Among Other Stars

Humanity has reached the stars.It is not alone.In 2187, Commander Adrian Vale leads the first crewed faster-than-light mission beyond the Solar System. The voyage is a triumph-but hidden within the ship's transit data is something no one can explain: a structured signal where no signal should exist.Less than a year later, humanity encounters the Velari, an intelligent civilization with its own history, politics, allies, and enemies. First contact begins not with invasion, but with mathematics, cautious diplomacy, and the difficult work of learning how to understand a species shaped beneath another sun.But the galaxy is already old.Humanity soon discovers worlds scarred by conquest, civilizations bound together by trade and rivalry, and conflicts that began long before Earth entered interstellar space. As explorers become diplomats and diplomats are forced to reckon with war, the United Earth Compact must decide what kind of civilization humanity intends to become-and how much power it is willing to use in the name of its ideals.The alliances that follow reshape the balance of power across inhabited space. On Earth and Mars, old political divisions deepen. Beyond the frontier, an ancient discovery suggests that even the civilizations humanity has met may be only the latest inhabitants of a far greater history.And watching from the edges of that expanding network are the Vael, an advanced civilization convinced that humanity is moving too quickly, spreading too far, and binding worlds together before any of them understand the consequences.To humanity, the stars represent possibility.To the Vael, they represent a warning.Among Other Stars is a sweeping science-fiction epic of first contact, exploration, diplomacy, political rivalry, ancient mysteries, and interstellar war-following humanity's transformation from a species confined to one solar system into a new and unpredictable force in a galaxy that was never waiting for it.