2050 AD. ‘The United Near-Earth Stellar Survey Program dispatches 1,000 crewed missions to nearby stars in an attempt to explore terrestrial worlds identified by Earth-based detectors. Instead of sending flesh and blood humans UNESSPRO crews each mission with simulations called engrams [which can download into android bodies if required] that are intended to behave as, and function as though they in fact are, the original scientists ...
In each mission, UNESSPRO plants a single control member who has been altered to ensure the crews follow strict operation guidelines.’
2163 Standard Mission Time. ‘Aliens come to the world of Upsilon Aquarius in the form of giant golden spindles that build ten orbital towers around ... Adrasteia. Within [the towers are] AIs that identify [them] as gifts to humanity from a powerful star-faring civilisation."
The gifts include faster-than-light ships, a surgery filled with exotic and highly beneficial technology, a detailed map of the Milky Way, a vast library, "a means of instantaneous communication up to 200 light years", etc, etc - lifetimes' worth of information to explore...’
In the meantime, back on Earth, ‘[a] technological spike shortly after the launch of the UNESSPRO and resulted in a war between non-human AIs [shades of The Terminator?] that led, amongst many other things, to the total destruction of Earth. A small percentage of [highly modified] humans have survived...’ [pp 1-2]
And then another alien species - dubbed the Starfish for the shape of their ships - appears out of nowhere and starts destroying the gifts and the human colonies established near them...
All of that information is in the first three pages of ‘Orphans Of Earth’, in a tight synopsis titled 'What Came Before' - and it's essential reading if, like me, you haven't read the first book, ‘Echoes Of Earth’.
It's probably essential reading even if you have, just to remind yourself of what's happened previously, since the amount of information and detail in ‘Orphans Of Earth’ is staggering and I assume the first book is equally densely-written.
‘Orphans Of Earth’ sees the surviving engrams and colonies attempting to find a way to survive the Starfish attacks and even in alliance with another species (nicknamed the Roaches as they appear at first sight to be nothing more than scavengers) to fight back.
And that, basically, is the story.
That being said, the prose crams in an awful lot of detail, description and intrigue with an admirable succinctness. The style is elegant, concise and lean, delineating the characters concisely as discrete individuals - which in itself is quite a feat since the vast bulk of them are engrams of the same few people originally sent out from Earth: essentially, copies of each other.
The alien species encountered by the characters are skilfully portrayed (although intelligible to humanity - they have to be, otherwise the story wouldn't work! - as opposed to truly alien and therefore incomprehensible). And there are glimpses, in places, of a real feeling of the loneliness of being separated from your homeworld by light-years and your generation by decades...
The book - the whole series - is SF on a truly grand scale. The overall theme and the various technological elements aren't new, of course. To some extent, once I got past the fascinating surface detail, I found the story quite simplistic and there are no real surprises anywhere (though in all fairness I have to point out that this is not my favourite type of SF).
Nevertheless, I found it a gripping read and actually exciting towards the end. Very enjoyable but not memorable. For me, this is the sort of book I could happily take on holiday, read with pleasure, then pass onto someone else to leave more room for my souvenirs.
I'd still like to read the sequel though. ‘Orphans Of Earth’ ends on a cliff-hanger...
Joules Taylor
http://www.wordwrights.co.uk
