Sci fi story with cavorite free#
The Qeng Ho trading culture gradually starts to dilute this, by demonstrating to the Emergents certain benefits of tolerated and restricted free trade the two human cultures merge to some extent over the decades of forced co-operation. Many Qeng Ho become Focused against their will, and the Emergents retain the rest of the population under mass surveillance, with only a portion of the crew not in suspended animation. By manipulating the brain in this way, Emergent managers induce obsession with a single idea or specialty, which they call Focus, essentially turning people into brilliant appliances. An active MRI-type device triggers changes through dia- and paramagnetic biological molecules. Emergent culture uses mindrot primarily in the form of a variant which technicians can manipulate in order to release neurotoxins to specific parts of the brain. The mindrot virus originally manifested itself on the Emergents' home world as a devastating plague, but they subsequently mastered it and learned to use it both as a weapon and as a tool for mental domination. Their struggles against ignorance and obsolescent traditions are coloured with oddly human-like descriptions and nomenclature, prefiguring some major plot revelations towards the end of the story.įar above, after a close fight, the Emergents subjugate the Qeng Ho but losses to both sides force them to combine and adopt the so-called "Lurker strategy", monitoring and aiding the Spiders' technological development, waiting until they build up the massive infrastructure and technological base that the visitors need in order to repair their vessels. The Emergents time an ambush to take advantage of the onset of symptoms.ĭuring these events, a concurrent history of the Spider civilization unfolds – mainly through the picaresque, and then increasingly political and technocratic, experiences of a small group of liberal-minded and progressive Spiders. A reception held by the Emergents doubles as a vector to infect the Qeng Ho with a timed "mindrot" virus. The Qeng Ho arrive at the OnOff star shortly before the Emergent fleet, a few years before the sun turns on, at which point the Spider civilization will "wake up" and continue its climb into a technological civilization. Two human groups launch expeditions to the Spider world: the Qeng Ho (pronounced Chung Ho and named after the explorer Zheng He), traders who have developed a common interstellar culture for humanity and the Emergents, a civilization that literally enslaves selected human minds and has only recently re-emerged from a Dark Age. If this is true, then whoever can establish ties with the aliens first could reap unimaginable rewards humans have made contact with only one other intelligent (but non-technological) alien species in millennia of travel through the stars. The planet's inhabitants, called "Spiders" by the humans for their resemblance to arachnids, have reached a stage of technological development very similar to that of Earth's humans in the early 20th century, although humans believe that they may once have been capable of space travel. During this period, the planet freezes and its fauna go into hibernation.
The plot begins with the discovery of an intelligent alien species on a planet orbiting an anomalous star, dubbed OnOff because for 215 of every 250 years it is dormant, releasing almost no detectable energy. 3.5 Relation to The Outcasts of Heaven Belt.No matter what, you're sure to find some of your favorite books (and hopefully a few titles you've never read before!) in this chronological list of the 100 best sci-fi books of all time. Maybe you read ( or listen to) sci-fi for the intense technological speculation, or because you enjoy how its authors hold a mirror up to modern society, or simply as a means of escaping everyday mundanity.
But one thing undoubtedly unites them all: the vivid imaginations their authors possess when it comes to thinking about the world. If you were to look at some of the best sci-fi books through literary history, you'd see such a range of titles and authors that you'd barely believe that they could be shelved in the same part of the bookstore. 100+ Best Sci-Fi Books to Take You to Infinity and Beyondįans of science fiction are drawn to the genre for a variety of reasons.
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