Beyond Kuiper: The Galactic Star Alliance

by Matthew Medney, John Conelly, Stefan Petrucha (Editor)

There is no Drake equation. There is no question on sentience. The galaxy is alive, filled with life, the only issue, us humans aren’t invited. The Galactic Star Alliance awaits your exploration. We acknowledge the vastness of time, the cyclical nature of civilization; and the obscurity of our own history. When we began debating “why hasn’t sentient life has been found in our galaxy?” All those years back, we were among the era of exoplanets. Every week it seemed NASA would announce a new outpouring of worlds, all vastly beyond reach, but each recalculating the likelihood of potential Earths. But to us, the numbers seemed staggering, compelling, surely there are others. So if our galaxy is full of sentient life, we thought of a simple, logical reason why no one has said hello: no one wants to. Stepping back and casting an objective eye on ourselves, it seems painfully obvious that humans lack a fundamental respect for their planet and each other. They possess extremely short memories and long grudges, and the idea of giving them the motivation or tools to hasten their expansion seems downright foolhardy. That being said, who are these judges?

From that simple notion birthed a million questions; How is faster than light possible? Could you have cohesive interstellar civilizations without it? How could you even govern a coalition of not different countries, but of species? Each question only created another, and each answer built our world piece by piece until it spanned thousands of answers and millions of lightyears. As for the title, from where would our judges watch us?

- Matthew is the CEO of Heavy Metal Entertainment that encompasses Heavy Metal Magazine & all other media ventures. As well, Matthew has been an Adjunct Professor at NYU, teaching classes on IP Creation and Digital marketing strategy and John is an aerospace engineer for Lockheed Martin who performs mechanical design for NASA deep space missions. with 3 satellites using his designs currently orbiting our planet.All science in the book is accurate and the theoretical science is backed up by science theory. No assertions in these works is fanatical.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Aliens, Comics

330 pages, Paperback

First published November 10, 2020

Reviews

[cara · Rating 1 out of 5]

Uh. Yikes.

DNF'd at 25%.

Listen, I don't normally DNF books. But this one, oh man, was it *bad*.

Though I am pretty new to the sci-fi genre, I couldn't follow a lick of what was going on in this story. It was a jumbled mess. I legitimately feel like I got a messed up copy, or I was supposed to read something before this. I couldn't follow anything that was going on. The story jumped from plot-point to plot-point without stopping to explain anything. There was no exposition, no setting, no world-building.

Oh, speaking of worldbuilding, it is one of the laziest things I have ever seen. All of the world-building and exposition is done in the footnotes of the story. It feels like the author felt too lazy to put in the work of weaving the exposition and setting into the story and just decided to info-dump. It makes the story much more confusing to have to piece together the footnotes, the story, and the world, instead of that all just being together.

Though these are smaller complaints, they certainly didn't help with my overall feelings towards the book. There were random pop-culture references that didn't fit at all. Within the first 10 pages, the ending of Avengers: Endgame was referenced, but it felt so forced and out-of-pocket that it was borderline cringy. Star Wars and Star Trek are also brought up, along with lines like "I miss 21st-century pop culture", which just seen to reinforce the lazy world-building. Along with that, there were a couple of grammatical errors sprinkled throughout the book, which, on their own, wouldn't have been bad, however combined with the terrible plot and setting, it just irritated me more.

Legitimately, I cannot find anything I enjoyed about this other than some of the art pieces. This book feels like it needs to be edited down majorly. I definitely wouldn't recommend this to anyone.

[Melon · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's... Not good. I'm really confounded by all the positive reviews. The writing is incredibly sophomoric. *I* could have written this book. Uncharacteristically for me, I pre-ordered and paid full price for this book because of positive early reviews, hoping for something to fill the void of The Expanse novels - - never again. I hate not finishing books I start, but two chapters in, I can tell this is... Terrible, I'm sorry. Their editor should be completely ashamed of themselves. Not only did the flow sound juvenile with all the artificial world-building and silly footnotes, but typographical errors abound. A comma followed by an exclamation point to end a sentence,! Accidental font changes. There's a nice idea behind it, I'm sure but... No. It's bad. Do not buy.

[Josh · Rating 2 out of 5]

An extremely passive way to tell a story.

A lot of fake reviews on this book. Click on the other profiles. They only have 1 book, rated at 5 stars. Zero friends, zero other reviews.

[Ash · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. *sigh* This might be one of my biggest disappoints yet. I had seen Beyond Kuiper featured in a few email newsletters and had added it to my wishlist, so when it not only popped up here on NetGalley but I was also approved for access, I was beyond stoked!

What needs to be said painfully clear, is that this audiobook is DRAMATIZED. It's performed by a handful of voice-actors, contains a ton of background noise, and music. The description boasts the original score, which is cool in theory, but in reality it sounds like a garbley mess and is distracting. Do the producers of this not realize how people listen to audiobooks? I audio-read while cleaning, driving, watching my kids play. The last thing I want while driving is to hear garbled sirens in my book, or pitchy static that is supposed to be "engine noise" or something while I'm going for a walk with a book. My sweet spot for audio-reading is 2.25x speed, but this sounds like a mess over 1.5x.

The dramatization also makes it very silly. This is labeled as Adult Fiction, but up to the point I listened it reads like Young Adult. The environmental/"humans are so dumb and violent" themes are more than heavy handed. At this point in 2020, we've had so much fiction with these themes that have been well done, that I could not bear to waste my time with this one.

To be clear, I love sci-fi. I just finished The Salvage Crew by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne and A Girl from Nowhere by James Maxwell that I adored. Beyond Kuiper sounds like my kind of book, but it's just too silly and the audio is a huge miss.

Thank you for the free audiobook in exchange for my honest review, NetGalley and Podium Audio.

[B · Rating 1 out of 5]

1 star is being very generous.
This is such a weird book and I couldn't get into it so I DNF at 30%.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

[Allyn Nichols · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know if there was an issue with my download but the text in this book is all over the place, chunks are repeated here and there and it was incredibly ard work to make it through. It will be excellent when all these things are ironed out and i appreciate that i'm reading an ARC. I'm going to have to give it 2 stars for now but that can easily be moved to 4 wheni read a finished manuscript. Real nerdy sci-fi of the kind i adore and it's such a shame that the text was such a mess. Hopefully this can be fixed asap and i'll edit my review accordingly.

[Lydia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oof. This reads like bad fanfic about Tony Stark or Elon Musk, down to the illustrations that are just "Tony Stark but like, in Europe or something." This book is for white male sci-fi fans who get hard for scientific accuracy.

[Linda ( Clary_Starfall ) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Space travel, intrigue, adventure, drama, loss, enemies, awesome illustrations.

I had an little trouble to get in the story because it’s not really my taste of genre as what I expected but when I got over the first hurdle I liked the flow, the characters and the storyline.

💕

[Scott Sharp · Rating 2 out of 5]

Worst fiction book I've ever read. Here's the good parts: the idea, galaxy building, and about five of the chapters. Everything else was bad. Footnotes! Copious and inconsistent use of footnotes was very off putting. Bad editing (spellcheck seemed to have been the only editing), really bad. Ex. References to footnotes on a certain page, but no related footnote on the stated page; a chronology with multiple events (e.g. first ....) Happening twice; etc. If you are going to read this, use an ereader, because those footnotes are in a 6 or 8 font in the physical book. This book needs to be edited down to five chapters and severely rewritten to incorporate footnotes into the story. It might be salvageable as a novella. The characters are not compelling - at least the human ones. The are so similar that it's hard to tell them apart. They all seem like iterations of dr. Hans Zarkov from Flash Gordon. The constant pop culture references to our time are annoying, as if nothing happens culturally for a century; it worked as part of the plot in Ready Player One, but no such plot device adequately incorporates that here. I expected much more from the editor of heavy metal magazine. I will not be reading a sequel without drastic improvements, an apology, and my reading time back.

[Jessica Draper · Rating 1 out of 5]

Um, no. Absolutely not. What were these other reviewers reading?!?
The tone is middle-aged-dude-imitates-warmed-over-Golden-Age-omni-competent-man. Every character the author likes is extra brilliant/handsome/wealthy/slick/sexy. One sends his super-genius (we're talking potentially world-shattering intellect here) to Hogwarts for Geniuses, complete with the main campus pastime being "find overly complicated technological ways of killing your classmates while the administration pretends not to notice." Now, in all fairness, maybe the point of the school is to weed out the smart little sociopaths by letting them off each other, but that's strictly sub-sub-sub-text or possibly reader wish fulfillment. I admit I didn't finish; by the time we got to the super-genius older but still hot woman professor turning from sexually harassing (and possibly abusing) her pretty-boy grad student to weeping heart-broken tears over her long-dead late husband, I just couldn't do it anymore. Oh, and the incompetent alien protector force camped out Beyond Kuiper? Yeah, they hold humans in deep contempt but still quote Star Wars like all the time. This is me, noping right out on outta there.

[Morgan Rosenblum · Rating 5 out of 5]

The level of world building and detail that went into this story is so legit. The best sci fi and fantasy stories, to me, are the ones that truly take me to another place - and make me forget that they aren't actually real. This book is so rich with that kind of faux history and plausibility that just makes you wonder if maybe it is. The characters are intricately crafted, multilayered and have real motivations, which ground the hi level sci fi aspects and make it relatable. Well done. Now give me more!

[Laurence Boyce · Rating 2 out of 5]

As ‘Beyond Kuiper: The Galactic Alliance’ is written by Matt Medney, the current CEO of the legendary ‘Heavy Metal’ magazine, alongside aerospace engineer John Connelly, it does boast some impressive credentials. The first is what is intended to be a series of epic sci-fi adventures, Medney and Connelly throw every sci-fi cliché against the wall to try and set up an exciting narrative whilst simultaneously building a world. There is certainly a creditable ambition to the whole enterprise. Sadly, this ambition is outweighed by numerous narrative and structural flaws that make everything rather hard going

(Read the rest at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/beyond-k...)

[Mouse · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yah, I also DNF’ed it! I read about 20%, then skipped around a bit to see if it would get any better and clear up, but it never did.
I’m honestly puzzled by the reviews on this, it’s such a hard book to get into, it’s bogged down by so much technical jargon and just completely loses itself. The book doesn’t make sense because it spends the majority of it trying to world build and keep throwing out names of things that will be completely forgotten.
I’d have more fun reading a technical manual about a refrigerator than this!

[James A. Benefiel · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too much made up jargon

This book uses too much made up jargon that there is a set of definitions for this jargon at the end of each chapter. It makes the narrative too convoluted and frankly quite boring.
The authors tried too hard to create an alien society with its own nomenclature which detracts from the storyline.

[Domi Greenhalgh · Rating 1 out of 5]

I only liked the potential of world building and the illustrations at each chapter. Mostly I didn't enjoy how I felt like I was reading an extraterrestrial dictionary and how it felt all over the place. It was super hard to follow because of all the back and forth between different characters. There were some chapters that had a ton of new vocabulary that weren't weaved into the story well so instead the author put them all in footnotes at the bottom of the page. It was confusing and boring.

[Karl Drinkwater]

I came across this because I'd bought an issue of Heavy Metal comic, #307. The comic itself had good artwork and stories but poor editing (many basic typos in the speech bubbles). Matthew Medney (this book's author) is one of the editors of the comic, so that didn't bode well in terms of attention to detail.

Anyway, in the midst of the comic was this bizarre advertorial for this book - a promo page, a chapter of it, and an interview. All walls of text, when I'd bought something for the images. I read it anyway, but I'm afraid that chapter was enough to put me off. Cringey and unrealistic dialogue, a writing style that felt rather amateur, unlikeably flat characters, and telling not showing - many crimes of a first novel which isn't properly polished. An example of the telling not showing:

"The corridor leading to his office displayed a sleek array of future tech. There were gadgets of all kinds, working and non-working, functional prototypes as well as theoretical models, all of which any good scientist should own, but the public would consider incomprehensible."

What tech? We're told it is amazing and mind-blowing, but not given a single example. Show us something rather than tell us. I didn't know if this was a display of portable black hole launchers or some kind of vacuum cleaner attachments that doubled as sexual devices.

As for dialogue ... the book is set in 2091. Nearly 70 years from now. Yet it reveals how much the mindset of the writers is stuck in the present day via the references. Here is the first introduction of a major character (again, in the year 2091). You can decide for yourself if this is the kind of thing you'd love.

A man with unruly silver hair and a colorful plaid button-down tucked neatly into his jeans sat in his chair. Unaware of Bernard’s dour state, visible excitement coursed through him.
“Hubert, great. I want to show you my modified calculations for the singularity capture.”
“Ah, D, yes, let’s have a look. Did you stabilize the quark stream during stage 4?” There was a slight lording to his tone.
“Oh, yes. The new math solves it. I bet William couldn’t even do this.”
“Much as I find it endearing how academic rivalries never die, I doubt that. William is the better mathematician, you know.”
“Right. Just like Iron Man was better than Captain America? Yes, Stark could hold the Gauntlet, but, be honest, that hardly makes him superior to the good ole stars and stripes.”
Momentarily enjoying a snarky analogy worthy of their shared love of early 21st century comics, Bernard rolled his eyes. Unfortunately, there were more somber things to discuss.
“D, Angie called. She wants you back, as in today, now—like the Borg Queen calling her ships back to the nest.” He finished with a halfhearted wink.
He expected Darren to be displeased, but the man looked ill. He was shaking,
as if being slowly consumed by a mix of anger and regret.

So, the editor of a comic uses that comic to promote his (non-comic) book with sixteen pages of promo. That sucks. People pay for the comic to read comics. It's not right to use the money they've paid to shove an unwanted book in their face.

Maybe this promo was why the editorial by this book's author was so bizarre and willy-waving for the topic of his book - AMAZING SCIENCE! (That's actually pretty boring.) Matt Medney's editorial says "There is nothing more important to humanity than the perseverance of science". Well, since science is just a methodology, one of many, and the outputs are morally neutral and just as likely to have negative consequences (as much sci-fi shows) - it comes across as setting the tone to slip in part of the novel, which has the same premise. Apart from that it doesn't fit the content of the comic at all. (And the other editorial by David Erwin adopts the same view, though goes further by insulting anyone who questions what they're told.) There's a tonal mismatch here. This is a comic where the stories are all fantasy, and in which magic and mystery often conquer science and hubris; where the science in the stories often has negative consequences, and there is even a story where a government controls what you can think and say, and will amputate limbs if you question them (with the implication throughout the story that the government is evil, they are lying, and if is RIGHT to question them). Why am I labouring this point? Because the two opinionated editorials seem to bear no relation to the actual content or tone of the comic they are attached to - the only possible reason that makes sense for their inclusion and content is to justify using pages the reader has paid for to do a sixteen page promo for a novel by one of the editorial writers, a novel with the same premis as the editorials ... Nothing else makes much sense to me.

Either way, the novel's opening was so contrary to what I enjoy reading as good fiction that it would be a DNF for me. The circumstances surrounding its marketing raise red flags. And as my first encounter with Heavy Metal, it was enough to make me wary of buying it again, which is a shame for the artists who seem to just want to tell good stories, totally at variance to the editorial team's personal views. Hmm, there's a lot to think about here, though it's probably not what was intended.

[Angel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was really excited when I first heard of Beyond Kuiper and I am really glad that I got to listen to the audiobook version. From my understanding, the book has a collection of illustrations while the audiobook comes with a soundtrack, more on that later. As excited as I was, I wasn't sure i was going to like this, to be honest. I love science fiction stories but by no means do I like hard sci-fi. I've tried in the past to read books that have great reviews and high recommendations from friends but ultimately I get lost trying to keep up with overly complicated universes. This book has been getting a lot of online attention due to it's link with Heavy Metal magazine. Is it hype or is it legit epic. Due to the online attention I decided to give it a go and I am glad I did!

I found the story to be fairly straight forward. Nothing felt overly complicated. I think the authors did a great job pacing things out and leading into information at the right time. The character building was great and I found the characters to be likable and to have depth. After each chapter, there was a sub chapter with definitions performed by one of the main characters of the chapter. As someone who isn't into hard sci-fi, this was kinda helpful but not necessary as it would end up pausing the story for a bit. Nice idea, just not sure if helped as much as it was intended.

The story was great and I really enjoyed it. I was a bit disappointed when the story ended with about a quarter of the audiobook still left when I looked down on my phone. The last quarter or so of the audiobook is the soundtrack/score of this project. Great as an idea but I would have happily traded half or so of those track in return to getting more story. The reason I say this is because I felt the story was building up only to get cut off at the end. This is the first in a 10 part story so there is more to come but to me the story felt like it ended prematurely which prevented me from giving this book 5 stars.

Beyond Kuiper's sound design really brought the story to another level. I enjoyed the soundscapes and sound effects which made scenarios and environments come to life. I think the narration was solid but could have been better with a different voice talent, maybe somebody a bit more seasoned to inject a bit more life into the performance.

Overall, I loved it! I'm a fan! I have the wallpaper on my phone to prove it. I'm looking forward to the next audiobook and the entire saga. I highly recommend Beyond Kuiper, the audiobook is fantastic and I'm sure the book is as well.

I want to thank Matthew Medney, John Connelly, Kyle Perrin, Dylan Sprouse, George C. Romero, Podium Audio and NetGalley for providing an ARC of this audiobook in exchange for my honest review.

[Sid · Rating 3 out of 5]

TLDR: I'm a big fan of world building, this book goes too far somehow. Also so many footnotes.

Longer review:
Instead of leaving any amount of information up to speculation or subtext to the reader it literally tells you everything. Reading a single page can be a 5min exercise in one's ability to focus. The extra information definitely is interesting but doesn't necessarily add to storytelling.
Love the timelines and map details presented in the back of the book. Not sure if converting all units to an imaginary but universally used alternate measuring system was necessary at all. I'm sure the readers could figure out that other kinds of beings would measure things differently.
The history and politics of the book are actually pretty intriguing. But I think the use of pop culture and 'nerdy' references don't make sense sometimes. People (that I'm around) don't randomly quote late 1800s media consciously in casual conversation, so why would people make star wars references in the 2090s?
I might read the second book if they ease off on the use of footnotes. So many footnotes.

[Justin Kearney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, I loved this book. It's a slow burn for a moment, but then it takes off and doesn't relent. There's a lot to take in, a crumbling Earth, humans making a lot of the same mistakes, but there is a galaxy to explore, and this book tackles and poses so many big questions. The worldbuilding is fantastic, with incredible artwork and maps to accompany the imagination. The future of humanity is a wild adventure, the characters are intellectual, memorable, and witty. The stakes planet sized. I want to read more, and know what happens next.

[Reuven · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is CAPTIVATING! That’s the first word that pops into my head. Chapter 1 makes you want to read all night to find out what happens. Chapter 2 is full of fun, unique, and memorable characters. If you like Sci-Fi, you will love this. If you don’t, you will still find it an intriguing piece of literary art. My mom read this book in 2 weeks and she loved it! And I’m pretty sure this is the first sci-fi book she’s ever read. Go read this book!

[Paul Reed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was super impressed by the quality of the story telling in this book. Medney really goes beyond the status quo for Sci-fi novels and creates this whole universe that reminds me of what has been done with star wars. If your a space sci-fi fans this is going to be one of those books you can't put down. I thoroughly enjoyed it and can't wait to see what is next for this author. He has made me into a fan of his work.

[Brendan Kearney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book will be your favorite part of 2020, an otherwise forgettable year. Take it from someone that is newer to the genre, I could not get enough of this. Brilliantly written and captivates a sense of understanding and imagination about space travel and alternate life forms, that you begin wondering where the line between truth and fantasy lies. 5 stars and looking forward to the next one!

[Scott Munjone · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story was difficult to get into. So much back story an information is provided that it is near impossible to maintain all the info.
It boils down to a three legged story involving an oblivious Earth, an all controlling ruling body (GSA- Galactic Star Alliance) and a renegade group (Creators of Space).
Those faint of heart should not attempt.

Happy to note the first listing in the timeline at the end is incorrect.

[Brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beyond Kuniper feels like the introduction to the first book in a series, not a full fledged book.

Much of the writing is devoted to developing this sci-fi universe with many different alien races and technology (with annotations used to flesh out the world) but by the time the end of the book is reached the reader is left unfulfilled and wondering what was the point of it all.

4/5 World building
2/5 Story
3/5 Prose

[Joe PI · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aspirational with a lot of high concepts going at three hundred miles an hour.

I liked the variety of women characters, as no two were the same, and a core friendship emerged that intrigued me in regards to future books in the series.

The penultimate scene was ominously cool, and I'd like to see a spinoff series of books with the Voidwhisperers.

[Larry B Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great Sci To Adventure

This is a deep book that required a lot of thought and pondering while reading. I loved it. The storyline was so well developed it flowed smoothly from one section to another without missing a thing. I liked the characters and how easy they were to identify with. I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it.

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard SciFi Interesting Premise

This is a tale of a galactic empire and Earth’s reawakening after a World War. The book spends too much time describing numerous alien species and the use of the alien system of measurement is very distracting. Still, once the book gets rolling, the plot is intriguing.

[David Torgerson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fun read. The authors created a small dictionary at the end of each chapter where they explain all the new terminology that describes the various alien species, planets, advanced technology, etc. They have to have some experience in astrophysics, though, not having a science background, I could not understand the descriptions of methods of travel faster than light but it did not make the book harder to read. Because of my reading background, I have for some time believed our planet has indeed been protected from interference by a more advanced, both morally and spiritually alien presence. Looking forward to the 2nd book in the series.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book reads and feels like an epic sci-fi adventure. From the first chapter till the last the book keeps you engaged and ready for more. Filled with incredible real science, beyond kuiper is a bridge to another realm grounded in science you can understand. Highly recommend.

[Joyce Kimberly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book covers everything I want in a science fiction read. The attention to detail, is something to marvel at. Also the relationship between Bernard and Angelica intrigues me, I want to know more about their backstory. I would definitely recommend this book to others.