Nucleation
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- £3.99
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
2022 Compton Crook Award Finalist
“Recommended for fans of Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon and Martha Wells’ Murderbot series.”
—Booklist
In this riveting debut science-fiction technothriller, a top-notch VR pilot encounters a disaster during the highest profile space-faring project of her career. Now she must unearth a critical truth: was her discovery due to a betrayal, a business rival, or a threat to humanity itself?
Helen Vectorvich just botched first contact. And she did it in both virtual reality and outer space.
Only the most elite Far Reaches deep-space pilots get to run waldos: robots controlled from thousands of lightyears away via neural integration and quantum entanglement. Helen and her navigator were heading the construction of a wormhole gate that would connect Earth to the stars . . . until a routine system check turned deadly.
As nasty rumors swarm around her, and overeager junior pilots jockey to take her place, Helen makes a startling discovery: microscopic alien life is devouring their corporate equipment. Is the Scale just mindless, extra-terrestrial bacteria? Or is it working—and killing—with a purpose?
While Helen struggles to get back into the pilot’s chair, and to communicate with the Scale, someone—or something—is trying to sabotage the Far Reaches project once and for all. They’ll have to get through Helen first.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Thought-provoking technology and well-paced intrigue do most of the heavy lifting in Unger's clever but uneven debut. Elite waldo operator Helen Vectorovich is remotely piloting a robot on a routine assignment to the deep space construction site of a jump gate when she discovers an anomaly in the construction nanites. Then an impossible interference in the quantum feed connecting Helen's waldo to both her physical body and her navigator, Ted, both planetside in Launch City, brings the mission to an abrupt end and leads to Ted's death. In the aftermath of the mission failure, Unger draws readers into the competitive world of waldo operators as Helen battles vicious gossip blaming her for the tragedy. Amid an investigation into possible corporate espionage, Helen unearths a clue in an abandoned asteroid mine that suggests alien contact may be the more likely cause for the disastrous quantum interference. Though science fiction fans will be captivated by Unger's smart, plausible vision of the future of space travel, especially the elegant solution of utilizing quantum entanglement to communicate across light years, the first contact scenario is less well defined, bringing this immersive sci-fi thriller to a murky close. Still, Unger offers readers plenty to chew on.
