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Artifact Space

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Miles Cameron has created a unique, believable, universe. Great characters and their relationships are core to making this story enthralling. Marca Nbaro has always dreamed about venturing into space aboard a greatship and escaping her harsh upbringing in the notorious Orphanage. However, after getting on the wrong side of the corrupt Dominus, Nbaro is forced to flee with few possessions, scandals dogging her step and an incomplete education. Pawning everything for some forged records, Nbaro boards the greatship Athens as a junior officer as it prepares to depart on the multi-year journey to Trade Point. Just... all my favorite things. I realize that this is not going to be everybody's cup of tea - it falls squarely into the sub-genre of military SF (they are not a true military though, but an armed merchant fleet), so expect to learn exactly how everything works (you can skip the explanations and jargon if that's not your thing, but I loved it). Another aspect that may not be for everyone: the book focuses on a group of really good, admirable people who are excellent at their jobs (although everyone still messes up and makes mistakes: they're not Mary Sues). This kind of environment is wonderfully healing for Marca Nbaro - who's grown up in orphanage hell with a very different sort of people - and I loved all the genuine friendship and loving, optimistic atmosphere. But if you're the kind of person who usually hates that and who prefers dark, villainous protagonists: this is not going to be the book for you!

Artifact Space - Miles Cameron

She may have just combined all the dangers of her former life, with all the perils of the new . . .” There’s a definite “coming of age” to AS which was enjoyable. You make a great point, the other characters had arcs too. Good stuff! After you activate enough distortions around the rotating rings, they will become one ring. Float through the ring to gain the Power of the Temple. And then there’s the question raised in the Houston “technosignatures” conference: What actually is meant by an artifact?

I sometimes think every writer of military science fiction is secretly (some not so secretly) trying to write Horatio Hornblower in space. That would be terrific for me as a reader, since I loved the Horatio Hornblower stories of daring, honour, valour, and ingenuity overcoming adversity rather than brute force. Alas, I’ve never really found a science fiction series that gave me those same Hornblower vibes while offering a believable and intriguing context in which those adventures could take place. And Artifact Space is nothing if not a naval novel in space—unless we want to get more specific and call it a Merchant Marines novel in space. It stars Marca Nbaro, barely escaped from an exploitative orphanage onto the Greatship Athens , an enormous ship that serves to facilitate trade between the human sphere and a distant and poorly understood alien culture. But something is destroying Greatships, and if the crew of the Athens can’t figure out how to stop it, they may be next. The economic/political system is a little cringy for me. I feel like it tries to position itself as beyond capitalism, but you've got people of privilege, including the main character, using their government positions to enrich themselves. And the book passes this off not only as the way things are, but as a positive thing, I feel? I'm not sure. It's done well and makes sense, and it doesn't make me dislike the main character (who is eminently likeable) but when I think about it, I'm like mad at myself for liking it, if that makes sense.

space history | space memorabilia | space collectSPACE | space history | space memorabilia | space

by commentators, guest bloggers, reviewers, and interviewees are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Locus magazine or its staff. The original image taken by Viking 1 looked somewhat like a human face. The feature, found in the region where the highlands meet the northern plains of Mars, was subsequently broadly popularized as a potential “alien artifact,” with even a major motion picture.If you enjoy watching a smart heroine learning the ropes on her first deployment, Artifact Space will be a treat. It’s smoothly written and spares no detail in telling the story of Nbaro’s journey from a fresh-faced midshipper to a key figure in the fight for the survival of the Athens. If you don’t particularly care for naval details—and I don’t—you’ll see more than you care to, but the crises interspersed regularly throughout the narrative should still be enough to prevent the novel from dragging. Anyway, we first meet said orphan, Marca Nbaro, as she is masquerading as a new recruit on one of the few Greatships, a giant ship capable of traveling between stars that functions as a highly-protected trading ship. It is a great way to introduce a potential Mary Sue, giving them a bit of rule-bending grit to contrast the ethical sweetness. Imperious attempted to bite off the knight’s hand. When that failed, he snatched the leather cylinder away from him. She may have just combined all the dangers of her former life, with all the perils of the new . . ., We know this because during a fall conference in Houston convened by NASA at the request of members of Congress, scientists were brought together to discuss many different kinds of potential signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life. While artifacts were one of many topics discussed, the term carries a quite magnetic pedigree.

Artifact Space by Miles Cameron - Goodreads Editions of Artifact Space by Miles Cameron - Goodreads

The message is carried by a phonograph record – -a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to show the diversity of life and culture on Earth. The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by space scientist and popularizer Carl Sagan. He and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds to give a sense of what Earth and Earthlings are like. Voyager 2 was launched by NASA in August, 1977 to study the outer planets. Part of the larger Voyager program, it was launched 16 days before its twin, Voyager 1, on a trajectory that took longer to reach Jupiter and Saturn but enabled further encounters with Uranus and Neptune. Yet why would the Margrave of Someil be keeping abreast of a magistrate’s travels? And why would he make one of his knights camp out in the cold and wet until my arrival? Nobody knows what the object – called Oumuamua, Hawaiian for “first messenger,” or “scout” – really is. The more likely possibilities of it being a comet or an solar system asteroid have been found to be inconsistent with some observed properties of the visitor, and this has led some senior scientists to even hypothesize that it just might be an alien probe. The world building was a little better but not by much. See in the author’s universe everyone is a happy merchant socialist plying the stars with goods in tow, ready to bring about a burgeoning expansion. Only this idea of existence is barely expounded upon and for good reason. It makes no sense. Capitalists are bad, merchant military socialists are good and …….?The book reads like a season of a TV show, which is a bit of a breathe of fresh air from a singular on-going battle or trip across the universe. Chapters feel like episodes where you can either read one and set it aside, or binge the entire thing to your heart’s content. Gives you sort of a reason to continue as chapters sometimes end on cliffhangers and, well, you just have to know what happens next. Most of the Artifacts you gain will be over the course of the main story missions you undertake, including the missions to visit random structures on random planets in Into the Unknown, Further Into the Unknown, and Final Glimpses. Ultimately, Artifact Space does a lot things well that aren’t especially to my taste, and it only teases on the elements that most excited me. The prose and characters are solid, but they aren’t quite enough to capture my interest when the plot spends so much time on what I consider to be less interesting details. So this is an example of a story that won’t get an especially high score from me, but where I recognize that taste mismatch is playing a larger-than-average role, and that I may still recommend to other readers who are a better fit for the subgenre. At the on-going American Geophysical Union annual meeting, NASA project manager Suzanne Dodd said she believed that Voyager 2 can keep functioning for 5 to 10 more years in this new region of space, though not with all its instruments operating.

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