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Hey Alliance-Union people!
I was thinking about Alliance-Union tonight, having posted a Hellburner snippet for a prompt on Tumblr - so I looked it up to see if there was any news and it turns out the next book, Alliance Unbound, is up for preorder! .... in October 2024. So long to wait! But apparently (as per Cherryh's blog) she and her wife have had a truly dismal couple of health-issue-filled years, so all her books are extremely behind. But we have a cover and a release date!
I wasn't sure if it was going to be a direct sequel to the previous book or not, but now we finally know what it's about and more-or-less what era it's set in.
When Cyteen opened up faster-than-light travel, it gave the technology for free to any ship that could reach it; and with that technology, it provided a map of jump-points, points of mass enabling starships to navigate hyperspace safely.
The map of jump-points, however, stopped with the route to Alpha—thus excluding Sol, and Earth, and the Earth Company, whose gateway to the stars was Alpha. Cyteen knew exactly what it was doing with its gift. Sol and the EC could still reach Alpha with sub-light pusher-ships as it always had—but Sol and the Earth Company no longer had any authority in the Beyond.
But Sol intends to take back control of its star-stations and stop Cyteen's unbridled expansion, however it can. To do that, they are willing to starve Alpha and concentrate their efforts on a huge FTLer capable of carrying military force.
That sounds like the development of the rider-carrier fleet, doesn't it? Or was there a generation of Earth fleet ships before that? Anyway, it sounds like it's going to be a lot closer to the Hellburner/Downbelow Station era than I was expecting, both in time and physical space (the previous book was about a generation earlier and far away). Might we see a young Graff or Mallory in this one, maybe even a cameo from some of my beloved Hellburner crew? Discuss!
I wasn't sure if it was going to be a direct sequel to the previous book or not, but now we finally know what it's about and more-or-less what era it's set in.
When Cyteen opened up faster-than-light travel, it gave the technology for free to any ship that could reach it; and with that technology, it provided a map of jump-points, points of mass enabling starships to navigate hyperspace safely.
The map of jump-points, however, stopped with the route to Alpha—thus excluding Sol, and Earth, and the Earth Company, whose gateway to the stars was Alpha. Cyteen knew exactly what it was doing with its gift. Sol and the EC could still reach Alpha with sub-light pusher-ships as it always had—but Sol and the Earth Company no longer had any authority in the Beyond.
But Sol intends to take back control of its star-stations and stop Cyteen's unbridled expansion, however it can. To do that, they are willing to starve Alpha and concentrate their efforts on a huge FTLer capable of carrying military force.
That sounds like the development of the rider-carrier fleet, doesn't it? Or was there a generation of Earth fleet ships before that? Anyway, it sounds like it's going to be a lot closer to the Hellburner/Downbelow Station era than I was expecting, both in time and physical space (the previous book was about a generation earlier and far away). Might we see a young Graff or Mallory in this one, maybe even a cameo from some of my beloved Hellburner crew? Discuss!
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