tension, discovery, and battles. It moved a bit slowly toward the end, and I felt the conclusion was a bit underwhelming. Still, I look forward to reading another Modesitt sci-fi novel.
It's a good work, and an odd telling, 2008-03-21
The story itself is well put together. I very good book. I don't care much for the way that it is told; however, with how it switches so randomly from one character to to another, all in 1st person. It honestly took me a few chapters to realize that it was in fact different characters. Then again, I wouldn't be able to think of another way to tell this tale and get the same feeling out of it.
I liked how it focused on each character through thier trials, and how each character had their own way to speaking and feeling about things. Instead of a straight up telling, it was flavored by what would be the characters exterpeinces and profession.
Fun, well-written far future, hard science, deep space science fiction, 2008-03-02
_The Eternity Artifact_ by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. is a fun, well-written far future, hard science, deep space science fiction novel. The basic premise is that humanity has spread throughout the galaxy through thousands of worlds, forming several interstellar governments, none of which appear to like the other (and indeed some hate all the others at a deeply-felt religious level). They exist at the start of the book at best in an uneasy truce, though they are always scheming for ways to gain an advantage over others.
Throughout the galaxy, no one has found any evidence of past or present alien intelligences. Until now that is. A sunless planet, ejected from the galaxy and traveling at unheard of speeds deep into the intergalactic void, has been discovered by one of the interstellar governments. The world appears unlike anything ever seen. Though the atmosphere apparently froze solid billions of years ago, the planet shows evidence that its oceans and continents had been deliberately manipulated into the present form by some alien intelligence. Even more striking, a single city or megaplex had been discovered, perfectly preserved, a realm of thousands of nearly identical silvery-blue metallic towers set along a system of what were once canals. The city is so old it predated even the freezing-out of the atmosphere.
The world was dubbed Danann and one interstellar government, the Comity, dispatched a top-secret mission to this incredibly distant world. It was comprised of a specially selected mixture of military personnel and civilian experts, the mission's story told through the eyes of four individuals, each individual meriting a chapter presenting the book's activity from their point of view. One is Liam Fitzhugh, a professor of historical trends pressed against his will into the mission as an academic expert (and who possesses hidden depths and an important though little-known at first background). Another is Chendor Barna, a highly talented and famous artist picked to chronicle the mission and to use his hard-to-define artist's eye to ascertain details missed by others. The third person is Jiendra Chang, a hardened, somewhat jaded female shuttle pilot, one who doesn't get along well with authority but brought on as one of the best at what she does.
The fourth person is William Gerald Bond. Or rather, is known as such to those on the ship _Magellan_, the main vessel of the expedition to Danann. In reality his name if John Paul Goodman and he is a foreign operative from a power opposed to the Comity, deeply conditioned and highly trained and who killed the real Bond and replaced him on the mission. His presence not only indicates a real danger to those on expedition and to the mission, but hints at the depths of political intrigue within the Comity and with other governments. Awash with plans within plans, the other governments either want the vast alien technological bonanza that Danann represents for themselves (or deny others from getting it if they can't have it), or in the cases of some religiously-motivated governments, want to bury and repress it, preventing anyone from ever getting it (and making sure no one from the expedition is ever heard from again).
It was a good book. I liked the political intrigue though I felt that the other governments could have been fleshed out a little better. I thought that the mechanism of presenting the story from the point of view of four individuals worked well and they were distinct characters, though I found the excessive verbiage of Fitzhugh sometimes a bit much (though his verbiage was explained, it was still sometimes hard to read). The mystery of the alien technology was quite interesting when it was finally presented at the end, I certainly didn't guess it. I really liked the sense of mood and atmosphere of the expedition once they were on Danann, the sense of being way out in the darkness, far from home, of the sheer alien-ness of the megaplex, of the deep sense of mystery there and the feeling that anything could happen. The book is also self-contained and stand-alone. Though I enjoy trilogies, quartets, and so on, it is good sometimes to read a book that begins and ends an entire tale.
Space Opera from Modesitt mostly delivers, 2008-02-16
Better known for his fantasy novels (eg. The Recluce novels), Modesitt also writes science fiction novels. The Eternity Artifact is set in one of his typical SF worlds: future SF, multiple polities. intrigue, and action. Competent characters, often one or more who is tied to an espionage organization. Lots of sociological speculation in and amongst the action.
In this instance, these usual tools are put into a space opera, showing an expedition to an runaway alien planet by a polity who has some very serious rivals. Rivals serious enough to use sabotage, agents and even outright space warfare to stop the expedition, or steal its secrets for itself.
The action is seen through the perspective of four protagonists, one of whom is not who he appears to the rest. Its told in first person throughout, and so we get lots of internal consideration and thought as the very different quartet--an artist, a former agent turned professor, a shuttle pilot, and an armorer more than he appears journey to a Big Dumb Object--the planet of Danann. It is the epynomous "Eternity Artifact", an unbelievably ancient alien world in a universe where no other aliens have ever been found. A tempting prize indeed!
Some don't really care for Modesitt's style, since he does like to laden sociological speculation heavily into his plot and story, and it can be off-putting. I wasn't entirely thrilled with Recluce, for example, and have enjoyed his other novels more. Eternity Artifact falls into this category, and I think its because of the multiple protagonists. This allows for a variety of perspectives which manage to keep a balance of ideas in tension.
The ending and denouement feel a bit weak in my opinion, but in the getting there, I was reasonably entertained. And whether you agree with his opinions or not, Modesitt does raise some good sociological questions in the story. And there is even the barest hint of a romance, too, swirled in.
I enjoyed the book.
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Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780765353450
ISBN: 0765353458
Label: Tor Science Fiction
Manufacturer: Tor Science Fiction
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 480
Publication Date: 2006-08-01
Publisher: Tor Science Fiction
Release Date: 2006-08-01
Studio: Tor Science Fiction |
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