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441st out of 644 books
—
259 voters
The Eternity Artifact
by
L.E. Modesitt Jr. (Goodreads Author)
Five thousand years in the future, humankind has spread across the galaxy and more than a dozen different planetary and system governments exist in an uneasy truce. Human beings have found no signs of other life anywhere approaching human intelligence. Until scientists discover a sunless planet they name Danann.
Moving at unnaturally high speed, Danann travels the void just...more
Moving at unnaturally high speed, Danann travels the void just...more
Paperback, 480 pages
Published
August 1st 2006
by Tor Science Fiction
(first published 2005)
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Nov 04, 2008
Terence
rated it
1 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommended to Terence by:
Picked up for 25 cents in a library sale
Shelves:
sf-fantasy
Not much to say here really. The Eternity Artifact is what I call an "airplane book" - something to kill the time flying to the Christmas family reunion but nothing to get excited about. The basic plot is that several thousand years in the future, the Comity of Worlds (a secular, reasonably tolerant and liberal polity) has discovered an extra-galactic alien artifact and assembles a team to go out and take a look at it before it enters an area of singularities and becomes unreachable. Ranged agai...more
Very boring scifi. Modesitt can suck the fun and excitement out of even the most amazing alien tech.
Not only is this book written in first-person perspective; the perspective switches between four different characters.
For anyone intimidated or uncomfortable with reading in this style, I highly suggest you stay clear.
Outside of the that nagging surprise, the book itself was fairly good, though it failed to delivery entirely on the premise I was hoping for.
As inspiration for my own story, I was hoping to get an idea of how to write a story told largely about exploring an unknown and unfamiliar l...more
For anyone intimidated or uncomfortable with reading in this style, I highly suggest you stay clear.
Outside of the that nagging surprise, the book itself was fairly good, though it failed to delivery entirely on the premise I was hoping for.
As inspiration for my own story, I was hoping to get an idea of how to write a story told largely about exploring an unknown and unfamiliar l...more
I started out reading and was sure that Modesitt had a problem with words. It was as if he were writing with a thesaurus open beside his writing pad (or computer keyboard). It seemed that any time he was ready to write a common word, he seemed to use the most odd choice available in the thesaurus. I complained to my wife. She suffers from my steady comments about books, no matter whether I'm gushing praise or heaping scorn. Well, it turns out that the excess in verbiage was a character's flaw. A...more
In the far future, humankind finally discovers signs of intelligent alien life, and undertakes a long journey to check it out. Unfortunately, the signs are millions of years old and the aliens are long gone. But what they've left behind is enough to start the biggest battle in human history. I raced through this book, and loved the characters. It's told in alternating first-person chapters, and Modesitt does a good job of giving each character a distinctly different voice. I got occasionally con...more
Rather surprisingly for Modesitt, there's practically no mention of the environment and ecology in this book. There's also little put forward regarding how a future society should function. There is, however, plenty of talk about, or in fact against, religion, as well as much about certain other defining characteristics of humanity, so it's certainly still Modesitt, largely wrapping philosophy in space opera in order to get some ideas across to a wider audience.
What I can say about the book is t...more
What I can say about the book is t...more
The is an axiom of science fiction that must be obeyed. The author must show at least a rudimentary understanding of the impacts of his imagined technology on society. As it is all imagination, failing to imagine how society might be impacted by the advances you imagine shows contempt for your readership.
intelligent nanotechnology robots capable of reading thoughts and decoding input from aural nerves exists and all it is used for is as a suicide pill for assassin spies.
Or
The characters take f...more
intelligent nanotechnology robots capable of reading thoughts and decoding input from aural nerves exists and all it is used for is as a suicide pill for assassin spies.
Or
The characters take f...more
If this had been the first book I ever read by Modesitt, I wouldn't read anything further. The book wasn't bad, just weak.
I think Modesitt attempted to make this book character-driven rather than plot-driven, except he introduced too many characters. And most of the characters were rather uninteresting. (Although Modesitt did a nice job in differentiating the characters by presenting them as first person and changing the way each character thought and spoke.) One character was just repulsive fr...more
I think Modesitt attempted to make this book character-driven rather than plot-driven, except he introduced too many characters. And most of the characters were rather uninteresting. (Although Modesitt did a nice job in differentiating the characters by presenting them as first person and changing the way each character thought and spoke.) One character was just repulsive fr...more
First, full disclosure--I didn't finish reading this book and I generally don't enjoy first-person stories as well. The actual story in this book didn't start til after page 100, and by then, I was already exhausted by the shifting first-person viewpoint. That's right, you get a new first-person viewpoint character each chapter. I think there are five viewpoint characters total. Maybe if this had been written with five shifting third-person viewpoint characters, I could have handled it. The firs...more
One of the darkest most mysterious books I've ever read in science fiction. It's been a while since I've read this, and the characters didn't really stick with me. I remember the plot.... but the environment of a sunless planet racing through the emptiness of space and all the other enviromental details have really stuck with me over the years. If anything sticks with as many books as I've read, it was worth reading.
More an exploration of politics and secular/religious battles than truly hard science fiction. There was some hard science in the plot, but it really took a back seat to the political story. The book is written in a first person perspective, and not for any one character, but for each main character. That took some getting used to when I started the book. I'm just not a huge fan of the first person perspective. By the end of the book I was feeling like this story really deserved more than one bo...more
This book was pretty bad. No suspense, mystery, nothing. The Goodman/Bond character was completely useless considering how his story finishes. The writing of Fitzhugh's character was ridiculous, why not just have him sound intelligent instead of sounding like someone trying to sound intelligent. When reading Fitzhugh's chapters I would cogitate that I should just perambulate away from this book. I enjoy Modesitt's Recluce novels for the most part but this first venture into reading his Sci-Fi no...more
I first started reading L.E. Modesitt Jr with the recluse series. Ive read several of his other sci-fi book and they always read to me as less formulaic. The Eternity Artifact has a good amount of realistic hard science and a great plot that kept wanting to know what happened next.
Old school space opera. Surprisingly, I'm going to say that I wished this book was twice as long. I would have put up with more character development (not that there wasn't any), and more political background.
Additionally, I can't remember the last time I've read a book that was told in four first person narratives. Very interesting.
Additionally, I can't remember the last time I've read a book that was told in four first person narratives. Very interesting.
This is the second time I have read this novel and I liked the first time but I like it better after reading it a second time. Modesitt always offers subtle questions about deep subjects beneath a veneer of dramatic action. This novel is very good.
This is the second book by L.E. Modesitt Jr. that I have read (the other one was the Empress of Eternity). I found the book very slow moving, and I kept hoping that the plot would pick up as the book progressed. Unfortunately, it never did.
Four-person narratives makes it interesting. The Danann artifact that is racing past the galaxy is interesting. But still, too much extraneous miniscule detail which detracts from the book . . . a definite Modesitt trait.
An entertaining read - understandable characters, and good interweaving of politics and technology. A little too pat in its extension of today's theocratic and technocratic cultures, but altogether a good yarn.
Not his best work, but by no means his worst either. The plot is really a thin disguise for a moral commentary which is similar to some of his other books.
The major quibble I had with this book was one of the characters, Fitzhugh, spoke in an incredibly irritating manner which appeared just to be a way for the author to show off the range of his vocabulary, for example he 'perambulates' everywhere instead of walks. Although Fitzhugh was meant to be an academic, some of it just seemed unnecessar...more
The major quibble I had with this book was one of the characters, Fitzhugh, spoke in an incredibly irritating manner which appeared just to be a way for the author to show off the range of his vocabulary, for example he 'perambulates' everywhere instead of walks. Although Fitzhugh was meant to be an academic, some of it just seemed unnecessar...more
I liked this, but it was nowhere near as enjoyable as most of his other works. The four person narrative is interesting. The overly verbose character amused me - I'm probably in a minority there!
This novel is told to good effect in four shifting first person perspectives. Each has a very distinctive voice, and are convincing and likeable for the most part. I really enjoyed the characters and their development and interaction, but the plot and pacing kind of fell flat. The alien archaeology was interesting, but the politics and space battles were not. I believe it would have been better had it it been more tightly edited (maybe a hundred pages shorter), and perhaps with an improved endin...more
It was a ho-hum story...with lots of shallow development regarding characters, action, and universe. If too don't have to read it, I wouldn't bother.
Good 'ancient aliens' book. Not very kind to religions. I liked how the writing style changed as the book moved from character to character.
Very interesting, a good read, decent up to date cosmology good plot. My first Modesti book, will read more now.
A truly fun and imaginative tale of exploration and discovery
I found this book a bit too predictable.
Good read, but it really doesn't go anywhere.
Aug 06, 2008
Jeffrey
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
library-copy,
science-fiction
Not his best work. The primary plot, while seemingly unique simply masks an underlying plot that is a moralistic commentary that we have seen many times before in his other work. Finishing the book left me feeling like I had read another, and sparked memories of other works that have expressed similar viewpoints. In the end nothing seemed resolved, simply a continuous thread that leads to...nowhere. I expected more from this author, and instead I found a retread.
Will I eventually add this to my...more
Will I eventually add this to my...more
Somewhat slow, and somewhat long.
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L. E. (Leland Exton) Modesitt, Jr. is an author of science fiction and fantasy novels. He is best known for the fantasy series The Saga of Recluce. He graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts, lived in Washington, D.C. for 20 years, then moved to New Hampshire in 1989 where he met his wife. They relocated to Cedar City, Utah in 1993.
He has worked as a Navy pilot, lifeguard, delivery boy, u...more
More about L.E. Modesitt Jr....
He has worked as a Navy pilot, lifeguard, delivery boy, u...more
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