Books Authors
Engine City

Engine City

by
Ken MacLeod

Synopsis of Engine City

The acclaimed Engines of Light Series that began with Cosmonaut Keep and Dark Light reaches its staggering conclusion in Engine City. Two hundred years ago, a starship arrived at Nova Babylonia and unloaded a cargo of encyclopaedic information from the solar system of the mid-21st century. One hundred years ago, Nova Babylonia had used that information to create a Modern Regime - a heavily industrialised civilisation ready to defend itself against the aliens whose arrival was believed to be imminent. Today, Nova Babylonia is in decline. The alien invaders never came and the Regime has fallen. Into this corrupt city arrives an outsider whose purpose is ambiguous. But businessman or spy, he is not the only visitor. War is coming to Nova Babylonia. And the gods.

Reviews of Engine City

81%

This isn't a piece of great SF, but it is still well worth reading. -- Mark L. Olson, The New England Science Fiction Association, Inc.

Engine City echoes the brassy raids on infinitude of Greg Bear, Dan Simmons and David Brin; matches the punctilious utopian and dystopian projections of Brian Aldiss and Kim Stanley Robinson; co-opts Harry Harrison's machinating saurians and the multiplanetary vistas of Peter Hamilton, not to mention the imaginative energy of MacLeod's close friend and mentor Iain M Banks. -- Colin Greenland, The Guardian

Absorbing and fascinating, I couldn't stop reading this. -- Joe Gordon, The Alien Online

I think that I enjoyed this Book so much because it is like real life (insomuch as a Science Fiction novel populated by alien spider-monkeys and ancient ancestors annoying their descendants can be). -- Katie McGivern, SF Crowsnest

After reading the final sections three times, I'm not sure exactly what happened and why. -- D. Douglas Fratz, Scifi.com

ENGINE CITY is a strong final entry to Ken MacLeod's delightful "The Engines of Light" trilogy. -- Harriet Klausner, BooksNBytes

Engine City is the latest in a long line of science fiction political thought experiments, and the energy and ideas presented here certainly bode well for science fiction's future. -- Gavin J. Grant

...it all works really well under MacLeod's hand. -- Ernest Lilley, SFRevu