'"Cosmonaut Keep" is a portal to a deeply imagined future history that parlays X-Files paranoia about Area 51 and alien Greys into a vast interstellar community watched over by microcosmic gods.' - Paul McAuley, INTERZONE

'Science fiction's freshest new writer' - Salon

After the Ural Caspian Oil War, nobody really trusted the EU government. So why should their extraordinary announcement of first contact with alien intelligence be believed?

Matt Cairns thinks he can discover the truth. It is out there, but much, much further away than he could have imagined. Thousands of light-years from Earth, a human colony is struggling for survival. The world on which they have settled, however, has already been inhabited by humans - and other intelligent species from Earth - for millennia. In that ancient division of labour, humans do have a place. But where is it?

Twenty-first-century political intrigue becomes space opera on an epic scale in Ken MacLeod's first book in a dazzling new series. His most ambitious novel to date, it will take one of Britain's most exciting new science fiction authors to even greater heights of success and critical acclaim.

Books by Ken MacLeod:

Fall Revolution
The Star Fraction
The Stone Canal
The Cassini Division
The Sky Road

Engines of Light
Cosmonaut Keep
Dark Light
Engine City

Corporation Wars Trilogy
Dissidence
Insurgence
Emergence

Novels
The Human Front
Newton's Wake
Learning the World
The Execution Channel
The Restoration Game
Intrusion
Descent

* Front cover of INTERZONE magazine * Review coverage in National and Specialist Press * Joint Author PR activity with Iain M Banks at the Edinburgh Festival * Submitted for SF Book of the Month promotions * Featured in the Orbit electronic newsletter and on the Orbit website as well as on Iain Banks' website

About the Author
Since graduating from Glasgow University in 1976, Ken MacLeod has worked as a computer analyst in Edinburgh. He now writes full time.

Reviews
Distinctive, politically challenging, both tantalizing and satisfying. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rarely does a book demand so much of the reader-and then deliver. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Like a British--specifically, Scots--counterpart of Bruce Sterling, Ken MacLeod is an SF author who has thought hard about politics and delights in making unlikely alternatives plausible, grippingly readable and often downright funny. * Cosmonaut Keep swaps between two timelines whose characters share the ultimate goal of interstellar travel. In an uncertain future on the far world of Mingulay, human colonists live in the title's ancient, alien-built Keep--coexisting with reptilian "saur *
Meanwhile alternate chapters present a mid-21st century Earth whose EU is (to America's horror) Russian-dominated with a big red star in the middle of its flag, rumours of alien contact aboun, and computer whizzkid Matt Cairns finds himself carrying a dat * Clearly the later storyline's Gregor Cairns is Matt's descendant. There are ingenious connections and surprises, with witty resonances between their wild careers, their travels and their bumpy love-lives. The foreground action-adventure points to a bigger *
Cosmonaut Keep opens MacLeod's new SF sequence Engines of Light. It is highly entertaining and intelligent, promising more good things to come. * David Langford, AMAZON.CO.UK REVIEW *
This man is going to be a major writer * IAIN M. BANKS *


Awards
Short-listed for Arthur C Clarke Award 2001.



Book Information
ISBN 9781841490670
Author Ken MacLeod
Format Paperback
Page Count 400
Imprint Orbit
Publisher Little, Brown Book Group
Weight(grams) 214g
Dimensions(mm) 126mm * 179mm * 29mm