Now back in print, this volume comprises The Cassini Division and The Sky Road , the last two books of The Fall Revolution, Ken MacLeod's groundbreaking, multiple award-winning science fiction epic. The Cassini Division: In the 24th century, post humans, god-like descendents of humans who transformed themselves with high technology, have warped the very fabric of the solar system for unknowable reasons. Ellen May Ngewthu has a plan to rid humanity of these beings, but she must first travel the entirety of the Solar Union, convincing others that post-humans are the threat she knows they are... The Sky Road: Her rockets redundant, her people rebellious, and her borders defenseless against the Sino-Soviet Union, Myra Godwin appeals to the crumbling West for help as she faces the end of the space age. And, centuries in the future, as humanity again reaches into space, a young scholar could make the difference between success and failure. For his mysterious new lover has seduced him into the idea of extrapolating the ship's future from the dark archives of the past. The Sky Road won the British Science Fiction Association Award. The Fall Revolution Series : 1. The Star Fraction 2. The Stone Canal 3. The Cassini Division 4. The Sky Road Ken MacLeod is the multiple award-winning author of many science fiction novels, including the Fall Revolution quartet, the Engines of Light trilogy ( Cosmonaut Keep , Dark Light , and Engine City ), and several stand-alone novels including Newton’s Wake , Learning the World , and The Restoration Game . Born on the Scottish isle of Skye, he lives in Edinburgh. Divisions By MacLeod, Ken Orb Books Copyright © 2009 MacLeod, Ken All right reserved. ISBN: 9780765321190 Chapter One   Looking Backward   Something flashed. I blinked away annular afterimages, and glared at a young man clad in cobalt-blue pyjamas who lowered a boxy apparatus of lenses and reflectors with a brief apologetic smile as he ducked away into the crowd. Apart from him, my arrival had gone unnoticed. Although the deck was a good hundred metres square, it didn't have room for everybody who was invited, let alone everybody who'd turned up. The natural progress of the evening, with people hitting off and drifting away to more private surroundings, would ease the pressure, but not yet.   There was room enough, however, for a variety of activities: close dancing, huddled eating, sprawled drinking, intense talking; and for a surprising number of children to scamper among them all. Cunningly focused sound systems kept each cluster of revellers relatively content with, and compact in, their particular ambience. The local fashions seemed to fit the party, loose and fluid but close to the body: women in saris or shifts, men in pyjama-suits or serious-looking togas and tabards. The predominant colours were the basic sea-silk tones of blue, green, red, and white. My own outfit, though distinctive, didn't seem out of place.   The centre of the deck was taken up by the ten-metre-wide pillar of the building's air shaft. Somewhere in one of the groups around it, talking above the faint white noise of the falling air, would be the couple whose presence was the occasion for the party—the people I'd come to speak to, if only for a moment. There was no point in pushing through the crowd—like anyone here who really wanted to, I'd reach them eventually by always making sure I was headed in their direction.   I made my way to a drinks table, put down my bottle and picked up a glass of Mare Imbrium white. The first sip let me know that it was, aptly enough, very dry. My slight grimace met a knowing smile. It came from the man in blue, who'd somehow managed to appear in front of me.   'Aren't you used to it?'   So he knew, or had guessed, whence I came. I made a show of inspecting him, over a second sip. He was, unlike me, genuinely young. Not bad-looking, in the Angloslav way, with dirty-blonde tousled hair and pink, shaved face; broad cheekbones, blue eyes. Almost as tall as me—taller, if I took my shoes off. His curious device hung on a strap around his neck.   'Comet vodka's more to my taste,' I said. I handed the glass into the monkey-thing's small black paws and stuck out my hand. 'Ellen May Ngwethu. Pleased to meet you, neighbour.'   'Stephan Vrij,' he said, shaking hands. 'Likewise.'   He watched as the drink was returned.   'Smart monkey,' he said.   'That's right,' I replied, unhelpfully. Smart spacesuit, was the truth of it, but people down here tended to get edgy around that sort of stuff.   'Well,' he went on, 'I'm on the block committee, and tonight I'm supposed to welcome the uninvited and the unexpected.'   'Ah, thanks. And to flash bright lights at them?'   'It's a camera,' he said, hefting it. 'I made it myself.'   It was the first time I'd seen a camera visible to the naked eye. My interest in this wasn't entir