Four Hundred Billion Stars

Four Hundred Billion Stars #1

by Paul J. McAuley

The possibility of life on other planets is the theme of this science fiction thriller which depicts through the experiences of a young telepath, the ingenious and sometimes terrifying means by which this "life" survives in hostile environments.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera, Hard Science Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Aliens, Collections

253 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published May 1, 1988

About the author

name Paul McAuley previously wrote under

Reviews

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Baffling that quality, interesting, thought-provoking Hard SF like this barely scrapes an avg rating of 3, when people are dropping 5 stars on garbage like Leviathan Wakes as if derivate sub-Firefly video-game plot aping space adventures are going out of fashion. I'm reading the sequel Eternal Light and if anything it is the better novel - yet it's languishing at 2.89 at last check. Don't think I haven't noticed a similar pattern with M. John Harrison and Ian Watson as well, because I have - I can't even bear to lookup how poor old Gene Wolfe is doing. You savages need to take a long hard look at yourselves.

[Andreas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Synopsis: The story follows Dorthy Yoshida, who is drafted unwillingly into the navy because she needs to support a scientific mission on a foreign planet with her telepathic skills.
This planet might be inhabited by the aliens, hidden deeply in the vast wilderness, which the navy fights in different system. Dorthy is supposed to help locating the enemy or proof that they aren’t around. The only halfway intelligent life-form identified so far are the “herders”, leading around large amount of cattle.
The planet is very special, as it orbits a red dwarf star, and some advanced technology released it from its tidal lock some million years ago. Could it be that the herders are descendants of these aliens, sent back to a barbaric form?

Together with a scientific expedition, Dorthy follows the herders, trying to “read” their intentions. Of course, shit hits the fan shortly. Dorthy finds herself in survival mode.

Review: I’ve read several short stories by McAuley and also loved his novel Quiet War (review) four years ago. I thought to read the second novel in the Quiet War series, but somehow grabbed this novel. I don’t know how that happened, call it a Happy Accident (tm Bob Ross).
It’s the very first novel by the author, and it shows. There’s a serious drag in the middle part with a boilerplate “protagonist needs to survive the harsh wilderness”. I could have very well skipped that one without loosing much. Another really bad element was the unfolding of the riddle around those herders: a dozen pages of exposition right at the end of the book.

So, why did I still like the novel? First of all because of Dorthy (come on, can’t you name a Japanese lady differently?). She is grumpy and has fits. But with reasons – as a telepath she needs to have her own time just to survive. It’s been quite a long time since I read a SF book featuring a telepath outside of Marvel superheroes. This might be a dying breed of our beloved genre!

Also, McAuley throws a lot of ideas into this rather short novel: biological programming, millions of years of history, “terra”forming of planets by aliens (is there a different word for it?). Call it idea-driven, but it was great stuff.
Add to that several conflicts of Dorthy with the crew and political struggles, and you’ll get this fine example of a planetary romance.

It might not be the best of his works, but it won a Philip K Dick Award back in 1989. It has aged well enough and I liked it.

[Florin Pitea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice plot. Good world-building. I would have enjoyed this novel considerably more in case I had read it thirty years ago.

[Angus McKeogh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the most action-packed novel I’ve ever encountered, and with books in the sci-fi tradition that’s a little unusual, but I certainly enjoyed the vision of our future and the denouement. Very interesting premise.

[Elana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am following up on my resolution to read old SF books that have been languishing on my shelves for years. In this case, what should have been a painful duty became real pleasure. I read other McAuley's books and include a discussion of his novel "Of the Fall" in my book "Science Fiction, Alien Encounters, and Ethics of Posthumanism". But this one, his first novel, is much better. It is beautifully written, has interesting and mysterious aliens, and an explanation that does not disappoint. The main character is somewhat tiresome and I wish she were called something else than "Dorthy". But if you like alien encounters that are more than a pretext for wasting hardware, this one is highly recommended.

[Clare O'Beara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dorthy Yoshida, astronomer, is commandeered from her work because she has a psychic talent and sent to another planet, which orbits a red giant star - quite closely, as these suns are not very hot, meaning that the sun fills the sky almost all the time. In the past this planet was tidally locked so someone has restarted its spin - somehow.

There's an enemy attacking Terran colonists in another system and the officers fear whoever planoformed this planet and seeded it with life, is the same enemy. Dorthy is asked to read the minds and intentions of the apparently simple humanoid herders. She has a paper copy of Shakespeare's sonnets which she carries like a security blanket, and a mixed attitude to her upbringing on Earth. Matters of course go badly wrong....

I was interested in the astrophysics we see related and in the biological background to the planet's mix of life-forms. I was not particularly interested in the repeated lectures as to how society had evolved back on old Earth, back thousands of years ago, in the Age of Waste and the fractured age of expansion. Maybe xenobiologists under constant threat do deliver countless lectures on such topics. Otherwise, a few paragraphs would I believe have sufficed.

Dorthy is not a sympathetic character. She deliberately avoids relationships with anyone and pushes away men who want to be intimate with her - and when you can read minds, that's not going to be many. I disliked the continued use of 'Talent' for her ability. Why the capital? She comes across as selfish and sullen most of the time, doing as little as possible.

I could not believe how many major mistakes these characters were making. Reading about the Zulu wars, or Lord of the Rings would have served the party better than Elizabethan love sonnets. Their apparently deliberate ignorance means they don't set a guard or perimeter alarm while four people in a camp are sleeping all at the same time, so now we're down to two.
The next campsite is located, ideally, in a deep dry riverbed. Had they not heard of Isandlwana? Do they know nothing of taking the high ground, where they can see, and trees give fuel for fires and weapons and shelter and might slow attack? As it happens, it's the flash flood that gets them. Ideal.
Next, do we not know that it's a bad idea to take a captive along when you climb a cliff? Think of Gollum.

By about halfway through I was just reading to see how many more major mistakes these people would make. The story was quite slow and I didn't get attached to any character.
I did however enjoy the depiction of living on a world close to a red giant star.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in January 2001.

McAuley's auspicious debut, this novel, won awards, which were well deserved. It is an imaginative and original piece of science fiction.

Humankind is engaged in a war throughout the galaxy with mysterious, high tech aliens, who attacked an unmanned survey ship. No alien has ever been seen, because they always self-destruct their ships when in danger of capture. There is a small clue to their identity, as another survey has discovered a planet which was already planoformed in the past - set spinning when it must have at one time had one face perpetually turned to its sun, as the moon does to earth. The planet has a strange ecology, which includes animals which have been extinct for millions of years from a range of locations including Earth. But it is the unique animals which draw the attention of the human scientific community and military it is thought that they are possibly the degenerate descendants of a colony of the aliens they are fighting.

Astronomer Dorthy Yoshida is sent to the planet not because of the speciality that she has chosen to follow but because of one she has rejected. She has telepathic powers, able to sense something of what is in the mind of others. The idea is that she can try to find out the truth about the origins of the animals by searching for clues in their minds. However, as she descends from orbit to the surface of the planet, she has the momentary impression of contact with a vast intelligence. Finding that intelligence becomes the focus of her time on the planet.

The novels that Four Hundred Billion Stars most reminded me of are both among the best known in the genre: Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead and Dan Simmons' Hyperion. While not as subtle as the former or as gritty as the latter, this gives an indication of the quality of the novel.

[Carl Barlow · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's hundreds of years in the future, and humanity is spreading through the stars... and pissing off an unknown alien enemy. Clues as to the strength and aims of this enemy are suspected to be found on a remote, near-desert, and all-but tidal-locked planet. But nobody is quite sure how to go about discovering more without further arousing the aliens' wrath. So an empath is sent. Predictably, this excites matters somewhat.

This is solid-enough SF, with an interesting story and setting. The characters are a little bland (scientist-types, military-types, inbetween-types), and, considering they are living hundreds of years from the present, are surprisingly -and disappointingly- contemporary. The pacing and plotting is a bit off, too (just when things are starting to get going, McAuley sees fit to drop a flashback into proceedings), and at least fifty pages could have been safely lost. But as a first novel, such things can be overlooked, and are here by no means totally off-putting.

FHBS is entertaining and keeps the pages turning swiftly enough, but it won't grab you by the balls - more cup them gently and keep them warm.

[Thomson Kneeland · Rating 5 out of 5]

After having read a few other sci-fi novels recently as well as an attempt at John Saul (a pure joke in writing!), it was refreshing to be reminded of good writing, vocabulary, and well thought out universes. Though perhaps the full story of 400 Billion Stars was not the greatest space opera every written, I was enthralled to the end, and like life, the story was not topped with a climactic conclusion in which the mysteries of the universe are revealed. It's an impressive debut for Paul McCauley, and almost more along the lines of a novella rather than a space opera. Compare the depth of McCauley's writing, the breadth of the descriptions of the landscapes, even the characters to those of Niven, Asimov, and others, and you'll find a much better author here in my opinion, even if the story doesn't fulfill the climactic movie plot expectation of most. This is also the first novel I can remember where telepathy is used in a central character without it being hocus-pocus mysticism, or some cheesy "psychic" premise: the use of "tele-empathy" as a purely evolutionary sense beyond our sixth sense. If you need your next sci-fi read, Alistair Reynolds, Vernor Vinge, or some of McCauley's other novels (The Quiet War) may be a better place to start; but 400 Billion Stars still trumps the majority of the books out there in terms of writing and plausibility with a well thought out universe, premise and storyline.

[Mohammed Abdikhader Firdhiye · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book started very good,promising but got weaker by the word after that. The characters became robotic,shallow,the story non-existing.

I still find the author interesting after having read some really good short stories by him but this novel was too much debut novel flaws.

[Stef Rozitis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found it hard to follow but am going to give it the benefit of the doubt that this may be because I don't read a lot of space-travel sci-fi. I liked that Dorthy was an introverted, capable but unfriendly protagonist. I was irritated by the overt sexism of Ramirez and the passive aggressive sexism of Arcady. I felt Ramirez's reaction was anachronistic for the world built in the novel (though it was a good foil for Andrews). It irritated me that Dorthy slept with Arcady and how that was presented as inevitable (also how that slotted in with the twins and with Angel's role in the novel). It's somewhat cliche to have a female character's super-power be empathy and the whole reluctance thing too.

That said there were some interesting twists that made me think, especially subsequent to the events at the keep which I initially thought was the denoument. The lack of ethics or even intelligence of the military complex was well portrayed. Dorthy being a better shot than the men (Arcady in particular) was a nice touch, the family backstory was tawdry and I am not convinced necessary. Arcady and Dorthy's casual violence toward the herder they captured was believable but horrible.

I am going to give it 4 stars because it's good that we are not told too much about Dorthy's body (apart from the fact that it can be wounded and that it menstruates). We are not told that she is sexy or has big breasts, in fact the feeling is that probably she isn't. She's Japanese and can speak Portugese is a scientist as well as an empath, strong and good with a rifle. She loves literature- in particular Shakespeare. McAuley reassuringly shows us that when men get their hand off it they CAN write women after all. It was odd that Arcady urinated a few times but it seemed that Dorthy never does but that was a minor quirk rather than a major flaw.

I'm not going to be specifically hunting for more like this but I am glad I didn't avoid it.

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘We live in the ashes of history.’ So writes Paul McAuley as he proceeds to show us just how addicted to this mantra most intelligences are. Dorthy Yoshida is drafted by the Navy into a deadly conflict with unknown aliens around a distant sun because of her Talent - she can see into other creatures’ minds. She is set down on an anomalous planet circling a red dwarf where a number of ‘holds’ occupied by semi-sentient creatures have been constructed and they are acting as though they have no purpose until the humans arrive. The planet should be tidally locked to the star but it is rotating slowly, evidence that it was artificially modified, and it is this technology which frightens the Navy. Dorthy’s contacts with the herders, as they are named, reveals a startling concept, that the creatures evolved to attain intelligence when threatened, and they feel very threatened now. Just why they evolved this way and what they really fear is the basis of this entertaining first novel. It is patchy in parts but the sections examining Yoshida’s life and motivations are particularly effective. It’s a pretty good read and explicates some of Shakespeare’s sonnets as well!

[Chris Nagy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is I think McAuley's first novel and if so it is quite a debut.
It is a little slow moving and the plot a tad vague, but the future history that is described is fascinating. And the aliens are very well imagined throwing you into a completely different world.
There is a fair amount of astronomical speculation and explanation, but not overly so. It's not a lecture. It's part of the story so it's necessary.
Also, the protagonist is a young Japanese astronomer who happens to be slightly telepathic so she is being used to help understand these aliens. Through her character, I have learned something about Japanese culture and what it takes to understand other cultures. A pretty complex book for being rather short, just under 300 pages.
McAuley's writing is superb, maybe one of the most eloquent sci-fi writers working today.
So, all in all, a good read and McAuley has easily become one of my most favorite writers working today.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very compelling story - can't say much without giving the mystery away. Definitely worth the read, the science part is full on but comprehensible with a basic familiarity of astronomical terms. My only criticism is that there is too much information dumped in the final reveal and some of the book does feel like filler once you look back after knowing the outcome. Still, a good balance of character and story development.

[Abhinav · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ah, so I'm finally done with this book.
I know that isn't a promising start to this review, and that's deliberate, because I didn't like this book too much.

First, before you accuse me of prejudice against hard SF - you're right, but not in the way you think. I open a hard SF book *fully* expecting to like it, and this book was apparently one, so if there's any bias it's *not* towards criticism.

The plot summary spoke of an alien race that had the power to kickstart a tidally locked planet into rotation; it spoke of telepaths and hinted at mysteries hidden away in the galactic core. What could go wrong?

Lots, as it turned out. The most disappointing thing is that I can't quite claim that the summary is just wrong, and none of that stuff happens - it does, but only towards the end of the book. The story of the aliens, the story of the planet our heroine winds up on, the story of the book, really, is revealed to us in about twenty pages of exposition. The rest? The rest is one long trudge through an occasionally alien desert. I love old fashioned man versus wild stories but this one was pretty tame as such stories go.

The protagonist, until the final few pages - and maybe even then - comes across as a selfish, spoilt brat. This was perhaps intended, but it did nothing to pull me into the book - I never found myself rooting for Dorthy Yoshida. If the story isn't there, at least the characters should be interesting right?

There is absolutely no humour in the story - none. Fine, very few authors can do humour properly, that's OK - I'm just FYIing everyone here. The dialogues, without wit and without emotion - because I can't really connect with the characters - are trite, except at one point when they descend into laughable crassness: there's one sex scene in this book, and its tone is so out of place - with the scientific metaphors and the colourful phrasing that it's almost awardworthy. I hear they give out awards for this kind of thing?

Right after all that bashing, I still give this book two stars because it had potential. The story's actually pretty good, and the finale where it's laid out was spectacular enough. Pity the rest of the book was so dull, I was actually cringing at the spectacularness of the endgame.

[Kirby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny how the reviews with 4 or 5 stars are just synopses or rants about other books being bad. This won't change it, because I didn't like this book all that much.

The book has five chapters, of which I quite liked the first two.
Chapter one introduced us to the world, the conflict, and the characters, chapter two thrusts us deep into the world, throwing interesting challenges at our protagonist.
Then, in all of chapter three and most of chapter four, we and the protagonist are wandering aimlessly in search of the plot, and clues to the Mystery, respectively.
Finally, the second half of chapter four reveals it all! In one large, uninspired infodump. It's almost a monologue by the Big Bad, in the worst of Hollywood traditions. Then we get a very short and hollow finale and chapter five is really just a two-page epilogue where the protagonist imagines how everything will turn out.

If the writing wasn't as good as it is and the first two chapters hadn't been very promising I probably would not have finished this book. It seems like the author lost his way halfway through and then decided to end it as quickly as possible.

It's not a bad book, but it could have been so much better.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Empathic heroine, insecure military, ancient aliens. Not a bad mix. I appreciate the recognition that not everyone in the future is anglo.

[Steve Scanlan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first of McAuley's novels centred on Dorthy Yoshida who has an ability to read minds. She has been 'kidnapped' by the Navy who want to use her to discover if the planet of P'thrsn is inhabited by a hostile alien race known as the Enemy.

She and a handful of other humans search the planet paying special attention to a race consisting of herders and the smaller critters that they herd. Dorthy believes that these simple creatures may be the Enemy but she has a hard time convincing the Navy.

A substantial amount of the story is devoted to the trek across the planet made by Dorthy and a scientist, Arkady. This section tended to drag and I began to think about the next novel I was going to read. The ending of the novel, which dealt with the confrontation with the alien race, was an improvement, but overall I'd say it was a disappointment after having read ETERNAL LIGHT.

[Andrew Brooks · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok for a first novel

But if it had been actually edited it would have been good, instead of barely passing. Some menus plot errors would have been corrected by said editing, But then there's also some pervasive antagonism against military evident that I found personally annoying. Then again, that could be just the British way of humor, rather than straight hostility; hard to say

[Chris Gillies · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well written book, but full of minor epics that seem to fizzle out too easily to get to the punchline at the end of the book. An enjoyable read but I was at times confused why the book even existed :)

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very very good first novel! I only recently started reading Paul McAuley and have lots of wonderful books ahead of me to catch up on! Excellent for those who like serious science fiction with good characterization…and I love the biological focus.

[Kim Zinkowski · Rating 2 out of 5]

C+.

[Ubik 2.0 · Rating 1 out of 5]

aggiornamento vecchio libro letto chissà quando

[Felix · Rating 4 out of 5]

Feather weight

Ok so nice central idea on mega giant habitat, but you'd have thought it would have been big enough for at least one 3d character?

[Jon Pennycook · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favourite book by Paul J McAuley. Many of the other related novels were a bit disappointing.

[Roddy Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Dorthy Yoshida is a telepath and an astronomer. because of her talent she is sent to investigate the mystery of a small planet orbiting a red dwarf star. Although it appears to have been planoformed, shaped by intelligent life, its only advanced life-forms are creatures called herders. They are known to possess primitive intelligence, while the slug-like herbivores they shepherd have only a rudimentary nervous system.

Could these life-forms really be connected with The Enemy, the unknown entity which fights a savage war with mankind in deep space?

It didn’t seem likely. Until Dorthy landed, when her mind immediately detected a dazzling intellect, the intensity of which she had never before felt….’

Blurb from the 1990 Orbit paperback edition

McAuley introduces us here to Dorthy Yoshida, a telepathic astronomer who has been commandeered by the military for a delicate mission.
Humanity are at war with an unknown species called simply The Enemy. So far, no one knows anything about them, except that that they have initiated hostilities from their bases in the asteroids of a system that humans blundered into.
Now a planet has been discovered in orbit around a giant red star. The planet has been spun-up into orbit, and seeded with life from various systems including Earth. Although there are various structures on the planet, they seem ancient and no civilisation seems to have survived. The dominant bioform is the predatory herders, creatures who travel and hunt in packs.
Dorthy is sent to the planet and, while her capsule is entering the atmosphere, senses one highly intelligent presence.
This novel was quite deservedly nominated for various awards. It is a complex character-driven mystery which not only examines the nature of Dorthy herself, but challenges the nature of what we think of as intelligence and questions its importance. In a universe where survival is imperative for a species, intelligence is arguably something one might only need to employ when danger threatens.
Dorthy’s world is set in a fully-realised universe full of ordinary and extraordinary humans, differing only from us in their level of technological development.

[Grady · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find I read a McAuley book for the world-building and the play of ideas; his characters are often hit or miss, for me. Here, telepath Dorthy Yoshida finds herself shanghaied into an Earther space-navy expedition to a strange planet that appears home to species collected from across at least six worlds (including a prehistoric Earth) and that may be home to a mysterious enemy. It has some of the feel of an adventure film where the male characters can’t stop being stupidly aggressive, bringing down trouble on themselves and everyone around them. But although there is plenty of drama, the pace felt slow, and I didn’t really like the main character - she showed so little kindness or warmth towards other characters - at best, just a kind of tolerance. I did want to know what would happen to her, and the ultimate solution to the mystery. Dorthy finds solace in Shakespeare (although some other highly educated characters barely know who he is). I kept wondering if the plot echoes a specific play of his, but if so, I can’t identify it.

[Attila · Rating 2 out of 5]

400 billion is the estimated number of stars in our galaxy. Somewhere, a small planet orbits a giant red star. Bathed in sickly red light and inhabited by primitive life forms, at first it appears uninteresting to humans. However, its unusual rotation rate and an alien building on the surface hint that there is more than meets the eye, and explorer teams are sent to investigate.

The first chapters are good, presenting life in a small outpost, with a tense and gripping atmosphere. This is followed by a long and boring part about some clueless explorers trudging through a remote part of the planet, making observations about the landscape and fauna; it does not add much to the story, and could have been dealt with in 5 pages instead of 100. A similarly boring part follows, describing a team exploring the vicinity of the alien building and uncovering the "mystery" of the planet, which is hardly interesting or unexpected, and by that time I could not really care about it anyway.

[Guy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another book with a good idea at its core, but where the execution is lacking... as if the author lost interest somewhere during the project. The lack of sympathetic characters would influence my rating negatively anyway, but the plodding picaresque story line followed by an overly hasty denouement provided lukewarm enjoyment at best. Which is a pity because the underlying ideas are worthy of a good space opera. Oh well.

[Chet · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author covers a lot of ground (and space) in his books with wide ranging results. This book features a heroine who can read alien minds (kind of, sometimes). She lands on a world to figure out who the enemy is because nobody else can figure it out. There must be an enemy--it is an alien world, right? The sentence structure was often unusual--maybe a British thing? In an apparent effort to be mystical, the wordage sometimes didn't make sense to me.