Beyond the Hallowed Sky by Ken MacLeod
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm very happy with this novel. It's not often that we get a near-future ramification novel that explores the discovery and realistic development of FTL, faster than light travel.

Sure, we get novels about trillionaires building FTL yachts or alien invasion impetus stuff, but not a straight cold-war FTL skullduggery and black-site FTL development. This one actually includes politics and proliferation as well as alliances designed to push certain blocs that much further ahead in Solar System colonization before most nations even realize they COULD.

Put this way, the novel is extremely realistic. If you have an advantage, exploit it in a massive way.

Of course, things get weird and hairy when we discover that others ARE out there and they want nothing to do with us.


I had a good time with this. I'm really looking forward to seeing where the latecomers will go with this. I've read a lot of SF and this feels just unusual enough to light a fire in me while feeling perfectly in line with older near-future hard SF.

View all my reviews