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Lightspeed Trilogy #1
Beyond the Hallowed Sky
'An exceptional blend of international politics, hard science, and first contact' Michael Mammay, author of the Planetside series
When a brilliant scientist gets a letter from herself about faster-than-light travel, she doesn't know what to believe. The equations work, but her paper is discredited - and soon the criticism is more than scientific. Exiled by the establishment, she gets an offer to build her starship from an unlikely source. But in the heights of Venus and on a planet of another star, a secret is already being uncovered that will shake humanity to its foundations.
Science fiction legend Ken MacLeod begins a new space opera trilogy by imagining humankind on the precipice of discovery - the invention of faster-than-light travel unlocks a universe of new possibilities, and new dangers.
When a brilliant scientist gets a letter from herself about faster-than-light travel, she doesn't know what to believe. The equations work, but her paper is discredited - and soon the criticism is more than scientific. Exiled by the establishment, she gets an offer to build her starship from an unlikely source. But in the heights of Venus and on a planet of another star, a secret is already being uncovered that will shake humanity to its foundations.
Science fiction legend Ken MacLeod begins a new space opera trilogy by imagining humankind on the precipice of discovery - the invention of faster-than-light travel unlocks a universe of new possibilities, and new dangers.
320 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 23, 2021
225 people are currently reading
2377 people want to read
About the author
Ken MacLeod
113 books764 followersKen MacLeod is an award-winning Scottish science fiction writer.
His novels have won the Prometheus Award and the BSFA award, and been nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards. He lives near Edinburgh, Scotland.
MacLeod graduated from Glasgow University with a degree in zoology and has worked as a computer programmer and written a masters thesis on biomechanics.
His novels often explore socialist, communist and anarchist political ideas, most particularly the variants of Trotskyism and anarcho-capitalism or extreme economic libertarianism.
Technical themes encompass singularities, divergent human cultural evolution and post-human cyborg-resurrection.
His novels have won the Prometheus Award and the BSFA award, and been nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards. He lives near Edinburgh, Scotland.
MacLeod graduated from Glasgow University with a degree in zoology and has worked as a computer programmer and written a masters thesis on biomechanics.
His novels often explore socialist, communist and anarchist political ideas, most particularly the variants of Trotskyism and anarcho-capitalism or extreme economic libertarianism.
Technical themes encompass singularities, divergent human cultural evolution and post-human cyborg-resurrection.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 171 reviews
April 5, 2022
I'm very happy with this novel. It's not often that we get a near-future ramification novel that explores the discovery and realistic development of FTL, faster than light travel.
Sure, we get novels about trillionaires building FTL yachts or alien invasion impetus stuff, but not a straight cold-war FTL skullduggery and black-site FTL development. This one actually includes politics and proliferation as well as alliances designed to push certain blocs that much further ahead in Solar System colonization before most nations even realize they COULD.
Put this way, the novel is extremely realistic. If you have an advantage, exploit it in a massive way.
Of course, things get weird and hairy when we discover that others ARE out there and they want nothing to do with us.
I had a good time with this. I'm really looking forward to seeing where the latecomers will go with this. I've read a lot of SF and this feels just unusual enough to light a fire in me while feeling perfectly in line with older near-future hard SF.
Sure, we get novels about trillionaires building FTL yachts or alien invasion impetus stuff, but not a straight cold-war FTL skullduggery and black-site FTL development. This one actually includes politics and proliferation as well as alliances designed to push certain blocs that much further ahead in Solar System colonization before most nations even realize they COULD.
Put this way, the novel is extremely realistic. If you have an advantage, exploit it in a massive way.
Of course, things get weird and hairy when we discover that others ARE out there and they want nothing to do with us.
I had a good time with this. I'm really looking forward to seeing where the latecomers will go with this. I've read a lot of SF and this feels just unusual enough to light a fire in me while feeling perfectly in line with older near-future hard SF.
November 26, 2021
Many Space Operas start off with a colonized galaxy based on Faster Than Light (FTL) travel. There aren't many which investigate the invention of FTL, and none that I know of is set in our near future. MacLeod produces an interesting combination of SF's flagship form of traveling with a believable projection of our current political landscape: the (European) Union, including Scotland, vs. North America plus UK, vs. Russia/China, all featuring post-singularity AIs governing the countries.
But how could FTL technology be produced at all? By time-travel. A genius scientists receives from a future self a specification of an FTL drive, because FTL opens up time-travel. A reclusive group builds the drive into a submarine, problem solved.
Lo and behold, everyone else has been secretly implemented FTL since 50 years or longer. They even have colonized another planet.
The novel spreads out to three different locations - one focuses on the Atlantic coast of Scotland where the FTL submarine is built. Another one investigates mysterious forces on that colonized planet outside of our Solar system. And the third one follows a conscious robot spying on the Union's city within the clouds of Venus.
The first half of the book dragged on and on, and I was on the brink of giving it up. I simply couldn't connect to the multiple POVs starting an interesting plot. I liked the ideas in it but didn't care much for anything else at all. Only in the second half the novel took slightly off, involving a creative form of first contact story.
It might sound crazy, but I think that the next novel might work for me better, now that the characters are established. Given the huge amounts of existing Space Operas, this new series isn't worth it in my opinion. 2.5 stars rounded up.
But how could FTL technology be produced at all? By time-travel. A genius scientists receives from a future self a specification of an FTL drive, because FTL opens up time-travel. A reclusive group builds the drive into a submarine, problem solved.
Lo and behold, everyone else has been secretly implemented FTL since 50 years or longer. They even have colonized another planet.
The novel spreads out to three different locations - one focuses on the Atlantic coast of Scotland where the FTL submarine is built. Another one investigates mysterious forces on that colonized planet outside of our Solar system. And the third one follows a conscious robot spying on the Union's city within the clouds of Venus.
The first half of the book dragged on and on, and I was on the brink of giving it up. I simply couldn't connect to the multiple POVs starting an interesting plot. I liked the ideas in it but didn't care much for anything else at all. Only in the second half the novel took slightly off, involving a creative form of first contact story.
It might sound crazy, but I think that the next novel might work for me better, now that the characters are established. Given the huge amounts of existing Space Operas, this new series isn't worth it in my opinion. 2.5 stars rounded up.
November 21, 2021
Ken MacLeod is an absolute master of near future SF thrillers that intelligently reflect politics and society as well as science. So Beyond the Hallowed Sky is securely rooted in a not so far off* Scotland, part of a multi-nation Union that has undergone revolutionary transformation but in a low key way (the 'Cold Revolution'). It's set against the Alliance, an array of anglo powers who have recently restored democracy, and Co-ord (China and Russia).
There's a lot of stuff about defections from one to the other (which seem fairly easy) and a glimpsed history that involves some nuclear exchanges, though I don't think all out war. But many here, including one of the main protagonists, John Grant, aren't keen on recalling history too much, either what they did (Grant is a responsible, a key figure in the Revolution) or what happened more widely. Macleod rather brilliantly portrays this future society through small details and hints, not outright description, so making it more of a living and breathing thing that if there were lengthy passages setting out what had happened or how things are structured.
A central theme of the story is, I think, one of technological change and transformation: what becomes of this world when a crazy, impossible idea - faster-than-light travel - turns out to be attainable (and actually, rather easy to realise). Evoking such upheavals as the launch of Sputnik-1 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, MacLeod shows how such an event - despite not having a direct impact, or much impact at all, on the ordinary lives of many people, might still play with the psychic moorings of a society, its sense of worth and purpose. He has I think further shocks in store for the folk of the 2070s because in another thread of the narrative we see attempts to come to terms with a truly alien sort of alien, one which seems intimately linked to our planet and its history and to be capable of great harm.
The way that this book brings together great themes - Space exploration! Aliens! FTL! - with the little details of individual lives - a boy and a girl meeting while out hiking, a trip on a ferry that will change lives, an evening spent in a bar listening to traditional music, the rhythms of life in a workplace - was for me one of its strengths. I enjoyed that this isn't for the most part "zappy" SF, although MacLeod shows himself more than capable of that when the story calls for it, as it does in the final quarter, when some concepts arise that - if I could name them here which I can't because of spoilers - would seem absurd in cold pixels. In context, however, and arising from the very ordinariness of much of the earlier story, they just makes sense and work.
Another theme, which is worth looking out for because it's so well integrated and embedded that it almost seems a matter of course, concerns the place of AI in these future societies. In Beyond the Hallowed Sky, it shows up incarnated in a sort of super-Siri virtual assistant available always and everywhere and charged with meeting needs before they're stated (the kind of thing I think that visionaries might hope could replace the action of markets?) It also figures embodied in robots, given a remarkable amount of latitude, you might think, and there are some intriguing conversations about consciousness, conscience and freedom here which perhaps aren't quite so integrated into the narrative but were thought-provoking.
All that may make Beyond the Hallowed Sky sound over-ideasy, perhaps, which would be quite a false impression. I love ideas in a book but I also love believable, quirky characters, especially the bad guys, an active and twisty plot, and being kept guessing about where everything bis going. And Beyond the Hallowed Sky scores very well on all that, and more, as well as being an engaging and complex opening to a trilogy whose subsequent volumes I'm already looking forward to reading.
There's a lot of stuff about defections from one to the other (which seem fairly easy) and a glimpsed history that involves some nuclear exchanges, though I don't think all out war. But many here, including one of the main protagonists, John Grant, aren't keen on recalling history too much, either what they did (Grant is a responsible, a key figure in the Revolution) or what happened more widely. Macleod rather brilliantly portrays this future society through small details and hints, not outright description, so making it more of a living and breathing thing that if there were lengthy passages setting out what had happened or how things are structured.
A central theme of the story is, I think, one of technological change and transformation: what becomes of this world when a crazy, impossible idea - faster-than-light travel - turns out to be attainable (and actually, rather easy to realise). Evoking such upheavals as the launch of Sputnik-1 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, MacLeod shows how such an event - despite not having a direct impact, or much impact at all, on the ordinary lives of many people, might still play with the psychic moorings of a society, its sense of worth and purpose. He has I think further shocks in store for the folk of the 2070s because in another thread of the narrative we see attempts to come to terms with a truly alien sort of alien, one which seems intimately linked to our planet and its history and to be capable of great harm.
The way that this book brings together great themes - Space exploration! Aliens! FTL! - with the little details of individual lives - a boy and a girl meeting while out hiking, a trip on a ferry that will change lives, an evening spent in a bar listening to traditional music, the rhythms of life in a workplace - was for me one of its strengths. I enjoyed that this isn't for the most part "zappy" SF, although MacLeod shows himself more than capable of that when the story calls for it, as it does in the final quarter, when some concepts arise that - if I could name them here which I can't because of spoilers - would seem absurd in cold pixels. In context, however, and arising from the very ordinariness of much of the earlier story, they just makes sense and work.
Another theme, which is worth looking out for because it's so well integrated and embedded that it almost seems a matter of course, concerns the place of AI in these future societies. In Beyond the Hallowed Sky, it shows up incarnated in a sort of super-Siri virtual assistant available always and everywhere and charged with meeting needs before they're stated (the kind of thing I think that visionaries might hope could replace the action of markets?) It also figures embodied in robots, given a remarkable amount of latitude, you might think, and there are some intriguing conversations about consciousness, conscience and freedom here which perhaps aren't quite so integrated into the narrative but were thought-provoking.
All that may make Beyond the Hallowed Sky sound over-ideasy, perhaps, which would be quite a false impression. I love ideas in a book but I also love believable, quirky characters, especially the bad guys, an active and twisty plot, and being kept guessing about where everything bis going. And Beyond the Hallowed Sky scores very well on all that, and more, as well as being an engaging and complex opening to a trilogy whose subsequent volumes I'm already looking forward to reading.
February 7, 2022
It's always a shame when an author comes up with some really good ideas, but then can't actually execute them. That wasn't entirely the case here since among the many POVs, the various concepts and themes were explored pretty well. The problem this book had was a soulless cast of characters who completely failed to engage me with anything that happened.
The choice to begin with vastly disparate POV's that didn't converge until right at the end proved especially detrimental since it killed any sort of flow created with the admittedly strong opening chapter. The protagonists of each plot thread were shallow husks with minimal personalities and vague wants, which made the entire book feel entirely plot-driven. The secondary characters likewise failed to create any sort of impression with probably the most engaging character being an AI.
It didn't help that the writing was pretty weak. For a book with so much dialogue, it was baffling to see so many dull conversations. Most of the book was a drag in fact with the author focusing on events and details which weren't that interesting or necessary. The world-building also needed a lot of work since while the makeup of this future was well thought out, the delivery of that information often felt tedious.
So while the few decent ideas coupled with the handful of good plot points were enough to spare this the 1-star rating, the catalogue of other issues hamstrung it from achieving anything higher than a 2. However, it's far from awful and I can imagine readers who prefer a fairly grounded sci-fi story with some thriller aspects that take a while to develop, ending up enjoying this far more than me.
The choice to begin with vastly disparate POV's that didn't converge until right at the end proved especially detrimental since it killed any sort of flow created with the admittedly strong opening chapter. The protagonists of each plot thread were shallow husks with minimal personalities and vague wants, which made the entire book feel entirely plot-driven. The secondary characters likewise failed to create any sort of impression with probably the most engaging character being an AI.
It didn't help that the writing was pretty weak. For a book with so much dialogue, it was baffling to see so many dull conversations. Most of the book was a drag in fact with the author focusing on events and details which weren't that interesting or necessary. The world-building also needed a lot of work since while the makeup of this future was well thought out, the delivery of that information often felt tedious.
So while the few decent ideas coupled with the handful of good plot points were enough to spare this the 1-star rating, the catalogue of other issues hamstrung it from achieving anything higher than a 2. However, it's far from awful and I can imagine readers who prefer a fairly grounded sci-fi story with some thriller aspects that take a while to develop, ending up enjoying this far more than me.
November 21, 2021
It feels like Ken MacLeod was overshadowed by Iain M.Banks at some point, as if we couldn't have two Scottish science fiction ones, and if we were going to forget one it might as well be the commie. But I have always enjoyed his work, not least because a tiny section of a previous book referenced my old workplace which showed an intricate knowledge of the web of Marxist society in Britain. What I have always liked about MacLeod is his enjoyment in playing with some of the the implications of second hand sci-fi ideas. I remember being absolutely delighted when at the end of The Execution Channel he pulled out James Blish's old spindizzies as a clever ultimate technology game changer for humanity. And interestingly here he toys with a similar idea again. If a still warring and fractious humanity gained the ability of faster than lightspeed travel - what would they do with it? The suggestion here is one rooted in cold war paranoia which underpins part of the narrative thrust. The other part is pure Scottish exceptionalism which also tries to juggle the issue of the Trident base in Clyde and what would happen to it (and the expertise around it) if Scotland gained independence. Basically there are a few hard sci-fi ideas, a number of social extrapolations and then a robot spy bit too.
Revolution is never far away in MacLeod's work and whilst we've moved on from Soviet Space Opera, this is set fifty years hence once the world had split onto three mutually distrusting blocs. Europe (including Scotland), a far right bloc of North America, England and India (spinning out from current global alliances no doubt), and the rest of the world In this a particle physicists receives a letter from herself outlining how to crack FTL travel - which she assumes must have come from the future. There's some nicely cynical work on how - when published - such work would be covered up. But there is also a question about - if your ship didn't use any kind of combustible thrust and could be frictionless, what might make a good spaceship (the answer a submarine). And so we have a number of concurrent narratives around the building of the craft, something approaching first contact on another planet and some 2001 style shenanigans on Venus. Packed with interesting characters who have political beliefs and backgrounds, feel properly fleshed out, human and funny. Because that was always the other thing I enjoyed about MacLeod, he writes with a lightness that is often very funny.
I enjoyed Beyond The Hallowed Sky so much that I forgive its unfinished nature - it is the start of a series and all the balls are in the air at the end here whilst still being a satisfying ending. There's a sense of utopia constant postponed by politics which I liked here, most of the characters are striving for advancement and a better world but are strapped in a system where any technological leap is seen first as how it might benefit the faction rather than humanity. The lead characters are on the whole ordinary engineers, scientists and bureaucrats who have to negotiate the burden of the past and the current situation. Often in a book with distinct narrative threads I hunger to go back to my favourite characters, the ones with the most interesting journey, and one of the greatest compliments I can give this is that with the three threads here, I never did. It was great to be reminded how satisfying and fun MacLeod's writing can be.
Revolution is never far away in MacLeod's work and whilst we've moved on from Soviet Space Opera, this is set fifty years hence once the world had split onto three mutually distrusting blocs. Europe (including Scotland), a far right bloc of North America, England and India (spinning out from current global alliances no doubt), and the rest of the world In this a particle physicists receives a letter from herself outlining how to crack FTL travel - which she assumes must have come from the future. There's some nicely cynical work on how - when published - such work would be covered up. But there is also a question about - if your ship didn't use any kind of combustible thrust and could be frictionless, what might make a good spaceship (the answer a submarine). And so we have a number of concurrent narratives around the building of the craft, something approaching first contact on another planet and some 2001 style shenanigans on Venus. Packed with interesting characters who have political beliefs and backgrounds, feel properly fleshed out, human and funny. Because that was always the other thing I enjoyed about MacLeod, he writes with a lightness that is often very funny.
I enjoyed Beyond The Hallowed Sky so much that I forgive its unfinished nature - it is the start of a series and all the balls are in the air at the end here whilst still being a satisfying ending. There's a sense of utopia constant postponed by politics which I liked here, most of the characters are striving for advancement and a better world but are strapped in a system where any technological leap is seen first as how it might benefit the faction rather than humanity. The lead characters are on the whole ordinary engineers, scientists and bureaucrats who have to negotiate the burden of the past and the current situation. Often in a book with distinct narrative threads I hunger to go back to my favourite characters, the ones with the most interesting journey, and one of the greatest compliments I can give this is that with the three threads here, I never did. It was great to be reminded how satisfying and fun MacLeod's writing can be.
June 24, 2024
I'm a pretty intelligent and clever person - but I don't think I am smart enough for this book. I couldn't keep up with the various timelines and POVs. It just didn't keep my interest well enough for me to put all the different timelines together and then it just ended.
I didn't hate it and really enjoyed some of the concepts, but I didn't really enjoy it either. So solid 3 star as a compromise.
I didn't hate it and really enjoyed some of the concepts, but I didn't really enjoy it either. So solid 3 star as a compromise.
April 13, 2023
Off to a fine start. Read the publisher's intro first. An alt-Brexit, with long-established (but covert) nuclear-submarine-based FTL travel. Alliance vs. Union, in a nice Orwellian touch. And rocky aliens! Whoa.
@ p. 74, young Myles has just met Marie, who is (I'm expecting) to be the Love of his Life. Here's how the Old Pro prefigures:
"They drank, they danced, they talked, they laughed. She stayed." Bravo!
@p. 80, First Contact with the Rock Aliens:
"Crisp, white Cyrillic letters scrolled across the screen. The message flowed into Mandarin, then Hindi. Then English: GO AWAY."
MacLeod is a very economical writer!
In another nice touch, the Alliance field party is rescued by locals: a mix of transportees and runaways from officialdom. Shades of Old Australia! Their leader of the moment is Jenkins, a big, buff, glib fellow. His account of First Contact is received by the Alliance scientists with considerable skepticism . . .
Back on Earth, ca. 2070 AD: this is a world with polished, working AIs. The Union's is named Iskander. Its robots pick up trash on the fly, manage your daily needs for food & transport -- and even bring you a coffee before you realize you need one! Whoa. I want!
@ p. 101. Marcus Owen, diplomat, spy, and Artificial Person, is on his third round in bed with Francesca Milloy, a material scientist, on a balloon habitat above Venus. They banter a bit, Francesca lets him know she's not sated yet. "Owen responded. She responded back. Matters progressed. ... 'Tell me again,' she panted, 'why you can't marry a sex robot?' " Marcus has discovered a new-to-him human kink!
As you can no doubt tell, I'm having fun with this one. MacLeod is one of my favorite writers, and he's in top form here. His best yet? The book ends at a cliff-hanger, no surprise there. With an *amazing* series of twists and turns along the way that I certainly won't be spoiling for you. Just read the book, OK? I give out very few full 5-star ratings, and I can't recall ever giving one for vol. 1 of a planned trilogy! I most certainly will be reading on, and if you don't enjoy this one too, I'll eat my socks.😇 First-rate SF/thriller/political/mystery, and no doubt I've missed a couple of other subgenres too. All of that in 335 crisply-written pages. My highest possible recommendation!
@ p. 74, young Myles has just met Marie, who is (I'm expecting) to be the Love of his Life. Here's how the Old Pro prefigures:
"They drank, they danced, they talked, they laughed. She stayed." Bravo!
@p. 80, First Contact with the Rock Aliens:
"Crisp, white Cyrillic letters scrolled across the screen. The message flowed into Mandarin, then Hindi. Then English: GO AWAY."
MacLeod is a very economical writer!
In another nice touch, the Alliance field party is rescued by locals: a mix of transportees and runaways from officialdom. Shades of Old Australia! Their leader of the moment is Jenkins, a big, buff, glib fellow. His account of First Contact is received by the Alliance scientists with considerable skepticism . . .
Back on Earth, ca. 2070 AD: this is a world with polished, working AIs. The Union's is named Iskander. Its robots pick up trash on the fly, manage your daily needs for food & transport -- and even bring you a coffee before you realize you need one! Whoa. I want!
@ p. 101. Marcus Owen, diplomat, spy, and Artificial Person, is on his third round in bed with Francesca Milloy, a material scientist, on a balloon habitat above Venus. They banter a bit, Francesca lets him know she's not sated yet. "Owen responded. She responded back. Matters progressed. ... 'Tell me again,' she panted, 'why you can't marry a sex robot?' " Marcus has discovered a new-to-him human kink!
As you can no doubt tell, I'm having fun with this one. MacLeod is one of my favorite writers, and he's in top form here. His best yet? The book ends at a cliff-hanger, no surprise there. With an *amazing* series of twists and turns along the way that I certainly won't be spoiling for you. Just read the book, OK? I give out very few full 5-star ratings, and I can't recall ever giving one for vol. 1 of a planned trilogy! I most certainly will be reading on, and if you don't enjoy this one too, I'll eat my socks.😇 First-rate SF/thriller/political/mystery, and no doubt I've missed a couple of other subgenres too. All of that in 335 crisply-written pages. My highest possible recommendation!
November 24, 2021
I thoroughly enjoyed Beyond The Hallowed Sky - a brilliant mix of science fiction, political thriller and first contact, the characters were terrific and the story itself fairly rocked along for me, I read it fast.
A letter from the future kicks off a chain of events in the present, there is lots of lovely sciency geekiness here along with a political backdrop full of intrigue, an eclectic cast of characters and some fascinating alien possibilities.
As a book one it sets the scene beautifully, an intelligent and strangely believable narrative that makes me impatiently look forward to the next book in the series. Recommended.
A letter from the future kicks off a chain of events in the present, there is lots of lovely sciency geekiness here along with a political backdrop full of intrigue, an eclectic cast of characters and some fascinating alien possibilities.
As a book one it sets the scene beautifully, an intelligent and strangely believable narrative that makes me impatiently look forward to the next book in the series. Recommended.
March 27, 2022
"I want The Expanse"
"We have The Expanse at home"
The Expanse at home:
"We have The Expanse at home"
The Expanse at home:
June 13, 2023
Ken MacLeod writes some very solid scifi. Very good world building, solid characters, good science, and some hella exciting near death spills and thrills. MacLeod is a pretty good writer also, every now and then he has some very good turn of phrase, others have quoted them more effectively than I. It's difficult noting them down with an audiobook alas, because there were some wonderful lines. He has a subtle sense of humour.
I loved the AAAI, it's maybe the best version of a functional AI that actually helps the populace.
Laksmi's character has such a great little time travel gag, still waiting for it to resolve in book 2.
Very cool alien planet.
And very interseting geo-politics.
All round a damn solid story.
Thanks @Charles for the recommendation. I'm already starting book 2. And I'm pretty sure there are only 2, which is nice.
I loved the AAAI, it's maybe the best version of a functional AI that actually helps the populace.
Laksmi's character has such a great little time travel gag, still waiting for it to resolve in book 2.
Very cool alien planet.
And very interseting geo-politics.
All round a damn solid story.
Thanks @Charles for the recommendation. I'm already starting book 2. And I'm pretty sure there are only 2, which is nice.
Read
August 24, 2021This is great hard SF that involves the discovery of FTL travel, but is centered around an earth 50 years in the future with new alliances. It asks the interesting question of how nations might act in relation to one another if there was an earth-shattering scientific breakthrough. Predictably, they don't act well toward each other.
It's also a first contact story, but a very unique one (I don't want to say much about that, because I feel like that would be a spoiler)
Should appeal to fans of The Expanse, both because of the roots in hard SF combined with multiple character perspectives on different sides of the international issues, as well as the setting within our familiar solar system (at least mostly).
It's also a first contact story, but a very unique one (I don't want to say much about that, because I feel like that would be a spoiler)
Should appeal to fans of The Expanse, both because of the roots in hard SF combined with multiple character perspectives on different sides of the international issues, as well as the setting within our familiar solar system (at least mostly).
January 3, 2024
“THERE WILL BE A RECKONING”. Cracking read for the end of 2023. Ken MacLeod hits the bullseye with a five minutes into the future (well, 43 years from 2024) vision of the world waking up to faster than light (FTL) travel and while it up-turns the political status quo for the protagonists it makes for a romping adventure read for the rest of us.
Ekranoplans. Robots. Multiple state AIs. A hot political set-up. Dated chapters which have you going “uh?” then play into the plot. Warnings from stone-based elder races. Yep, this has the lot along with a west coast of Scotland setting which gives it a great sense of place (interesting that after decades of featuring in SF novels Scotland doesn’t yet feel played out as a setting) and I loved that one of the first people to take a Clyde-built FTL ship into space was called Morag. The set-up involves the reader being asked to accept that the mathematics for FTL travel has been mysteriously solved (the provenance of the maths is a plot point) but MacLeod immediately starts ramping up the verisimilitude, suggesting which ship builders would be best placed to construct such a vehicle, the shell company that would be created, how the ordering of parts would be arranging without drawing attention (shades of the British selling “machine tools” to the Iraqis) etc. This granular, procedural side to “Hallowed Sky” reminded me of novels like Neal Stephenson’s “Seveneves”; namely “If this mad-crazy thing happened what would actually be the next steps?” but in my opinion MacLeod gets the balance right far better than Stephenson’s overload of engineering porn. Post-Alastair Reynolds there is a sense that anyone using FTL travel seriously in their SF novel has to tacitly apologise for it and MacLeod’s focus on the humdrum details of its implementation could be interpreted as such but there is something inherently exciting in MacLeod saying “They’ve cracked the maths, now how do we build this thing?” and then offering up a first flight under gunfire, heroic rescues and AI-controlled spacesuits hanging onto the hull of the ship.
The novel touches lightly on issues such as climate change, immigration, etc. and has – bearing in mind events in 2023 – a disturbing vision of what might befall the Middle East but MacLeod’s vision of where we might be with technology in 50 years time feels sensible, a level-headed extrapolation. It’s certainly there but not too invasive (even if Myles tells the AI Iskander he’ll be glad to never hear his voice again), people are still waving their phones to pay for tickets but there are no subcutaneous patches, consciousness-uploading or mad-crazy advertising. Fusion appears to be a thing and has helped manage the changing climate (even if some communities are now ghost towns) and it’s this sort of war-gaming of a potential future that, frankly can be consoling when wondering where the hell the world is heading in 2024. It's not all sweetness and light in MacLeod’s 2067 vision of competing power blocs and I’ll believe gardening bots when I see them but these days it’s nice to know that there’s at least one writer out there who thinks we’ll at least still be around, albeit with a fresh set of problems.
Reading of MacLeod’s wonderfully belligerent stone-based aliens in the month this was in the news made for a zeitgeisty read even if Doctor Who did “The Stones Of Blood” back in the seventies. Similarly the FTL “jumps” seemed to occur with a deal of ease once in place but I couldn’t help but be put in mind of the reboot of Battlestar Galactica which relied on similar tech. I have no problem with this when the narrative is delivered with such brio and the author is clearly out to keep the reader entertained with a toothsome narrative without sacrificing intelligent content, it’s the cultural soup we’re all steeped in. There is a boffo twisteroo when the nature of “Black Horizon” is revealed and a second moment which had me spluttering “WTF?” out loud involving a image appearing in a Venusian crevasse and it’s this sort of thing that makes me want more. How is MacLeod going to land all this? Well he certainly does a fine job weaving all the elements together in the finale which alters the status quo and sets things up nicely for part 2. There’s a nut-job robot wandering around about to get new instructions and Venus is having a very bad day. Me? I had a blast. “Lets do this.”
Ekranoplans. Robots. Multiple state AIs. A hot political set-up. Dated chapters which have you going “uh?” then play into the plot. Warnings from stone-based elder races. Yep, this has the lot along with a west coast of Scotland setting which gives it a great sense of place (interesting that after decades of featuring in SF novels Scotland doesn’t yet feel played out as a setting) and I loved that one of the first people to take a Clyde-built FTL ship into space was called Morag. The set-up involves the reader being asked to accept that the mathematics for FTL travel has been mysteriously solved (the provenance of the maths is a plot point) but MacLeod immediately starts ramping up the verisimilitude, suggesting which ship builders would be best placed to construct such a vehicle, the shell company that would be created, how the ordering of parts would be arranging without drawing attention (shades of the British selling “machine tools” to the Iraqis) etc. This granular, procedural side to “Hallowed Sky” reminded me of novels like Neal Stephenson’s “Seveneves”; namely “If this mad-crazy thing happened what would actually be the next steps?” but in my opinion MacLeod gets the balance right far better than Stephenson’s overload of engineering porn. Post-Alastair Reynolds there is a sense that anyone using FTL travel seriously in their SF novel has to tacitly apologise for it and MacLeod’s focus on the humdrum details of its implementation could be interpreted as such but there is something inherently exciting in MacLeod saying “They’ve cracked the maths, now how do we build this thing?” and then offering up a first flight under gunfire, heroic rescues and AI-controlled spacesuits hanging onto the hull of the ship.
The novel touches lightly on issues such as climate change, immigration, etc. and has – bearing in mind events in 2023 – a disturbing vision of what might befall the Middle East but MacLeod’s vision of where we might be with technology in 50 years time feels sensible, a level-headed extrapolation. It’s certainly there but not too invasive (even if Myles tells the AI Iskander he’ll be glad to never hear his voice again), people are still waving their phones to pay for tickets but there are no subcutaneous patches, consciousness-uploading or mad-crazy advertising. Fusion appears to be a thing and has helped manage the changing climate (even if some communities are now ghost towns) and it’s this sort of war-gaming of a potential future that, frankly can be consoling when wondering where the hell the world is heading in 2024. It's not all sweetness and light in MacLeod’s 2067 vision of competing power blocs and I’ll believe gardening bots when I see them but these days it’s nice to know that there’s at least one writer out there who thinks we’ll at least still be around, albeit with a fresh set of problems.
Reading of MacLeod’s wonderfully belligerent stone-based aliens in the month this was in the news made for a zeitgeisty read even if Doctor Who did “The Stones Of Blood” back in the seventies. Similarly the FTL “jumps” seemed to occur with a deal of ease once in place but I couldn’t help but be put in mind of the reboot of Battlestar Galactica which relied on similar tech. I have no problem with this when the narrative is delivered with such brio and the author is clearly out to keep the reader entertained with a toothsome narrative without sacrificing intelligent content, it’s the cultural soup we’re all steeped in. There is a boffo twisteroo when the nature of “Black Horizon” is revealed and a second moment which had me spluttering “WTF?” out loud involving a image appearing in a Venusian crevasse and it’s this sort of thing that makes me want more. How is MacLeod going to land all this? Well he certainly does a fine job weaving all the elements together in the finale which alters the status quo and sets things up nicely for part 2. There’s a nut-job robot wandering around about to get new instructions and Venus is having a very bad day. Me? I had a blast. “Lets do this.”
November 13, 2021
2.5 stars
I received a review copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. It has not affected my opinions.
BEYOND THE HALLOWED SKY is a book where the premise is super interesting, but the style and structure of the book simply didn't work for me.
I really enjoyed the idea of creating Faster-Than-Light (FTL) travel, and these strange rock-AI-alien (thingys!) who can control geology. However, it wasn't enough to keep me interested and engaged when the story style was confusing me and making me lose interest.
This is a multi-POV book where the characters are largely unrelated until the very end, when their stories start to intersect (but haven't yet linked.) The character who starts off the book, who the blurb focuses on, isn't the focus of the story. She disappears for 100 pages.
It's a valid, and common, story style, but it's one that simply doesn't work for me. These sorts of book feels like I'm reading random stories smushed together in one package (until they finally link.) I don't have a reason to care about them because they're not part of a whole and my brain has said "this first one is the most important, and the others can't be as they're not linked in."
Plus it didn't help that chapter one seems to be saying there isn't FTL travel and that this is going to be a massive breakthrough. But chapter two? It says (3 years later) that there's been FTL for 50 years. It's explained later that some groups have it (and are keeping it silent) and others don't, but that took a long time to come in. So I was left wondering if somehow the FTL had enabled time travel and they'd gone back to create FTL earlier?
These two things combined made it hard for me to keep up the interest to read along, as I didn't know who I was interested in (so which POV I was waiting for) and also it was tricky to see how things lined up together into a coherent whole.
I received a review copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. It has not affected my opinions.
BEYOND THE HALLOWED SKY is a book where the premise is super interesting, but the style and structure of the book simply didn't work for me.
I really enjoyed the idea of creating Faster-Than-Light (FTL) travel, and these strange rock-AI-alien (thingys!) who can control geology. However, it wasn't enough to keep me interested and engaged when the story style was confusing me and making me lose interest.
This is a multi-POV book where the characters are largely unrelated until the very end, when their stories start to intersect (but haven't yet linked.) The character who starts off the book, who the blurb focuses on, isn't the focus of the story. She disappears for 100 pages.
It's a valid, and common, story style, but it's one that simply doesn't work for me. These sorts of book feels like I'm reading random stories smushed together in one package (until they finally link.) I don't have a reason to care about them because they're not part of a whole and my brain has said "this first one is the most important, and the others can't be as they're not linked in."
Plus it didn't help that chapter one seems to be saying there isn't FTL travel and that this is going to be a massive breakthrough. But chapter two? It says (3 years later) that there's been FTL for 50 years. It's explained later that some groups have it (and are keeping it silent) and others don't, but that took a long time to come in. So I was left wondering if somehow the FTL had enabled time travel and they'd gone back to create FTL earlier?
These two things combined made it hard for me to keep up the interest to read along, as I didn't know who I was interested in (so which POV I was waiting for) and also it was tricky to see how things lined up together into a coherent whole.
November 18, 2021
I was honestly quite surprised when I read the lukewarm reviews from the other early readers. I have read quite a few of Ken MacLeod's books, and I thought this one was particularly exciting from start to finish. I raced through it in just a few days. It has a very intriguing start, with a physicist who gets a letter, apparently written to her from the future, giving a formula for faster than light travel. And then she finds what happened to other people who have made similar discoveries....and that's just the start. Lots of wonderful surprises and set pieces from start to finish, and a very different first contact that makes me want to learn more about the "aliens" (or whatever they are) as the trilogy advances.
March 29, 2022
Publishers are selling this wrong on the back of the book; should be about space politics in the near future, not about a scientist getting a letter from herself (since book one doesn't resolve this).
Slow starter with (too) many character introductions and no connection between them, until things finally come along and then sh*t goes down. The last 100 pages are worth it.
Don't trust the robot! (Not a spoiler, they are introduced as a spy. Also, they are a fun wildcard to follow.)
Slow starter with (too) many character introductions and no connection between them, until things finally come along and then sh*t goes down. The last 100 pages are worth it.
Don't trust the robot! (Not a spoiler, they are introduced as a spy. Also, they are a fun wildcard to follow.)
August 23, 2024
’From Nature's womb untimely ripped, every particle of her body screamed its wordless, homeless longing for all it had known since the Big Bang’
Beyond the Hallowed Sky (fantastic name by the way) is my first near-future space opera, and I fully enjoyed it. Utterly impressive in its hard-science and ideas on AI and robotics, I can honestly say it’s unlike anything I’ve read before.
Set in the not-so-distant future of 2070 (at which time i will be around 70 years old, a truly harrowing thought) Macleod has created such an interesting version of our world in a post-dictatorship state. I found the three sect split of Earth completely fascinating, and loved that space-travel and FTL (Faster Than Light Travel) were so politicised. To write about FTL in its creation stage, rather than as an established norm is such an interesting and unique perspective and I think it was so well done. Whilst the science was of course complex, never was a I made to feel like an idiot nor was a I left in the dark as to what was happening. Macleod has that in common with Weir - an ability to make complicated science fun.
The book was split into three sets: Earth, Venus and a new planet called Apis. Whilst the story-lines of each were intricately connected with fantastic plot-work and engaging writing, I’d still like to discuss them individually.
Earth - Scotland Forever ‼️‼️
Whilst my least favourite of the story-lines, I found that the building of the FTL ship to be still a good read. I would say that this books greatest weakness overall is its character work, mainly because they’re all pretty unimpressive, and I think that Grant and Co were the worst examples of this. I did find myself wanting to get back to the Venus and Apis chapters as quickly as possible, but I did like that these sections provided those more grounded and ‘realistic’ elements. They were also incredibly useful in understanding the wider politics, which I appreciated. Also, who doesn’t love Scotland?
Venus - Robots and Dodgy AI
Surprisingly the Venus story-line didn’t really revolve around Venus all that much, but rather Marcus Owen an Alliance (British) spy and robot. Whilst minimal, I did enjoy that this book incorporates Venus as its secondary Sol System planet. Luna, Mars and Jupiter’s moons of Europa, Ganymede and Io are all overly common in space operas nowadays, so it was great to see our sister planet get that recognition. I found Marcus’s silly little exploits on Venus’s space stations to be pretty fun as well, and I enjoyed him as an example of quite a conscious robot. The fact he didn’t know he was a robot for most of his ‘life’ was very interesting, and seeing people’s different reactions to him as a ‘thing’ was very cool. I also find the AI Iskander to be very creepy and off-putting with its preemptive nature. Certainly something to be scared of in our own future.
Apis - The Planet of Bees
Apis’s story-line was by far my favourite. Not only did I find this eerily Earth-like planet to be a great backdrop, but the sentient rock that inhabits it, Earth and Venus to be such a unique idea with so much potential. The fact it can literally break apart planets is probably the most threatening ‘villain’ I’ve come across, well, ever! The fact that they’re also turning this planet into some kind of beacon of hope and the future of mankind really reminded me of the Alien franchise when they put a goddamn mining colony on the Xenomorph infested planet. Just so dumb, but such a good cliffhanger for a first book.
Overall, Beyond the Hallowed Sky gets 4/5 stars for subverting my initial expectations. Can’t wait to read the rest of this trilogy!
Beyond the Hallowed Sky (fantastic name by the way) is my first near-future space opera, and I fully enjoyed it. Utterly impressive in its hard-science and ideas on AI and robotics, I can honestly say it’s unlike anything I’ve read before.
Set in the not-so-distant future of 2070 (at which time i will be around 70 years old, a truly harrowing thought) Macleod has created such an interesting version of our world in a post-dictatorship state. I found the three sect split of Earth completely fascinating, and loved that space-travel and FTL (Faster Than Light Travel) were so politicised. To write about FTL in its creation stage, rather than as an established norm is such an interesting and unique perspective and I think it was so well done. Whilst the science was of course complex, never was a I made to feel like an idiot nor was a I left in the dark as to what was happening. Macleod has that in common with Weir - an ability to make complicated science fun.
The book was split into three sets: Earth, Venus and a new planet called Apis. Whilst the story-lines of each were intricately connected with fantastic plot-work and engaging writing, I’d still like to discuss them individually.
Earth - Scotland Forever ‼️‼️
Whilst my least favourite of the story-lines, I found that the building of the FTL ship to be still a good read. I would say that this books greatest weakness overall is its character work, mainly because they’re all pretty unimpressive, and I think that Grant and Co were the worst examples of this. I did find myself wanting to get back to the Venus and Apis chapters as quickly as possible, but I did like that these sections provided those more grounded and ‘realistic’ elements. They were also incredibly useful in understanding the wider politics, which I appreciated. Also, who doesn’t love Scotland?
Venus - Robots and Dodgy AI
Surprisingly the Venus story-line didn’t really revolve around Venus all that much, but rather Marcus Owen an Alliance (British) spy and robot. Whilst minimal, I did enjoy that this book incorporates Venus as its secondary Sol System planet. Luna, Mars and Jupiter’s moons of Europa, Ganymede and Io are all overly common in space operas nowadays, so it was great to see our sister planet get that recognition. I found Marcus’s silly little exploits on Venus’s space stations to be pretty fun as well, and I enjoyed him as an example of quite a conscious robot. The fact he didn’t know he was a robot for most of his ‘life’ was very interesting, and seeing people’s different reactions to him as a ‘thing’ was very cool. I also find the AI Iskander to be very creepy and off-putting with its preemptive nature. Certainly something to be scared of in our own future.
Apis - The Planet of Bees
Apis’s story-line was by far my favourite. Not only did I find this eerily Earth-like planet to be a great backdrop, but the sentient rock that inhabits it, Earth and Venus to be such a unique idea with so much potential. The fact it can literally break apart planets is probably the most threatening ‘villain’ I’ve come across, well, ever! The fact that they’re also turning this planet into some kind of beacon of hope and the future of mankind really reminded me of the Alien franchise when they put a goddamn mining colony on the Xenomorph infested planet. Just so dumb, but such a good cliffhanger for a first book.
Overall, Beyond the Hallowed Sky gets 4/5 stars for subverting my initial expectations. Can’t wait to read the rest of this trilogy!
August 2, 2025
3.5 stars
Read
April 5, 2022DNF @ 40%.
I was really excited for this based off the blurb, but at the moment all I'm doing is listening blankly to something I don't particularly have any interest in so I'm throwing in the towel.
The opening chapter was neat - I was interested and engaged and wanted to see what happened, where the scientist (whose name I've already forgotten) would go with this letter from her future self.
Instead, we almost immediately leave her behind and jump from perspective to perspective of utterly unmemorable characters on Venus, in Scotland, and on some other planet.
I honestly couldn't tell the characters apart if you asked me to - there's no meaningful characterisation as far as I got into the book, and the writing isn't particularly interesting or compelling either.
It's a no from me. Disappointing after an interesting concept.
I was really excited for this based off the blurb, but at the moment all I'm doing is listening blankly to something I don't particularly have any interest in so I'm throwing in the towel.
The opening chapter was neat - I was interested and engaged and wanted to see what happened, where the scientist (whose name I've already forgotten) would go with this letter from her future self.
Instead, we almost immediately leave her behind and jump from perspective to perspective of utterly unmemorable characters on Venus, in Scotland, and on some other planet.
I honestly couldn't tell the characters apart if you asked me to - there's no meaningful characterisation as far as I got into the book, and the writing isn't particularly interesting or compelling either.
It's a no from me. Disappointing after an interesting concept.
December 15, 2021
The start of a new space opera and it is brilliant. Set in Scotland only 50 years in the future from now, it feels really real and touchable but it also has the wonder that I love in science fiction as we explore another distant planet, Apis. The characters are fantastic, their concerns and worries (revolving around nationhood, independence, distrust) feel timely and that is married perfectly with the science fiction element. This is very intelligent, original and engrossing science fiction, with a really strong sense of foreboding and terror. Review to follow shortly on For Winter Nights.
February 16, 2022
Submarines as faster than light star ships ? Some bloke builds one in a boat yard near port Glasgow and saves the day? Not complete crap but very nearly so. And reading the barely disguised Scottish independence stuff was a pain in the arse.
May 3, 2022
The first 20% is a rather tedious attempt to describe the politics of the era and introduce several fairly two-dimensional characters in almost irrelevant settings that felt very over-described.
This book just completely failed to engage me so I have put this aside.
This book just completely failed to engage me so I have put this aside.
February 17, 2023
I may change my rating with book 2, but the 4th star is for having fun with the ideas.
Surely John Grant (not exactly Zaphod Beeblebrox, but the name suits him) is a tribute to old-time SF. He's the guy who only needs a spanner and a screwdriver to build anything. His only hobby seems to be giving exhaustive descriptions of the area where the author lives. They say "write what you know."
It's kinda too bad that the only character with a personality is the robot, but it almost makes up for all the others.
Several action scenes get a mark for being well thought through (we'll need this ... wouldn't it be faster if we ... and so on).
I guess I'l have to read #2.
Surely John Grant (not exactly Zaphod Beeblebrox, but the name suits him) is a tribute to old-time SF. He's the guy who only needs a spanner and a screwdriver to build anything. His only hobby seems to be giving exhaustive descriptions of the area where the author lives. They say "write what you know."
It's kinda too bad that the only character with a personality is the robot, but it almost makes up for all the others.
Several action scenes get a mark for being well thought through (we'll need this ... wouldn't it be faster if we ... and so on).
I guess I'l have to read #2.
April 18, 2024
Really considered DNF, but decided I’d skim it, so take this review with a grain of salt.
I wasn’t prepared for the multiple POV, which threw me off. Even with so many different characters there were only two I was actually interested in, one of which, who I thought would be the main character, was barely in the story/story shown from their POV.
I wasn’t prepared for the multiple POV, which threw me off. Even with so many different characters there were only two I was actually interested in, one of which, who I thought would be the main character, was barely in the story/story shown from their POV.
December 15, 2021
Beyond the Hallowed Sky begins with a mystery and a scientific discovery. Brilliant scientist Lakshmi Nayak receives in the post a letter from an unknown source in Kabul. That is strange enough, but when Lakshmi looks at it, she finds a mystery equation.
Nayak discovers that the letter has been sent to her by herself. It contains equations that suggest that Faster-Than-Light (FTL) travel is possible. Excitedly, Nayak checks the formula, which appears to work. However, when sharing with her established peers, instead of being lauded, Nayak finds herself attacked, both professionally and personally.
The story then moves forward three years and broadens to take in the consequences of this through other character’s perspectives.
The reason why Nayak’s discovery was not well-received globally was that FTL travel was not new, nor as revolutionary as she/we thought. China, Russia and the US have actually known about FTL for decades but kept it jealously as a secret. Any scientist who has by chance discovered the concept has conveniently gone quiet or even disappeared. Nayak herself goes into hiding in Scotland.
This allows the reader to observe the future political situation. As Nayak escapes to Scotland, we find that much of Europe (including Scotland) and the US are part of a Union, whilst Britain steadfastly adheres to the Alliance, a grouping of countries including India. In addition, there’s the Co-ordinated States made up of Russia, China and their dependencies. As today, none of these groups trust each other, which has led to a complex Cold War type scenario.
What the reader then discovers is that, unknown to most, scientists have travelled in secret to other Earth-like planets using FTL. The novel then goes to the planet Apis, where scientist Emma Hazeldene is part of a scientific research expedition. Emma and her colleagues have been on Apis for over fifteen years, although they are not the only people there. Defectors and deserters known as Exiles also live a shadowy existence away from the scientific base. Emma and her colleagues discover and make contact with an alien lifeform, although the Exiles have been there first.
Back on Earth, John Grant was an active participant of the revolution known as the Rising. Now a submarine builder on the Clyde, near the Alliance Faslane defence base. His son Myles is newly returned to Dunoon from university, his partner Ellen is working on building the Nordzee Barrier across the North Sea, a consequence of dealing with climate change. Whilst working there, Grant sees a submarine disappear in front of his eyes, which suggests that there’s something going on.
We then take an abrupt left turn to Venus, where Cloud City hovers above the planet. Here Union and Alliance live together exploring Venus’s surface. Much of this part of the book is focused upon Alliance Secret agent Marcus Owen, who is also a human-form robot, who goes to Venus on a mission - to ensure that the scientific communities do not uncover a major secret on the planet’s surface.
As usual, Ken does a good job of juggling these different characters and perspectives before having them interlink. Ken’s stories usually reflect political and social issues as well as the science fictional ones, and so it is here. The different viewpoints give us a mosaic picture of the future and are, by turns, exciting, mysterious and dangerous. Throughout all of this, though, there are a number of key themes underlying the character’s actions. There are some interesting consequences of Climate change, COVID-like epidemics and a Union Artificial Intelligence named Iskander that has integrated itself into social norms are all involved in this future setting.
Socially there’s much talk of movement, migrants and refugees, with various characters moving to different places by choice or by being forced to move, which clearly echoes current earth-bound issues today, but unlike some recent novels Ken doesn’t hammer the points home repeatedly. They’re there but not overstated.
As this is the first book in a trilogy, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to find that there is a fair amount of scene setting in the novel, although to be fair it never feels particularly forced. As this is the first book of a trilogy, don’t expect everything to be resolved, but by the end things are motoring along nicely. The ending is exciting and brings much to an appropriate point, whilst also setting up elements to be continued in the future books.
Big themes, alien contact, a range of people and planets, political manoeuvring, social commentary – it’s all here. Beyond the Hallowed Sky is the work of a proficient writer who brings us a view of an intriguing future with a diverse range of characters. Great read, and a series I look forward to continuing.
Nayak discovers that the letter has been sent to her by herself. It contains equations that suggest that Faster-Than-Light (FTL) travel is possible. Excitedly, Nayak checks the formula, which appears to work. However, when sharing with her established peers, instead of being lauded, Nayak finds herself attacked, both professionally and personally.
The story then moves forward three years and broadens to take in the consequences of this through other character’s perspectives.
The reason why Nayak’s discovery was not well-received globally was that FTL travel was not new, nor as revolutionary as she/we thought. China, Russia and the US have actually known about FTL for decades but kept it jealously as a secret. Any scientist who has by chance discovered the concept has conveniently gone quiet or even disappeared. Nayak herself goes into hiding in Scotland.
This allows the reader to observe the future political situation. As Nayak escapes to Scotland, we find that much of Europe (including Scotland) and the US are part of a Union, whilst Britain steadfastly adheres to the Alliance, a grouping of countries including India. In addition, there’s the Co-ordinated States made up of Russia, China and their dependencies. As today, none of these groups trust each other, which has led to a complex Cold War type scenario.
What the reader then discovers is that, unknown to most, scientists have travelled in secret to other Earth-like planets using FTL. The novel then goes to the planet Apis, where scientist Emma Hazeldene is part of a scientific research expedition. Emma and her colleagues have been on Apis for over fifteen years, although they are not the only people there. Defectors and deserters known as Exiles also live a shadowy existence away from the scientific base. Emma and her colleagues discover and make contact with an alien lifeform, although the Exiles have been there first.
Back on Earth, John Grant was an active participant of the revolution known as the Rising. Now a submarine builder on the Clyde, near the Alliance Faslane defence base. His son Myles is newly returned to Dunoon from university, his partner Ellen is working on building the Nordzee Barrier across the North Sea, a consequence of dealing with climate change. Whilst working there, Grant sees a submarine disappear in front of his eyes, which suggests that there’s something going on.
We then take an abrupt left turn to Venus, where Cloud City hovers above the planet. Here Union and Alliance live together exploring Venus’s surface. Much of this part of the book is focused upon Alliance Secret agent Marcus Owen, who is also a human-form robot, who goes to Venus on a mission - to ensure that the scientific communities do not uncover a major secret on the planet’s surface.
As usual, Ken does a good job of juggling these different characters and perspectives before having them interlink. Ken’s stories usually reflect political and social issues as well as the science fictional ones, and so it is here. The different viewpoints give us a mosaic picture of the future and are, by turns, exciting, mysterious and dangerous. Throughout all of this, though, there are a number of key themes underlying the character’s actions. There are some interesting consequences of Climate change, COVID-like epidemics and a Union Artificial Intelligence named Iskander that has integrated itself into social norms are all involved in this future setting.
Socially there’s much talk of movement, migrants and refugees, with various characters moving to different places by choice or by being forced to move, which clearly echoes current earth-bound issues today, but unlike some recent novels Ken doesn’t hammer the points home repeatedly. They’re there but not overstated.
As this is the first book in a trilogy, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to find that there is a fair amount of scene setting in the novel, although to be fair it never feels particularly forced. As this is the first book of a trilogy, don’t expect everything to be resolved, but by the end things are motoring along nicely. The ending is exciting and brings much to an appropriate point, whilst also setting up elements to be continued in the future books.
Big themes, alien contact, a range of people and planets, political manoeuvring, social commentary – it’s all here. Beyond the Hallowed Sky is the work of a proficient writer who brings us a view of an intriguing future with a diverse range of characters. Great read, and a series I look forward to continuing.
May 9, 2024
BRB, emigrating to the Union. This is a smart, thoughtful book about how the development of a previously impossible technology—the ubiquitous FTL drives that make most science fiction function—has knock-on effects on humanity, both at a large scale and in interpersonal relationships. It's well-written and beautifully grounded, and I'm looking forward to the next one.
September 5, 2022
Humans destroying things
February 11, 2025
Some good ideas, but hampered by god-awful pacing, ambiguous prose, and cardboard characters.
August 27, 2024
Laskshmi Kayak receives a note from herself, with equations that seem to show that FTL travel is possible. Since she can't remember writing such a note, she assumes that must also mean it comes from her future self, and time travel is also possible. But when she publishes about her findings, she is threatened, and defects from the Alliance (basically the Anglosphere plus India), to the Union (the European Union plus Scotland and Ireland). But the threat has an obvious meaning: the Alliance already has FTL travel, and they don't want that to become public. Soon she is working with Union citizen John Grant, who once saw a submarine surface, then seem to waver and disappear, to built an FTL craft.
The Alliance does indeed have FTL travel, and they, along with a Russian/Chinese alliance, have been settling numerous planets. But in the process, they have discovered what seem to be strange rock formation that seem to have interiors that move -- rock formations that turn out to be massive alien computing devices. Union explorers on Venus find something similar. These alien formations turn out to be powerful and threatening.
Beyond the Hallowed Sky is a complex novel, and my description above gives only the barest taste of what's going on. It combines political intrigue, geopolitics, hard SF, speculation on AI, and an encounter with massive intelligent alien artifacts. This is a tricky balancing act, and MacLeod at his best (and he's at his best here) does a great job of pulling it off.
I'm already a third of the way into the second book in the trilogy.
The Alliance does indeed have FTL travel, and they, along with a Russian/Chinese alliance, have been settling numerous planets. But in the process, they have discovered what seem to be strange rock formation that seem to have interiors that move -- rock formations that turn out to be massive alien computing devices. Union explorers on Venus find something similar. These alien formations turn out to be powerful and threatening.
Beyond the Hallowed Sky is a complex novel, and my description above gives only the barest taste of what's going on. It combines political intrigue, geopolitics, hard SF, speculation on AI, and an encounter with massive intelligent alien artifacts. This is a tricky balancing act, and MacLeod at his best (and he's at his best here) does a great job of pulling it off.
I'm already a third of the way into the second book in the trilogy.
January 15, 2022
I've read most of MacLeod's previous books and there are definitely some familiar elements here, but also enough new plot ideas to be interesting. It does cover a lot of ground, from exploration of Venus to interstellar travel to enigmatic alien artefacts to a world locked into something of a Cold War between three different blocs while struggling with the impact of rising sea levels. It does move at a good pace, possibly some plot points could have had a bit more time spent on them. As the first book in a trilogy I think it's a decent start but there's so much left unexplained that it's difficult to really judge it without reading the full trilogy.
May 18, 2022
I like Ken Macleod’s writing. Or to be more accurate, I like Ken Macleod’s writing when he is on form, which, to be fair, isn’t always the case. The good news is that in Beyond the Hallowed Sky, he is very much on form. In tone, it is very similar to his original Fall Revolution series in that it is fairly near future, hardish Sci-Fi, with a political flavour, and very, very Scottish.
The set up is a world in 2067-2070 where there has been some kind of limited nuclear conflict (not referred to in any great detail) and where there are now three political blocks, reminiscent of 1984, the Alliance, akin to Oceania, minus Scotland and Ireland and politically liberal-capitalist, the Cordinated-States (Eastasia) and the Union (Eurasia), basically the EU plus those parts of the British Isles not in the Alliance.The story is centred around the third of these, which is described as an “economic democracy” and “not overtly totalitarian”, but informally ruled by a cadre of veterans of a “cold revolution”. This is another way in which Macleod recalls Orwell. The most effective critics of the left are those from the left, but where the latter was a bitter, acerbic commentator, here the author, gently, affectionately pokes fun at his target.
The story opens with a post-graduate student, Lakshmi Nayak, from the Alliance writing a paper in which she seems to prove the possibility of faster-than-light travel. This is apparently confirmed by the proof having been, she believes, sent back in time by her future self. When she publishes, her paper is roundly rubbished by her peers, but she is also threatened by a representative of the British Council “widely believed to be the only wholly reliable intelligence service of the United Kingdom”. This results in her defecting to the Union.
The resulting tale bounces between the banks of the Clyde (and the isle of Arran), a research station in the clouds of Venus, and a colony on a planet orbiting a distant star.
This is the first book of a trilogy, so rather than a climactic conclusion, the end sets everything up intriguingly for the next instalment. In getting there, Macleod tells an enjoyably exciting yarn, but the thing which sets him apart, his USP, is the thread of humour which runs through the whole book. I particularly enjoyed the all pervasive Artificial Intelligences (automated Big Brothers ?) which run the societies. In the Union, “Iskander” is seen as both helpful and as a controlling arm of the state, while in the capitalist Alliance, it is believed to be less influential, being dismissed as mere advertising….
The set up is a world in 2067-2070 where there has been some kind of limited nuclear conflict (not referred to in any great detail) and where there are now three political blocks, reminiscent of 1984, the Alliance, akin to Oceania, minus Scotland and Ireland and politically liberal-capitalist, the Cordinated-States (Eastasia) and the Union (Eurasia), basically the EU plus those parts of the British Isles not in the Alliance.The story is centred around the third of these, which is described as an “economic democracy” and “not overtly totalitarian”, but informally ruled by a cadre of veterans of a “cold revolution”. This is another way in which Macleod recalls Orwell. The most effective critics of the left are those from the left, but where the latter was a bitter, acerbic commentator, here the author, gently, affectionately pokes fun at his target.
The story opens with a post-graduate student, Lakshmi Nayak, from the Alliance writing a paper in which she seems to prove the possibility of faster-than-light travel. This is apparently confirmed by the proof having been, she believes, sent back in time by her future self. When she publishes, her paper is roundly rubbished by her peers, but she is also threatened by a representative of the British Council “widely believed to be the only wholly reliable intelligence service of the United Kingdom”. This results in her defecting to the Union.
The resulting tale bounces between the banks of the Clyde (and the isle of Arran), a research station in the clouds of Venus, and a colony on a planet orbiting a distant star.
This is the first book of a trilogy, so rather than a climactic conclusion, the end sets everything up intriguingly for the next instalment. In getting there, Macleod tells an enjoyably exciting yarn, but the thing which sets him apart, his USP, is the thread of humour which runs through the whole book. I particularly enjoyed the all pervasive Artificial Intelligences (automated Big Brothers ?) which run the societies. In the Union, “Iskander” is seen as both helpful and as a controlling arm of the state, while in the capitalist Alliance, it is believed to be less influential, being dismissed as mere advertising….
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