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The Ansible Stories #1-3
Ansible: A Thousand Faces: (The Complete Omnibus of Seasons 1-3)
Traveling across space and time to make first contact, Islamic explorers discover a terrible predator. Now only a band of time travelers stand between humanity and the long dark. This omnibus includes all three volumes of the Ansible Saga in one edition. In Ansible , 25th century explorers transfer their minds across space and time to make first contact...and get marooned in alien bodies on alien worlds. Along the way, they encounter the most dangerous predator humanity has ever faced. Now a Syrian refugee, a thirteenth-century librarian, and a hijabi shapeshifter from the far future must travel across space and time to defend humanity from this intergalactic and devouring evil. They'll find A wheelchair gunslinger from far-future Beijing. A legion of women soldiers wielding Spinning Saws that can slice through predators that only barely exist inside our universe. A strange child-empath who can hear all of humanity's suffering at every instant in history. A firestarter-goddess from our prehistory. Together, they will face a species that travels across time and feeds on terror itself. REVIEWS FOR " Ansible was pitched to me as featuring a ‘bisexual shapeshifting hijabi time traveler’, and you know what, that really is all I need to hear. But even though, with that premise, I was expecting it to be awesome? I did not, could not, imagine the…the scale of it. How completely it would take my breath away. How utterly it would consume my every waking moment – and quite a lot of my sleeping ones. How impossible it would be to stop thinking about it. How it would – would fit, the way the perfect stone fits in your hand, smooth and silken and just inexplicably right . Except Ansible isn’t your average pebble, but some kind of crystal, one with veins and dapples of colour running through it, so that every time you look, every time you turn it over in your hand, there’s some new and unexpected brilliance to fall in love with." – Every Book a Doorway
"If you were a fan of A Wrinkle In Time as a youth, you need Ansible in your maturity. This saga picks up where Wrinkle left off, delving deeper and reaching further into what it means to be human, what it means to have resolve, and what it means to stand against the dark. In all times and all places, there are things to fear. And there are those we face our fears to protect. Those we love, whether as kin or as expressions of the divine in mortal form. This is a story of what it means to face the dark. This is the series we need right now. There has rarely been a more lyrical, evocative, and beautiful exploration of what it means to be human. It reminds us not only that we can be better than what we it reminds us of why we must be. And beyond that, it’s just a damn good story." – O. E. Tearmann, author of Aces High, Jokers Wild
"Stant Litore may be SF's premier poet of loneliness." - Jason Kirk, author of Reverb
"Litore's stories aren't only entertaining. They are stories invading our lives, unexpectedly. You encounter them, as you might encounter people. They are those random elements in life that happen to you, like a mugging, like childbirth, like falling in love and marriage, like death and the funeral that follows. They are moments that leave a mark, and leave you changed." - Andrew Hallam, Ph.D., Metropolitan State University of Denver
"Stant eloquently writes passages that are so moving, full of passion, fury, loneliness, blind drive ... He takes us to places of amazing beauty, awe-inspiring, as well as places where the implications in the story can leave you almost in despair for the human race." - Nikki Ebright, Director, Myths & Legends Con
"If you were a fan of A Wrinkle In Time as a youth, you need Ansible in your maturity. This saga picks up where Wrinkle left off, delving deeper and reaching further into what it means to be human, what it means to have resolve, and what it means to stand against the dark. In all times and all places, there are things to fear. And there are those we face our fears to protect. Those we love, whether as kin or as expressions of the divine in mortal form. This is a story of what it means to face the dark. This is the series we need right now. There has rarely been a more lyrical, evocative, and beautiful exploration of what it means to be human. It reminds us not only that we can be better than what we it reminds us of why we must be. And beyond that, it’s just a damn good story." – O. E. Tearmann, author of Aces High, Jokers Wild
"Stant Litore may be SF's premier poet of loneliness." - Jason Kirk, author of Reverb
"Litore's stories aren't only entertaining. They are stories invading our lives, unexpectedly. You encounter them, as you might encounter people. They are those random elements in life that happen to you, like a mugging, like childbirth, like falling in love and marriage, like death and the funeral that follows. They are moments that leave a mark, and leave you changed." - Andrew Hallam, Ph.D., Metropolitan State University of Denver
"Stant eloquently writes passages that are so moving, full of passion, fury, loneliness, blind drive ... He takes us to places of amazing beauty, awe-inspiring, as well as places where the implications in the story can leave you almost in despair for the human race." - Nikki Ebright, Director, Myths & Legends Con
- GenresScience Fiction
545 pages, Hardcover
Published January 28, 2023
1 person is currently reading
26 people want to read
About the author
Stant Litore
49 books216 followersStant Litore is the author of Ansible, The Running of the Tyrannosaurs, The Zombie Bible, and Dante’s Heart. Besides science fiction and fantasy, he has written the writers’ toolkits Write Worlds Your Readers Won’t Forget and Write Characters Your Readers Won’t Forget, as well as Lives of Unstoppable Hope and Lives of Unforgetting, and has been featured in Jeff Vandermeer’s Wonderbook: An Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction. He has served as a developmental editor for Westmarch Publishing and holds a Ph.D. in English. He lives in Aurora, Colorado with his wife and three children and is currently at work on his next novel.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 10, 2021
Actual Rating 5+ Stars
This is by far my most favourite book of 2020! I can not believe I never heard of this author before. This is not just Muslims in Space... it is so much deeper than that! Spiritually, Philosophically and world-building wise, this collection of stories is so intricate. I was blown away! And I read A LOT of Sci-Fi like, really... this does not happen often. I will be following this author closely not only for continuation of this story (fingers-crossed) but also for anything else he has written. If this was THIS GOOD what else am I missing? For real, read this, you will not be dissapointed!
Also, special shout-out for the voice-work of the Audiobook version, - absolutely outstanding work. Marvelously done, so much emotion and depth in the work. Really connected with me.
Will be re-reading for sure, but need a bit of a break to rest and ponder all of the many questions presented in the story.
2nd re-read: I absolutely love this Universe still. And returning to it was a pure, terrifying Joy!
This is by far my most favourite book of 2020! I can not believe I never heard of this author before. This is not just Muslims in Space... it is so much deeper than that! Spiritually, Philosophically and world-building wise, this collection of stories is so intricate. I was blown away! And I read A LOT of Sci-Fi like, really... this does not happen often. I will be following this author closely not only for continuation of this story (fingers-crossed) but also for anything else he has written. If this was THIS GOOD what else am I missing? For real, read this, you will not be dissapointed!
Also, special shout-out for the voice-work of the Audiobook version, - absolutely outstanding work. Marvelously done, so much emotion and depth in the work. Really connected with me.
Will be re-reading for sure, but need a bit of a break to rest and ponder all of the many questions presented in the story.
2nd re-read: I absolutely love this Universe still. And returning to it was a pure, terrifying Joy!
April 5, 2022
HIGHLIGHTS
~bisexual shapeshifting hijabi time traveler
~the most nightmarish monsters to ever nightmare
~psychic scholar-scientists
~gleaming prose
~it’s never time to give up on hope
This is a masterpiece.
It starts beautiful but bleak; beautiful, because a new Islamic Golden Age is flourishing after the environmental collapse of Earth, which is slowly recovering; bleak, because it is all about the Starmind program, where the minds of trained individuals are flung through space and time into the bodies of alien life-forms – and that experience is predictably lonely, occasionally tragic, as is to be expected with something so new, experimental, and exploratory. The humans can’t make it home again, after all.
Then it turns to horror. Because one far-flung Ansible, as they’re called, comes to a world full of monsters. And unintentionally gives them the location of Earth.
Picture enormous, near-invisible jellyfish. Now imagine that they are immune to most weaponry, are impossibly strong, and feed on sapient fear. If they touch you with their tendrils – which can lift an adult human up into the sky, not nearly as delicate an they should be – they trap your mind in an eternity of nightmares and feast on your psychic screaming forever.
This is the first 16% of the book – about 100 pages of this 600-page epic. And it’s rough. By which I mean, difficult to get through, not poorly written.
After that, though.
Gods.
Ansible was pitched to me as featuring a ‘bisexual shapeshifting hijabi time traveler’, and you know what, that really is all I need to hear. But even though, with that premise, I was expecting it to be awesome? I did not, could not, imagine the…the scale of it. How completely it would take my breath away. How utterly it would consume my every waking moment – and quite a lot of my sleeping ones. How impossible it would be to stop thinking about it. How it would – would fit, the way the perfect stone fits in your hand, smooth and silken and just inexplicably right. Except Ansible isn’t your average pebble, but some kind of crystal, one with veins and dapples of colour running through it, so that every time you look, every time you turn it over in your hand, there’s some new and unexpected brilliance to fall in love with.
Read the rest at Every Book a Doorway!
~bisexual shapeshifting hijabi time traveler
~the most nightmarish monsters to ever nightmare
~psychic scholar-scientists
~gleaming prose
~it’s never time to give up on hope
This is a masterpiece.
It starts beautiful but bleak; beautiful, because a new Islamic Golden Age is flourishing after the environmental collapse of Earth, which is slowly recovering; bleak, because it is all about the Starmind program, where the minds of trained individuals are flung through space and time into the bodies of alien life-forms – and that experience is predictably lonely, occasionally tragic, as is to be expected with something so new, experimental, and exploratory. The humans can’t make it home again, after all.
Then it turns to horror. Because one far-flung Ansible, as they’re called, comes to a world full of monsters. And unintentionally gives them the location of Earth.
Picture enormous, near-invisible jellyfish. Now imagine that they are immune to most weaponry, are impossibly strong, and feed on sapient fear. If they touch you with their tendrils – which can lift an adult human up into the sky, not nearly as delicate an they should be – they trap your mind in an eternity of nightmares and feast on your psychic screaming forever.
This is the first 16% of the book – about 100 pages of this 600-page epic. And it’s rough. By which I mean, difficult to get through, not poorly written.
After that, though.
Gods.
Uncertainty is not despair; it’s another word for hope.
Ansible was pitched to me as featuring a ‘bisexual shapeshifting hijabi time traveler’, and you know what, that really is all I need to hear. But even though, with that premise, I was expecting it to be awesome? I did not, could not, imagine the…the scale of it. How completely it would take my breath away. How utterly it would consume my every waking moment – and quite a lot of my sleeping ones. How impossible it would be to stop thinking about it. How it would – would fit, the way the perfect stone fits in your hand, smooth and silken and just inexplicably right. Except Ansible isn’t your average pebble, but some kind of crystal, one with veins and dapples of colour running through it, so that every time you look, every time you turn it over in your hand, there’s some new and unexpected brilliance to fall in love with.
Read the rest at Every Book a Doorway!
August 3, 2020
Be warned, I’m getting gushy on this omnibus review. Ansible has become one of my all time favorite series.
In brief, if you were a fan of A Wrinkle In Time as a youth, you need Ansible in your maturity. This saga picks up where Wrinkle left off, delving deeper and reaching further into what it means to be human, what it means to have resolve, and what it means to stand against the dark.
In all times and all places, there are things to fear. And there are those we face our fears to protect. Those we love, whether as kin or as expressions of the divine in mortal form. This is a story of what it means to face the dark.
Okay, in a little more nuts-and-bolts detail, let’s elaborate. SO MUCH history, biology, and sociology goes into this story, making it breathe and move in organic and absolutely believable ways. Litore’s exploration of what amounts to a second Golden Age of Islam is masterful. It takes the current socio-political situation and inverts it. Now scientific endeavor is the greatest way to honor God, as it was in the 900s, and the Islamic world has risen to shocking heights in stellar exploration. Most notably, they want to send human consciousness to other stars. But most ways to do that aren’t going to work.
There is one way, though. What if you could take the human *mind*, the human *consciousness*, and cast it out there?
Book 1 explores and elaborates on how the idea works. Book 2 takes the possibilities further. And by Book 3, the things that are done are incredible.
Litore’s ability to write advanced science into poetry and turn sci-fi into epic saga is something I will never cease to be amazed by. This isn’t a sci-fi adventure. Sure, space ships are involved, and sometimes pre-hominids too, and yeah, jellyfish that eat your braaaaaaainnnnsss (read that in as campy a tone as possible, please)
But in Litore’s hands, this material is so much more. This is the poetry of time, and space, and soul.
This is the series we need right now. There has rarely been a more lyrical, evocative, and beautiful exploration of what it means to be human. It reminds us not only that we can be better than what we are: it reminds us of why we must be. And beyond that, it’s just a damn good story.
Grab yours. You’ll be glad you did.
In brief, if you were a fan of A Wrinkle In Time as a youth, you need Ansible in your maturity. This saga picks up where Wrinkle left off, delving deeper and reaching further into what it means to be human, what it means to have resolve, and what it means to stand against the dark.
In all times and all places, there are things to fear. And there are those we face our fears to protect. Those we love, whether as kin or as expressions of the divine in mortal form. This is a story of what it means to face the dark.
Okay, in a little more nuts-and-bolts detail, let’s elaborate. SO MUCH history, biology, and sociology goes into this story, making it breathe and move in organic and absolutely believable ways. Litore’s exploration of what amounts to a second Golden Age of Islam is masterful. It takes the current socio-political situation and inverts it. Now scientific endeavor is the greatest way to honor God, as it was in the 900s, and the Islamic world has risen to shocking heights in stellar exploration. Most notably, they want to send human consciousness to other stars. But most ways to do that aren’t going to work.
There is one way, though. What if you could take the human *mind*, the human *consciousness*, and cast it out there?
Book 1 explores and elaborates on how the idea works. Book 2 takes the possibilities further. And by Book 3, the things that are done are incredible.
Litore’s ability to write advanced science into poetry and turn sci-fi into epic saga is something I will never cease to be amazed by. This isn’t a sci-fi adventure. Sure, space ships are involved, and sometimes pre-hominids too, and yeah, jellyfish that eat your braaaaaaainnnnsss (read that in as campy a tone as possible, please)
But in Litore’s hands, this material is so much more. This is the poetry of time, and space, and soul.
This is the series we need right now. There has rarely been a more lyrical, evocative, and beautiful exploration of what it means to be human. It reminds us not only that we can be better than what we are: it reminds us of why we must be. And beyond that, it’s just a damn good story.
Grab yours. You’ll be glad you did.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews