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Eternal Light
  

Eternal Light (Paperback)

by Paul McAuley (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 400 pages
  • Publisher: Orbit; New edition edition (25 Mar 1993)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1857230159
  • ISBN-13: 978-1857230154
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 317,047 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review
With this, his third novel, Paul J. McAuley stopped being merely promising and entered the front rank of British SF authors. The galactic backdrop already visited in his earlier books Four Hundred Billion Stars and Secret Harmonies here opens out at huge and exhilarating scale. Our galaxy is infested with quarrelling factions of the irrationally hostile alien Alea, against whose colonies the crumbling and partly decadent human Federation wages a depressing, genocidal war of self-defence. Now an anomalous star travelling at daunting speed has arrived from the galactic core and offers rapid wormhole transit to the centre--where ambitious Alea are building the most gigantic habitats in SF, hyperstructures light-years across. This project's use of energies from outside the universe endangers the cosmos: "Something is rubbing the fabric of space-time thin enough to allow creation to shine through." Only pure mathematical weaponry supplied by advanced "angels" from a fractal reality can stop the unravelling of space. But the ramshackle human mission to the core is beset by strife, religious fanaticism, greed and mutiny, and looks set for bloody failure even before the Alea unleash their own superweapon. A rich, crowded novel that combines exotic descriptions, slam-bang action and a mind-blowing secret history of the universe. --David Langford --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description
A novel which centres on the discovery of an enigmatic star travelling towards the solar system from the galactic core, having been accelerated to a considerable fraction of the speed of light half a million years ago. The author won the Philip K. Dick Award for "Four Hundred Billion Stars".

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Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Fourth Time Lucky, 11 Dec 2003
By dogbarkssome (England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)      
This review is from: Eternal Light (Paperback)
After two novels and a short story collection that were at best mediocre, McAuley finally hits his stride with Eternal Light. It’s set in the same universe as the majority of his previous work, but it’s a huge leap forward in terms of quality. Primarily this is a direct sequel to Four Hundred Billion Stars, as it continues the journey of lead character Dorthy Yoshida, but with plenty of recaps it’s possible (and may actually be preferable) to skip the previous novel and read this as a standalone novel.

The central story takes another well-worn sf idea – the evolution of life beyond flesh – but weaves it around a giddily inventive plot. As with Secret Harmonies, McAuley splits his narrative between two main leads, thus ensuring that things never becomes dull.

At times Eternal Light borders on being too-hard sf, but thanks to its strong characters the book never completely disappears up it’s own standing wave function. If you like the sort of epic universe building of Stephen Baxter (and with its use of stars as weapons, evolving beyond the material universe, and a uroboric use of time Eternal Light is a close relative of Baxter’s Xeelee series) you’ll find much to enjoy here.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Reissue of modern classic, 10 Jun 2009
By Gareth Wilson "drosdelnoch2" - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Eternal Light (Paperback)
Personally speaking this is the book that brought Paul to my attention and its been a firm Sci-Fi favourite since as one of the tales that I judge all others by. Its got cracking civilisations shaped by their technologies, idealistic societies and above all a tale that will keep you gripped to the last page with the fully formed characters. It's no wonder that this tale has been reprinted as a modern classic especially when you add to the mix time travel and classic space ship to ship battles that has become part of the staple fan diet. If you're only going to pick up one of Paul's books to try make it this one.
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