Series
The Lightspeed Trilogy
Ken MacLeod · 3 novels · 1 novelette · 2016–2024
Ken MacLeod's recent trilogy imagines the accidental discovery of faster-than-light travel by a present-day physicist and the political fallout once humanity gets access to a wider galaxy that turns out not to be empty. Beyond the Hallowed Sky opens on an Earth still riven by bloc politics as the discovery becomes a new front in great-power rivalry, with the sequels carrying the consequences off-world. It treats first contact as a geopolitical problem as much as a scientific one.
Summary by Loreful, from public sources
Reading order
The order the books came out.
Best read in the order they were published.
Map
The Lightspeed Trilogy at the centre, its books fanned around what holds them. Pick anything for its details, and zoom out for similar series in orbit — the reading order above lists the same books as text.
Stats
By decade
- 2010s1
- 2020s3
Shape
3 novels · 1 novelette
1 author
reads like:science fictionaliensother star systemsfar futureadventurousadult
Mood
Bright and intense: 100% of this series' placed works, the catalog's 44%.
this series · the catalog · one dot = one book3 of 4 works carry a tone
Edges of the map
- Beyond the Light Horizondarkest · calmest
- Beyond the Hallowed Skybrightest
- Beyond the Reach of Earthmost intense