Cosmonaut Keep

Another of Edinburgh resident MacLeod's idiosyncratically distinctive futures ("The Sky Road", 2000, etc.). In 2044, following various wars and revolutions, Scotland maintains a precarious independence within the Communist-Russia-dominated EU. Computer whiz Matt Cairns's American-spook girlfriend, Jadey Ericson, obtains a computer disk containing details of a secret European Space Agency facility on a remote asteroid where scientists are secretly chatting with aliens. These ancient, highly advanced associations of bacteria-sized entities have given the ESA computer codes to crack any encryption-"and "blueprints for a revolutionary space drive. Rather than sharing the information, one EU faction agitates for a preemptive war against the US. Instead, though, the asteroid's scientists declare independence. In alternate chapters, we learn that a starship from Earth subsequently arrived at planet Mingulay, 12,000 light-years distant. Here, the "gods" are real; huge, squid-like krakens navigate starships; and the Cosmonaut Families share the planet with two other variant human types and the dinosaur-like saurs. But, apparently because of a prohibition by the kraken, the original starship remained idle in orbit. Now, Mingulay must compete economically with other human-colonized planets like Nova Terra. Researchers Gregor Cairns and Elizabeth Harkness team up with the immortal saur Salasso to investigate the ban on space flight-and solve the intricate problem of interstellar navigation without computers, the original bio-machines having long since degraded. Distinctive, politically challenging, both tantalizing and satisfying-and bulging with implications that merit, and will doubtless receive, further exploration. (Kirkus Reviews)