/lit/ - Literature

Are aliens really evil bros?

"The Killing Star" by Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski, 1995.

An anon in the last thread was looking for an ebook of this novel which wasn't found but an audiobook is extant. As the blurb sounded interesting, I listened to the audiobook.

The novel opens in the near future where humans have colonized Luna, Mars, Ceres, Mercury: the usual suspects. The Solar system is invaded by large objects moving at relativistic speeds. The objects detach like cluster bombs and target the known clusters of humanity. Due to the kinetic energy of the impacts, the surfaces of the planetary bodies are sterilized and humanity is reduced to Ceres and whatever was afloat at the time on the solar winds.

The novel then shifts perspective to the survivors which include residents of Ceres, a submarine exploring the wreck of the Titanic, an outpost on a comet, and a sect that follows the clones of Jesus and Buddha, who are known as Joshua and Justin.

The novel consists of several short stories written from these perspectives at the time of the attack and the immediate aftermath and loosely strung together. The stories are often split so the reader can be shifted to another perspective. The stories don't really overlap so there's not much reason to do this other than staving off reader boredom for as long as possible.

The survivors deduce that an alien race has detected their emissions and chose to exterminate humanity as a preemptive measure. The primary thesis of the novel is that spacefaring races would conclude that all other spacefaring races are a threat to their survival. Any threat to survival must be eliminated.

The Ceres survivors shut down their fusion reactors and go dark, hoping to avoid detection by neutrino emissions. Eventually they receive a broadcast from the aliens, which is a rebroadcast of the 1985 Michael Jackson single "We Are the World". The survivors deduce that this was the strongest emission ever emanated from Earth and the aliens must have detected us from it. The rebroadcast turns out to have an embedded virus that infects the receiving equipment and converts it to self-replicating robots. These robots overrun the station on Ceres, exterminating the survivors there.

The two submarine survivors were saved by the depth of the Atlantic while they explored the Titanic. After the attack, they surface and begin transmitting SoS calls that are heard by the surviving outposts who choose to ignore them as this will draw alien attention. The crewman of the submarine has a VR simulation of the Titanic that he is obsessed with and the captain has to cajol him out of it in order to help scavenge for supplies.

Does anyone knows of an ebook version of The Killing Star?

I really want to read it but it's very expensive to order it for real (+ shipping)

I saw a 2010 thread asking for the same thing, so I don't know if this is the right thread but it's SF so, you know
Fucker in that thread gave a direct torrent link ;_;

>>8751413
Forgot pic

I just got into hard scifi and i love this book.
Minus some obvious pro-jew propaganda in there.