Skip to main content

story identification - book about telepaths hunting humans


I remember reading this book years ago, but I'm unable to remember the title. I'm hoping someone else has read it and remembers the title. Here is a quick synopsis from what I remember:


Humans, while testing their first FTL drive, travel to the closest star and destroy it. However, there was an unknown, inhabited world around the star. The world was populated by telepaths; when the telepaths realized what was going on, they 'screamed' out into the universe with their last dying breath, asking all the other telepathic aliens to kill these other aliens (humans) in revenge. It tells the story through generational gaps, as humans attempt to survive the ensuing genocide committed against them.



If anyone could give me the title for this book, I would love to re-read it!



Answer



This is almost certainly Earth Ship and Star Song by Ethan I. Shedley. The first human starship accidentally destroys another civilization, which gives a telepathic alarm, and thereafter, humanity is hunted and destroyed whenever they gather together.


@Jim2B's summary sounds very familiar, though I haven't read the book since the 80s and don't remember exact details.


Here's the summary from the inner flap of Earth Ship and Starsong:



The year is 2100, and mankind has destroyed the earth's ecology. Faced with irrefutable evidence that the end is near, the technocracy that governs the remnants of the human race realizes that there is no workable alternative but to emigrate from this "bitter lesson called Earth."
But there are dangers. Man must adapt for the journey, and must perfect the power source for his Earth Ships—a drive based on the controlled creation of black holes in space. Blind to the existence of any sentient race that has not developed along technological lines, man destroys a telepathic race while refining the Black Hole Drive. Realizing its doom, this race spreads a call for revenge throughout the galaxy. The reader will follow with fascination as man—the hunted—tries time and again to found a new home, only to be destroyed and driven to the fringes of a hostile universe by increasingly virulent attacks. Will man be allowed to atone, or must he strike back to regain his place in the cosmos?



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...

star trek - Warning regarding forward saucer section in Nemesis?

In Star Trek: Nemesis , just before the Enterprise rams into the Scimitar, Picard sends a text message from his captain's chair arm pad to Troi — who is manning the helm in lieu of the crewman who was just blown out through what was once the view screen — indicating that she should put full impulse on standby. (Literally, if you watch the scene closely, Troi's console prefaces the order with "TXT MSG" !) My question is: Did Picard also somehow warn crew members in the forward saucer section about what was about to happen? The ramming of the Scimitar was a heat of the moment decision. Considering that he also resorted to calling the auto-destruct sequence shortly after (which ended up being offline), he probably was of the mindset that any losses would be acceptable in order to hault Shinzon's march to Earth. Still, I'm curious. Answer The original script indicates that he called for the crew to " brace for impact ". Whether that call (or the comma...