A secret war against artificial intelligence and a future, unknowable foe; and a love that transcends death and time…
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Peter F. Hamilton and Gareth L. Powell’s action-packed sci-fi adventure Light Chaser—available August 24th from Tordotcom Publishing.
The comparative utopia of twenty-third-century Earth is about to go dreadfully awry when a seemingly benign alien race is abruptly revealed to be one of the worst threats humanity has ever faced. Driven by an intense religious extremism, the Olyix are determined to bring everyone to their version of God as they see it. But they may have met their match in humanity, who are not about to go gently into that good night or spend the rest of their days cowering in hiding. As human ingenuity and determination rise to the challenge, collective humanity has only one goal—to wipe this apparently undefeatable enemy from the face of creation. Even if it means playing a ridiculously long game indeed.
But in a chaotic universe, it is hard to plan for every eventuality, and it is always darkest before the dawn.
Peter F. Hamilton’s Salvation Lost, the follow-up to Salvation, is available October 29th in the U.S. from Del Rey, and publishes October 31st in the U.K. with Pan Macmillan.
The October 1945 edition of Wireless World magazine carried an article from a young Arthur C. Clarke called “Extra Terrestrial Relays.” It was the concept of using satellites in geostationary orbit, 35,786 kilometres high, around the Earth, to beam radio signals from one continent to another. Remember Sputnik didn’t go into orbit until October 1957, and that only reached a height of 577km. So in 1945 the article was received as a grand idea, theoretically possible, but by the standards of post WWII rocketry, severely impractical. Nonetheless, the first communication satellite to use this orbit (now named the Clarke Orbit) was Syncom 3, launched in August 1964, 19 years after Clarke’s article. An article which was detailed enough to receive a patent had he sent it to the patent office instead of the magazine. Today, communication satellites are a multi-billion pound business.
Clarke drew together a number of sciences—orbital mechanics, radio design, rocketry—and extrapolated the combination perfectly. It’s one of the best examples of what people see as a Science Fiction writer’s job: predicting the future.
Please enjoy this excerpt from Pan Macmillan’s recent release, The Evolutionary Void, by Peter F. Hamilton. Read another extract here along with an interview with the author at Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist.
Justine: Three Year Reset
Exoimage medical icons leapt out of the darkness to surround Justine Burnelli’s consciousness. She’d seen that exact same set of read-outs once before.
“Oh man,” she grunted in shock and delight. “It worked.” She tried to laugh, but her body was resolutely refusing to cooperate, insisting it had just spent three years in suspension rather than . . . Well, actually she wasn’t sure how long it had taken to reset the Void back to this moment in time.
