The Engines of God (Academy - Book 1)

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But the cloud draws closer to its target, and the unsuspecting humanoids have only days to live. Scientists must find a way to rescue the humanoids without violating the protocol not to interfere with the civilization.

c) Inakademeri, a.k.a. "Nok", a moon of a ringed gas giant, and home to the only known non-human intelligent species still alive; the "Noks" had developed technology roughly equivalent to Earth's early 20th century. At the time of discovery they were engaged in a global conflict roughly analogous to World War I. An omega cloud is headed towards Earth, but won't arrive for about 900 years. Much of humanity doesn't see any rush to do anything. A newly-discovered pre-industrial civilization, however, is directly in an omega's path, and it will reach that planet in a matter of months. The book chronicles the efforts to mount a rescue of the creatures, known as "Goompahs" because of their resemblance to characters from a 23rd-century children's show, without violating the series' version of the Prime Directive. The story has a good mix of scifi world-building and action, but also the first truly memorable characters in the series. The Omega Clouds – agents of destruction which seem to be able to recognise right angles and other signs of intelligent life – have been studied intensively. Apart from the fact that they are based on nanotechnology, there is very little else discovered about them. One is heading toward Earth and will arrive in around a thousand years. Given that the Monument-Makers were more advanced than humanity, and that they had even more time to deal with the problem and failed, the outlook for Earth's future looks bleak. And he made in Jerusalem engines, invented by skilful men, to be on the towers and upon the corners, wherewith to shoot arrows and great stones. And his name spread far abroad; for he was marvellously helped, till he was strong.

Some of his skilled workers invented machines that could shoot arrows and sling large stones. Uzziah set these up in Jerusalem at his defense towers and at the corners of the city wall. God helped Uzziah become more and more powerful, and he was famous all over the world. A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children. They used a cutting laser and a shuttlecraft to begin to transform some natural stone plateaus into giant cubes, just like at the other planets.

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. He made in Jerusalem engines, 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; for he was marvelously helped, until he was strong. 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). Fortunately, Maggie was soon able to decipher the perplexing inscription from Oz: "Farewell and good fortune. Seek us by the light of the horgon's eye." A horgon was a mythical Quraquan beast, and the passage referred to a part of a stellar constellation, pointing the way to the Monument-Makers' home. Using the out-of-place cylindrical towers on Oz as waypoint markers, Hutch and Frank Carson (the second-in-command of the Quraqua expedition) were able to make a list of potential stars to which the passage might refer. Using a powerful radio telescope, they surveyed all the candidate stars and found one that was broadcasting a faint artificial transmission – Beta Pacifica. 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.A first part of the book introduces the characters, and the setting and sets up a race against time – an archeologist team from Earth (the Academy) has to save as many artifacts as possible before the Government starts terraforming, which includes nuking polar caps and dropping ice asteroids on a planet – actions which will bury/destroy all remnants. Each group sees its task as more urgent. So the battle of egos starts.

McDevitt is a tad frustrating. He’s a highly competent writer and one can’t fault his science or his characterisation. The ‘Academy’ novels (of which this is the fourth) have been highly enjoyable and I’m sure there are legions of readers out there who want more of Priscilla ‘Hutch’ Hutchins, Academy pilot and now, somewhat older, in an executive role within the Academy itself. In Jerusalem he set up machines, invented by skilled workers, on the towers and the corners for shooting arrows and large stones. And his fame spread far, for he was marvelously helped until he became strong. A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.This one gets a good 4 Stars for a great space mystery story, enigmas in space archeology. Recently (within the past few thousand years) space-going civilizations have disappeared. Traces of violent action are found but are unclear. Great space monuments are found. The archeology team is exploring ruins on an earth-like planet scheduled for terraforming to enable future human occupation. The story suffered from an artificial pace, the science team must evacuate so nuclear explosives can melt the icecaps to release trapped water. Tense action follows with unfortunate results. It sounds like a really good episode of Trek, right? Right. Well, no complaints there. I never expected total and complete originality out of these. Just a careful and methodical worldbuilding, care and devotion to characters, and a hopeful outlook despite everything. Including a very regular death toll on every single outing. (Wait... redshirts?) 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. 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 wondrously 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.Leaving the Kosmik ship for the newly arrived Academy vessel, they set out, once again, to try and solve their cosmic mystery once and for all. 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. Despite the fact that this author is popular and has written a slew of other books, I never heard of him. That being said, in fact, there was nothing wrong with the writing itself. This guy can write, but the plot has some very thin areas, the story has too many characters, too much detail (pointless, needless, useless detail), complexity where it isn’t wanted or needed, and simplicity where depth is called for. Omega succeeded both at creating a compelling setting and some very believable and memorable characters. In the first book of the series, The Engines of God, we learn that most of the ruined civilizations discovered by humans were destroyed by "omega clouds," possibly-artificial, planet-sized clouds that move through space and target technological societies (as identified by right angles detectable from space). The next two books in the series mentioned the omegas, but they did not figure prominently in the stories. Omega, obviously, puts the omegas front and center. 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.