The Alien Years - Softcover

Silverberg, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0586211101 ISBN 13: 9780586211106

Publisher: Voyager, 1999

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, 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;
‘Silverberg’s invention is prodigious... like a competent juggler, he maintains his rhythm and suspense to the end’
TLS;
‘Spectacularly readable’
The Times

From the Back Cover:

The new millennium has barely begun when a vast fleet of alien vessels descends without warning on the Earth. Some starships blaze mighty trails of fire; some pop into view, unfathomably silent. Three different but equally strange kinds of alien emerge. Wide-eyed UFOlogists who rush to welcome them are scooped up like bugs collected for study.

The aliens make no response when governments attempt to communicate with them, but a single act of resistance to them provokes massive retaliation. This is the first major catastrophe of the alien years and it will be followed by others. In silence the aliens take control of the world, effortlessly enslaving what remains of its population.

On a remote California ranch, the Carmichaels are a family of blue-eyed, straight-backed patriots, flawed by narrow thinking and repressed emotions-but redeemed by their courage. With them rests the slender hope that the natives of Earth may one day be free.

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

"One of the great storytellers of the century."
ROGER ZELAZNY

About this edition

• Publisher: Voyager
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0586211101
• ISBN 13: 9780586211106
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464