Cosmonaut Keep
In one strand of the story a computer programmer in a newly independent Scotland takes a job on a remote asteroid and finds that the owners of the place have plans he was not told about.
About
Cosmonaut Keep is a science fiction novel by the Scottish writer Ken MacLeod, published in 2000 and the first book in his Engines of Light trilogy.
The two narratives are separated by centuries and connected by a family, by politics and by the question of who is permitted to travel between the stars. In one of them a programmer leaves a Scotland that has just become independent for a position maintaining systems on a distant resource, and finds himself among people with their own ideas about ownership; in the other, his descendants live aboard a ship whose crew includes the descendants of genetically altered animals and who negotiate with the planet below. MacLeod is a political writer, and the future he describes has unions, factions and arguments about property rather than a single government. The book is dense with ideas and takes its time over the cultures it invents.
It was nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke and Hugo awards, and the trilogy continues in Dark Light and Engine City, which follow the same families further into the future.
Book details
- Author
- Ken MacLeod
- First published
- 2000
- Series
- Engines of Light, book 1
- Subgenre
- Space opera, First contact
- Primary genre
- Sci-Fi
- Tags
- No tags for this book.
- Reading order
- This is the only Engines of Light title on the shelf right now.
Rating
Review
Editor profile
Baby Bat
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