Saga of the Seven Suns
The Saga of Seven Suns (engl. Original title: Saga of Seven Suns ) is a 2002 published in seven volumes by 2008 Science Fiction - epic by Kevin J. Anderson .
content
The original idea is based on the assumption that mankind will set off in the year 2100 by means of eleven generation ships to colonize the galaxy. After centuries of voyage, one of the ships is discovered and rescued by an alien people called the Ildirans (2244). The Ildirans have an engine that enables intergalactic travel in real time. This technology will be made available to the rescued people who will make the drive more efficient and use it to return to Earth and subsequently colonize the entire spiral arm of the Milky Way .
The real action begins with the ignition of the Klikiss torch in 2427. The Klikiss were an insectoid race that became extinct 10,000 years ago. In the ruins of their cities, two xeno-archaeologists discover the plans for the Klikiss torch, with which one can ignite gas giants and transform them into suns. Such a torch will be recreated and tested on a distant gas giant. With this nuclear ignition of a gas giant, four moons are to be made habitable for humans. But in the depths of almost all gas giants in the galaxy, the mighty people of the hydrogues live who are vastly superior to humans. The hydrogues are startled by the loss of millions of their conspecifics and leave their gas giants to wage war with almost all living beings outside their home worlds. Only the Klikiss robots, built and left over from the Klikiss, appear to be allied with the hydrogues. In the following parts you learn that the Klikiss robots seem to have wiped out their creators over 10,000 years ago and are now trying to free human robots from "slavery". Through experiments with humans, the Ildirans secretly try to achieve a connection between the two peoples, in the hope that these beings can then communicate with the otherwise inapproachable hydrogens and make a lasting peace.
The Hanseatic League - the association of most of the human-populated planets - tries to reunite humanity, but uses dubious means and so it comes to war against the Roamers (human space nomads), who have no military chance, but through theirs good hiding places are partially undetectable. Instead of fighting the real enemy, people weaken each other. At the same time, the hydrogues and Klikiss robots are trying to force the Ildirans into an alliance against the humans, which they also agree to.
An alliance of free people, Ildirans (who, as secretly planned, stab the hydrogues in the back and keep their alliance with humans) as well as the aquatic beings "wentals" and living trees, called "verdani", can fight back the hydrogues, who also fight are still in a two-front war against the "faeros" called fire beings. But at that time the Klikiss reappeared, the Ildiran Empire threatened to split up and the Hanseatic League's civil war against their own colonies widened after the Hanseatic King, Peter, and the chairman, Basil Wenceslas, had an irredeemable dispute and the king fled. Wenceslas had originally installed the king only as a straw man, but the latter recognized dangers more quickly and thus aroused the chairman's displeasure. On the forest planet 'Theroc', which is also home to the Verdani, Peter explains the establishment of a free confederation and tries to isolate the earth. The Roamers join this confederation and establish a first free trade network.
Shape and style
The books are divided into short chapters of just a few pages, each named after one of the many characters involved. In each chapter, the plot around the named person is told. The entire saga consists of an unmanageable number of storylines that have more or less to do with the main plot. The four main storylines deal with the Hanseatic League and its colonies, the Roamers, the world forest of Theroc and the Ildiran Empire.
Anderson keeps his style short and sweet, describes the big picture and follows the important storylines. He does not achieve emotionality through the in-depth description of feelings, but through the many secondary threads with their well-developed secondary characters.
Volumes
The volumes published in German and English are:
| Volume no. | German | English | annotation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Empire ( ISBN 3-453-87047-6 ) | Hidden Empire ( ISBN 0-446-61678-8 ) | |
| 2 | The Star Forest ( ISBN 3-453-87538-9 ) | A Forest of Stars ( ISBN 0-446-61058-5 ) | |
| 3 | Solar storms ( ISBN 3-453-52020-3 ) | Horizon Storms ( ISBN 0-446-61059-3 ) | |
| 4th | Fallen Suns ( ISBN 3-453-52187-0 ) | Scattered Suns ( ISBN 0-446-57717-0 ) | |
| 5 | Of fire and night ( ISBN 3-453-52273-7 ) | Of Fire and Night ( ISBN 0-7432-7542-X ) | |
| 6th | The metal swarm ( ISBN 978-3-453-52506-1 ) | Metal Swarm (UK: ISBN 978-0-7432-7543-9 ) | |
| 7th | The Ashes of the Worlds ( ISBN 978-3-453-52536-8 ) | The Ashes of Worlds ( ISBN 978-0-316-00757-3 ) |
literature
- Carsten Polzin: Das Imperium , in: The Science Fiction Year 2004 , edited by Sascha Mamczak and Wolfgang Jeschke , Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-453-87896-5 , pp. 853-854.