Eclipse

by K.A. Bedford

Watching "HMS Eclipse" through the geosynch spaceport window, Officer James Dunne, a newly minted graduate of the Royal Interstellar Service Academy, thinks his first assignment will be routine . . .... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1894063309
• ISBN13: 9781894063302
• Release Date: September 2005
• Publisher: EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing,
• Length: 311 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Better than Star Trek!

'Eclipse' won Australia's top SF award, the Aurealis Award for 2005, with this novel, his second. His first novel, 'Orbital Burn' was a finalist for the same award in 2004. I am not well read in the science fiction genre, but I know good books and this is one of them. I really enjoyed reading this book, and look forward to more stories from the same universe that KA Bedford has created in his first two books. Others have summarized the plot, so I won't speak about that, but I will say that I like my novels with real-life grit and characters that I can believe really exist. Eclipse has that gritty feel, while still taking you on an invigorating journey through the stars. A++

Absorbing and tense read

Being a big reader of mostly SF, I keep 10-15 unread books at any given time and when I finish one, I flip through all of them to see which grabs me then. One recent evening after finishing Glasshouse, I opened Eclipse and it really grabbed me so I read it nonstop until finished later in the night. It is this good and tense. While I enjoyed Orbital Burn too, this book put Mr. Bedford on my buy on publication list, so I eagerly wait his new novel. The synopsis of the book gives a good description of the story which is pretty much independent of the earlier book, though set in the same universe, but the strength of the book is in the 4 main characters (the junior officers, the exec and the captain), their personalities and interaction. Of all the characters, the captain and some of his life trajectory as recounted (read the book to see how) struck me as so well done that you could really image him and his torments. Very, very good. Liviu

Sophomore jinx? Not here, folks.

It is a widely held belief in many kinds of artistic endeavours that a second effort is often a let-down, especially when the first is notable. Well, K.A. Bedford's "Orbital Burn" was notable, and I was pleased to discover that this second effort of his is even better. Others above me here have given a nice synopsis of the story, so I'll just say that you should be careful if you have a heart condition; this book is a pulse-pounder that's guaranteed to raise your heartrate. Killer cover, killer story ... what more could you ask for?

SF for the rest of us...

I'm not really a science fiction fan. Ray Bradbury is my only must-read in the category. KA Bedford, however, manages to pull out some of Bradbury's fair dust and give us a book that speaks to the deepest, darkest parts of humanity. The technology is important, but it's only one factor in the incredible evolution of the main character. If you've never read SF before, this is the perfect book on which to cut your teeth.

Eclipse of the Soul

Eclipse is K. A. Bedford's second published SF novel, following Orbital Burn (2004). Though set in the same universe as the earlier novel it shares none of the characters or story-line (aside from a couple of references to the "Kestrel event") with that work and can be enjoyed without having read the previous book. Eclipse opens about forty years after the events described in Orbital Burn and 150 years after the Earth was mysteriously destroyed by forces unknown. Humanity is spread across the remaining planets and moons of the sol system as well as nearby stars. James Dunne, 21, a newly minted graduate of the Royal Interstellar Service, is about to take up his first duty on the starship Eclipse. He meets an attractive female graduate while waiting to board and soon finds himself plunged into an environment of steadily increasing horror, institutionalised bastardry, intraservice rivalry and corruption, and is faced with the threat of a new war. He also becomes involved in humanity's first contact with an alien race. Dunne has to deal with a deeply disturbed and vengeful captain and a psychotic and sadistic executive officer who is out to break his spirit at any cost. Meanwhile the reader gradually finds out details of Dunne's family history and gains insight into why he joined the service and why he feels compelled to stick it out while his world collapses around him, and his future looks increasingly bleak. The story comes with several interesting SF ideas, such as injectable computer "headware" for command, control, communication (and hacking) aboard ship and cheap biologically engineered "disposable" humans of limited capabilities--used when a robot is not enough, and a real human is too much, for the job at hand. Then there's the "virtual queen" who seems to engender as much, or as little, loyalty in her subjects as any flesh and blood royal. Eclipse starts out like a fairly typical Heinlein-inspired "military SF" story but it soon veers off into altogether darker, more interesting and dramatic, territory. Set almost entirely aboard the starship Eclipse the story appears to leave some loose threads hanging around towards the end (I got the impression there's much more to Dunne's father's disappearance/death, his mother's remarriage and his brother's tragedy than we find out in this story) and I can't help wondering if Dunne's story will be continued in the future. At the end of Eclipse I was left uncertain if the weakly godlike aliens were the same ones that appear in Orbital Burn. Either way the story arc feels unfinished. We can but hope. Eclipse is an accomplished and engrossing tale that plays on the darker side of military service and human nature. It won the Aurealis award for the best Australian SF novel of 2005.