Antares Dawn

By Michael McCollum

The super giant star Antares exploded in 2512, isolating the human colony on Alta from the rest of human space for more than a century. One day, a powerful warship materialized in the system without warning. Alarmed, the Altan Space Navy dispatched a ship to investigate. What ASNS Discovery finds is a battered hulk manned by a dead crew.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael McCollum
• Release date: Apr 5, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452364070

Michael McCollum

Michael McCollum was born in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1946, and is a graduate of Arizona State University, where he majored in aerospace propulsion and minored in nuclear engineering. He is employed at Honeywell in Tempe, Arizona, where he is Chief Engineer in the valve product line. In his career, Mr. McCollum has worked on the precursor to the Space Shuttle Main Engine, a nuclear valve to replace the one that failed at Three Mile Island, several guided missiles, the International Space Station, and virtually every aircraft in production today. He was involved in an effort to create a joint venture company with a major Russian aerospace engine manufacturer and has traveled extensively to Russia. In addition to his engineering, Mr. McCollum is a successful professional writer in the field of science fiction. He is the author of a dozen pieces of short fiction and has appeared in magazines such as Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, Amazing, and Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. His novels (all published by Ballantine, Del Rey) include A Greater Infinity, Life Probe, Procyon's Promise, Antares Dawn, and Antares Passage. His novel, Thunderstrike!, was optioned by a Hollywood production company for a possible movie. His other books include The Clouds of Saturn and The Sails of Tau Ceti. His latest books, Gibraltar Earth, Gibraltar Sun, Gibraltar Stars and Antares Victory, were published for the first time anywhere at Sci Fi - Arizona, and Third Millennium Publishing. Several of these books have subsequently been translated into Japanese, German, Russian, and English (as opposed to American). Mr. McCollum is the proprietor of Sci Fi - Arizona, one of the first author-owned-and-operated virtual bookstores on the Internet. He is also the operator of Third Millennium Publishing (http://3mpub.com), a web site dedicated to providing publication services to author/publishers on the INTERNET. Mr. McCollum is married to a lovely lady named Catherine, and has three children: Robert, Michael, and Elizabeth. Robert is a financial analyst for a computer company in Massachusetts. He is married to Patty, who once licked the big salt crystal in the Boston Museum of Science. Michael is a computer specialist. Half a decade ago, he was a Military Police Specialist with the Arizona National Guard. He found the promise of “one weekend a month and two weeks a year” to have been optimistic in the post-September 11th world. He went on a year-long camping trip at government expense to a garden spot somewhere between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, from which he returned safe and sound. Elizabeth is a graduate of Northern Arizona University and married to Brock. They live in Washington, D.C.

Reviews for Antares Dawn

[tomwaitstables · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

It reads like a first novel. The plot focused on the wrong things and rambled on in some parts that should have been trimmed down or cut. The dialogue was clipped. It didn't reveal anything about the characters; there was no subtext. It wasn't bad for a first novel. It has a good idea; and a lot was invested in it. And he really did research it, try to make it hard sf. but i didn't enjoy it. I probably won't read another Michael McCollum novel, unless I have nothing else to read. and it won't be the sequel, Antares Passage. It just seemed so lazy; anyone who knows me that i like sf, even bad sf. what i can't stand is lazy sf. or lazy anything.Antares Dawn is about a colony that was cut off from the rest of the human hegemony for about 100 or so years. Or 300 years; I don't really remember and it diesn;t matter. Then an Earth battlecruiser comes through the system, with obvious signs of battle damage. the battlecruiser is so much more advanced than anything they have that it seems invincible, and the scary thing is whatever it is in the black that was able to destroy it. Imagine the cargo cult, those Stone Age tribes in the Pacific suddenly introduced to the rest of the world when the Americans and Japanese suddenly begin waging war in their isolated little island. That was the premise, an idea that held so much promise. Instead, Antares Dawn got sidetracked into a long, needless lecture about a nova, and there were whole chapters that could've been reduced to a few sentences. It was just so . . . Hopefully McCollum got better as he wrote. Antares Dawn was too bland for me to recommend it.

[danjlaf · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Re-reading a good book is always fun after a decent interval, just as it was when first read it, it was an enjoyable re-reading The antares series is one of the best of Mccollums works

[one3horse3library · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

It reads like a first novel. The plot focused on the wrong things and rambled on in some parts that should have been trimmed down or cut. The dialogue was clipped. It didn't reveal anything about the characters; there was no subtext. It wasn't bad for a first novel. It has a good idea; and a lot was invested in it. And he really did research it, try to make it hard sf. but i didn't enjoy it. I probably won't read another Michael McCollum novel, unless I have nothing else to read. and it won't be the sequel, Antares Passage. It just seemed so lazy; anyone who knows me that i like sf, even bad sf. what i can't stand is lazy sf. or lazy anything.Antares Dawn is about a colony that was cut off from the rest of the human hegemony for about 100 or so years. Or 300 years; I don't really remember and it diesn;t matter. Then an Earth battlecruiser comes through the system, with obvious signs of battle damage. the battlecruiser is so much more advanced than anything they have that it seems invincible, and the scary thing is whatever it is in the black that was able to destroy it. Imagine the cargo cult, those Stone Age tribes in the Pacific suddenly introduced to the rest of the world when the Americans and Japanese suddenly begin waging war in their isolated little island. That was the premise, an idea that held so much promise. Instead, Antares Dawn got sidetracked into a long, needless lecture about a nova, and there were whole chapters that could've been reduced to a few sentences. It was just so . . . Hopefully McCollum got better as he wrote. Antares Dawn was too bland for me to recommend it.