{"id":1070,"date":"2014-12-09T16:09:45","date_gmt":"2014-12-09T22:09:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/?p=1070"},"modified":"2014-12-25T13:41:27","modified_gmt":"2014-12-25T19:41:27","slug":"crossing-the-sea-of-suns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/crossing-the-sea-of-suns\/","title":{"rendered":"Crossing the Sea of Suns"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"across<\/a>Across the Sea of Suns<\/a><\/em>
\nGregory Benford
\nKindle $6.64<\/p>\n

Some months back I reviewed<\/a> In the Ocean of Night<\/em>, the first volume in Gregory Benford’s Galactic Center<\/em> series.\u00a0 Across the Sea of Suns<\/em> takes place a number of years later, and it’s just as good as the first volume in the series.<\/p>\n

The Lancer<\/em> is a deep space ram ship that scouting nearby stars for possible Earth-like planets.\u00a0 The target is a nearby star with only a catalog number that has since been christened Ra.\u00a0 Signals have been detected coming from that star.<\/p>\n

Aboard is Nigel Walmsley, the protagonist from Ocean<\/em>.\u00a0 He’s a bit older, but more cantankerous than ever.\u00a0 He doesn’t get along with Ted Landon, the bureaucrat in charge.\u00a0 After the events in Ocean,<\/em> Nigel doesn’t exactly think like everyone else.\u00a0 This causes friction between him and Ted because Ted is very\u00a0 much a bureaucrat.\u00a0 It doesn’t help that Nigel is usually right.\u00a0 Too bad Ted doesn’t listen very well.<\/p>\n

Ra has an Earthlike planet orbiting it, which the crew of the Lancer<\/em> name Isis.\u00a0 It’s not a hospitable world by human standards, but it does contain life.\u00a0 Among which are a species which not only communicate by radio waves, but see only at radio wavelengths.<\/p>\n

But the real discovery, the one that has long term consequences for humanity, are the two asteroids orbiting Isis.\u00a0 These asteroids are Watchers.\u00a0 They are complicated machines programmed to look for signs of intelligent life.\u00a0 And eliminate it.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the crew of the Lancer<\/em> doesn’t know this.\u00a0 At least not until it’s too late.<\/p>\n

\"across<\/a>Back on Earth, a sailor named Warren is having an alien encounter of his own.\u00a0 After the Lancer<\/em> left the solar system, other space ships arrived.\u00a0 These contained aquatic creatures that are now wrecking shipping.\u00a0 We meet Warren when his ship is sunk by one of them.\u00a0 He ends up on a raft, and then the aquatic aliens begin to try to communicate.<\/p>\n

There are times when the book seems slow, but that’s simply Benford giving depth to his story.\u00a0 He raises some interesting questions.\u00a0 Benford’s universe is one inhabited by machine intelligences, intelligences that are hostile to mankind and all other forms of life.\u00a0 But something protected Earth from them in the past.\u00a0 We saw the remnants of that battle in In the Ocean of Night<\/em>.\u00a0 Who were they?\u00a0 Why didn’t they protect the life around nearby stars?\u00a0 Or did they, and fail?\u00a0 Where are they now?<\/p>\n

There are four more volumes in the Galactic Center series.\u00a0 I’m looking forward to reading them all.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Across the Sea of Suns Gregory Benford Kindle $6.64 Some months back I reviewed In the Ocean of Night, the first volume in Gregory Benford’s Galactic Center series.\u00a0 Across the Sea of Suns takes place a number of years later, and it’s just as good as the first volume in the series. The Lancer is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[704],"tags":[724,708,786],"class_list":["post-1070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gregory-benford","tag-across-the-sea-of-suns","tag-galactic-center","tag-gregory-benford"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3P5pJ-hg","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1070"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1075,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1070\/revisions\/1075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}