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The Engines of God (Academy - Book 1)

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In Jerusalem he made machines of war invented by skillful workmen to be on the towers and the corners, for the purpose of shooting arrows and great stones. So his fame spread far, for he was marvelously helped until he was strong. 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.

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. 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. 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. Quite a cool book, and it's only just the beginning of a series I am excited to read. It's an interstellar archaeological mystery, but also a futuristic procedural novel following the working lives of archaeologists, scientists, and auxillary crewmembers. I love this kind of thing (see also Julie Czerneda's Species Imperative trilogy, which follows future biologists through their working lives).

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The novel starts off with a tense episode on a long-uninhabited alien planet, involving a confrontation between the archaeologist heroes and an impatient terraforming company waiting to begin their work on that world. This section is excellent on its own, but it also serves to put some clues in place for a riveting mystery about enormous monuments in space, and some mysterious force taking out civilisations every 8000 years. In the latter half of the novel, we follow some of the characters from the first half as they chase the mystery down, and end up witnessing some pretty terrifying cosmic phenomena. One of the problems with alot of science fiction is that it can revel to0 much in didacticism. Some authors that I like are particularly prone to this. For example, half of the dialogue in a Heinlein novel is a thinly disguised lecture. Sometimes, the disguise isn't even that thin, as for example his tendency to set characters in classrooms and let the lecturer lecture. Neil Stephenson is prone to do this in entirely different ways, launching into chapter length descriptions of Touring machines, cryptography, the birth of finance, and so forth. No one could come up with a good reason for this event, which they all found very disturbing. Nor could anyone explain why the Monument-Makers were inhabiting a station of such inferior technology. The short stories "Melville on Iapetus" (1983), "Promises to Keep" (1984), "Oculus" (2002), "The Big Downtown" (2005), [7] "Kaminsky at War" (2006), "Maiden Voyage" (2012), "Waiting at the Altar" (2012), and "The Cat's Pajamas" (2012) are also set in the Academy universe. 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.

It is interesting to see how the book written in 1994 assumes that governments will start to care about the environment three centuries after its devastation began, as well as some 20th-century terms like the “third world country” remain while both political and economic map is closer to 1991 than even to 2022. I understand this is because the author was interested in highlighting other questions, but this makes the book feel dated. And 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.McDevitt does a good job of drawing strong women characters. Here we have Hutch and Melanie Trucscott, first a rival, later almost a friend, both interesting people that you would like to know. And he's very good at economically sketching even minor characters, who are seldom rendered as ciphers or stereotypes. Connected Narratives". Archived from the original on September 19, 2010 . Retrieved February 9, 2012. Reread for the first time since God knows when. Very impressive book, better than I recalled. This was the first of the Academy series, and introduced Priscilla Hutchins, starship pilot, who loses two beaux in this book, one to a gruesome (but valorous) battle with alien fauna.

Also he built towers in the desert, and digged many wells: for he had much cattle, both in the low country, and in the plains: husbandmen also, and vine dressers in the mountains, and in Carmel: for he loved husbandry.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? If her theory was correct, she could extrapolate the current position of this destructive wave in space: they could plot a course and go see what had caused numerous disasters across multiple inhabited planets.

In Jerusalem, he made devices, invented by skillful men, to be on the towers and on the battlements, with which to shoot arrows and great stones. His name spread far abroad, because he was marvelously helped until he was strong. There is a lot of the "professionals behaving very unprofessionally" trope that I always dislike in sci fi. So many accidents and even deaths could have easily been prevented if they'd just acted like careful professionals. On the other hand, when I look at the real world the same thing applies, so perhaps I have unrealistic expectations. I thought that the fun element was slightly missing this time round. It was what made the earlier novels great. Like one reviewer mentions: Indiana Jones in Space. There's a lot less of that this time round. Despite this, it's still a novel that's worth your time if Science Fiction is your thing. I would recommend reading the series though, since this book in itself isn't a true indication of just how cool these novels are. There's an Academy ship out there and the four people aboard are instructed to go down to the planet and interact with the aliens, who are being called Goompahs, a term I learned to utterly hate by the end of the book. The team wears clothing that make them invisible and they go into the cities, but Dig, one of the book's heroes, starts a stampede that kills the leader of the team, so something goes wrong right away.Scientists at the Academy nervously watch the killer comet draw closer to Earth. The clouds aren’t simply nonliving collections of materials. They appear to be able to focus on civilizations with technology, and they have a frightening record of destroying every technically advanced civilization they encounter. In Jerusalem his inventors made equipment for shooting arrows and for throwing large stones from the towers and corners of the city wall. His fame spread everywhere, and he became very powerful because of the help he received from God.

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