Rating: 
Summary: A gift or a curse?
Review: A engram crew of a survey ship runs into an alien race that likes to leave gifts. This gifts take many forms, mostly in the form of information or high-tech wonders. But the aliens don't stick around, but just dump the gifts and leave.
Can they be trusted? Or are they just paranoid? Do they have REASON to be paranoid?
The gifts, from a faster-than-light ship to a library full of information about the galaxy, all seem too perfect. Was the survey ship just at the right place at the right time, or is there something more happening?
This is a hard science fiction adventure, a first contact novel and a dangerous mystery all in one. Can Peter Alander figure out what to do? Can he help humanity, made up of people who look at him as nothing more then a flawed program, or will he end up failing it?
I enjoyed the novel very much and really found the idea that most of the characters are not even living beings, if defined by our standards, to be a nice touch.
Rating:
Summary: A gift or a curse?
Review: A engram crew of a survey ship runs into an alien race that likes to leave gifts. This gifts take many forms, mostly in the form of information or high-tech wonders. But the aliens don't stick around, but just dump the gifts and leave.
Can they be trusted? Or are they just paranoid? Do they have REASON to be paranoid?
The gifts, from a faster-than-light ship to a library full of information about the galaxy, all seem too perfect. Was the survey ship just at the right place at the right time, or is there something more happening?
This is a hard science fiction adventure, a first contact novel and a dangerous mystery all in one. Can Peter Alander figure out what to do? Can he help humanity, made up of people who look at him as nothing more then a flawed program, or will he end up failing it?
I enjoyed the novel very much and really found the idea that most of the characters are not even living beings, if defined by our standards, to be a nice touch.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointed
Review: After reading their previous trilogy (The Evergence Trilogy) I expected another book written in a similar style. That said I was very disappointed in this book. It lacks the action of their past works, and the ideas behind the story are not that interesting. I found myself almost falling asleep while reading this book. To top it all off the ending was one of the most horrible endings I have yet to read. I hope their next book is much better.
Rating:
Summary: A Triumphant Return for a Powerhouse Team!
Review: After surging to bestseller status with the impressive Convergence series, Sean Williams and Shane Dix return with a hard science fiction adventure that spans the stars. Peter Alander is a shadow of his former self in more ways than one, in a future where multiple copies of explorers have ventured out to see the universe, leaving their human bodies far behind on Earth. But, it is on the far edge of the universe that Alander and his shipmates discover something that Earth must hear about immediately. Or must it?Williams and Dix never deliver anything less than heart-pounding action and excitement in there collaborations and ECHOES OF EARTH is no exception. It's a world we will barely recognise as our own, peopled with creatures that no longer resemble us in anything but the most superficial way. And that's the most stunning aspect of this new world of Williams and Dix's creation: the aliens encountered are scarely more inhuman than what awaits Alander on Earth. No one in the genre is delivering more vivid, more mind-boggling far-space adventure than these two Australian authors. If you haven't caught onto their work yet, ECHOES OF EARTH is a perfect place to start. Don't blame me if you find yourself scrambling to find all their previous work, that's just the way it is with these guys...
Rating:
Summary: Beware of Aliens Bearing Gifts
Review: Echoes of Earth is the first novel in a new series. It is the story of the destruction of civilization in the Solar System and the discovery of aliens with greatly superior technology, combining elements of Allen's Ring of Charon, Vinge's Marooned in Real Time, Williamson's Manseed and Pohl's Heechee series. In 2050, Earth begins to send out 1000 exploration ships containing engrams, cybernetic personality simulations, rather than actual humans. All the engram crews are based on only 60 personalities. One of these engrams, based on Peter Stanmore Alander, is particularly unstable, but all break down within a few decades. The engram ship Frank Tipler has the mission to Upsilon Aquarius. In 2160, the ship reaches its target and the engram crew begins their mission to study the solar system. They had lost communications with Earth shortly after they left, but are confident that Earth will contact them later. Alien ships suddenly enter the UA system and build 10 orbital towers -- beanstalks -- and an interconnecting ring in only a few hours as the engrams watch. Peter Alander, who has been permanently assigned an android body to slow down his personality deterioration, enters an alien device at the bottom of one tower and is carried up to orbit. There he encounters the Gifts, 11 artificial intelligences who control the advanced technology provided by the aliens as gifts to the less advanced humans. Among these gifts are devices to communicate and travel faster than light. The Gifts are programmed to obey only one person -- Peter Alander -- among the crew; the aliens, who the engrams call Spinners, apparently want the Gift recipients to absorb the new technology slowly to reduce cultural shock. However, the other engrams can operate the alien technology after learning the control interface protocols. Since the other engrams are running on the computers within the Frank Tipler and controlling drones remotely, Peter is the only engram that can operate the FTL ship at this time. After secret programming in one of the engrams almost destroys the mission, Peter takes the FTL ship back to Earth to ensure that information on the Spinner technology is not lost. The Solar System has changed drastically since the Frank Tipler left. The artificial intelligences have reached self-awareness and followed their own agenda, destroying the Earth and Venus to build the beginning of a Dyson sphere around the sun. The eruption of AI has almost wiped out the biological intelligences and only about 3 million are left. The surviving humans have incorporated cybernetic technology to form personality gestalts with multiple points of view. All these intelligences are joined to some extent into the Vincula, a sort of group mind, but some resist the conservatism of that body. One of the human gestalts is based on Caryl Hatzis, one of the engram contributors. When Alander arrives in the Solar System, he tries to contact the proper authorities, but finds that only Hatzis has survived. The Vincula tries to take the FTL ship away from him to suppress the technology, but he escapes back to UA with the original Hatzis. This story contains little new in plot or concepts, but the level of detail makes it more immediate. It grabs your attention like a good widescreen movie. Recommended for Williams and Dix fans and anyone who enjoys the interstellar adventures of Roger MacBride Allen, Vernor Vinge, Jack Williamson and Frederik Pohl.
Rating:
Summary: Beware of Aliens Bearing Gifts
Review: Echoes of Earth is the first novel in a new series. It is the story of the destruction of civilization in the Solar System and the discovery of aliens with greatly superior technology, combining elements of Allen's Ring of Charon, Vinge's Marooned in Real Time, Williamson's Manseed and Pohl's Heechee series. In 2050, Earth begins to send out 1000 exploration ships containing engrams, cybernetic personality simulations, rather than actual humans. All the engram crews are based on only 60 personalities. One of these engrams, based on Peter Stanmore Alander, is particularly unstable, but all break down within a few decades. The engram ship Frank Tipler has the mission to Upsilon Aquarius. In 2160, the ship reaches its target and the engram crew begins their mission to study the solar system. They had lost communications with Earth shortly after they left, but are confident that Earth will contact them later. Alien ships suddenly enter the UA system and build 10 orbital towers -- beanstalks -- and an interconnecting ring in only a few hours as the engrams watch. Peter Alander, who has been permanently assigned an android body to slow down his personality deterioration, enters an alien device at the bottom of one tower and is carried up to orbit. There he encounters the Gifts, 11 artificial intelligences who control the advanced technology provided by the aliens as gifts to the less advanced humans. Among these gifts are devices to communicate and travel faster than light. The Gifts are programmed to obey only one person -- Peter Alander -- among the crew; the aliens, who the engrams call Spinners, apparently want the Gift recipients to absorb the new technology slowly to reduce cultural shock. However, the other engrams can operate the alien technology after learning the control interface protocols. Since the other engrams are running on the computers within the Frank Tipler and controlling drones remotely, Peter is the only engram that can operate the FTL ship at this time. After secret programming in one of the engrams almost destroys the mission, Peter takes the FTL ship back to Earth to ensure that information on the Spinner technology is not lost. The Solar System has changed drastically since the Frank Tipler left. The artificial intelligences have reached self-awareness and followed their own agenda, destroying the Earth and Venus to build the beginning of a Dyson sphere around the sun. The eruption of AI has almost wiped out the biological intelligences and only about 3 million are left. The surviving humans have incorporated cybernetic technology to form personality gestalts with multiple points of view. All these intelligences are joined to some extent into the Vincula, a sort of group mind, but some resist the conservatism of that body. One of the human gestalts is based on Caryl Hatzis, one of the engram contributors. When Alander arrives in the Solar System, he tries to contact the proper authorities, but finds that only Hatzis has survived. The Vincula tries to take the FTL ship away from him to suppress the technology, but he escapes back to UA with the original Hatzis. This story contains little new in plot or concepts, but the level of detail makes it more immediate. It grabs your attention like a good widescreen movie. Recommended for Williams and Dix fans and anyone who enjoys the interstellar adventures of Roger MacBride Allen, Vernor Vinge, Jack Williamson and Frederik Pohl.
Rating:
Summary: Another great one from Dix and Williams
Review: Having thourouhly enjoyed the Evergence series, I was thrilled to see another book by Dix and Williams. This book (hopefully the first in a series) is NOT a clone of their previous series. There is a different kind of action here, yet no less gripping in my opinion. I was drawn in within the first chapter and the book continued to fill my head with questions and provoked some interesting thoughts on some age old concepts involving our species. This book had a kind of "Michael Crichton" feel to it, a group of scientists trying to unravel a mysterious something. I intentionally am not putting any story details in my review, as that will be for each person to discover on thier own. I will say that just like Evergence, I had trouble putting the book down each night and am anxiously awaiting the next book. Dix and Williams have a knack for creating lush environments in which their interesting characters can interact.
Keep em comin guys! You rock!
Rating: 
Summary: Potential, but not up to the standard of Evergence - yet
Review: I bought Echoes of Earth on the strength of the Evergence series. Based on William's and Dix's previous work, I was somewhat disappointed by this book. A lot of science-fiction falls into the trap of being about ideas and science, and forgetting the vital elements of plot and character. I was certainly intrigued by the plot of Echoes of Earth - humanity (if you want to call it that) discovers alien intelligence and then discovers very quickly that being contacted by the unknown can have catastrophic results - but character is where this book fell down, for me. The Evergence Trilogy had interesting and likeable characters such as Morgan Roche, Uri Kajic, et al.; but Peter Alander and Caryl have so far failed to appeal to me in the same way. Caryl, in particular, (the "real" one, that is) is downright unpleasant so far. The tone of the book is somewhat flat. For example, the way Peter misses Lucia and the "death" of Cleo Samson should have engaged the emotions and had more impact than they did. I like a sense of wonder in my science-fiction, not the feeling that this is all ho-hum. It did seem to me that Williams and Dix skated over all the technological marvels they wrote about, especially in Sol system, rather than emphasising how astonishing it was. Some of the action in Sol system was pretty hard to understand, too. Without citing particular references, Echoes of Earth is somewhat derivative on a number of its plot points. That was true of Evergence as well, but the authors specifically acknowledged that, and it's not something I mind in the slightest if what you do with your borrowing is fresh enough. But it wasn't fresh enough in Echoes of Earth.
Will I read the sequels to this book? I will - because on the authors' past performance, I can hope that the Orphans of Earth series will get better, and I'm certainly interested enough to want to know what happens next. There were signs of some potential improvement at the very end. But more appealing characters and a greater sense of excitment and wonder would certainly improve things.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but...
Review: I enjoyed this book, but not enough to want to desperately want to conclude the series. First of all, what I like. The science was not exactly hard, but plausible. By that I mean, there is little technical justification for most of the high technology. However, this is reasonable because, from the point of view of the books very human and very primitive characters, the technology was both alien and beyond comprehension. The story was above average, and moved very quickly. From the mysterious arrival, to the deeper investigation and widening mystery, to the inevitable onset of chaos, destruction, and general no good, the plot moves at a reaspectable (if somewhat predictable) pace. But, there was plenty to dislike. The characters werent all that great. Bearing in mind that our major players are sentient computer programs modeled after real human beings, its difficult to become attached. I could care less what happened to them. And, throughout most of the novel, the author does little to change this. In such circumstances, he should have forced us to see them as more human, as true beings of character. Instead, we see machines, programs, behaving according to engineered design. In fairness, the end of the text changes this picture somewhat, but by then its far too late (at least in my opinion). The damage was done. The requisite "death and destruction" ending for a series such as this was a little too deadly and destructive. Rather than a grand battle, we get crushed ants. Yawn. Weak. Lame. I didn't care, one way or the other. Humanity of Williams' future DESERVES its fate. But I would have liked to be slightly more entertained. One would think an intelligent species on the brink of forced extinction would have mounted a more desperate resistance. So, yeah, I guess what I'm saying is that a good science fiction series (for me, at least) needs a little character and a proper plot to go with all that technology and alien mystery. Or, a little fiction with my science, please.
Rating:
Summary: Love and hate
Review: I have been reading Science Fiction for 45 years and this is one of the best hard Science Fiction novels I have ever read. It is also one of the most depressing. I won't spoil it for you by telling you why except to say that you may look differently at your computer and at technological research after you finish the book.
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