The Alien Years - Hardcover

Silverberg, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0246137223 ISBN 13: 9780246137227

Publisher: Voyager, 1998

Synopsis

Seven years from now, the aliens land. Mountainous aliens in veils of light: they bring silence and death to the world. The legendary Robert Silverberg takes us beyond INDEPENDENCE DAY to explore the consequences of invasion from space ...

Heedless of humanity’s pain, the aliens – the Entities – establish themselves all over the world within days of arriving in countless ships. The first (accidental) incident of violence against them results in summary removal of all power sources. Some are restored, but resistance, later, brings down a plague that wipes out much of the world’s population. Survivors are herded into detention centres and used as slave labour. Whatever is cherished by the people of Earth is dismantled by the Entities. Pride and freedom are qualities of the past.

Even so, people resist their might, led in the US by the Carmichael family of military men, a family split within but united in the face of the great threat posed by the Entities.

From their ranch high in the mountains, they search for the Prime, the centre of alien intelligence... into which they will hack, against which they will fight.

Meanwhile, in Prague, a quisling insinuates himself into the Entities’ confidence. Conflict becomes internecine: nothing is sacred or safe.

The Entities throughout maintain a distance from us, coldly disinterested. And fifty years after they arrived, they leave.

Free once more, the mystery of the Entities from first to last leaves more uncertainty than gladness at their departure can dispel. Human nature faces a challenge equal to that posed by expulsion from Paradise: expulsion from Hell.

About this title

Review:

‘We travel in the hands of a master’
New Scientist

From the Back Cover:

FIRST CONTACT...

The new millennium has barely begun when, undetected by any satellite or telescope, a vast fleet of alien vessels descends on the Earth. Some starships blaze mighty trails of fire, like the big one that lands near Los Angeles, where the grass is tinder-dry. In New York one pops into view out of nowhere, mysterious and unfathomably silent. Some land in the middle of big cities – outside the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, in front of St Peter's in Rome. In Johannesburg a glistening, spooky kind of alien emerges; in Frankfurt, behemoths; in Rio, the aliens look like huge walking squid; elsewhere there are mixtures of the three kinds. None responds in any way to the many attempts at communication made by the awe-struck peoples of Earth.

For their pains, wide-eyed UFOlogists who rush to welcome the superior beings from the sky are scooped up like bugs collected for study. Among them is Cindy Carmichael. Her New-Age optimism has not been dented by years of steely disapproval from her military in-laws, and now her hour has come...

NO CONTACT...

But the aliens make no announcements, no demands; they decree no decrees. They do not communicate anything, even to Cindy. They are simply here. Soon an attempt at resistance brings down upon the planet the first major catastrophe of the alien years. It will be followed by others. In silence that can only be disdainful, the aliens take control of the world, effortlessly enslaving what remains of its population.

Cindy Carmichael's husband dies in the holocaust, but her military in-laws survive on a remote ranch. The Carmichaels are a family of blue-eyed, straight-backed patriots, flawed by narrow thinking and repressed emotions – but redeemed by an old-fashioned commitment to the ideals of human civilization. With them rests the slender hope that the natives of Earth may one day be free.

Robert Silverberg's new novel is a brilliantly convincing and definitive new treatment of one of science fiction's greatest themes.

Robert Silverberg was born in New York in 1935. He sold his first novel while still a student at Columbia University, and has been a full-time writer since graduation. He has published more than fifty novels as well as serious works of history and archaeology, and has been nominated for more awards for his fiction than any other science fiction writer, alive or dead. He and his wife now live in San Francisco.

'When one contemplates Robert Silverberg it can only be with awe. In terms of excellence he has few peers, if any'
LOCUS

'A master of his craft and imagination'
LOS ANGELES TIMES

'Where Silverberg goes today, the rest of science fiction will follow tomorrow'
ISAAC ASIMOV

'Robert Silverberg is doing more to bring science fiction back into the mainstream of literature than anyone'
ANALOG

'One of the great storytellers of the century'
ROGER ZELAZNY

'Silverberg's touch is assured, his prose clean and wonderfully effective...Silverberg has succeeded brilliantly in conveying the unknowable strangeness of the universe...a book to devour whole, but its images will remain with the reader for a long time'
NEW SCIENTIST on 'Starborne'

'Robert Silverberg is one of the most imaginative and versatile writers ever to have been involved with SF'
ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION

About this edition

• Publisher: Voyager
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0246137223
• ISBN 13: 9780246137227
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 464