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The Trigon Disunity #1
Emprise
Seventeen years after the Food and Fuel Wars devastated Earth, transforming a once powerful civilization into isolated farming communities in which scientists are burned at the stake, astronomer Allen Chandliss, hidden in the Idaho hills, discovers that aliens are about to arrive on Earth.
416 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1985
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363 people want to read
About the author
Michael P. Kube-McDowell
53 books58 followersMichael Paul Kube-McDowell's earliest science fiction stories began appearing in magazines such as Amazing, Asimov's, and Analog in 1979. His 1985 debut novel Emprise, the first volume of the Trigon Disunity future history, was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award. The Quiet Pools, published as a Bantam hardcover in 1990, was a Hugo Award nominee.
In addition to his solo novels, Kube-McDowell has collaborated with Sir Arthur C. Clarke (The Trigger) and Isaac Asimov (for the YA series Robot City. He also wrote the popular Black Fleet Crisis trilogy for the Star Wars Expanded Universe; all three volumes were New York Times bestsellers.
A former middle school science teacher, Kube-McDowell has written about science and technology for a variety of periodicals, on topics ranging from gnotobiology to ultralights to spaceflight. He covered the launch of STS-4 for The South Bend Tribune.
Kube-McDowell has attended more than 80 SF fan conventions, and met his wife Gwen (then an artist) in a con huckster room. They both were later members of the Pegasus Award-winning electric filk ensemble The Black Book Band, which performed at cons in the Midwest in the 1990s and released the live album First Contact (Dodeka Records).
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
February 5, 2023
Kube-McDowell's first novel feels a little dated (it was first published in 1985), but still constitutes a fine first-contact novel, and one filled with political intrigue to boot. In Emprise, the world basically ran out of gas by the 1990s, and economic disarray ensued, along with a break down of social order globally. Just preceding the energy crisis, a group of scientists came up with the 'fission blanket', by which a projector of sorts neutralizes radioactive material, making nukes mute. The resulting fallout served to discredit scientists (who became linked with the chaos) and most of humanity focused upon just finding their daily bread.
One scientist, however, kept his eyes on the sky if you will with a lash-up observatory deep in Idaho and one day, discovered an incoming radio message that could only be from an alien intelligence. Long story short, the message, when finally decoded, announced 'greetings, we are coming!'. Unfortunately, the global economic malaise and political disorder made acting upon the message almost impossible...
Emprise suffers from some pacing issues, but still presents a fascinating alternative time line for humanity. Most of the 'action' if you will takes place around 2015 or so, with a new world council trying to bootstrap a new space program. This is hard science fiction for sure and hence suffers from the typical lack of real character development of that genre, but the big ideas are enough to carry the story along. Good stuff from Kube-McDowell and now off to the next installment in the trilogy. 3 alien stars!!
One scientist, however, kept his eyes on the sky if you will with a lash-up observatory deep in Idaho and one day, discovered an incoming radio message that could only be from an alien intelligence. Long story short, the message, when finally decoded, announced 'greetings, we are coming!'. Unfortunately, the global economic malaise and political disorder made acting upon the message almost impossible...
Emprise suffers from some pacing issues, but still presents a fascinating alternative time line for humanity. Most of the 'action' if you will takes place around 2015 or so, with a new world council trying to bootstrap a new space program. This is hard science fiction for sure and hence suffers from the typical lack of real character development of that genre, but the big ideas are enough to carry the story along. Good stuff from Kube-McDowell and now off to the next installment in the trilogy. 3 alien stars!!
May 30, 2015
This reads like a classic sci-fi novel, easy enough to shelve with Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, etc. It's full of big ideas, actual science, compelling story that doesn't rely on explosions to propel the plot.
Highly recommended. Hopefully this, and the others in the trilogy, will get individual or an omnibus release.
Curious sidenote: this came out the same year as (and was somewhat overshadowed by) Sagan's Contact, and the two share the "message from space" plot device. How they handle that same event is very different. If you read Sagan and think Emprise is a rip-off,think again. It's the equal, maybe superior, story.
Highly recommended. Hopefully this, and the others in the trilogy, will get individual or an omnibus release.
Curious sidenote: this came out the same year as (and was somewhat overshadowed by) Sagan's Contact, and the two share the "message from space" plot device. How they handle that same event is very different. If you read Sagan and think Emprise is a rip-off,think again. It's the equal, maybe superior, story.
May 13, 2020
Kube-McDowell, Michael P. Emprise. The Trigon Disunity. Berkley, 1985.
This first volume of the Trigon Disunity series was a nominee for the Philip K. Dick Award, and one can see why. It deals in the way Dick often did with issues of surveillance and bureaucratic skullduggery. During an almost apocalyptic planetary environmental and economic collapse, we are somehow able to martial the resources to travel out several years to meet an incoming alien starship that has pinged us. The story of getting ready to launch is slow, but once the encounter takes place the drama becomes intense as the political and religious divisions among the crew threaten to upset all the apple carts. There is a scientist who is interested in seeing what evolution has wrought, a militarist who is interested in deciding whether to attack, defend, or surrender, a religious zealot who thinks the aliens will be messengers from God. And there is our protagonist, who has to decide how to mediate the disputes and decide what to do when the aliens turn out to be surprising in many ways.
This first volume of the Trigon Disunity series was a nominee for the Philip K. Dick Award, and one can see why. It deals in the way Dick often did with issues of surveillance and bureaucratic skullduggery. During an almost apocalyptic planetary environmental and economic collapse, we are somehow able to martial the resources to travel out several years to meet an incoming alien starship that has pinged us. The story of getting ready to launch is slow, but once the encounter takes place the drama becomes intense as the political and religious divisions among the crew threaten to upset all the apple carts. There is a scientist who is interested in seeing what evolution has wrought, a militarist who is interested in deciding whether to attack, defend, or surrender, a religious zealot who thinks the aliens will be messengers from God. And there is our protagonist, who has to decide how to mediate the disputes and decide what to do when the aliens turn out to be surprising in many ways.
February 9, 2024
I read the three books of The Trigon Disunity back in the 1980s, when they were first published, in the mid-80s. I enjoyed them immensely. This, I thought at the time, does what science fiction does best: tells an exciting story that resets our vision of both past and future.
Now, nearly four decades later, I am rereading the books. On page 126 I was thinking: this is indeed great fun. I’m not talking Book of the New Sun brilliance, here, but surely as good as anything in Heinlein or Asimov.
I know, I know: mine is a decidedly minority position. I have read a fair number of negative reviews. So: CAUTION.
As far as I can tell, these books have fallen off the radar of today’s sf readers and mavens. This is a neatly constructed tale, this Emprise, and is on the whole perfectly satisfying. If one is looking for comparisons, I suggest the Niven/Pournelle team and the work of Jack McDevitt. This is not Literature, nor any attempt at it, but popular thriller novelizing. This is essentially a political drama. It has nothing to do with my politics, by the way. It is about government action. I do not believe the author mentions taxation once. His interests lie in space travel. And he (rightly) sees politics as the only way to achieve such a thing quickly.
1. Premise: we are introduced to a post-Apocalyptic world. Civilization has fallen (in the 1980s) sans war or plague — indeed, peace was the problem (it is a clever collapse, but I will not spoil it). America has gone back to virtually 19th century economic conditions, but without fossil fuels. Anti-science furor dominates culture. And in a backwater area of Idaho, a man secretly scours the heavens with his makeshift radio telescope. And he encounters a message. An obviously artificial message. It comes from Mu Cassiopeia, and the scientist decides he must inform a colleague. Some colleague; some scientist somewhere. But he cannot raise any of his friends from before the collapse. He succeeds only in informing one man in England, a former member of the House of Lords, an astronomer. And then he is captured, tried and executed for the treason that is science. So much for America.
2. The main story: the confirmation of the discovery, the subsequent deciphering of the message, and then the political response by King William: revive civilization in time to send a spacecraft as emissaries to greet the aliens midway.
3. This is an extremely satisfying First Contact story. Note that the very premise is “post-apocalyptic,” and the Message is a First Contact as bland as we could hope. It remains until the very end of the book to discover what is actually going on, when the First Contact is as close an encounter as Hynek could hope for.
And the reader is in for a big surprise.
Thus Emprise offers us a novum and a concluding paradigm shift. Everything gains new meaning at the end. It satisfies critic Stephen E. Andrews’s demands for good science fiction.
Yet the book is not anything like high literature. The descriptions are cut down to the bare minimum, as is characterization. It is all about the premise, the nova and the plot.
Just like much Golden Age science fiction. I think it works on this level, and that this is enough.
In the past I have not recommended the book as often as I might because elements of the premise are eyerollworthy. For example, the author believes in Peak Oil Theory, which is unscientific and makes no sense, especially now that we know (well, this is controversial) that “fossil fuels” are not the crushed remains past life: petroleum is made in the mantle and gushes up naturally to the surface. And much of the environmentalist assumptions are on this order; the ecology is the least sound science here. One could pick at such nits endlessly. But one could also find small pro-science gems all over the place, such as his brief description of the FTL drive developed in the course of the story.
It is a lot of fun. Sure, it would have been better a hundred pages longer, with more description and a tad more character development, and bit better description of the technical action at the encounter outside the solar system, but hey: the definition of a novel has always been a long work of fiction with a flaw in it.
There are flaws, but also gems, within. Many. One of those gems is the discovery of a dark [‘Jupiter’] star, a twin for our Sol. It does not feature as key to the plot.
Also, I really enjoyed many, many other touches. The term for the aliens, used in the novel, is “MuMan,” for being from Mu Cassiopeia. Nifty.
Next up: Enigma.
Now, nearly four decades later, I am rereading the books. On page 126 I was thinking: this is indeed great fun. I’m not talking Book of the New Sun brilliance, here, but surely as good as anything in Heinlein or Asimov.
I know, I know: mine is a decidedly minority position. I have read a fair number of negative reviews. So: CAUTION.
As far as I can tell, these books have fallen off the radar of today’s sf readers and mavens. This is a neatly constructed tale, this Emprise, and is on the whole perfectly satisfying. If one is looking for comparisons, I suggest the Niven/Pournelle team and the work of Jack McDevitt. This is not Literature, nor any attempt at it, but popular thriller novelizing. This is essentially a political drama. It has nothing to do with my politics, by the way. It is about government action. I do not believe the author mentions taxation once. His interests lie in space travel. And he (rightly) sees politics as the only way to achieve such a thing quickly.
1. Premise: we are introduced to a post-Apocalyptic world. Civilization has fallen (in the 1980s) sans war or plague — indeed, peace was the problem (it is a clever collapse, but I will not spoil it). America has gone back to virtually 19th century economic conditions, but without fossil fuels. Anti-science furor dominates culture. And in a backwater area of Idaho, a man secretly scours the heavens with his makeshift radio telescope. And he encounters a message. An obviously artificial message. It comes from Mu Cassiopeia, and the scientist decides he must inform a colleague. Some colleague; some scientist somewhere. But he cannot raise any of his friends from before the collapse. He succeeds only in informing one man in England, a former member of the House of Lords, an astronomer. And then he is captured, tried and executed for the treason that is science. So much for America.
2. The main story: the confirmation of the discovery, the subsequent deciphering of the message, and then the political response by King William: revive civilization in time to send a spacecraft as emissaries to greet the aliens midway.
3. This is an extremely satisfying First Contact story. Note that the very premise is “post-apocalyptic,” and the Message is a First Contact as bland as we could hope. It remains until the very end of the book to discover what is actually going on, when the First Contact is as close an encounter as Hynek could hope for.
And the reader is in for a big surprise.
Thus Emprise offers us a novum and a concluding paradigm shift. Everything gains new meaning at the end. It satisfies critic Stephen E. Andrews’s demands for good science fiction.
Yet the book is not anything like high literature. The descriptions are cut down to the bare minimum, as is characterization. It is all about the premise, the nova and the plot.
Just like much Golden Age science fiction. I think it works on this level, and that this is enough.
In the past I have not recommended the book as often as I might because elements of the premise are eyerollworthy. For example, the author believes in Peak Oil Theory, which is unscientific and makes no sense, especially now that we know (well, this is controversial) that “fossil fuels” are not the crushed remains past life: petroleum is made in the mantle and gushes up naturally to the surface. And much of the environmentalist assumptions are on this order; the ecology is the least sound science here. One could pick at such nits endlessly. But one could also find small pro-science gems all over the place, such as his brief description of the FTL drive developed in the course of the story.
It is a lot of fun. Sure, it would have been better a hundred pages longer, with more description and a tad more character development, and bit better description of the technical action at the encounter outside the solar system, but hey: the definition of a novel has always been a long work of fiction with a flaw in it.
There are flaws, but also gems, within. Many. One of those gems is the discovery of a dark [‘Jupiter’] star, a twin for our Sol. It does not feature as key to the plot.
Also, I really enjoyed many, many other touches. The term for the aliens, used in the novel, is “MuMan,” for being from Mu Cassiopeia. Nifty.
Next up: Enigma.
December 31, 2019
I first read this as a teenager, and it didn’t hold up well on a re-read: there are some good ideas but the world building tried to be more than the author could pull off, which lasted through the remainder of the trilogy. It tries to be set outside the US, which was a neat idea but the characters and culture act and talk like late Cold War Americans and Christianity is the only religion which is important enough to impact the plot.
Content warning: as was unfortunately common in that generation, one of the female characters is largely defined by a brutal rape described in unnecessary detail and continues to be in the plot mostly for male, and thus more important, characters to want to have sex with her.
Content warning: as was unfortunately common in that generation, one of the female characters is largely defined by a brutal rape described in unnecessary detail and continues to be in the plot mostly for male, and thus more important, characters to want to have sex with her.
January 3, 2021
The U.S. has fallen back into a balkanized fundamentalist regime while other countries too have devolved away from technology due to the invention of the Fission Blanket - a technique rendering fissionables inert. Designed to bring peace it instead wrought havoc and made science and scientists anathema and criminalised. Into this a signal from another star finally reaches Earth and an American astronomer covertly monitoring the skies determines it is from Mu Cassiopeia - and designates them MuMen. Shortly after radioing a colleague in England the original discoverer is sentenced to death and a secret cabal of scientists works to translate the message - which turns out to be in English! Michael Kube-McDowell has given us an entertaining story of the attempt at first contact with aliens who are already on their way to Earth and all the political machinations that would entail. The biggest surprise awaits the crew of a human ship sent to intercept the aliens before they reach Earth! Pretty good first novel.
October 11, 2024
Not your typical first contact book, Kube-McDowell roots this story in a then-future post-apocalyptic world where scientists are scapegoats for society’s mistakes. It takes quite a while to get to the contact part but there are still two more books in the series to explore.
December 13, 2012
As others have said, I really really liked the beginning. It was like a much more relevant version of "A Canticle for Leibowitz," since the dark ages it appears will not reemerge from a nuclear holocaust but from perhaps the draining of the world's remaining resources. The fact scientists are the scapegoat and are actually burned at the stake was fascinating and frightening, and I was far more interested in this setting than the long build-up to the first contact. The back of the book led me to believe that was what most of the book was about, but that unfortunately wasn't the case. Yeah, the rebuilding of society WAS interesting, although Kube-McDowell failed to fully clarify how suddenly humanity had enough fuel reorganize itself and launch multiple rockets into space. Yeah, he touched on some alternative energy sources, but it it seemed silly to me that humanity could turn around from such a desolate place to inventing a near-light speed spacedrive in a few years.
The main flaw of this book is it was far too ambitious. I'm not interested in reading about another first contact, I'm interested in that world where scientists are the equivalent of witches which suddenly gets a message from space. What was the situation in Africa? We heard about the Chinese leaders, but not about the Chinese people. How suddenly did all the Asian countries start voting together? For hundreds of years they have hated each other. For being such a smart book in many ways, it was lacking in non-technobable writing.
The main flaw of this book is it was far too ambitious. I'm not interested in reading about another first contact, I'm interested in that world where scientists are the equivalent of witches which suddenly gets a message from space. What was the situation in Africa? We heard about the Chinese leaders, but not about the Chinese people. How suddenly did all the Asian countries start voting together? For hundreds of years they have hated each other. For being such a smart book in many ways, it was lacking in non-technobable writing.
September 8, 2010
The beginning had me hooked, society pushing the bounds of it's available energy devolved by an inability to see the coming disaster. I mean, come on, how is that not relevant, and it was written 30 years ago! So I was hoping he would dive into what happens next, what technological level do we re-stabilize at, is growth afterward even possible? And he does, but only as an aside to the primary plot line; and it's a good story, fun to read, maybe 2 of the characters are really enticing, and the ending leaves a myriad of possibilities for the sequel, but I was more interested in the few brush strokes dedicated to the backdrop.
July 11, 2020
Aliens who turn out to be long lost human siblings, carried away to distant planets eons ago has become a bit of a trope in science fiction. Kube-McDowell's first volume in his Trigon Disunity trilogy presents just such a situation but avoids falling into tired ruts but approaching it from the human perspective of politics, power and religion. He also doesn't give us any clue to the answer of the mystery, which is a good way to get me started on the second book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 19, 2019
pretty amazing collection of ideas and actions - left me with a lot to think about in terms of God, science and our assumptions about so many aspects of life and the beyond. Surprised to read reviews that the reader 'couldn't finish' the book - for me it was quite hard to put it aside and I raced through it. I loved the writing style - erudite and almost HG Wells like in its tone and shape. Great to find some science fiction that has some ideas and that challenge us to think. Too much science fiction nowadays is just technological or follows well worn tropes, or worse, copies what has proved to be commercially successful.
March 27, 2019
Couldn't finish.
November 21, 2023
A really good tale with scientists being the scapegoats for the world's problems ... liked many of the characters, though there were quite a few over the 50 year or so of the plot of the book.
May 29, 2024
It's a cookbook!
July 7, 2013
I have read science fiction, but it always had a romantic element. That being said, you can say that I was way out of my comfort zone reading this book.
I found some parts of the book interesting since it was published back in 1984 and I read it in 2013. The story starts off around the year 2011 with major changes to the way things really are.
It wasn't anything like the description. There was a long--very long-- period of time leading up to the arrival of the 'aliens'. You don't even get to the point of them meeting with the aliens until the end of the book. This book seemed like an agonizing and long journey of getting Earth ready for the arrival of visitors (which never happens).
There's also the fact that the book is written with so much technical jargon that I didn't understand half of it. I'm not a stupid person, but never had any training with computers or space aviation. That's what you would need to understand half of what is said in this book.
I know that there are two more books in the series, but I can't see myself reading them.
I found some parts of the book interesting since it was published back in 1984 and I read it in 2013. The story starts off around the year 2011 with major changes to the way things really are.
It wasn't anything like the description. There was a long--very long-- period of time leading up to the arrival of the 'aliens'. You don't even get to the point of them meeting with the aliens until the end of the book. This book seemed like an agonizing and long journey of getting Earth ready for the arrival of visitors (which never happens).
There's also the fact that the book is written with so much technical jargon that I didn't understand half of it. I'm not a stupid person, but never had any training with computers or space aviation. That's what you would need to understand half of what is said in this book.
I know that there are two more books in the series, but I can't see myself reading them.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 28, 2024
This book reminded me of old school hard SF in all the right ways. Really enjoyed it. My only small gripe is that the novel doesn’t really have a main protagonist. It switches a few times. I understand why the author chose this route, it’s not realistic for one individual to be involved in everything that happens. But it did leave me wondering what happened to the other characters that we lose track of.
I’m looking forward to reading the sequels soon.
I’m looking forward to reading the sequels soon.
January 27, 2008
This book was given to me by the author, Michael Kube-McDowell, and I thought it was an interesting science fiction story. He doesn't stay with one point of view character, but moves the story along from one character to another, so it's a slightly different approach from stories that stay with one character or group of characters through the whole book.
December 3, 2014
Poche VO
June 22, 2023
To start a book with a handwavium gadget that eliminates a specific type of energy so you can make an unbelievable plot somewhat plausible made me stop reading it. Too much infodumps, as well.
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August 23, 2008isbn,original
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews