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Noumenon (Noumenon, Book 1)

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

Astrophysicist Reggie Straifer has discovered a mysterious object in deep space: a strange star, blinking in a seemingly impossible pattern. As humanity plans its first adventures beyond the solar system, Reggie and thousands of others join NOUMENON – a convoy of nine ships on a mission to reveal the origins of this anomalous star. Is its strobing a natural phenomenon or something far more alien?

NOUMENON’s voyage will take centuries. To preserve their talents, the convoy is populated by clones of its original crew. Born and reborn in a sealed society with a single purpose, every individual and every generation must come to terms with inheritances that go far beyond DNA.

Marina J. Lostetter’s stunning debut explores the wonders of deep space and the obsessions, fears and desires of humanity’s first interstellar travellers as they speed toward a single blinking star and a discovery beyond their wildest imaginings.

 Fiction Genre Fiction Hard Science Fiction Psychological Science Fiction Space Exploration Technothrillers Thriller & Suspense Time Travel Interstellar Thriller Technology Exciting Military

Critic reviews

‘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
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The heart of Noumenon, the reason it works and the most evocative thing about it, is its structure. This is true of both the convoy and the book.

The titular Noumenon is a convoy of nine ships sent to a distant star to analyse anomalous signals. Even with the sub-dimensional FTL travel, it will be a generational mission, over centuries. In order to give the mission the best chance of success, potential crewmembers are analysed and selected, not just for launch, but forever: they will be continually cloned, replaced by themselves, maintaining the balance and make-up of the crew. This single decision has ramifications for the society and the mission down the generations

Like Asimov's early Foundation books (and Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, though the sections here are longer than that book), Noumenon the book presents a series of events of the evolving society, each chapter skipping ahead in time to new characters (albeit familiar from cloning) and showing us how earlier decisions, earlier actions have played out. The solution to a problem in one chapter becomes the cause of the problem in the next, and at each step the characters must solve the problem as best they can for the here and now, with whatever knowledge and limited foresight they have.

Threaded throughout and tying everything together is the convoy's AI, ICC, the only truly consistent crewmember and the one charged with maintaining society and ensuring the success of the mission.

Like Foundation, Noumenon creates such a plausible sequence of events that you stop seeing it as a work of fiction and begin to believe it as a detailed future history. You're pulled along not by seeing what happens to an individual character, but by seeing the ramifications of earlier stories. It's as powerful a work of hard social science fiction as Foundation ever was, and that's the highest recommendation I can give it.

Reminscent of the best of Foundation

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struggled with the voice actors lack of range. There were points where I didn't know which character was talking because of it

great story. lacklustre voice acting

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Follows a central them, but really a collection of short stories along the theme. They vary - some better than others. Never really came together and when you do connect with a character... it’s the end of that short section

Patchy - more short stories than novel

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Short version: there is a sequel and I'm not bothered in the slightest.

Long version: This was a good listen but a weak execution of some interesting ideas.

I won't fault the audio experience at all, delivery was good and clear (though I was annoyed that cloned generations had the same accents as their originals, done to help clarity but narratively unlikely).

The premise was great but the execution was weak. There was a lot of telling and less showing. We saw crises unfold but the reasons behind the crises were listed off rather than beong experienced in the story. And ideas of nature vs nurture were under explored.

Really liked the mid point and finale plots but by the last quarter of the book I just wasn't engaged.

Overall just a bit bland - may be better reading it.

Good performance of some untapped potential

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So many ideas about social structures and how that will resolve at the interpersonal level. So that is great to read and think about, but they are tarnished by by view that they are not really possible or realistic. Still it has the big picture about learning and expansion and what that means to people. The way to solve the long time scales is one of those clever but unrealistic ideas. So it is forgiven due to it being required to make the plot work at all. Not great, but good enough to get me to buy the next book and still be looking forward to it.

Interesting ideas but perhaps not realistic.

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