The Golden AgeThe Golden Age is Grand Space Opera, a large-scale SF adventure novel in the tradition of A. E. Van vogt and Roger Zelazny, with perhaps a bit of Cordwainer Smith enriching the style. It is an astounding story of super science, a thrilling wonder story that recaptures the excitements of SF's golden age writers. The Golden Age takes place 10,000 years in the future in our solar system, an interplanetary utopian society filled with immortal humans. Within the frame of a traditional tale-the one rebel who is unhappy in utopia-Wright spins an elaborate plot web filled with suspense and passion. Phaethon, of Radamanthus House, is attending a glorious party at his family mansion to celebrate the thousand-year anniversary of the High Transcendence. There he meets first an old man who accuses him of being an impostor and then a being from Neptune who claims to be an old friend. The Neptunian tells him that essential parts of his memory were removed and stored by the very government that Phaethon believes to be wholly honorable. It shakes his faith. He is an exile from himself. And so Phaethon embarks upon a quest across the transformed solar system--Jupiter is now a second sun, Mars and Venus terraformed, humanity immortal--among humans, intelligent machines, and bizarre life forms that are partly both, to recover his memory, and to learn what crime he planned that warranted such preemptive punishment. His quest is to regain his true identity. The Golden Age is one of the major, ambitious SF novels of the year and the international launch of an important new writer in the genre. |
Contents
Section 1 | 7 |
Section 2 | 11 |
Section 3 | 13 |
Section 4 | 24 |
Section 5 | 39 |
Section 6 | 60 |
Section 7 | 80 |
Section 8 | 87 |
Section 13 | 144 |
Section 14 | 157 |
Section 15 | 174 |
Section 16 | 192 |
Section 17 | 207 |
Section 18 | 221 |
Section 19 | 278 |
Section 20 | 301 |
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Common terms and phrases
antihydrogen antimatter Aoen armor Atkins Aurelian body brain casket chamber channel circuits College of Hortators costume cube Curia Daphne Daphne's Diomedes door Dyson Sphere Earthmind Eleemosynary Composition emotional Emphyrio energy Eveningstar exile eyes face floating forbidden memories Gannis gesture going Golden Oecumene hand Helion helmet human icon Jupiter Lakshmi Lakshmi Agreement light live mannequin manor-born Mansion masquerade mass-mind matter memory Mentality Middle Dreaming mind nanomachines Nebuchadnezzar Neo-Orpheus Neptunian neuroform Noetic Noumenal once Orpheus pain Peers penguin perhaps Phae Phaethon felt Phaethon knew Phaethon looked Phaethon saw Phaethon turned Phoenix Exultant records Red Manorial redacted remember Rhadamanthus routine Scaramouche scene sense-filter ship signal Silver-Gray smiled society solar Sophotech space space elevator speak spoke staring stars stepped telepresence tell things thought thoughtspace Tsychandri-Manyu Vafnir virus voice Warlock Wheel-of-Life wife wonder word Xenophon