Shroud
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4.5 • 2件の評価
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- ¥1,500
発行者による作品情報
On a planet shrouded in darkness, a stranded crew must fight for survival. But, the darkness may have plans of its own in this wildly original story from Adrian Tchaikovsky, Hugo and Arthur C. Clarke Award–winning author of Children of Time.
They looked into the darkness and the darkness looked back . . .
New planets are fair game to asset strippers and interplanetary opportunists – and a commercial mission to a distant star system discovers a moon that is pitch black, but alive with radio activity. Its high-gravity, high-pressure, zero-oxygen environment is anathema to human life, but ripe for exploitation. They named it Shroud.
Under no circumstances should a human end up on Shroud’s inhospitable surface. Except a catastrophic accident sees Juna Ceelander and Mai Ste Etienne doing just that. Forced to stage an emergency landing, in a small, barely adequate vehicle, they are unable to contact their ship and are running out of time. What follows is a gruelling journey across land, sea and air. During this time, Juna and Mai begin to understand Shroud’s dominant species. It also begins to understand them . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this thrilling if somewhat long-winded meditation on extraterrestrial life and the trouble that awaits humanity if it tries to exploit the outer terra, Hugo Award winner Tchaikovsky (Service Model) imagines a distant galaxy being eyed for Earth's Third Stage Commercial Expansion. Within this galaxy, the planet Shroud appears uninhabitable, with no light source and an atmosphere of "roiling smoker's fug." But when the space vessel Garveneer detects an "all-frequencies storm of radio traffic" emanating from the planet, a Special Projects team awakens from deep-freeze hibernation to investigate. Using drones, the scientists discover the planet is crawling with a "hive mind" of tubular creatures. Before any theory about the worms' origin can be developed, however, a collision disrupts research and sends two team members—narrator Juna and macro engineer Mai—hurling toward Shroud in a two-person pod. Stranded, they manipulate the pod to cross the planet's cavernous landscape hoping for rescue even as they take the opportunity to observe Shroud's strange inhabitants—who study the humans right back. The old-fashioned Vernian adventure meshes well with the vividly rendered world full of bizarre creatures. This space fable is sure to please Tchaikovsky's fans.
