The ancient Greeks believed that the Earth was the center of the universe. The great astronomer Ptolemy mapped the solar system and stars, locating each heavenly body in a crystalline sphere, the spheres forming a concentric series that progressed in an orderly fashion outward from the earth. Celestial Matters is a startling novel of hard SF, set in an alternate, ptolemaic universe in which these beliefs are literal scientific fact. The greek empire of Alexander the Great has lasted for a thousand years, and for a thousand years it has been at war with the Empire of the Orient. Now, a spaceship has been built to voyage through the spheres to the sun and return with the ultimate weapon: a fiery piece of sun matter.
Aias, a distinguished scientist of the Delian League, is set to command the first, secret expedition to the sun. The ship, Chandra's Tear, sculpted whole from moon matter, is ready to depart on its epic voyage. But as Aias is returning from his final shore leave to Athens across the Mediterranean, his ship is attacked by enemy soldiers flying deadly self-propelled battle kites. Aias's death seems certain, until the arrival of the Greek navy and, more surprising, Aias's new bodyguard, a tough Spartan warrior woman called Yellow Hare, who has been sent by the ruling Archons to protect their valuable captain. And so begins the most extraordinary SF adventure of the year. Battling against overwhelming odds - not to mention assassins, traitors, and the paranoia of his own military forces - Aias takes Chandra's Tear on the strangest and most wonderful voyage in all (alternate) history.… (more)
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Yes, that's an unabashed recommendation. I have a great fondness even for conventional hard SF. Imagine, then, how much more I am delighted by a work of alternate-universe hard SF that incorporates some of my favorite classical themes.
Such as this book, which is a work of hard SF in which the sciences in question are Ptolemaic astronomy, Aristotelian physics and chemistry, Pliny's biology, and on the other hand, Daoist alchemy and xi-based sciences.
It is also, of course, an alternate history. In this universe, Alexander having survived his bout of illness, the Delian League has expanded through all of Europe and half of "Atlantea", and is now - and has been for centuries - at a stalemated war with the Middle Kingdom. And they think they're about to start losing the war.
And in this world, Celestial Matters is told by one Aias, the commander of the celestial ship Chandra's Tear, who is in charge of the Delian League's answer to the Manhattan Project: to steal celestial fire from the Sun itself as a weapon...
Superlatively recommended for excellent worldbuilding, great characterisation, and a thundering good plot. ( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/cerebrate/2008/11/celestial_matters_richard_g... )
(Amy) I admit I was very dubious about this book. My husband recommended it to me, and for the first three-dozen pages I alternated between giving him skeptical looks over the top of the pages and muttering under my breath at the insanity of the people who thought our world worked this way. See, this science fiction book is one wherein the scientific principles are Aristotelian and Ptolemaic and, well, by the standards of our world, Just Plain Wrong. But herein, they are not. The celestial spheres are quite present, and the elements are every bit as elemental as one could wish.
As a modern scientist by almost-training, I find it hard to fully comprehend the philosophical community from the centuries before empiricism was considered particularly relevant, and my reading of the story from the world in which the above philosophies were empirically true was colored by my bafflement as to how anyone came up with them in this universe, where some of them were very obviously not.
But all that aside, I did manage to set aside these objections (amusingly enough, right around the 50-page point at which I would have given up on the book had it still proved difficult), and found myself quite caught up in the story of the trip to steal a piece of the sun to use in the war against the Middle Kingdom.
I didn't enjoy it as much as Alistair did - but then, I've never really been a classicist in my reading or study, so I didn't get as much out of it as he did. But for anyone who likes thinking in interesting directions, or who is both a classicist and an SF fan, this book is highly recommended.
(http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/zenos-library/2009/01/celestial_matters_richa...) (