White Space

“Outstanding…Amid a space opera resurgence, Bear’s novel sets the bar high.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) A space salvager and her partner make the discovery of a lifetime that just might change the universe in this wild, big-ideas space opera from Hugo Award-winning author...

A space salvager and her partner make the discovery of a lifetime that just might change the universe in this wild, big-ideas space opera from multi-award-winning author Elizabeth Bear. Haimey Dz thinks she knows what she wants. She thinks she knows who she is. She is wrong. A routine salvage mission uncovers evidence of a terrible crime and relics of a powerful ancient technology, just as Haimey and her small crew run afoul of pirates at the outer limits of the Milky Way and find themselves both on the run and in possession of ancient, universe-changing technology.

Meet Doctor Jens. The first part of her job involves jumping out of perfectly good spaceships. The second part requires developing emergency treatments for sick aliens of species she's never seen before. She loves it. But her latest emergency is also proving a mystery: two ships, one ancient and one new, locked in a dangerous embrace, a mysterious crew suffering from an even more mysterious ailment, a shipmind trapped in an inadequate body, much of her memory pared away, a murderous virus from out of time.

Information doesn't want to be free. Information wants to vanish without a trace. Sunya Song's job is to stop that from happening. She's an archinformist: a specialist historian whose job usually involves sitting at a console at her university job near the Galactic Core, sorting ancient documents and restoring corrupted files. But now, the research opportunity of a lifetime has sent her - and her family - halfway across the galaxy to save the archaeological find of the century: an ancient alien artificial intelligence called the Baomind.

Dr. Sunya Song embarks on an interstellar journey across the Milky Way to connect with the artificial intelligence known as Baomind, a moon-sized entity that holds the key to humanity’s survival amidst cosmic challenges and unforeseen threats in Hugo Award–winning author Elizabeth Bear’s...