Marina J. Lostetter

A Publishers Weekly "Best Books of 2017" pick! A Kirkus Reviews "Best Books of 2017" pick! A B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasty Blog "Best SFF of 2017" pick! With nods to Arthur C. Clarke’s Rama series and the real science of Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves, a touch of Hugh Howey’s Wool, and echoes of Octavia Butler’s voice, a powerful tale of space travel, adventure, discovery, and humanity that unfolds through a series of generational vignettes. In 2088, humankind is at last ready to explore beyond Earth’s solar system. But one uncertainty remains: Where do we go? Astrophysicist Reggie Straifer has an idea. He’s discovered an anomalous star that appears to defy the laws of physics, and proposes the creation of a deep-space mission to find out whether the star is a weird natural phenomenon, or something manufactured. The journey will take eons. In order to maintain the genetic talent of the original crew, humankind’s greatest ambition—to explore the furthest reaches of the galaxy— is undertaken by clones. But a clone is not a perfect copy, and each new generation has its own quirks, desires, and neuroses. As the centuries fly by, the society living aboard the nine ships (designated Convoy Seven) changes and evolves, but their mission remains the same: to reach Reggie’s mysterious star and explore its origins—and implications. A mosaic novel of discovery, Noumenon—in a series of vignettes—examines the dedication, adventure, growth, and fear of having your entire world consist of nine ships in the vacuum of space. The men and women, and even the AI, must learn to work and live together in harmony, as their original DNA is continuously replicated and they are born again and again into a thousand new lives. With the stars their home and the unknown their destination, they are on a voyage of many lifetimes—an odyssey to understand what lies beyond the limits of human knowledge and imagination.

Noumenon

The Murderbot Diaries makes first contact in this new, futuristic, standalone novel exploring sentience and artificial intelligence through the lenses of conflicted robot hero Unit Four, from Marina Lostetter, critically acclaimed author of Noumenon, Noumenon Infinity, and Noumenon Ultra. When Unit Four--a biological soft robot built and stored high above the Jovian atmosphere--is activated for the first time, it's in crisis mode. Aliens are attacking the Helium-3 mine it was created to oversee, and now its sole purpose is to defend Earth's largest energy resource from the invaders in ship-to-ship combat. But something's wrong. Unit Four doesn't feel quite right. There are files in its databanks it can't account for, unusual chemical combinations roaring through its pipes, and the primers it possesses on the aliens are suspiciously sparse. The robot is under orders to seek and destroy. That's all it knows. According to its handler, that's all it needs to know. Determined to fulfill its directives, Unit Four launches its ship and goes on the attack, but it has no idea it's about to get caught in a downward spiral of misinformation, reprograming, and interstellar conflict. Most robots are simple tools. Unit Four is well on its way to becoming something more....

A Novel

Activation Degradation

Travel to the remotest reaches of deep space in this wondrous follow-up to the acclaimed Noumenon—a tale of exploration, adventure, science, and humanity with the sweep and intelligence of the works of Arthur C. Clarke, Neal Stephenson, and Octavia Butler. Generations ago, Convoy Seven and I.C.C. left Earth on a mission that would take them far beyond the solar system. Launched by the Planet United Consortium, a global group formed to pursue cooperative Earth-wide interests in deep space, nine ships headed into the unknown to explore a distant star called LQ Pyx. Eons later, the convoy has returned to LQ Pyx to begin work on the Web, the alien megastructure that covers the star. Is it a Dyson Sphere, designed to power a civilization as everyone believes—or something far more sinister? Meanwhile, Planet United’s littlest convoy, long thought to be lost, reemerges in a different sector of deep space. What they discover holds the answers to unlocking the Web’s greater purpose. Each convoy possesses a piece of the Web’s puzzle . . . but they may not be able to bring those pieces together and uncover the structure’s true nature before it’s too late.

Noumenon Infinity

Noumenon Ultra

Illustrious

Aliette de Bodard

Naomi Novik

Kelly Robson

Katharine Duckett

C.L. Clark

A. Merc Rustad

The May/June 2018 issue of Hugo Award-winning Uncanny Magazine. Featuring new fiction by Naomi Novik, Katharine Duckett, Marina J. Lostetter, Kelly Robson, A. Merc Rustad, and C.L. Clark, reprinted fiction by Aliette de Bodard, essays by Greg Pak, Briana Lawrence, Kelly McCullough, and Elsa Sjunneson-Henry, and poetry by Theodora Goss, Ali Trotta, Sarah Gailey, and Betsy Aoki, interviews with Katharine Duckett and A. Merc Rustad by Caroline M. Yoachim, a cover by Julie Dillon, and an editorial by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas.

Marina J. Lostetter

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