Five SF Novels Featuring Ancient Alien Artifacts
https://www.tor.com/2021/10/08/five-sf-novels-featuring-ancient-alien-artifacts/
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jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) writes:
>Five SF Novels Featuring Ancient Alien Artifacts
>https://www.tor.com/2021/10/08/five-sf-novels-featuring-ancient-alien-artifacts/
>--

Foster's _The Tar-Aiym Krang_
Hogan's _Inherit the Stars_
Weber's _Mutineer's Moon_
McDevitt's _Ancient Shores_
The various Stargate incarnations

In article <sjprfo$koi$1@reader1.panix.com>,
jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:

> Five SF Novels Featuring Ancient Alien Artifacts
> https://www.tor.com/2021/10/08/five-sf-novels-featuring-ancient-alien-artifact
> s/

Was _Ringworld_ mentioned in an earlier essay? BTW, "Scarlet Dream" is
listed as a novelette by the ISFDB.

Most of the SF with Ancient Artifacts that I can think of are shorter
than novels.

--
"We have advanced to new and surprising levels of bafflement."
Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan describes progress in _Komarr_.
�-----------------------------------------------------
Robert Woodward robertaw@drizzle.com

In article <robertaw-48ED9F.09561208102021@news.individual.net>,
Robert Woodward <robertaw@drizzle.com> wrote:
>In article <sjprfo$koi$1@reader1.panix.com>,
> jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
>
>> Five SF Novels Featuring Ancient Alien Artifacts
>> https://www.tor.com/2021/10/08/five-sf-novels-featuring-ancient-alien-artifact
>> s/
>
>Was _Ringworld_ mentioned in an earlier essay? BTW, "Scarlet Dream" is
>listed as a novelette by the ISFDB.
>

Are the Pak really aliens?
--
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

On 10/8/2021 11:48 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) writes:
>> Five SF Novels Featuring Ancient Alien Artifacts
>> https://www.tor.com/2021/10/08/five-sf-novels-featuring-ancient-alien-artifacts/
>> --
>
> Foster's _The Tar-Aiym Krang_
> Hogan's _Inherit the Stars_
> Weber's _Mutineer's Moon_
> McDevitt's _Ancient Shores_
> The various Stargate incarnations

Nice list ! And I have read them all.

Lynn

On 10/8/2021 11:26 AM, James Nicoll wrote:
> Five SF Novels Featuring Ancient Alien Artifacts
> https://www.tor.com/2021/10/08/five-sf-novels-featuring-ancient-alien-artifacts/

I have read "Galactic Derelict by Andre Norton (1959)" and "A Fire Upon
the Deep by Vernor Vinge (1992)". Both good books.

Lynn

On 2021-10-08 11:37 a.m., Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
> In article <robertaw-48ED9F.09561208102021@news.individual.net>,
> Robert Woodward <robertaw@drizzle.com> wrote:
>> In article <sjprfo$koi$1@reader1.panix.com>,
>> jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
>>
>>> Five SF Novels Featuring Ancient Alien Artifacts
>>> https://www.tor.com/2021/10/08/five-sf-novels-featuring-ancient-alien-artifact
>>> s/
>>
>> Was _Ringworld_ mentioned in an earlier essay? BTW, "Scarlet Dream" is
>> listed as a novelette by the ISFDB.
>>
>
> Are the Pak really aliens?
>

Yes. They are really extraterrestrials. Closely related to us mind you,
but that's far from rare. Also the stasis boxes qualify as ancient
alien artifacts.

Robert Woodward <robertaw@drizzle.com> writes:

> In article <sjprfo$koi$1@reader1.panix.com>,
> jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
>
>> Five SF Novels Featuring Ancient Alien Artifacts
>> https://www.tor.com/2021/10/08/five-sf-novels-featuring-ancient-alien-artifact
>> s/
>
> Was _Ringworld_ mentioned in an earlier essay? BTW, "Scarlet Dream" is
> listed as a novelette by the ISFDB.
>
> Most of the SF with Ancient Artifacts that I can think of are shorter
> than novels.

Charles Sheffield's Heritage series starting with _Summertide_
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?557

--
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now: http://members.iinet.net.au/~sjharker@netspace.net.au/
or: http://members.iinet.net.au/~sjharker_nbn/

On 2021-10-08, James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:

> Five SF Novels Featuring Ancient Alien Artifacts
> https://www.tor.com/2021/10/08/five-sf-novels-featuring-ancient-alien-artifacts/

I've read _World of Ptavvs_ and _A Fire Upon the Deep_.

But there are SO MANY novels that have this trope.
And I'm a sucker for it!

Something most of you won't remember: The anonymously authored
1980/81 _Flash Gordon_ books, that really had not connection with
"Flash Gordon" except for three character names, and where said
Flash, Dale, and Zarkov run into the leftovers of two ancient
civilizations that were locked into an epic war and now the humans
are drawn into that conflict by the surviving machine remnants.
There's an ultimate weapon, too.

Rainer M. Schröder's series of German juveniles that were (unauthorized,
I suspect) sequels to _Close Encounters of the Third Kind_, the
second of which had our protagonists stumble on some world severely
booby-trapped from an ancient conflict.

Stanisław Lem's _Niezwyciężony_ (_The Invincible_), where human
explorers on an alien planet run into a swarm of self-reproducing
micromachines that appear to have been the winner of an ancient war
there and that kick human ass. The title is ironic as the humans
arrive in a ship named Invincible, but leave with their tail between
their legs, and it's the alien quasi-life that proves to be invincible.
Now this novel could be turned into a cracking movie, but people
prefer to die on the hill of _Solaris_ instead.

Didn't Pip & Flinx also come across ancient death machines twice
in their first three published adventures?

In Iain M. Banks' _Against a Dark Background_, a humanoid civilization
inhabits a solar system in intergalactic space, far, far, far away
from any neighboring star. Numerous civilizations have come and
gone and the system is littered with their leftovers, including the
Lazy Guns... and a bitchin' motorbike.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

James Nicoll wrote:

>Five SF Novels Featuring Ancient Alien Artifacts

I have read:

Scarlet Dream by C. L. Moore (1934)
World of Ptavvs by Larry Niven (1966)
A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (1992)

Brian