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Veil of Stars #1
Beyond the Veil of Stars
Agent Cornell Novak is sent through the government's energy portal and translated into a creature adapted for another world on a mission to redeem the dreams of his father, a frustrated UFO researcher. By the author of Black Milk.
318 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1994
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
September 23, 2014
Science fiction novels must have a true sense of weirdness for me to get beyond the first chapter. Too often in this Star Trek/Dr. Who period SF is about comfortable cliches and flat characters, when IMHO it should be startling, unpredictable, new. This is the first Reed book I've read, and it not only has that oddness, that strangeness which marks the best SF for me, but compelling, original characters I cared about. In the climactic scene we are introduced to an alien "city" that was genuinely new (I've been reading SF for nearly 40 years), and I feared for the characters--to me, that's a tough test to win, and Reed won it with a terrific payoff. Highly recommended.
September 10, 2017
Quite an adventure
Robert Reed writes science fiction unlike anything else I've read. No run of the mill stuff here. Unusual and different. Fantastically strange.
Robert Reed writes science fiction unlike anything else I've read. No run of the mill stuff here. Unusual and different. Fantastically strange.
April 21, 2015
Very original, convincing portrait of non-humanoid aliens, nicely contrasted with a story about a father and son who live on the fringe (UFO researcher). Definitely recommended.
Since I saw no mention elsewhere, take note that Beneath the Gated Sky is a direct sequel.
Since I saw no mention elsewhere, take note that Beneath the Gated Sky is a direct sequel.
May 4, 2008
The Nineties was a weird time. After the fall of the resounding American success in the first Persian Gulf war and the Subsequent fall of the Soviet Union, America Emerged as the sole dominant super power in the world. Presently we are in the midst of the political and economic aftermath of this now. However, immediately afterwards, the victorious American public became obsessed with UFOs and Government conspiracies to cover them up. The X-Files became one of the highest rated shows on American television. As an adolescent during this period of time, I was obsessed with UFOs and the science fiction conspiracy theories surrounding them. Subsequently, since I've grown up I've become more interested in the reasons why this cultural phenomenon emerged at this time. While I am neither culture anthropologist or student of the media, I have developed a theory.
The Soviet Union fell, the government collapsing in on its own bureaucracy while the society rebelling against the communist imposed poverty. America lost its "formidable" opponent in the cold war. We emerged as the dominant force in the world. Finally solely triumphant in the power struggle that began in WW2. Americans were happy about this, no doubt. But there was also a strange undercurrent to the victorious celebration. We did not defeat the soviet union, so much as the soviet union fell apart because of its own mismanagement. We had been at war with a rusting communist bureaucracy which couldn't manage to compete providing people basic comforts of modern life. The American propaganda was that we must remain vigilant in the face of this threat. If we faltered we would be destroyed. But after the soviet union fell, and we began to understand how impoverished they really were. The thought of them overthrowing the successful and technologically advanced west seemed absurd. Our government had fostered a phobia of an external superpower. Meanwhile, the American people had tacitly agreed to turn a blind eye to the machinations of the military industrial complex because they were protecting us from the pinko threat. Into the imaginary enemy spot vacated by the soviet union slipped aliens. But at the same time, the distrust of the government who misled us about the power of the soviet union slipped in and mixed with the UFO fantasy. People came to believe that the government knew more than it was letting on. They were either working with or secretly fighting against the aliens. The cold war was really a front to develop advanced technologies to fight alien invaders.
All this really doesn't have much to do with this book. Other than the fact that this book is about amateur UFO hunters and government conspiracies. However, this book is a prime example of the literature (especially in sci-fi) reflecting the UFO conspiracy cultural phenomenon of the nineties.
This book is about a kid who grows up with a UFO nut father. And then, one day, there is some weird sort of cosmic cataclysm. Specifically, the night sky changes. No longer can humans see the stars. Rather, the night sky changes to a view of the earths surface on the opposite side of the planet. As if the surface of the earth were on the inside of a sphere, not on the outside of it.
The book goes on from there. I don't want to provide spoilers. It was weird, that's for sure. But fairly enjoyable sci-fi. It had a lot of interesting ideas. I would recommend it to sci-fi fans.
I read this book my freshman year of high school because my friend Chris Buer recommended it to me.
The Soviet Union fell, the government collapsing in on its own bureaucracy while the society rebelling against the communist imposed poverty. America lost its "formidable" opponent in the cold war. We emerged as the dominant force in the world. Finally solely triumphant in the power struggle that began in WW2. Americans were happy about this, no doubt. But there was also a strange undercurrent to the victorious celebration. We did not defeat the soviet union, so much as the soviet union fell apart because of its own mismanagement. We had been at war with a rusting communist bureaucracy which couldn't manage to compete providing people basic comforts of modern life. The American propaganda was that we must remain vigilant in the face of this threat. If we faltered we would be destroyed. But after the soviet union fell, and we began to understand how impoverished they really were. The thought of them overthrowing the successful and technologically advanced west seemed absurd. Our government had fostered a phobia of an external superpower. Meanwhile, the American people had tacitly agreed to turn a blind eye to the machinations of the military industrial complex because they were protecting us from the pinko threat. Into the imaginary enemy spot vacated by the soviet union slipped aliens. But at the same time, the distrust of the government who misled us about the power of the soviet union slipped in and mixed with the UFO fantasy. People came to believe that the government knew more than it was letting on. They were either working with or secretly fighting against the aliens. The cold war was really a front to develop advanced technologies to fight alien invaders.
All this really doesn't have much to do with this book. Other than the fact that this book is about amateur UFO hunters and government conspiracies. However, this book is a prime example of the literature (especially in sci-fi) reflecting the UFO conspiracy cultural phenomenon of the nineties.
This book is about a kid who grows up with a UFO nut father. And then, one day, there is some weird sort of cosmic cataclysm. Specifically, the night sky changes. No longer can humans see the stars. Rather, the night sky changes to a view of the earths surface on the opposite side of the planet. As if the surface of the earth were on the inside of a sphere, not on the outside of it.
The book goes on from there. I don't want to provide spoilers. It was weird, that's for sure. But fairly enjoyable sci-fi. It had a lot of interesting ideas. I would recommend it to sci-fi fans.
I read this book my freshman year of high school because my friend Chris Buer recommended it to me.
August 15, 2018
Inspired writing, and memorable other realities that are both intensely alien, and strangely, unaccountably familiar. Starts out well grounded in our recognizable world, and then things take a dramatic, other worldly turn. I plan to read more by Robert Reed!
January 5, 2025
An alien story, alien in its own right
Cornell’s Dad is mad for aliens, loonie crazy mad in his desire to prove their existence, yet without any real scientific knowledge to be able to properly follow through on his research, he ends up more a paranoid laughingstock than a respected researcher. Add on inexplicable crystal rings suddenly appearing, and inverted sky that now reflects Earth back on itself instead of holding stars, and a missing mother, Cornell escapes the craziness without a backward glance. That is, until he discovers the Universe is crazier than anything his dad ever dreamt up.
It’s what Cornell discovers and how he discovers it that makes this book one of the most unique sci fi stories I’ve ever read. Four stars out of five only because it took a little too long for the set up and the ending felt a little too rushed and ambiguous.
Still, it’s a curious read that stretches your imagination. Enjoy.
Cornell’s Dad is mad for aliens, loonie crazy mad in his desire to prove their existence, yet without any real scientific knowledge to be able to properly follow through on his research, he ends up more a paranoid laughingstock than a respected researcher. Add on inexplicable crystal rings suddenly appearing, and inverted sky that now reflects Earth back on itself instead of holding stars, and a missing mother, Cornell escapes the craziness without a backward glance. That is, until he discovers the Universe is crazier than anything his dad ever dreamt up.
It’s what Cornell discovers and how he discovers it that makes this book one of the most unique sci fi stories I’ve ever read. Four stars out of five only because it took a little too long for the set up and the ending felt a little too rushed and ambiguous.
Still, it’s a curious read that stretches your imagination. Enjoy.
Read
August 31, 2018one of those strange obscure sf paperbacks I've been lucky to chance upon. The lead character is man whose life and development had been rather tattered from growing up with a UFO conspiracy father and the discovery that his mother actually abandoned them instead of being abducted. When he was young the world was suddenly rearranged, the sky looking as if the globe had been scrolled up so that instead of stars above you see Australia. As an adult the guy is recruited into a secret program that sends volunteers as 'quantum intrusions' in portals to other worlds, that often harbor the strangest kinds of life. This part rather recalled to me the fantasies of Stanislaw Lem. The parts of the story where the lead had to introspect and deal with challenges to his identity- his fragmented relationship with his dad, his knowledge of his mom, his approach of middle-age-- were very moving.
November 30, 2021
Inventive good reading. This has everything a good SciFi should have: Characters you identify with, creative concepts that will never be dated (as many SciFis can be), a storyline you look forward to getting back to and a closure that leaves you wanting more (looking forward to the sequel).
Reminds me of the early pulp science fictions I started with in my youth, yet it has all the telltales of a modern read. This is great writing and great storytelling. I look forward to more reads from Robert Reed.
Reminds me of the early pulp science fictions I started with in my youth, yet it has all the telltales of a modern read. This is great writing and great storytelling. I look forward to more reads from Robert Reed.
February 24, 2018
Unputdownable!
I started my love of Robert Reed books through having a tattered copy of Marrow that i read many times. I only recently started reading his further books and was overjoyed to find that they are all as complex.
I highly recommend all the books I have read. And I thoroughly enjoyed this one.
I started my love of Robert Reed books through having a tattered copy of Marrow that i read many times. I only recently started reading his further books and was overjoyed to find that they are all as complex.
I highly recommend all the books I have read. And I thoroughly enjoyed this one.
August 15, 2023
I tried
This novel because I liked several short stories of Mr Reed's in various anthologies.
Started off really slow with really nothing going on at all. Kid riding around staring at women's shirts pretty much covers the first third of the book.
Then things just get strange, not in the sense of happenings, but in the characters seeming paranoid and disjointed.
DNF
This novel because I liked several short stories of Mr Reed's in various anthologies.
Started off really slow with really nothing going on at all. Kid riding around staring at women's shirts pretty much covers the first third of the book.
Then things just get strange, not in the sense of happenings, but in the characters seeming paranoid and disjointed.
DNF
April 27, 2024
I read this book a long time ago, when it was new. I don’t remember any of it, really, except it felt more personal and small, and less sweeping and epic like previous books I’d read by the author. It wasn’t particularly compelling and neither was the sequel but being a completionist I had to read both.
October 24, 2024
actually really intriguing sci-fi. bizarre world with alien design unlike i've seen before. the characters and stuff were unique enough to be interesting and the writing held up throughout. at times it drags but overall it was good.
also was pleasantly surprised that even though there is a sequel, this felt like it ended when it needed to, and didn't have an obnoxious cliffhannger.
also was pleasantly surprised that even though there is a sequel, this felt like it ended when it needed to, and didn't have an obnoxious cliffhannger.
July 10, 2024
Gave up on this about a third of the way through. There was a super long build up to anything resembling action and then it ended up being kinda boring action at that.
Not my favorite by this author and a bit disappointing.
Not my favorite by this author and a bit disappointing.
May 8, 2025
Astounding, Original, and Thoroughly Engrossing.
A Story Like No Other, Yet Hauntingly Familiar. Captures Your Thoughts, and Feelings, Deeply Compelling. Reed Shines with the Brightest and Best.
A Story Like No Other, Yet Hauntingly Familiar. Captures Your Thoughts, and Feelings, Deeply Compelling. Reed Shines with the Brightest and Best.
September 25, 2018
The two books in this series are pretty good and hint at a really great story, but it seems unrealised in the end. The greatship novels are better, although these are good.
January 11, 2021
Meh, I thought there would be more space involved, not invested enough to read the sequel. But good enough
October 18, 2013
‘Cornell Novak spent most of his youth traversing the American heartland with his father, a fanatical. self-appointed UFO researcher who investigated strange sightings and odd manifestations. His young life abruptly changes one day when the night sky suddenly vanishes, to be replaced by a distorted mirror image of the Earth. But even as ‘The Change’ makes his father a celebrity, a gulf opens between them, leaving Cornell feeling alone and betrayed.
Years later, Cornell joins a secret government project and learns about ‘portals’ to alien worlds through which humans emerge as aliens. Cornell crosses a portal with Porsche, a beautiful and charismatic companion with whom he embarks upon a bizarre odyssey. When he finally returns to Earth, Cornell realises that his greatest challenge is yet to come, as he faces secrets more shattering than any of his encounters on the other side.’
Blurb from the September 1995 Tor paperback edition.
Reed begins in low key with this tale of Cornell, his father and his father’s friend Pete, driving across America chasing tales of UFO sightings.
Cornell believes that his father’s obsession with UFOs stems from the fact that his mother was abducted by aliens.
Suddenly, the three begin investigating reports of large circles of fused glass, burnt into the landscape across the country.
Shortly afterwards the world is forced to take Cornell’s father seriously when the sky disappears and is replaced by an ‘everted world’, a view of the Earth as though seen from the inside of a giant world-shaped balloon.
Later, Cornell (estranged from his father following the revelation that that his mother – far from having been abducted – abandoned them both when Cornell was a child) is recruited by a secret Government Agency. This organisation has discovered – or been shown – portals which lead to other worlds. Humans can travel back and forth through the portals but are physically transformed during the process into natives of an equitable intelligence level.
Cornell, passing through to the world known as High Desert, is transformed into a gestalt organism, composed of a central spherical mind, attended by six humanoid – but very alien – bodies.
It’s very much a novel of two halves, each being oddly pastoral in its own way. In the first half Reed skilfully paints portraits of the people of small town America, tolerant of the mild aberrations of their neighbours. There are echoes of Simak here, particularly when Porsche Neal later describes the Universe as merely a big neighbourhood, separated by picket fences, a metaphor which Simak may very well have been happy to use himself.
The natives of High Desert (or at least the recruits who have ‘gone native’ almost literally) also live a pastoral existence, living on grease nuts and using nothing more advanced than reclaimed spearheads which the original natives abandoned.
In his vacation periods back on Earth, Cornell confronts his mother and makes a kind of peace with his father who, it transpires, had been right all along in assigning such importance to the fused glass discs for whose presence no one could provide a decent explanation.
So what point is Reed trying to make, if any? Reed is puzzling in that many of his novels – at least before ‘Marrow’ were very different to each other while still exhibiting a richness of characterisation, and a need to explore the soul of the protagonist. What they may have in common is a ‘masked’ character, in this case Porsche Neal, who is discovered to be an alien transformed into human.
‘Exaltation of Larks’ sees Sally Faulkner exposed as an ancient individual who was trying to subvert the Turtles’ plan for the universe. ‘Marrow’ sees one of the near-immortal captains exposed as the mastermind behind a convoluted plan to take over the ship, while in ‘Sister Alice’ it seems that hardly anyone ends up being what they initially purport to be.
Here, Reed is following Dick in examining what it is that defines us as human, and in so doing, highlights the irrelevance of Humanity in the Universe.
Years later, Cornell joins a secret government project and learns about ‘portals’ to alien worlds through which humans emerge as aliens. Cornell crosses a portal with Porsche, a beautiful and charismatic companion with whom he embarks upon a bizarre odyssey. When he finally returns to Earth, Cornell realises that his greatest challenge is yet to come, as he faces secrets more shattering than any of his encounters on the other side.’
Blurb from the September 1995 Tor paperback edition.
Reed begins in low key with this tale of Cornell, his father and his father’s friend Pete, driving across America chasing tales of UFO sightings.
Cornell believes that his father’s obsession with UFOs stems from the fact that his mother was abducted by aliens.
Suddenly, the three begin investigating reports of large circles of fused glass, burnt into the landscape across the country.
Shortly afterwards the world is forced to take Cornell’s father seriously when the sky disappears and is replaced by an ‘everted world’, a view of the Earth as though seen from the inside of a giant world-shaped balloon.
Later, Cornell (estranged from his father following the revelation that that his mother – far from having been abducted – abandoned them both when Cornell was a child) is recruited by a secret Government Agency. This organisation has discovered – or been shown – portals which lead to other worlds. Humans can travel back and forth through the portals but are physically transformed during the process into natives of an equitable intelligence level.
Cornell, passing through to the world known as High Desert, is transformed into a gestalt organism, composed of a central spherical mind, attended by six humanoid – but very alien – bodies.
It’s very much a novel of two halves, each being oddly pastoral in its own way. In the first half Reed skilfully paints portraits of the people of small town America, tolerant of the mild aberrations of their neighbours. There are echoes of Simak here, particularly when Porsche Neal later describes the Universe as merely a big neighbourhood, separated by picket fences, a metaphor which Simak may very well have been happy to use himself.
The natives of High Desert (or at least the recruits who have ‘gone native’ almost literally) also live a pastoral existence, living on grease nuts and using nothing more advanced than reclaimed spearheads which the original natives abandoned.
In his vacation periods back on Earth, Cornell confronts his mother and makes a kind of peace with his father who, it transpires, had been right all along in assigning such importance to the fused glass discs for whose presence no one could provide a decent explanation.
So what point is Reed trying to make, if any? Reed is puzzling in that many of his novels – at least before ‘Marrow’ were very different to each other while still exhibiting a richness of characterisation, and a need to explore the soul of the protagonist. What they may have in common is a ‘masked’ character, in this case Porsche Neal, who is discovered to be an alien transformed into human.
‘Exaltation of Larks’ sees Sally Faulkner exposed as an ancient individual who was trying to subvert the Turtles’ plan for the universe. ‘Marrow’ sees one of the near-immortal captains exposed as the mastermind behind a convoluted plan to take over the ship, while in ‘Sister Alice’ it seems that hardly anyone ends up being what they initially purport to be.
Here, Reed is following Dick in examining what it is that defines us as human, and in so doing, highlights the irrelevance of Humanity in the Universe.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 17, 2019
Very strange, and a little bit scary.
June 11, 2008
Reed has a great writing style and builds his characters to where you know them almost as well as you know yourself. Beyond the Veil of Stars has a good, solid, but almost boring plot wrapped up in a great buildup of his characters lives and motivations. Nothing extremely exciting, but a good read nonetheless.
June 29, 2022
5* on my first read eight years ago. Second reading was very mixed. Each part had some great ideas fleshed out very well, but also some tedious plodding along. It has a good finish, but it felt like I had to work so hard to get there. I really like Robert Reed's 'Marrow' series much better.
January 9, 2015
I had this book on my book shelf which usually means I want to read it again. Strange book but interesting if you like SF. (spoiler alert) The explanation for the change in the sky doesn't work but the translation into the creatures on High Desert is ingenious.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 26, 2015
A few chapters in I realized I'd read this book years ago. But I read it again.
It was ok. Slightly depressing view of humanity & exploration of another world. Interesting idea in concept, but wanders a bit in execution.
It was ok. Slightly depressing view of humanity & exploration of another world. Interesting idea in concept, but wanders a bit in execution.
April 21, 2011
Reed introduces alien life as very different from us. He brings you into alien worlds and describes them well. There are a few good twists and turns as he unravels the mysteries in this story.
May 26, 2011
I'm shocked to find a Robert Reed novel in my book diary list. I though he was "new to me" via FSF.
June 25, 2014
Not the best Robert Reed. He has some really good ones but this one was a bit ho hum.
September 26, 2014
James Cameron chipped off a small piece of this book and bloated it into a movie called Avatar. This does not even begin to explain how wonderfully strange this book is.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews