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Marina J. Lostetter

Noumenon Kindle Edition

by Marina J. Lostetter (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

313 ratings

Book 1 of 3: Noumenon

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With nods to Arthur C. Clarke’s Rama series and the real science of Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves, a touch of Hugh Howey’s Wool, and echoes of Octavia Butler’s voice, a powerful tale of space travel, adventure, discovery, and humanity that unfolds through a series of generational vignettes.

In 2088, humankind is at last ready to explore beyond Earth’s solar system. But one uncertainty remains: Where do we go?

Astrophysicist Reggie Straifer has an idea. He’s discovered an anomalous star that appears to defy the laws of physics, and proposes the creation of a deep-space mission to find out whether the star is a weird natural phenomenon, or something manufactured.

The journey will take eons. In order to maintain the genetic talent of the original crew, humankind’s greatest ambition—to explore the furthest reaches of the galaxy— is undertaken by clones. But a clone is not a perfect copy, and each new generation has its own quirks, desires, and neuroses. As the centuries fly by, the society living aboard the nine ships (designated Convoy Seven) changes and evolves, but their mission remains the same: to reach Reggie’s mysterious star and explore its origins—and implications.

A mosaic novel of discovery, Noumenon—in a series of vignettes—examines the dedication, adventure, growth, and fear of having your entire world consist of nine ships in the vacuum of space. The men and women, and even the AI, must learn to work and live together in harmony, as their original DNA is continuously replicated and they are born again and again into a thousand new lives. With the stars their home and the unknown their destination, they are on a voyage of many lifetimes—an odyssey to understand what lies beyond the limits of human knowledge and imagination.

Print length

349 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Harper Voyager
Publication date

August 1, 2017
File size

1185 KB
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Books In This Series (3 Books)

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Noumenon

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1
Noumenon
Marina J. Lostetter

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2
Noumenon Infinity
Marina J. Lostetter

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3
Noumenon Ultra: A Novel
Marina J. Lostetter

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Marina J. Lostetter's original short fiction has appeared in Lightspeed's Women Destroy Science Fiction! and InterGalactic Medicine Show, among other publications. Originally from Oregon, the former winner of the Writers of the Future Award now lives in Arkansas with her husband, Alex, and enjoys globe-trotting, board games, and all things art-related.

Celeste Ciulla is an accomplished actress and voice-over artist based in New York City. For her stage performances, she has received the 2010 Lunt-Fontanne Fellowship and the Callaway Award. She is also an Earphones Award-winning narrator.

--This text refers to the audioCD edition.

Review

‘NOUMENON is a grand interstellar quest that marries intimate detail with the sweep of social change and discovery across generations. I was enthralled’

Yoon Ha Lee, author of Ninefox Gambit

‘A striking adventure story that could hold a galaxy in its scope’

KIRKUS REVIEWS

‘An ambitious and stunning debut’

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Back Cover

In 2088, humankind is at last ready to explore beyond Earth’s solar system.

But one uncertainty remains: Where do we go?

The journey will take eons. In order to maintain the genetic talent of the original crew, humankind’s greatest ambition—to explore the furthest reaches of the galaxy—is undertaken by clones. But a clone is not a perfect copy, and each new generation has its own quirks, desires, and neuroses. As the centuries fly by, the society living aboard the nine ships changes and evolves, but their mission remains the same: to reach Reggie’s mysterious star and explore its origins . . . and implications.

A mosaic novel of discovery, Noumenon—in a series of vignettes—examines the dedication, adventure, growth, and fear of having your entire world consist of nine ships in the vacuum of space. The men and women, and even the artificial intelligence, must learn to work and live together in harmony, as their original DNA is continuously replicated and they are born again and again into a thousand new lives. With the stars as their home and the unknown their destination, they are on a voyage of many lifetimes—an odyssey to understand what lies beyond the limits of human knowledge and imagination.

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Inside Flap

In 2088, humankind is at last ready to explore beyond Earth's solar system.

But one uncertainty remains: Where do we go?

Astrophysicist Reggie Straifer has an idea. He's discovered an anomalous star that appears to defy the laws of physics, and proposes the creation of a deep-space mission to find out whether the star is a weird natural phenomenon, or something more alien.

The journey will take eons. In order to maintain the genetic talent of the original crew, humankind's greatest ambition--to explore the furthest reaches of the galaxy--is undertaken by clones. But a clone is not a perfect copy, and each new generation has its own quirks, desires, and neuroses. As the centuries fly by, the society living aboard the nine ships changes and evolves, but their mission remains the same: to reach Reggie's mysterious star and explore its origins . . . and implications.

A mosaic novel of discovery, Noumenon--in a series of vignettes--examines the dedication, adventure, growth, and fear of having your entire world consist of nine ships in the vacuum of space. The men and women, and even the artificial intelligence, must learn to work and live together in harmony, as their original DNA is continuously replicated and they are born again and again into a thousand new lives. With the stars as their home and the unknown their destination, they are on a voyage of many lifetimes--an odyssey to understand what lies beyond the limits of human knowledge and imagination.

--RT Book Reviews --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01N3KO7L7
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Voyager (August 1, 2017)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 1, 2017
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1185 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 349 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #363,363 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,371 in Hard Science Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #2,180 in Hard Science Fiction (Books)
- #2,334 in Women's Adventure Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
313 ratings

About the author

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Marina J. Lostetter

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The open skies and dense forests of the Pacific Northwest are ideal for growing speculative fiction authors--or, at least, Marina J. Lostetter would like to think so. Originally from Oregon, she now resides in Arkansas with her husband, Alex. When not writing or drawing she can often be found reading spec-fic, or playing it (she enjoys a good zombie-themed board game now and again). And she does it all while globetrotting. Please visit her online at www.lostetter.net.

Customer reviews

5 star		43%
4 star		29%
3 star		16%
2 star		9%
1 star		3%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Zachary A Cochran

What's the point here?

Reviewed in the United States on September 3, 2018

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Without any interesting direct story or cogent backstory this novel assumes the reader should care about generations (apparently? it's loose on its own chronology) of one dimensional characters strung together through poorly investigated societal(?), scenic(?), thematic(?), changes. So many questions... What's the point when a story line is ditched the minute you get interested in anyone? What's the point of buying into the next deep time dystopia if there's no coherent thread to set it up? Is it important the characters are clones and not say... frozen and reanimated? How have any of them earned my trust as a point of view? Or have they not? Who knows? But maybe if it's vague enough we can get a trilogy out of it.

26 people found this helpful

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John F Kraft IV

Mixed reaction

Reviewed in the United States on April 23, 2018

Verified Purchase

I had mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, I found it fairly engrossing, and I generally enjoyed the story. About two-thirds of the way through the book the tone then changes dramatically and not for the better. Frankly, it was abrupt enough that I had to go back and check to see if I had skipped something . Once I reached that point, I lost most of my investment in the book and started getting annoyed by some of the more questionable plot decisions.

The editing also fell apart in the last third of the Kindle edition. I found incorrect names ("Anton Gaudi"), mis-used words (("strenuous" instead of "tenuous"), and other similar issues. It almost seemed like the editor got tired and gave up.

32 people found this helpful

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How would one travel the galaxy?

Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2018

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How would one travel the galaxy?
Noumenon is a gem of a space opera. It asks one of the confounding questions of deep space travel: How would a people travel the galaxy? Black holes, Cryogenics, Artificial Intelligence, Bio-Artificial Intelligence, Virtual reality, Cloning, or other exotic means. The problem is time versus distance versus the human condition. Well, not to belabor a challenge, Ms Lostetter adopted the Cloning method in conjunction with an interesting sub-dimensional (SD) quantum type of travel to defeat the difficult Einstein distance vs time challenge. I’ll allow the author to better define her parameters but in the end she does a better than average job with the deep space travel conundrum. The story revolves around genetic cloning to insure proper crewing of deep generational space ships. Although clones are exact duplicates of the original, small differences do creep in and grow to large differences over time. This is the heart of the story as Noumenon spans eons of space travel for the ships of Convoy 7. Fascinating story with terrific insight in the multi-faceted human condition.
Character development is the heart of Noumenon and is done in vignette style with recurring basic clone genetic lines. These vignettes are all wrapped in an intriguing story of very long deep space travel to a strange star, LQ Pyxidis, thousands of light years from earth. The entire roundtrip from earth will take thousands of earth years and about half that in SD faster than light quantum travel.
No gratuitous sex, violence or language. Just interesting writing.
This is the first book in I guess a possible trilogy. Book #2 comes out in August 2018 and is entitled Noumenon Infinity. Book #3?? A fun read about very deep space travel and how it could possibly be done. Yes I know, there are lots of proposals this is just one person’s supposition. Ms Lostetter does a fine job and will keep the reader engaged. Overall a strong recommend if you like Space, the Final Frontier!!

13 people found this helpful

Helpful

Dumb Plot Device - Gets in the way of the storytelling and is completely illogical.

Reviewed in the United States on May 20, 2018

Verified Purchase

I had high hopes for this book based on the reviews, but it has a STUPID underlying plot device, and it gets pretty boring as you get deeper into the book. In addition, the actions of the characters are so implausible to make the book unreadable.

[DETAILS - WITH SPOILERS - WHY I DIDN’T LIKE IT] The whole concep that they would initially use clones of real people (with the same name and “character traits” as their Earth-bound “parent”) to crew an interstellar spaceship is a stretch at best....but the whole underlying plot device — that there is no breeding among the crew during a multi-generation ark ship, and that each individual clone would each be replaced with their identical (ie, clone) replacement....and that the new clone will take over the same job as the prior clone after a pre-determined number of years (whereupon the older clone is simply euthanized) — was so illogical, and became so unbelievable as the “generations” went on, that I simply gave up and stopped reading the book about 2/3 of the way in.

Overall, the concept had promise initially, but the author took an interesting idea to an extreme, making it beyond believable (and at that point, it just becomes dumb). I gave it two stars, instead of one, because it started out OK and even has potential...if the author were to go back and modify it significantly.

25 people found this helpful

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PrimordialStar

Very interesting!

Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2017

Verified Purchase

This is a very interesting take on a generation starship novel. The crew encounters a lot of moral and ethical questions about cloning, as well as many about what it means to be human and to be an individual. I really enjoyed it, and my only concern would be that this is probably not okay for kids under 15 or so, no matter their reading level, just due to some of the situations encountered. There's nothing sexual, but there are a lot of things that might bother younger readers, so parents, if this is for a younger kid, please read over it first to make sure it won't bother them. I would seriously recommend this to anyone who likes the science fiction storylines where they delve into the human experience at the same time as they question the unknown!

9 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Graham Turnbull

a bit of a mess really

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 2, 2019

Verified Purchase

One would think that a story purportedly about the discovery of other intelligent beings in the Galaxy might actually focus on this. Instead this book focuses on rather pedestrian societal issues that are never realistically rendered nor are very likely in the first place. If you manage to get that far, consider just how realistic is the Earth society they return to. Add to this, narrative driven by dialogue and skimpy characterisation; and the fact that after 20 years at their destination, they discover not one single fact; one has to question the purpose of being never mind the purpose of the book.

24 people found this helpful

Michael Turner

Very Amatuer

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 4, 2020

Verified Purchase

Such a glaring lack of research that I couldn't get past the first 50 odd pages. And we're talking really basic stuff.

Firstly, the whole premise of spending TRILLIONS, to send 200,000 humans (clones) and 7 massive spaceships to a far off point of interest, with no real purpose, is madness. Especially when this decision is made following a short presentation to global figures about a sun that might have something around it, but still they get the green light.

And what goals are asked by those funding it? Find out if it's natural or not, and come back to tell us what you've found. That's it!! That's the actual mission brief!! Trillions to go and tell us what you've found!!

Then to top it all, the biggest whopper. The person with the initial idea is given a tour of one of the vessels prior to launch and decides to hang back, plug his PDA in and uploads his device's personality into the onboard system. Zero security whatsoever, not even a password to get past. Trillions of dollars and someone can plug a device in and upload whatever the hell they want without any challenge.

Wha kind of crap is this?

And it has over a thousand 4-5 star reviews? You must have a lot of friends and family.

12 people found this helpful

Nick Brett

Thoughtful sci-fi

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 31, 2019

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A few years from “now” long range telescopes see what may be a non-human artefact at the very edge of the galaxy. A fleet of ships is built to go and investigate the first ever possibility of alien life. Because the trip will take generations to complete, the very best are selected for the self-sustaining fleet but on a basis of clone technology. Generations of clones will carry the torch towards the unknown. So the first humans to potentially see alien life will actually be clones. Much of the book is about the journey and we “meet” different generations of the clones (and the AI helping to control the fleet) as they get nearer to their destination. We then see what they find (no spoilers here) and their equally long journey back to Earth to report on their findings. Of course there has been an enormous passage of time so the Earth they come back to is not what they were expecting. Again no spoilers except to say there are no big “wow” surprises, more a thoughtful approach as to how the ship society and life on Earth has evolved, and more than that, without turning into HAL from 2001, how the AI also changes over time.
I can’t say it was an exciting page turner but it made me think more than most sci-fi and the ideas shared have stayed with me for quite a while. Not one to get for a “Space Opera” or epic saga, but a thoughtful view on what it is to be human.

4 people found this helpful

A. Johnson

A good idea following a voyage of exploration through generations but ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 4, 2018

Verified Purchase

A good idea following a voyage of exploration through generations but I was never that involved and attached to any of the characters and it was at times disjoint a it moveed from one gneration to the next. I suspect the authour introduced the AI character and the clones to try to address this but at least for me it didn't work. Another issue was theat the story telling is quite clunky at times and many times seems unconvincing. Overall the book doesn't rise above average, there are many worse books but I would neither recommend nor warn about it.

5 people found this helpful

Stick Pilgrim

Wonderful and gripping.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 12, 2019

Verified Purchase

A wonderful book that is masterfully paced. Reminds me a little of Children of time but with a spirit of wonder rather than apocalyptic dread. The book is set on a space convoy, with each section taking place over each successive generation. But don't let that put you off, there is one story and common threads throughout, and the seeds of the future events are laid perfectly throughout. You don't learn much about the alien race, but the story is about her journey more than the destination!

One person found this helpful

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