Across a Billion Years

Summary: A group of space archaeologists from different planets make a discovery that puts them on the trail of an ancient, highly advanced race that disappeared nearly a billion years ago.

Tom Rice is a graduate archaeology researcher part of a team drawn from several different races from different planets on an expedition excavating a site on one of the planets occupied by an incredibly advanced and ancient civilization, The High Ones. Tom, in his youthful enthusiasm, is the narrator of this story. The chapters are recorded messages to his telepath sister, Lorie, whose mind can communicate across the galaxy while her invalid body is confined to a hospital bed.

The dig, like most, is tediously routine at first, allowing us to get to know show more the expedition's characters--the android Kelly, the rhino-like Mirrick, Dr. Horkk from Thhh, Steen Steen, a hermaphroditic creature, Saul the stamp collector, Leroy Chang, who turns out to be kind of creepy, Pilazinool, who loves to remove and replace his robotic limbs, Dr Shein, who heads the expedition, 408b, an octopoid creature, and Tom's love interest, Jan, who at first is more interested in the stamp collector.

The expedition shifts from tedium to intrigue when Tom discovers a sphere that is kind of a projector, that plays back scenes from The High One's civilization. Nothing like this has ever been discovered. More than that, it puts them on a trail of discovery leading first to an asteroid where a robot has been entombed in a cave, it turns out over 800 years ago. They find the asteroid, and the robot intact, who conveniently is a universal translator. The robot in turn takes them to a home planet, abandoned "just" 275 million year ago by the Mirt Korp Ahm, as the High Ones call themselves. The planet continues to be inhabited by a fantastic assemblage of self-maintaining robots, much like Dihn Ruu, their interpreter.

It is here that Dihn Ruu learns why the aging home star of the Mirt Korp Ahm cannot any longer be seen. The planetary system has been enclosed by a Dyson sphere to conserve energy. And with this news, the explorers lay plans to head there, only to face arrest from Galaxy Central!

Will they make it to the home planet of the Mirt Korp Ahm? If they do, what will they find? Will they be received or destroyed? And how will these discoveries change them? These are interesting questions that I cannot answer without spoiling the conclusion.

Perhaps as interesting as this adventure from planet to asteroid to planet are the relationships between the members of the team. Silverberg explores the human-android relationship--are humans from a vat really different from those conceived the old-fashioned way? And why do humans inherently suspect other species?

Equally intriguing is Tom's perception of his sister. He pities her physical disabilities and "guards" her from aspects of his life that highlight her disabilities. Silverberg gives us an interesting portrayal of how the "abled" view those "differently abled" and how the "differently abled" see things.

Oddly, it seemed to me that what Silverberg considers the least is the encounter between species, and how such contact, particularly if one is far advanced, would change the explorers civilization. Nor does there seem to be much interest in the highly advanced robotic civilization, other than as stepping stones to learn what has become of the Mirt Korp Ahm.

Nevertheless, he raises the interesting question of what a race a billion years old might be like, for humans who reckon the advance of modern civilization over less than 50,000 years. Silverberg presents us with this interesting thought experiment clothed in a chase across a galaxy. show less

Arguably ahead of its time when written, time has not been kind and the book now comes across as quite dated, in an uncomfortable and not quaint manner. It also doesn't help that the main character is an insufferable immature jerk, which is hard to ignore as the book is written from his first person perspective in the form of letters to his sister. Bonus points for including a Dyson Sphere, which are always welcome.

Tom Rice is a graduate student working on a multispecies team of xenoarchaeologists studying a high-tech culture that vanished a billion years ago. His first-person narration is in the form of letters to his twin sister, a disabled telepath on Earth. It is too expensive for him to communicate by telepathy.

This one is a near miss for me. The narrative voice is effective, but similar themes were handled better by earlier writers. Robert Heinlein’s Time for the Stars featured telepathic twins, and Arthur C. Clarke played with similar megastructures in two 1950s novels, The Star and The City and the Stars. Finally, some of Tom’s comments on gender make me cringe.

Written in from the first-person view to Tom Rice, this story follows a group of archeologist as they dash across the galaxy, hoping to discover the greatest archological find in human history. What they get - is so much more! The book starts a little slow, but picks up quickly. The characters are amusing and different and I enjoyed the narrators description of each.
This book was written in 1969. As I read more sci-fi books from that time period, I have noticed a common particularirty about them. There is less violence and more thought. The character spend time ruminating about the natura of the cosmos and human society, etc. This seems to show up less and less in books as you approach the current age. I don't know what it means, but show more it's got me thinking....
Anyhoo, this is a good solid sci-fi novel, and I enjoyed reading it. show less

Well that was refreshing. This is a old book written in 1969 and weighing in at a whopping 232 pages (paperback). The length is what was refreshing. It had been awhile since I read a science fiction book that was not at least 2 or 3 times that size. Just enough world building and dialog to keep it interesting but the right size to get the story across.
This is a book set hundreds of years in the future in which the species of the galaxy have been studying the remains of a ancient (billions of years old) civilization who left stuff scattered around. The story is about one such expedition who find and follow something never found before. Good stuff it was I thought.

Humans have found the remains of High Ones, in sites nearly a billion years old in our region of the galaxy. In this book a small group is digging on one planet. One of their members is writing 'message cubes' to be delivered to his telepathic sister, back on earth (long distance communication is enabled by telepathic twins). This tells the story of their findings, which lead to some dramatic revelations at the end. The ending of the book was superb.

Before reading it, I didn't check the date the book was written, so it was kind of a game to figure it out as I read. Silverberg makes up a lot of slang in the book, and frankly none of it is very compelling, it seems to be a way to make his book seem late 60's hip, but it doesn't work show more because none of the slang is anchored to any other language, it is just weird words. It doesn't really bother you while reading the book, but it does stand out. That's not a criticism of the book necessarily, it makes it more of an artifact of the time it was written. show less

I wanted to like this more, but the main character is too annoying. Also, this is the second sci-fi book with telepathy I've read in the last few months... I'm not into it!