Earth II - Box Set

Virus/Earth II, Vol. 3 & 4

By: Ray Jay Perreault

Narrated by: Ray Jay Perreault

Length: 23 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's summary

Earth II - Box Set includes Earth II - You Have No Honor & Earth II - Rebirth.

Earth II - You Have No Honor: Earth was attacked by a suspicious virus, and over 99% of the population was lost. Just as the world was stabilizing alien spacecraft appeared in orbit. The remaining humans know who caused the virus.

Julius sees an opportunity to gain resources and Joan, Tom Herl, and SIMPOC must make a quick decision about how to keep an eye on Julius and deal with the invasion. Joan, Tom, and SIMPOC follow Julius to the homeworld of the aliens that invaded Earth and find an enemy that invaded Earth for surprising reasons. The battle on Earth rages as the US Navy face an attacking alien force of sophisticated robots. Battles are fought in the Indian Ocean and Pearl Harbor.

Earth II - Rebirth: This is the fourth book in the Virus/Earth II series. Humanity has dealt with the alien invasion and found themselves traveling among the stars. They find other alien cultures, some they can trust and some they can’t. More than 99% of the humans on Earth have died due to a suspicious virus from an alien invasion. A truce is finally worked out with the invading aliens, but now humans have thousands of spaceships as reparations for the mistaken invasion. The remnants of the US government try to rebuild the world, but they encounter other aliens, some of whom may not be friendly. The rebuilding must be balanced with possible alien conflicts. Julius, the A.I. android that was part of the original collapse of humanity, still lurks on the horizon. His only objectives are to eliminate the threats to his existence: the remaining humans and the other AI computer SIMPOC.

©2019 Raymond J Perreault (P)2019 Raymond J Perreault

great box set

enjoyed getting out of the solar system and flying through the galaxies. sympoc once again helps save the day by taking on an alien invasion , initiating communications with an alien species and showing and aptitude for working out the science that leaves up humans baffled. great read

Earth confronts alien invasion

This is the third and fourth books of the Earth II series. Book 3, You Have No Honor, brings together two threads, that of SIMPOC, one of the first two true artificial intelligences, and of a deeply strange and suspicious virus that wipes out 90% of the human population. As the story opens, the virus has burnt itself out, and the remaining humans are trying to pick themselves up and preserve human civilization. Unfortunately, just at this point, alien spacecraft start landing on Earth in large numbers and, ignoring the remaining population centers, set out on a project the purpose of which isn't yet apparent.

SIMPOC, having worked out the outlines of what has happened, has made itself mobile and, based on its programming to help people, has decided that its first necessity is to stop the other artificial intelligence, which calls itself Julius after its now-deceased programmer. Julius has been programmed to protect itself--seemingly a sensible precaution, and in fact very dangerous. SIMPOC teams up with returned leadership of the space station OASIS, which supported the now-isolated research colony on Mars--the only human population completely isolated from the virus. OASIS commander Joan Herl, her husband, chief engineer Tom Herl, SIMPOC, and the rest of the OASIS group, reconnect with the surviving US government, start working out what's going on with the alien invasion, going after the dual threats of the aliens and Julius--who has decided that the two biggest threats to its existence are SIMPOC, and the surviving humans.

Book 3, Rebirth, has the humans in control of a substantial number of alien ships and machines. They just have to figure out how to control and crew them. At the same time, the surviving US government is starting to pull together the remaining American population, while also reaching out to the remnants of other governments and countries.

While this is going on, Joan, Tom, and SIMPOC have mastered the alien craft sufficiently that they decide it's sensible to try out its FTL drive to do some cautious exploration of Earth's interstellar neighborhood--but in a different direction than Earth's former invaders. That leads to some interesting discoveries, and some new decisions that need to be made in a hurry.

I enjoyed both of these books quite a bit. They are fast-paced, well plotted, and have interesting characters. In many ways they have the characteristics of the 1960s sf I enjoyed as a much younger reader--except Perreault seems to quite naturally include a degree of diversity and natural human equality quite unlike the stories that left me identifying with male characters because there were so often no female characters that weren't just window dressing. It's just a lot of fun and very enjoyable.

Perreault narrates this audiobook, and is a very good narrator of his own work.

I received a free copy of this audiobook from the author, and am reviewing it voluntarily.

Great listen

I enjoyed listening to this boxset of Earth II. The story has a lot of twists to it, but was worth listening to.

Great listen

I enjoyed listening to to this so much I listened to it over and over. Sorry for not doing this again. I guess I liked it.

good book to listen to

I really enjoyed reading this series. Have always been drawn to sci-fi since I was young (original Trekkie). It's been very good to see how many young/not so young authors continue to write one of my favourite genre's.

Earth II

The story is very imaginative. The plot is good and the characters are well developed. Each event that happens keeps you wondering, what next.
Thank you Ray for letting me listen to this audio.
I look forward to the next segment.