Nine

by Drew Wagar

An Oolite short story - The story of an attempt to reach the 'ninth' chart. As players familiar with Elite and Oolite will doubtless know, there are only eight charts reachable by Galactic Hyperspace. Does the ninth chart exist? Can it be reached? If so, what's there? This is a slightly chilling tale of the 'Ooniverse'.

Nook

First published October 3, 2010

About the author

Drew Wagar is a science fiction and fantasy author, living in the UK. He is the author of the Hegira Series, the Shadeward Saga, The Midnight Chronicles, the Elect Saga and the official Elite Dangerous novelisations.

You can join a mailing list and discover more about Drew's books at his website.

www.drewwagar.com

Reviews

[Stuart Aken · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a science fiction short based on the Oolite space trading game. No, I'd never heard of it, either. But you don't need to be familiar with this created Ooniverse to understand and enjoy this clever tale.

It's a multi-layered piece, with many themes, in spite of its brevity. But it can also be easily enjoyed as a simple story. The characters are all drawn with care and enough personality to make them real people rather than either caricatures or stereotypes.

The story moves at a good pace, employing appropriate scientific terminology to convey the action, whilst allowing the less knowledgeable to understand what is actually going on. A good balance between scientific reality and comprehension for the general reader.

I enjoyed the wonderfully portrayed in-fighting between the academics as much as the plausible emotional connection between the protagonist and his caring daughter. And the lovely twist at the end works beautifully.
Lovers of science fiction will enjoy this one. Recommended.

[Piotr Kalinowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

An extremely short reminder that what you consider a brilliant and beautiful idea may still turn out to be invalid.