Apes and Angels
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4.1 • 15 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Six-time Hugo Award winner Ben Bova chronicles the saga of humankind's expansion beyond the solar system in Apes and Angels, the second book of the Star Quest Trilogy which began with Death Wave.
Humankind headed out to the stars not for conquest, nor exploration, nor even for curiosity. Humans went to the stars in a desperate crusade to save intelligent life wherever they found it.
A wave of death is spreading through the Milky Way galaxy, an expanding sphere of lethal gamma radiation that erupted from the galaxy's core twenty-eight thousand years ago and now is approaching Earth's vicinity at the speed of light. Every world it touched was wiped clean of all life. But it’s possible to protect a planet from gamma radiation. Earth is safe.
Now, guided by the ancient intelligent machines called the Predecessors, men and women from Earth seek out those precious, rare worlds that harbor intelligent species, determined to save them from the doom that is hurtling toward them.
The crew of the Odysseus has arrived at Mithra Gamma, the third planet of the star Mithra, to protect the stone-age inhabitants from the Death Wave. But they’ll also have to protect themselves.
The Star Quest Trilogy
#1 Death Wave
#2 Apes and Angels
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the deeply disappointing final volume of six-time Hugo-winner Bova's Star Quest trilogy, humans are the ultra-advanced aliens encountering extraterrestrial life. As part of a mission to protect other planets from the "death wave... of gamma radiation" spreading from the core of the Milky Way, the crew of the starship Odysseus voyage to the Mithra star system, where they must negotiate the challenges of contact and the possibility that they are not the first interstellar travelers to visit. Bova's premise is intriguing, but the execution is at best an untidy, transient retro pleasure, and at worst offensively dated. Flat characterizations are exacerbated by obsolete notions of gender roles, and the supporting cast comprises infelicitously described single representatives of races, ethnicities, and nationalities: the white protagonist whimsically imagines a man of Aboriginal descent as "a black leprechaun," and a Chinese woman is "physically small, doll-like," and wearing a tunic with "a high mandarin collar." The rushed, unsatisfying conclusion also has disconcerting overtones of white-savior heroism.
