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    The Eternity Artifact
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    The Eternity Artifact
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    The Eternity Artifact
    Ebook549 pages8 hours

    The Eternity Artifact

    By L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    5,000 years in the future, humankind has spread across thousands of worlds, and more than a dozen different governments exist in an uneasy truce. But human beings have found no signs of other life anywhere approaching human intelligence.

    This changes when scientists discover a sunless planet they name Danann, travelling the void just beyond the edge of the Galaxy at such a high speed that it cannot be natural. Its continents and oceans have been sculpted and shaped, with but a single megaplex upon it--close to perfectly preserved--with tens of thousands of near-identical metallic-silver-blue towers set along curved canals. Yet Danann has been abandoned for so long that even the atmosphere has frozen solid. Within a few years Danann will approach an area of singularities that will make exploration and investigation impossible.

    Orbital shuttle pilot Jiendra Chang, artist Chendor Barna, and history professor Liam Fitzhugh are recruited by the Comity government and its Deep Space Service, along with scores of other experts as part of an unprecedented and unique expedition to unravel Danann's secrets. And there are forces that will stop at nothing to prevent them, even if it means interstellar war.

    Other Series by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
    The Saga of Recluce
    The Imager Portfolio
    The Corean Chronicles
    The Spellsong Cycle
    The Ghost Books
    The Ecolitan Matter
    The Forever Hero
    Timegod's World

    Other Books
    The Green Progression
    Hammer of Darkness
    The Parafaith War
    Adiamante
    Gravity Dreams
    The Octagonal Raven
    Archform: Beauty
    The Ethos Effect
    Flash
    The Eternity Artifact
    The Elysium Commission
    Viewpoints Critical
    Haze
    Empress of Eternity
    The One-Eyed Man
    Solar Express

    At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateAug 1, 2006
    ISBN9781429914000
    Author

    L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

    L. E. Modesitt, Jr., is the bestselling author of the fantasy series The Saga of Recluce, Corean Chronicles, and the Imager Portfolio. His science fiction includes Adiamante, the Ecolitan novels, the Forever Hero Trilogy, and Archform: Beauty. Besides a writer, Modesitt has been a U.S. Navy pilot, a director of research for a political campaign, legislative assistant and staff director for a U.S. Congressman, Director of Legislation and Congressional Relations for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a consultant on environmental, regulatory, and communications issues, and a college lecturer. He lives in Cedar City, Utah.

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    Reviews for The Eternity Artifact

    4/5

    32 ratings6 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I generally find things to like about Modesitt's novels. Typically his characters are forced to make hard decisions and then live with the consequences of those decisions. Typically he pays attention to economics and how they shape a society and the lives of its citizens. Typically his characters have to deal with their fare share of drudgery and boredom rather than bouncing effortlessly through an unending succession of fantastic adventures. On the other hand, there have been times when in reading his novels it felt to me like he was telling more or less exactly the same story over and over and over.This one felt different: a bit less rigorous, but quite a bit more fun. That's a tradeoff that I was happy to make. I liked and cared about the characters that I was supposed to like and care about. There were a few basic plot aspects that left me perplexed, but I didn't really care.
    • 5/5
      Written from the standpoint of multiple first persons -- Goodman/Bond the armorer tech/spy; Fitzhugh the professor; Barna the artist and Chang the pilot. everything a science fiction book should be --from the discovery of the Danann world to the artifact they discovered, to the various hypothesis postulated and to the space battles. Couldn't help but root for Fitzhugh and Chang to get together in the end as well.
    • 2/5
      Very boring scifi. Modesitt can suck the fun and excitement out of even the most amazing alien tech.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      I found this book at Goodwill and the front and back cover description enticed me enough to purchase (I've found that for the $1.50 commitment it's worthwhile trying out authors you wouldn't otherwise purchase at $8.00). This is the first book I've read by L. E. Modesitt, Jr. - I've seen some of his fantasy work (the Recluse novels) so I have wanted to try him out. Initially, the story was a bit off-putting as the character viewpoint changes pretty much with every chapter, and one of the characters is a professor who thinks and speaks using the largest words and most complex sentence structure imaginable. I soon got past that and found most of the characters interesting and likable. Also, the plot was interesting (space opera), even with some flaws in the math (there's another review here that gives the book 1/2 star as the reader couldn't get past some of the bad science, so I won't dwell on it).One thing I've found in my readings is that a book needs to be judged by the overall quality of the story and not the minutiae (not to say that a lot of errors can turn me off as a reader, while this book had problems there wasn't anything in it that bothered me to the point of putting it down). The book could definitely have used more editing - lots of typos (obvious inappropriate word substitution via spelling and grammar checkers) but it seems that this has become the norm in paperback fiction. If one gets too bogged down by inaccuracies, forget about reading SF from previous decades as the further you go back in time of publication, the less accurate the material becomes.In general, the book was well paced, the characters, setting and plot interesting - all good hallmarks of a good read. I wouldn't say that this book was an intense page turner, but I felt entirely entertained by the finish, and ultimately that's why I read SF.
    • 3/5
      An interesting novel about a future galactic civilization divided up into competing cultures that all originated on Earth. Mainly, it is the democracies vs. the chinese vs. those who still believe in God. The discovery of a whole planet of alien artifacts is the biggest news in a long time, and getting there and bringing back discoveries pits the 'enlightened' (my term) against those that still believe in God. Its a good story, but you know who's going to win long before the end. Strangely enough, while there are amazing discoveries made, including an amazing new theory, the book ends before the results can be felt in all of the civilizations. Its a good story with interesting characters, though he perhaps over-does the anti-social professor and the anti-social shuttle pilot characters.