He also built machines in Jerusalem, devices designed to stand on the towers and at the angles of the walls to shoot arrows and cast large stones. His name spread far and wide; the help he received was wondrous, so strong did he become. I never really connected emotionally to the characters and there was also a romance sub-plot I didn't care about at all. I'm not sure why, but since the people I buddy-read this with felt the same way, I thought I'd mention it. If you are a very character-focused reader who doesn't geek out about alien ruins and intergalactic mysteries, I think this book probably wouldn't work for you. In Jerusalem he made engines of war invented by skillful men to be on the towers and on the corners for the purpose of shooting arrows and great stones. Hence his fame spread afar, for he was marvelously helped until he was strong. The best part of the story is the strong female team members. Hutch, Angela, Maggie, Melanie, etc, lots of great, well-written characters. Earth has generally taken a "hands off" approach to living natives, but as pressure mounts to begin terraforming habitable worlds as an escape plan, this "Prime Directive" morality begins to seem less desirable. There is an interesting reversal of the classic sci-fi trope, and subtle commentary on colonialism and how we might justify it in the future, when an argument is made to colonize an inhabited planet "for the natives' own good." They are in the middle of a savage global war, and it is claimed that some of them have become aware of the existence of their alien watchers, and are begging for intervention. That technological aid and imposed peace would incidentally involve Earthlings resettling on their hosts' planet would be only a logical extension of a benevolent intervention...

c) The "city's" layout was perfectly symmetrical and composed of regular cubic units, with the notable exception of two cylindrical towers.The surface of the planet held only ruins, and the Academy team went down to investigate. What they found were structures much too primitive to have been made by a hyper-advanced space-faring race. A third of the way into the novel they began to annoy me and I was at the point of hoping the Omega cloud would arrive prematurely and save me the trouble of reading any more about them. Besides the dish array, the star system had one terrestrial planet that bore a startling resemblance to Earth in terms of physical characteristics. From all appearances, settling of the planet could, in principle, begin immediately, with no terraforming required. The crew had high hopes that they had discovered the home planet of the Monument-Makers, but, if so, they were no longer there. However, there were two anomalies. First, the largest of the planet's four moons had a giant cube of stone, which was damaged and scorched just like the Monuments at Quraqua and Nok. Second, a space station orbited the planet. They immediately set out to investigate the station. To their dismay, the space station was not created by a highly advanced race, as the Monument-Makers were known to be. Instead, the level of technology was below current human standards. There were aspects of the plot, such as poor service to beloved characters, that reduce the quality of Omega. Nevertheless, the reduction is minimal, especially for readers that can use their imagination and project into the future. In essence, Hutchins and Tor are short shrifted in Omega, relegated to administration tasks conducted from afar while all the gripping action occurs light years away.

It's a few hundred years in the future, and we've discovered monuments on planets and moons around the solar system. The book makes use of a few set-pieces to move scientists and archaeologists toward finding out what those monuments are and what they mean. We don't get a whole lot of answers, but I think those unfold in the following books. And he maketh in Jerusalem inventions -- a device of an inventor -- to be on the towers, and on the corners, to shoot with arrows and with great stones, and his name goeth out unto a distance, for he hath been wonderfully helped till that he hath been strong. It was an exciting book, I loved Hutchins, the main character who is a woman pilot, which is a refreshing change. In fact, I appreciated all the women scientists and people in charge, and it was pretty easy to believe that scientists will do anything to "get the story," even when it potentially (and actually) might lead to tragedy. What fascinates me about McDevitt's writing is that he makes you feel as though you are right there with Priscilla during her interstellar travel adventures. When she enters star systems and explores the planets, searching and finding - whether already explored or previously unexplored - previous alien artifacts or extinct alien races, you are discovering this with her and there is a sense of awe. I love this about this series because it fulfills the fantasy of discovering other planets and what they would be like. In The Engines of God she explores 3 planet systems as she aids and assists the Academy in their pursuit to uncover the Monument Makers. There is a decent amount of discovery as the reader explores and discovers with Priscilla.But all of that I could have lived with. After all, a good series of books can survive a clunker. The part I hated about this book was that the Omega cloud were vastly different than they were in "The Engines of God". That book created a universe where advanced races were regularly, every 6000 years or so, nearly wiped out by the Omega clouds. But in "Omega", we learn that the Omega clouds are just creating art.... So the universe went from dark and menacing to just plain nuts. Mostly, I tolerate this pretty well. The ideas and information is often interesting, and the stories are generally interesting and exciting enough that I don't always mind the digression. Science fiction is after all, above all, about ideas. In the case of Heinlein, one of the attractions is that he's more subtle than you might initially give him credit for if you read only one work. This is after all, the same author that wrote both 'Starship Troopers' and 'Stranger in a Strange Land'. Heinlein seems to have the ability to treat his ideas as toys, and to finish - as in the end of 'Starship Troopers' - with sufficient jingoism that it seems to serve to question his own jingoism. Heinlein and Stephenson don't seem to write angry, they hold novel positions that seem to be their own, create interesting arguments even when I don't agree with them, and it doesn't hurt - I admit - that I often agree with many of their ideas.

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy. Interested in some science fiction that features a killer cloud, a race against time, an almost-human alien race, and a romance that is both sweet and memorable? This fourth book in McDevitt’s Academy series may be exactly what you’re hoping for. It’s pretty important that you read the first three books in the series though. I could have done without the Algore climate change drivel about constant hurricanes and other man-made disasters on Earth as the reason for the terraforming mission to Quaraqua. If you could terraform another planet, why not turn that expertise on the closer problem? The characters are sadly but predictably underdeveloped. There’s also too many of them: I get that McDevitt wanted to make the team feel and sound realistic, and on a dig, there will be a ton of people, which does often result in a “too many cooks in the kitchen” situation. I’m happy to give him a thumbs up for realism, but from the uninitiated reader’s perspective, it can feel overwhelming. McDevitt wrote a bunch more Priscilla Hutchins books, so I can only hope she is more fleshed out as the series goes on, because in this one, I didn’t learn much about her character – besides the fact that she is feisty and that her mother is very disappointed she won’t settle down.He made skillfully designed devices in Jerusalem to shoot arrows and catapult large stones for use on the towers and on the corners. So his fame spread even to distant places, for he was marvelously helped until he became strong. Meanwhile, elderly scientist Harold Tewkesbury has been studying a series of novalike explosions (his students have called them ‘Tewks’) that have shown up along Omega wave fronts. This is the very beginning of the 23rd century, humanity discovered faster-than-light travel and explored several habitable planets, just in time to terraform them and migrate from Earth, which is under too much environmental stress. And on a few of these planets, past civilizations are discovered, usually pre-space age and extinct as well as artifacts of high-tech aliens. One of the discovered peculiarities is that on two planets there was a sudden regress/destruction of civilizations that happened in a roughly 8000 years span.

Non si può saltare da un orbita all'altra come si cambia nastro trasportatore all'areoporto (Gravity), non si può stare in maniche di camicia in una fessura fra i multiversi a ribaltare libri dallo scaffale (Interstellar), non è che se impari a leggere una lingua aliena dopo sei capace di prevedere il futuro (The Arrival - giudicato da molti un grande film, ma appunto per questa cosa che gli alieni arrivano per donarci i superpoteri letterari per me cade nel calderone delle puttanate).

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With The Engines of God (1994), McDevitt introduced the idea of a universe that was once teeming with intelligent life, but contains only their abandoned artifacts by the time humans arrive on the scene. The main character of The Engines of God, pilot Priscilla Hutchins, has since appeared in seven more books, Deepsix (2001), Chindi (2002), Omega (2003), Odyssey (2006), Cauldron (2007), StarHawk (2013), and The Long Sunset (2018). The mystery surrounding the destructive "Omega Clouds" (which are introduced in The Engines of God) is left unexplored until Omega. [5] Hello Out There ( Meisha Merlin, 2000), omnibus edition of A Talent for War and a revised The Hercules Text The short stories "In the Tower" (1987) and "A Voice in the Night" (2013) are also set in the Alex Benedict universe. Partly it's the setting - two hundred years in the future, but that odd sort of future which is just like 1995 with a couple of future-y things added. The telephones have video and there are faxes, but now they go faster than light. Are there really science-minded writers who think that the modern world is just like the early 19th century?