Rings of Life
Science fiction in four books
A mountain comes up out of a valley floor overnight. Far from that valley, humanity is leaving for the stars, which turn out to be occupied.
Four books, one rule: no time travel, no wormholes, no warp drive. Nothing here needs a law of physics that does not exist.
The History of the X
Simon watches the mountain grow across the road to the next town, and his village calls him a liar. Lila, who talks to dogs, and Hannes, who would rather stay out of it, climb up with him to look.
Humanity is stepping off the Earth, watched by an Observer who expects nothing good to come of it. Three astronauts from Titan are sent in secret to a ship nobody is supposed to know about, on a voyage of two thousand years.
In the rings of a gas giant, a weapon left over from somebody else's war learns to think, and then to eat.
Under the ice of an ocean world, an architect who has never believed in his god watches a temple sink and lies to the Inquisitor about it. The god, by the way, is real. Doubt is still a capital crime.
None of them knows the others exist.
The Legacy of the X
Simon and Lila are loose in the virtual worlds of modern humanity, where nothing is where it seems. In another galaxy the Replicant, the weapon from the rings, is heading for the home of Lila's new friends, the teddy-bear mantises. Lila means to go and talk to it.
Hannes never left. He has taught himself more magic than anyone back home likes, and the nearest mayor, who permits none, has an army.
On the ocean world the rebels have found Juukor, their accidental hero, and they have a job for him.
At Vela the Jocelyn Bell is emptying out. Kreios has gone to the center of the galaxy. Dima is planning a voyage with no return ticket, and Jo, once the ship's voice, is going along.
Between the galaxies an ark is still running from whatever took its home. Nobody aboard knows what is waiting at the end.
The Future of the X
Dima and Jo are lost in a galaxy they can no longer navigate. The only one who can point them home is a stranded alien priest, left behind as expendable, who has already worked out what his help should cost.
Juukor, promoted by the god he means to bring down, is closing on Sol with no idea what he will find. The Avian, the ark's people, are stranded too, until an Observer none of them has ever met takes a hand. Hannes has a castle now, and the Black Army is marching on it. It has killed wizards before and still knows how.
A colony leaves the Jocelyn Bell for two hard worlds, and Selene must explain to the ACC's ethics board why she still makes humans out of flesh and blood.
The last biological humans have one chance left. Its name is Vana.
The Billion Year Countdown
Billions of years on, Chapman17 is a historian, which in a galaxy of virtual immortals pays about what you would expect. Watching the Dyson Swarm burn up over the sun, he does the one thing nobody does. He says hello to the Replicant. It answers, apologizes for everything that is about to happen, and flies into the sun.
Chap loses his career, gains a lawyer with excellent hair and no visible conscience, and takes honest work hauling wrecks. So he ends up with a four-billion-year-old alien, frozen solid, legally neither alive nor dead; a government agent who tells him almost nothing; a foul-mouthed spy in the body of a rat; a pirate colony praying to a white pyramid; and a species across several galaxies that has started spinning itself into cocoons. Nobody will say what connects them. He intends to find out.
Book IV stands alone. Start here if you like.
Species art: AI-generated (FLUX and SDXL, run locally) from the species plates in Book III.
A partial timeline
A galactic year is one lap of the Sun around the Milky Way, 225 million years. From Book III's appendix.
| Galactic year | Sol year | Event |
|---|---|---|
| -41 | -13,797,000,000 | Big Bang |
| -34 | -12,150,000,000 | Formation of the Milky Way |
| 0 | -4,500,000,000 | Formation of the Sun, beginning of the first galactic year |
| 1 | -4,280,000,000 | Origin of life on Earth |
| 18 | -542,000,000 | Cambrian explosion of life |
| 20 | -66,000,000 | Extinction of the dinosaurs, 20th galactic year begins, Chicxulub asteroid impact |
| 20 | -200,000 | Birth of Homo sapiens |
| 20 | 0 | Beginning of human chronology |
| 20 | 1,969 | First crewed Moon landing |
| 20 | 2,231 | Birth of Homo mutatio astronauticus |
| 20 | 2,495 | First ansiblum and second lunar accelerator go into operation |
| 20 | 2,620 | Human cryostasis becomes possible |
| 20 | 2,741 | First crewed interstellar mission lands on Epsilon Eridani |
| 20 | 3,117 | Launch of the Jocelyn Bell |
| 20 | 3,962 | Humanity reaches Level 2 on the Kardashev Scale |
| 20 | 5,095 | Jocelyn Bell reaches Vela |
| 38 | 4,000,000,000 | Andromeda reaches the Milky Way, 38th galactic year |
| 45 | 5,625,000,000 | Natural lifespan of the Sun ends, 45th galactic year |
| 2,000 | 445,500,000,000 | All 47 galaxies of the Local Group merge after ~2,000 galactic years |