Read and Download Ebook Firstborn... Firstborn Arthur C. Clarke , Stephen Baxter PDF File: Firstborn... 1 Read and Download Ebook Firstborn... Firstborn Arthur C. Clarke , Stephen Baxter Firstborn Arthur C. Clarke , Stephen Baxter The Firstborn–the mysterious race of aliens who first became known to science fiction fans as the builders of the iconic black monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey–have inhabited legendary master of science fiction Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s writing for decades. With Time’s Eye and Sunstorm, the first two books in their acclaimed Time Odyssey series, Clarke and his brilliant co-author Stephen Baxter imagined a near-future in which the Firstborn seek to stop the advance of human civilization by employing a technology indistinguishable from magic. Their first act was the Discontinuity, in which Earth was carved into sections from different eras of history, restitched into a patchwork world, and renamed Mir. Mir’s inhabitants included such notables as Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and United Nations peacekeeper Bisesa Dutt. For reasons unknown to her, Bisesa entered into communication with an alien artifact of inscrutable purpose and godlike power–a power that eventually returned her to Earth. There, she played an instrumental role in humanity’s race against time to stop a doomsday event: a massive solar storm triggered by the alien Firstborn designed to eradicate all life from the planet. That fate was averted at an inconceivable price. Now, twenty-seven years later, the Firstborn are back. This time, they are pulling no punches: They have sent a “quantum bomb.” Speeding toward Earth, it is a device that human scientists can barely comprehend, that cannot be stopped or destroyed–and one that will obliterate Earth. Bisesa’s desperate quest for answers sends her first to Mars and then to Mir, which is itself threatened with extinction. The end seems inevitable. But as shocking new insights emerge into the nature of the Firstborn and their chilling plans for mankind, an unexpected ally appears from light-years away. From the Hardcover edition. Firstborn Details Date : Published (first published 2007) ISBN : Author : Arthur C. Clarke , Stephen Baxter Format : Kindle Edition 388 pages Genre : Science Fiction, Fiction Download Firstborn ...pdf Read Online Firstborn ...pdf Download and Read Free Online Firstborn Arthur C. Clarke , Stephen Baxter PDF File: Firstborn... 2 Read and Download Ebook Firstborn... PDF File: Firstborn... 3 Read and Download Ebook Firstborn... From Reader Review Firstborn for online ebook Benjamin D. says Somewhere in this meandering travelogue is an outline for a decent book, but Baxter (I'm fairly certain Clarke wasn't actually involved in writing this) doesn't seem interested in it. In a rare moment of plot, when our main character finally matters, there's a couple pages of people talking about things, and then the event takes place off screen. None of the characters matter; they just move from place to place to place, and most are just caricatures anyway (What's that? Military guy is irritated by a non-violent perspective again? What a surprise!). Army of Penguins says Oof. I'll say this series was... interesting. I hadn't been a big fan of Time's Eye, but Sunstorm had been absolutely epic. And now this book... ends up somewhere between the other two, which is kinda fitting since it also tries to balance the uber-epic threat level of Sunstorm with the fantastic setting of Mir from Time's Eye. I won't go into too spoiler-y plot details here, so I'll just say that my main issues with this book were the pacing and the last few chapters, which left me mildly confused and slightly disappointed. If you read the other two books, then yeah, you should probably read this one, too. This book definitely isn't bad, but it's also not as awesome and epic as I had hoped (measured by the high standard that Sunstorm set for me). I truly hope that Stephen Baxter will give this series the real ending it deserves. And if/when that happens, I will gladly adjust my rating and review. Alex says This series was all over the place for me. Time's Eye was interesting and fun but not necessarily amazing, but then I'd consider Sunstorm one of my favorite Clarke books. Sunstorm is classic Clarke and extremely well done. An alien threat that seems insurmountable, many failed attempts to stop it to the point that you're just as nervous as the characters to find out what they're going to do, and ingenious science that makes it all come together. This, the third and final book in the series, has all of the elements of its predecessor, and ties in the events of the first book, Time's Eye, as well. So it should be a homerun. Unfortunately all of those pieces come together sooooooo slowly, working their way through a thick sludge of "politics" and character development for 8 billion characters at once, many of whom have no bearing on the plot whatsoever. Grasper and Alexander the Great have no real role in the events of this book, yet we hear about their doings on several different occasions. It was kind of cool to read about Grasper's evolution but ultimately it just made the book seem that much longer. I suppose if anyone asks my opinion I'd say to just read Sunstorm and skip the other two. Maybe you'll find it more interesting than I did though. PDF File: Firstborn... 4 Read and Download Ebook Firstborn... Peter Tillman says This is a novel that, by objective standards, is pretty bad. A slow and clumsy start, stock characters, plot points that make no sense.... And yet, and yet -- there's a lot of actual science in the story (documented in an afterword), and the story finally got moving and sucked me in. The time-sliced mosaic-world Mir, with a glacial North America filled with the Pleistocene megafauna, is pretty great (even if the human characters aren't). The space-battle with the incoming Q-missile is thrilling, even if the strategy to divert the deadly missile and save the Earth is almost laughably naive (view spoiler) But the image of a universe full of refugees from the implacable Firstborn enemy is haunting. Well, we hard-SF fans can't be too picky. 2.5 stars with a courtesy round up. But if you don't like hard SF, or demand a bit of polish in the prose, skip this one. There's a hook for a sequel at the end, but Sir Arthur died the year after this book was published, so the series remains unfinished, and the mysteries of the Firstborn (and the refugees) remain unresolved. Joe says Somewhat more rambling and less satisfying than the previous two Time Odyssey books. Unsatisfying ending. Massimo Marino says An ancient race that will not share the available energy in the universe with other civilizations, and therefore is devoted to pursue the destruction of other intelligences as they become ‘competitors’; this is the premise of the great fresco by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter dedicated to the fight of humanity against the Firstborn who first became known to science fiction fans as the builders of the iconic black monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Firstborn have inhabited legendary master of science fiction Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s writing for decades. The novel should conclude the “Time Odyssey” trilogy, picking up the threads left open in previous novels and revealing those mysteries remained unsolved. The story opens with the awakening of Bisesa Dutt, brave British soldier and heroine of the two previous episodes, from a cryogenic sleep that lasted 19 years. Her daughter Myra awakes her, driven by an emergency situation: an alien probe had been detected in the deep space and is headed toward Earth, and now identified as a quantum bomb able to obliterate an entire planet. Together with the young astronaut Alexei Carel, the two women fled from Earth through a space elevator, directed to Mars, where an Eye of the Firstborn had been found, preserved by the ancients and now disappeared Martians. But this is only the first part of the long journey of Bisesa, who finds herself on Mir, the planet built by taking countless splinters time of Earth ages by the Firstborn, and where the young astronomer Abdikadir awaits. In Babylon, the capital of the empire that Alexander the Great, (yes, THE Alexander the Great) intends to extend over the entire planet, a surprising news awaits Bisesa: in this pocket universe, Mars is blue and inhabited. PDF File: Firstborn... 5 Read and Download Ebook Firstborn... This and the discovery of the Eye allow to understand that in the past the mysterious Firstborn have already caused the extinction of an intelligent race in the solar system, the unfortunate Martians have not managed to avoid being swept away. Perhaps, now, the same fate awaits the human breed: it is the time of the end. More than science fiction, the story is full of Fantasy, with technology (and its descriptions) that clashes with science, so much so that I doubt Clarke, who lived through his last days, had the time to really work on this novel. Spoiler alert: I’ll talk about details of the plot and the ending of the story, so if you are willing to read the novel, you should end now reading this review. One would expect, from the third volume of a trilogy, some sort of conclusion, pleasant, surprising or predictable and disappointing as it will be, but a conclusion.