Encounter With Tiber
Encyclopedia
Encounter With Tiber is a 1996 science fiction
novel
written by former astronaut Buzz Aldrin
and science fiction writer John Barnes
. A working title, used on some advance covers for the British edition, was The Tides of Tiber.
(the aliens' home world) who is using the time in transit to translate two alien books and to write a history of how humans gained access to the alien's knowledge.
system was under threat of cosmic bombardment. Their only hope to survive was to explore and colonise nearby space. On 21st century Earth, astronauts find artifacts left by this civilisation and wonder who they were.
The narrator is a historian who is part of a mission to the Alpha Centauri system, the home system of the aliens. As all crew members were required to bring several projects to work on, due to the decades long nature of the mission, she spends her time writing biographies of several family members who were closely involved in the acquisition of a repository of the alien's knowledge. As another project she translates two autobiographies by the aliens who had visited the Sol system some 9,000 years before.
, which it is not .
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
written by former astronaut Buzz Aldrin
Buzz Aldrin
Buzz Aldrin is an American mechanical engineer, retired United States Air Force pilot and astronaut who was the Lunar Module pilot on Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing in history...
and science fiction writer John Barnes
John Barnes (author)
-Writing:Two of his novels, The Sky So Big and Black and The Duke of Uranium have been reviewed as having content appropriate for a young adult readership, comparing favorably to Robert A. Heinlein's "juvenile" novels...
. A working title, used on some advance covers for the British edition, was The Tides of Tiber.
Plot introduction
Evidence is found of an intelligent alien species who visited the Earth long ago and left an encyclopedia with the collected knowledge of their culture. The story is told from the point of view of a human historian on a star ship on the way to Alpha CentauriAlpha Centauri
Alpha Centauri is the brightest star in the southern constellation of Centaurus...
(the aliens' home world) who is using the time in transit to translate two alien books and to write a history of how humans gained access to the alien's knowledge.
Plot summary
9,000 years ago an alien society in the Alpha CentauriAlpha Centauri
Alpha Centauri is the brightest star in the southern constellation of Centaurus...
system was under threat of cosmic bombardment. Their only hope to survive was to explore and colonise nearby space. On 21st century Earth, astronauts find artifacts left by this civilisation and wonder who they were.
The narrator is a historian who is part of a mission to the Alpha Centauri system, the home system of the aliens. As all crew members were required to bring several projects to work on, due to the decades long nature of the mission, she spends her time writing biographies of several family members who were closely involved in the acquisition of a repository of the alien's knowledge. As another project she translates two autobiographies by the aliens who had visited the Sol system some 9,000 years before.
Trivia
The book calls 4097 a prime numberPrime number
A prime number is a natural number greater than 1 that has no positive divisors other than 1 and itself. A natural number greater than 1 that is not a prime number is called a composite number. For example 5 is prime, as only 1 and 5 divide it, whereas 6 is composite, since it has the divisors 2...
, which it is not .