Comments on: Name that book

Question: Name that book

batikrose — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 20:43:08 -0800

Asking for a friend: Name that book ... SF

"I'm trying to find a book I read in the early 90's about a group of people who have moved to a new planet with a less hospitable climate. The leaders have decided that technology was the downfall of earth and forbid it, reverting their community to per-technology times. The main character, a youth, meets someone who lives in the mountains nearby who has been damaged by the planted uv rays. They tell him about a time where technology was common, a generation or two back and inform him there's a ship at the bottom of the lake. He manages to release the water via a flood gate or something, exposing the ship to the community. I think it may have been part of a series or trilogy. "

By: spunweb

spunweb — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 20:59:34 -0800

Maybe the Worthing Saga?

"It was a miracle of science that permitted human beings to live, if not forever, then for a long, long time. Some people, anyway. The rich, the powerful--they lived their lives at the rate of one year every ten. Somec created two societies: that of people who lived out their normal span and died, and those who slept away the decades, skipping over the intervening years and events. It allowed great plans to be put in motion. It allowed interstellar Empires to be built.

It came near to destroying humanity.

After a long, long time of decadence and stagnation, a few seed ships were sent out to save our species. They carried human embryos and supplies, and teaching robots, and one man. The Worthing Saga is the story of one of these men, Jason WOrthing, and the world he found for the seed he carried.

Orson Scott Card is "a master of the art of storytelling" (Booklist), and The Worthing Saga is a story that only he could have written."

By: Alterscape

Alterscape — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 21:04:24 -0800

I was going to go with another Card novel, "The Ships of Earth." I'm pretty sure that series had an AI giving the protagonist instructions, rather than an old man in the mountains, though.

By: spunweb

spunweb — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 21:35:59 -0800

Oh, seconding The Ships of Earth... but I feel like the ship was actually in the mountains, not in the sea...

By: tacodave

tacodave — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 14:20:53 -0800

As a big Orson Scott Card fan, I can assure you it isn't any of his novels.

By: Sleeper

Sleeper — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 23:37:49 -0800

It may be the Safehold series by David Weber.

Humans move to a new world to escape genocidal aliens who can find us by tracking our radio transmissions and seeing our city lights, so they keep their new planet dark and silent by adopting a religion that condemns technology as the downfall of the Earth.

I haven't read the series, so I don't know if it's really the one.

By: EatenByAGrue

EatenByAGrue — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 16:54:35 -0800

Not Safehold. Not old enough and the description doesn't match.

By: aaebig

aaebig — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 13:40:09 -0800

One of Monica Hughes' Isis books, maybe? There were three of them:

The Keeper of the Isis Light
The Guardian of Isis
The Isis Pedlar

Your book sounds like it might be "The Guardian of Isis"