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Newtons Sleep was the seventh novel in the Faction Paradox series and the only one published by Random Static. An ebook of the novel was later released on the Random Static website for free.
Publisher's summary
Don't tell her what it was like. Don't tell her how you had to dig your way out through heavy layers of clay to reach the fresh air, because that would distress her. Don't tell her about the box, because that would confuse her.
And don't tell her about the light, because that was sacred.
Lately cannonballs have flown their arcs, leaving the crystal sky unbroken, while on Earth their traces are all too visible. Yet though Heaven has never seemed so far away, the divine is terribly closer. War on Earth presages War in Heaven; the struggle between the holy houses of Christ and their eternal Adversary has erupted among the living.
These are the signs of the last days: in 1651, a dead angel is found in a tree in Lincolnshire and a nymph rises from the waters of Kent; in 1642, a dying man is miraculously healed in the grave; in 1665, uncanny skull-masked doctors descend upon a plague house; in 1683, the French secret service unveil mirrors that show the futures; in 1671, Aphra Behn -- she-spy and poetesse -- infiltrates a gathering of alchemists; in 1649, the English kill their king, and history begins...
Plot
to be added
Characters
Worldbuilding
- The first babel attempts to prime humanity for the War in Heaven.
- Erasmus and the other pilots are posthumans who use praxis to reach their past and ensure it isn't altered.
- Biodata is translated as "life-gifts" — a calque.
- Larissa is The Little Book of Absolute Power.
- Charles II is mentioned.
Notes
- This book was the first for the small New Zealand publishing company Random Static.
- The cover won the 2009 Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Artwork.
- The author acknowledges Fiona Moore and Tat Wood for thoughts and comments on the first draft.
- In January 2009, Random Static decided to release Newtons Sleep as a free ebook. This release was without any Faction Paradox series branding, which was deemed an unhelpful distraction to a book that "stands up perfectly well as an SF novel in its own right."[1] The ebook is available here.
- Obverse Books began publishing this story in 2011.
- Mademoiselle Machine is implied to be Time's Vigilante Ace long after the Virgin New Adventures, with "Machine" being what "McShane" sounds like in her bad French accent. Among various hints, Machine relates to Nate Silver on preferring to use a short nickname instead of a real name, the tarot card representing Machine's naked soul is the Ace of Swords which depicts a hand holding up a sword (as Ace did in Battlefield), and a young girl in the streets near The Cunicularii is seen imitating the revving of a motorcycle.
Continuity
- Chatelaine Thessalia, The Little Book of Absolute Power, and the first babel appear. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
- The Faction has been devastated by the Second Wave. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
- Erasmus and his friends are from the Pilots' Coterie. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
- Father-Mother Olympia mentions that Mathara took on a protégé originating from the London area. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two)
- The boy later known as Yellow Dog of the Thirty-One Cuts claims to have seen meetings of wild things who hid sharp teeth and claws in their dark robes in the caverns beneath House Ixion. (PROSE: The Return of the King)
External links
- Official Newtons Sleep page at Random Static