Beyond the Reach of Earth, Ken MacLeod
Beyond the Reach of Earth, Ken MacLeod
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Beyond the Reach of Earth

Author: Ken MacLeod

Narrator: Elliot Chapman

Unabridged: 10 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/26/2023

Categories: Fiction, Science Fiction


Synopsis

Ken MacLeod is back with a stellar interstellar addition to the Lightspeed trilogy!

THE FERMI ARE AWAKE . . .

The invention of faster-than-light technology has brought great opportunity, but also great danger.

The Black Horizon conspiracy is broken up, but it still has deadly assets beyond the reach of Earth. As the great powers jostle for advantage, the alien minds known as the Fermi have their own ways of dealing with humans meddling in plans vaster and more ancient than anyone can suspect.

After the Venus catastrophe, John Grant's starship Fighting Chance and the Space Station have reached Apis—but not for long. They barely have time to mourn the dead before they're chased out of the system. The Station begins exploring the systems Black Horizon warned them against—with good reason, as they soon discover.

On Apis, Alliance agent Marcus Owen has a new mission: to communicate with the alien intelligences in the rocks, and to stop anyone else from getting to them first. Everyone knows he's a spy, but he's not going to let that cramp his style. But the scientists investigating the rock find that the Fermi may not be the only alien intelligence on Apis . . .

About Ken MacLeod

Ken MacLeod lives in Scotland. He has honors and master's degrees in biological subjects and worked for some years in the IT industry. Since 1997 he has been a full-time writer. He is the author of nineteen novels, from The Star Fraction to Beyond the Reach of Earth, and many articles and short stories. His novels and stories have received three BSFA awards and three Prometheus Awards, and several have been short-listed for the Clarke and Hugo Awards.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Peter on May 10, 2023

I've always liked Ken MacLeod, and after not reading much of his over the last ten years, fell quite hard for the first book in this trilogy, It did a good job at that moment of expansion, when we discover FTL, and had a nice rug pull to show that it had actually been invented in secret fifty years......more

Goodreads review by Simon on December 29, 2023

Very good, tightly plotted and quite original sci-fi set about 50 years in the future. It features first contact with bizarre alien rocks, faster-than-light travel in submarines, an independent socialist Scotland as part of a socialist European commonwealth, a suave English spy/assassin android, a f......more

Goodreads review by Anatoly on March 05, 2025

A more solid 3 due to a more solid story. Still, barely any character development, making this series much more difficult to connect with.......more

Goodreads review by David on March 30, 2023

Warning - there are spoilers here for Book 1 in this trilogy, Beyond the Hallowed Sky, which I'd strongly advise you to read first. (If you haven't read it, or are hazy about the details, there is a helpful precis in Book 2, but the first book is so much fun, you really ought to read it). In a clever......more

Goodreads review by Owen on April 08, 2023

Beyond the Reach of Earth should be everything I love — it felt very like Larry Niven, who I grew up on, but with a communist society in a space opera and the Fermi paradox — but I struggled with it. I’ve given the book 4 stars because I think that might be as much about me as it is the book. I’m ve......more