THREE
FOUR
PART FIVE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
PART SIX
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
EPILOGUE
TIMELINE OF GALACTIC SERIES
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FIRST CONTACT
“I only notify them of your presence. So they will know, I expect, that you may someday come.”
“Why not—”
“Come to study you? Too fraught with risk. Your kind is too precarious. I have seen thousands of ruined, gutted worlds. Wars, suicides, who can tell? To my makers you are a plague, the one percent of the galactic cultures that carry the seeds of chaos.”
“I don’t…”
“You are rare. My makers, you see, were machines such as myself.”
“The stars are…”
“Populated by the machines, descendants of the organic cultures that arose and died.”
ACCLAIM FOR GREGORY BENFORD’S CLASSIC NOVELS OF THE GALACTIC CENTER
ACROSS THE SEA OF SUNS
“So good it hurts. Benford puts it all together in this one—adult characters, rich writing, innovative science, a grand philosophical theme—it’s all here.”
—Washington Post Book World
“Confirms again Benford’s unsurpassed ability to simultaneously sustain literary values and exciting speculative science.”
