Customer Reviews

The Eternity Artifact

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have criticized Modesitt in other reviews, particularly in his recent novels in the Recluce universe, for using the same plot over and over. By contrast, in this novel Modesitt has brought new ideas, new plots and a new approach to story-telling. The result is his best story in several years.

Millennia after humankind has colonized other star systems, its religious wars are now interstellar. The Comity is the largest interstellar government, if not especially well-organized, and unlike its rival polities is secular. The Comity is secretly organizing an expedition to a newly-discovered world that has ancient, abandoned alien constructions beyond any technology humankind has. Among the experts recruited to this expedition, and the points of view the reader follows, are

- Fitzhugh, a history professor who hides behind a wall of words, and who may be more than he knows.

- Chandra, a shuttle and needleship pilot, who is far too honest and far too good a pilot for her own good.

- Barna, an artist who cannot resist the chance to bring his skills and perceptions to the first alien culture found.

- Goodman, spy and assassin for the religious Covenant worlds, who infiltrates that Comity mission.

The secret doesn't stay a secret long, and Modesitt skillfully mixes these four viewpoints, and provides some fine plot twists and surprises along the way.

The issues of religiosity and its impact on a secular society are a theme here, in the same way they inform "The Parafaith War" and its sequel, "The Ethos Effect." The novel is about the reactions of the various secular and religious-based cultures to the evidence of an advanced alien culture and the effect of those reactions on the four protagonists. For a man who lives in Utah, home of the LDS church, his judgments of religion and religious culture are harsh.

The four protagonists are especially well-drawn. They have distinctive voices and their distinct personalities emerge effectively. True, Modesitt remains purely incapable of writing a love scene. And he can't seem to decide if he likes or loathes his assassin. But these are minor issues in a thoughtful story, well-told. It's superior to anything he has written lately. Recommended.

The criticism's of other reviewers, particularly those concerning the author's alleged "rehashing" of previous book characters and "slow pacing" (both by professional and amateur critics) are duly noted.

However, personally speaking, I have not read any of Modesitt's books, this is the first I have heard of him so I cannot really comment on the veracity or not of reviewer's comments.

_I_ can say however that I did not see any real problems with the writer's characters or character development. Further, I found the relationship (and related "sexual tension" tropes, etc.) between two of the main characters (who shall remain nameless ;) very interesting, not to mention familiar (in more ways then one). Indeed, you can find a very similar relationship (though arguably much more developed then in Modesitt's book) in Dread Empire's Fall: The Praxis by Walter Jon Williams (the first in a great series IMHO definitely highly recommend it).

I do not really agree that the story started that slowly (though I found myself asking a couple of times, "When are they going to get to the space part" ;) but still thought it definitely kept the readers interest throughout, many times I found it very difficult to put down.

To me the strongest aspects was the very realistic sociological, political, even psuedo-historical ruminations by the author especially through the "Professor Fitzugh" character. Though sometimes he was annoying and maybe a bit overwrought-stereotypical overall very informative and entertaining.

Very recommended. Hope you enjoy as much as I did.

Modesitt is probably better known for his fantasy than his SF, if only because he's written so much more of it (he has two active series, plus another five-volume series).

His SF shares some of the features that make his fantasy writing so compelling: vivid world-building and thoughtfulness about the implications of actions. The Eternity Artifact is no different; not only are we treated to the discovery of a truly alien artifact, but the suggestions Modesitt makes are surprising indeed. There is some compelling action, but they aren't substituted for an actual ending, as military SF sometimes does.

The use of rotating first-person POV works rather well for this story--better, perhaps, than a single narrator would have been. My only real complaint, though, lies in the universe Modesitt has constructed. It reminds me of a far-future version of "The Octagonal Raven," but it is such a crowded universe that I wish a prologue, or perhaps simply a map, had been provided to set the stage. [To put it in perspective, the political situation here is even more complicated than in The Ethos Effect and The Parafaith War.]

That said, fans of Modesitt's SF will certainly want to read this book, and fans of his fantasy should definitely give it a try as well.

This is my first Modesitt novel and it was enjoyable if slightly slow. As far as sci-fi ideas, I'd rate it 9/10, execution gets 7/10. Five thousand years from now the first sign of alien life is discovered in the form of an artificial planet, 6 billion years old, on which a dazzling but sterile hollow city has been built. Faster than light travel exists so getting beyond the galaxy (where it is located) is a matter of days.

Humans have populated thousands of worlds and have divided into the following groups: Sunni/Muslim, Covenant/Christian, Comity/ secular & Middle Kingdom/Chinese. For theological & political reasons, none of the groups wants the Comity (who found the planet) to succeed in their mission. The story is told by four of the characters - a pilot, artist, historian & spy. The author has an annoying habit of repeating the same explanation or action for each character. There is also an overabundance of military/technical gibberish that most will bypass.

The secret(s) of the aliens, their monumental achievement, who they were, what they did & why they did it & the reason we cannot reproduce their technology is quite brilliant. I am looking forward to other books by the same author, hopefully without the repetitiion or military gobbly-gook.

The Eternity Artifact (2005) is a standalone SF novel. It is set several millennia from now in a galaxy apparently lacking alien cultures. Humans colonized nearby stars and gradually spread into the Tellurian Diaspora. The League of Worlds are tied to Earth, but the Comity, Chrysanthemum Worlds, Middle Kingdom, Worlds of the Covenant, and Sunnite Alliance are independent polities.

Chronos is an extragalactic world more than ten billion years old. It is slightly larger than Terra, but much denser, with 280 times the mass. It was discovered and explored by the League during the fourth millennium. Later expeditions were mounted by Covenant and the CW.

Another world -- named Danann -- is later discovered moving away from Chronos. The Comity refurbishes the Magellan -- an old colony ship -- and equips it with dreadnaught drives and the armament of a battle cruiser. Then they start gathering personnel for an extended voyage to Danann.

In this novel, John Paul Goodman is a senior operative for the Covenant Intelligence Service. He has recently assassinated the First Advocate of the Middle Kingdom worlds.

Liam Fitzhugh is a former elite commando team leader. After two terms, he left the service and became an academic. Now he is a full professor of History, specializing in trends.

Jiendira Chang is a shuttle pilot. She has lost her former licenses for reporting a superior to the authorities. Now she is working on the frontier flying old and poorly maintained shuttles.

Chendor Barna is an artist on Gallia. He is good enough to take only commissions that he likes.

Daffyd Morgan is a D.S.S. Commander. He is the operations officer on the Magellan. As such, he commands the needle boats and the shuttle craft.

In this story, Goodman is tasked with a mission impersonating a Comity armorer named William Gerald Bond, soon to be assigned onboard the Magellan. He is to gather parts from the armory and assemble an AG signaler.

Fitzhugh receives a message congratulating him on applying for a senior fellowship with the Comity Diplomatic Corps. He has not applied for such a position and wonders who has submitted his name. He reckons that he can decline later and ignores the message.

Later, Fitzhugh discovers a Security man within his office. He is told to check his messages and finds that he is released from the university on a sabbatical with the Diplomatic Corps. The Security agent does not know anything other than he is to escort Fitzhugh to a Comity courier.

Chang returns to the station to find herself released from her job and assigned to the D.S.S. as a lieutenant. A courier pilot flies her off the station. Eventually, she reaches an asteroid station in the outer fringes of the Hamilton system.

Chang is briefed on the mission by Commander Morgan and introduced to Lieutenant Braun, another shuttle pilot. They both start running simulations of the Magellan shuttles. Chang soon learns the basic parameters of the target world, but it does not match any known planet.

Barna is also met by a Security agent and is transported to Deep Find Station. He joins a group of other civilians, mostly scientists of some sort. He also learns that none -- other than the top command -- knows the destination of the Magellan.

Goodman is put to work inventorying the armory and refitting older torpedoes. The Chief Armorer is a stickler for safety and neatness, but knows his business. Goodman learns some new techniques from him and Ciorio, another armorer second class. He starts planning the theft of components for the signaler.

Eventually the Magellan separates from the asteroid station and the top brass discloses the destination and purpose of the expedition. Danann has abandoned alien buildings. From prior observations, those who built the structures were probably much more advanced than contemporary human technology.

This tale leads the Magellan into several conflicts with other human cultures. First the Alliance attacks them within the Hamilton system. Then enemy agents sabotage the systems and attack the top brass. Of course, Goodman is trying to betray the ship's destination.

This story dwells on the mindset of theistic societies. Like several other tales by this author, the fundamentalist cultures do not want humanity to discover new sciences and technologies. Naturally, other more secular societies want to acquire such advances for themselves, but the Covenant and Alliance worlds want to suppress such knowledge.

This work draws upon prior experiences of the author in naval service, aviation and academics. It also draws heavily upon his knowledge of the arts. Read and enjoy!

Recommended for Modesitt fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of academic reasoning, artistic intuition, and true romance.

-Arthur W. Jordin

It's the future. Humanity has spawned a number of civilizations, with their central organizing themes revolving around the presence or absence of religious beliefs. When a strange artifact is discovered in deep space, one that may provide answers to fundamental religious questions, how much will these civilizations gamble to protect their way of life? "' As has been quoted so often in history, there is little difference between miracles ascribed to deities, magic, and sufficiently advanced technology'" (p. 293).

In The Eternity Artifact, by L. E. Modesitt, Jr., this story is told through the first person experiences of four people: Professor Liam Fitzhugh, who may be much more than a history scholar; artist Chendor Barna, who sees things differently than other people; shuttle pilot Jiendra Chang, extremely competent but possessing a short fuse; and assassin Goodman/Bond, who is charged by his government to sabotage the efforts of the Comity government to investigate this artifact.

The story, through these four sets of eyes, revolves around the trip to the mysterious artifact, the attempts to interpret what they find, and ...sabotage.

Modesitt takes many opportunities to discuss, I assume, his views toward religion. It's not flattering:

- "The election has made it clear that the Middle Kingdom must be run on principles of enlightened humanism and secularism, and not by the dead hands of ancient prophets and barbaric gods" (p. 2)

- "Religious implications? What did aliens have to do with religion? If someone believed in an all-powerful god - or goddess - the damned deity had to have power over aliens and us. Who believed in a deity that wasn't all-powerful? Didn't say anything, though. Never did understand why people believed that crap. Life after death? Even the words were a contradiction" (p. 120).

- "'All truth comes from the Lord,' countered Tomas. 'If science, or a secular thinker, challenges what their imams declare as their God's truth, they will follow the imam. In a technological society, being a true believer tends to create a certain schizoid behavior'" (p. 142).

- "Science had found no proof of gods or angels, and so most who believed truly in the superiority of intellect and reason had drifted away from belief in a supreme deity who created the universe. We believed - for I was certainly among that group - that with time and sufficient knowledge human beings could eventually unlock all the secrets of the universe, from the smallest components of fermions and bosons to the vastness of the universe itself" (p. 294).

- "It's not precisely a question of intelligence, but of beliefs. We all have beliefs. Certain sets of beliefs enhance intelligence while others restrict the scope of its application. true believers, theocratic or otherwise, are those whose beliefs limit their applied intelligence. Throughout history, they've always been so" (p. 450).

It's gotta be personal!

This story had interesting character development, tension, discovery, and battles. It moved a bit slowly toward the end, and I felt the conclusion was a bit underwhelming. Still, I look forward to reading another Modesitt sci-fi novel.

_The Eternity Artifact_ by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. is a fun, well-written far future, hard science, deep space science fiction novel. The basic premise is that humanity has spread throughout the galaxy through thousands of worlds, forming several interstellar governments, none of which appear to like the other (and indeed some hate all the others at a deeply-felt religious level). They exist at the start of the book at best in an uneasy truce, though they are always scheming for ways to gain an advantage over others.

Throughout the galaxy, no one has found any evidence of past or present alien intelligences. Until now that is. A sunless planet, ejected from the galaxy and traveling at unheard of speeds deep into the intergalactic void, has been discovered by one of the interstellar governments. The world appears unlike anything ever seen. Though the atmosphere apparently froze solid billions of years ago, the planet shows evidence that its oceans and continents had been deliberately manipulated into the present form by some alien intelligence. Even more striking, a single city or megaplex had been discovered, perfectly preserved, a realm of thousands of nearly identical silvery-blue metallic towers set along a system of what were once canals. The city is so old it predated even the freezing-out of the atmosphere.

The world was dubbed Danann and one interstellar government, the Comity, dispatched a top-secret mission to this incredibly distant world. It was comprised of a specially selected mixture of military personnel and civilian experts, the mission's story told through the eyes of four individuals, each individual meriting a chapter presenting the book's activity from their point of view. One is Liam Fitzhugh, a professor of historical trends pressed against his will into the mission as an academic expert (and who possesses hidden depths and an important though little-known at first background). Another is Chendor Barna, a highly talented and famous artist picked to chronicle the mission and to use his hard-to-define artist's eye to ascertain details missed by others. The third person is Jiendra Chang, a hardened, somewhat jaded female shuttle pilot, one who doesn't get along well with authority but brought on as one of the best at what she does.

The fourth person is William Gerald Bond. Or rather, is known as such to those on the ship _Magellan_, the main vessel of the expedition to Danann. In reality his name if John Paul Goodman and he is a foreign operative from a power opposed to the Comity, deeply conditioned and highly trained and who killed the real Bond and replaced him on the mission. His presence not only indicates a real danger to those on expedition and to the mission, but hints at the depths of political intrigue within the Comity and with other governments. Awash with plans within plans, the other governments either want the vast alien technological bonanza that Danann represents for themselves (or deny others from getting it if they can't have it), or in the cases of some religiously-motivated governments, want to bury and repress it, preventing anyone from ever getting it (and making sure no one from the expedition is ever heard from again).

It was a good book. I liked the political intrigue though I felt that the other governments could have been fleshed out a little better. I thought that the mechanism of presenting the story from the point of view of four individuals worked well and they were distinct characters, though I found the excessive verbiage of Fitzhugh sometimes a bit much (though his verbiage was explained, it was still sometimes hard to read). The mystery of the alien technology was quite interesting when it was finally presented at the end, I certainly didn't guess it. I really liked the sense of mood and atmosphere of the expedition once they were on Danann, the sense of being way out in the darkness, far from home, of the sheer alien-ness of the megaplex, of the deep sense of mystery there and the feeling that anything could happen. The book is also self-contained and stand-alone. Though I enjoy trilogies, quartets, and so on, it is good sometimes to read a book that begins and ends an entire tale.

Better known for his fantasy novels (eg. The Recluce novels), Modesitt also writes science fiction novels. The Eternity Artifact is set in one of his typical SF worlds: future SF, multiple polities. intrigue, and action. Competent characters, often one or more who is tied to an espionage organization. Lots of sociological speculation in and amongst the action.

In this instance, these usual tools are put into a space opera, showing an expedition to an runaway alien planet by a polity who has some very serious rivals. Rivals serious enough to use sabotage, agents and even outright space warfare to stop the expedition, or steal its secrets for itself.

The action is seen through the perspective of four protagonists, one of whom is not who he appears to the rest. Its told in first person throughout, and so we get lots of internal consideration and thought as the very different quartet--an artist, a former agent turned professor, a shuttle pilot, and an armorer more than he appears journey to a Big Dumb Object--the planet of Danann. It is the epynomous "Eternity Artifact", an unbelievably ancient alien world in a universe where no other aliens have ever been found. A tempting prize indeed!

Some don't really care for Modesitt's style, since he does like to laden sociological speculation heavily into his plot and story, and it can be off-putting. I wasn't entirely thrilled with Recluce, for example, and have enjoyed his other novels more. Eternity Artifact falls into this category, and I think its because of the multiple protagonists. This allows for a variety of perspectives which manage to keep a balance of ideas in tension.

The ending and denouement feel a bit weak in my opinion, but in the getting there, I was reasonably entertained. And whether you agree with his opinions or not, Modesitt does raise some good sociological questions in the story. And there is even the barest hint of a romance, too, swirled in.

I enjoyed the book.

In The Eternity Artifact, a distinctly alien city draws a human exploration vessel into the intergalactic void. But humanity is not united in the goal of discovering the city's secrets; indeed the city reveals not only the best of human curiosity and wonder, but also the worst of human intolerance and fear.

This was my first foray into Modesitt's tales since I was mostly disappointed with the Forever Hero trilogy. Modesitt did not disappoint this time out. The plot keeps you reading and the pacing (especially disappointed with this in the Forever Hero trilogy) felt right...with the point of view of the story flitting, on the whole gracefully, from the perspectives of four different characters.

Overall, The Eternity Artifact is definitely worth picking up...it is a great scifi exploration mystery, posing questions and ultimately theorizing answers that have a firm basis in science as we understand it today...yet leaves plenty of room for the possibility-expanding ideas that are critical to good science fiction.

This is one of the finest works written by L.E. Modesitt. It incorporates some of the common threads from his other works but in an more elegant and refined way. If you have enjoyed any of Modesitt's science fiction this is a must read. If you have not read any of his science fiction this is a great place to start.