Escape Route

by Peter F. Hamilton, Jared Doreck (Narrator)

The Lady Macbeth sets out on a dubious prospecting mission and ultimately discovers an ancient, long abandoned, derelict, xenoc starship. Captain Marcus Calvert must unlock its alien secrets in time to save his crew. Set in the author's Confederation universe of his "Night's Dawn" trilogy, this gripping tale tells the story of the last flight of Joshua Calvert's father. This story also explains why the Lady Macbeth was in such poor shape when it first made its appearance in The Reality Dysfunction.
This title is part of the publisher's Great Science Fiction Stories audio series.

Also anthologized in The Year's Best Science Fiction 15, The Good New Stuff: Adventure SF in the Grand Tradition and The Space Opera Renaissance.

Approximately 2.5 hours in length.

Genres: Science Fiction

Audio CD

First published July 1, 1997

About the author

Peter F. Hamilton is a British science fiction author. He is best known for writing space opera. As of the publication of his tenth novel in 2004, his works had sold over two million copies worldwide, making him Britain's biggest-selling science fiction author.

Reviews

[Andrew Ten broek · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short little story is a prequel to The Night's Dawn trilogy. It gives the listener of the audiobook some insight into who the father of one of the central figures of that trilogy was. Namely, the story deals with Marcus Calvert the father of Joshua Calvert, who was the owner of the spaceship the Lady MacBeth before Joshua became its owner. The story sees the return of some Kiin mythology as well and Marcus has to deal with strangers that convince him to let them hire his ship for a mission in the pursue of gold. What they find is a totally different thing and they end up finding a derelict spaceship of alien technology, and what is a wormhole port doing near the derelict?

[Shhhhh Ahhhhh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great but actually not the book I thought I had acquired. In any event, I'd love to see more set in this universe. Frankly, I don't see enough work with the interplay over long eons of existence between species that reach different levels of technological development at different times. Having humans not be the top dog in the universe and come out into it, learning of its true vastness both in time and space, and seeing just how strange things are is a really cool trope to see played around with.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first peak at something written in the Night's Dawn Universe. Well written side story.

[Shawn Conroy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Terrible audio quality. Okay story.

The story was fine for a 2 hour story. I don't know if it would have been better if the audio quality was better. Contains some big, interesting ideas against a boring everyday extraction story with a small twist. I might have enjoyed the story itself more if not for the audio quality and performance.

The audio was poorly made: there was an echo, it seemed to use a very cheap microphone that gave poor audio quality, and while the voice actor gave a much better job than I could, had very uneven voices for all the character, but all the characters did have very different voices. Perhaps too different?

Very much a let down from his Commonwealth Saga/Void Trilogy, and Mandel series. And I thought John Lee was a so-so voice actor.

[Jeff Daly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I listened to the audiobook version, read by Jared Doreck.

Loved it.


started: unknown
finished: 2011-02-04.Feb.Fri 15:18

duration: 2h:35m:31s

[Reuben Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

This should have been a full length novel.