In the twenty-first century man created the Eschaton, a sentient artificial intelligence. It pushed Earth through the greatest technological evolution ever known, while warning that time travel is forbidden, and transgressors will be eliminated. Distant descendants of this ultra high-tech Earth live in parochial simplicity on the far-flung worlds of the New Republic. Their way of life is threatened by the arrival of an alien information plague known as the Festival. As forbidden technologies are literally dropped from the sky, suppressed political factions descend into revolutionary turmoil. A battle fleet is sent from Earth to destroy the Festival, but Spaceship engineer Martin Springfield and U.N. diplomat Rachel Mansour have been assigned rather different tasks. Their orders are to diffuse the crisis or to sabotage the New Republic’s war-fleet, whatever the cost, before the Eschaton takes hostile action on a galactic scale.

Udgivet af Orbit 

Charles Stross
Charles David George "Charlie" Stross (born 18 October 1964) is a writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. His works range from science fiction and Lovecraftian horror to fantasy. Stross was born in Leeds. In the 1970s and 1980s, Stross published some role-playing game articles for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in the White Dwarf magazine. Some of his creatures, such as the death knight, githyanki (borrowed from George R. R. Martin's book, Dying of the Light), githzerai, and slaad (a chaotic race notable for their rigid caste system) were later published in the Fiend Folio monster compendium. His first published short story, "The Boys", appeared in Interzone in 1987. His first novel, Singularity Sky was published by Ace Books in 2003 and was nominated for the Hugo Award. In addition to working as a writer of fiction he has worked as a technical author, freelance journalist, programmer, and pharmacist at different times. He holds degrees in Pharmacy and Computer Science. Rogue Farm, an animated film based on his 2003 short story of the same title, debuted in August 2004.