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Eric Nylund
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Signal to Noise Mass Market Paperback – June 1, 1999

by Eric S Nylund (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 64 ratings
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Jack Potter puts computer cryptography to work for the highest bidder: sometimes for private corporations, sometimes for the government. Sometimes the work is legal; if not, Jack simply raises his price. But one day, Jack discovers something cloaked in the hiss of background radiation streaming past the Earth from deep space: a message from an alien civilization. One that's eager to do business with humanity -- and its representative.

Before he knows it, Jack has entered into a partnership that will open a Pandora's Box of potential profit and loss. The governments, the multinationals, and mysterious players more powerful still, all want a piece of the action -- and they're willing to kill, even wage war, to get it. Now Jack is entangled shifting web of deceit and intrigue in which no one, not even his closest friends, can be trusted. For Earth's cloak-and-dagger business practices are writ large in the heavens...and hostile takeovers are just as common across light years as they are across boardroom tables.

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Previous page
  1. Print length
    400 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Harper Voyager
  4. Publication date
    June 1, 1999
  5. Dimensions
    4.19 x 1 x 6.75 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0380792923
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0380792924
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Eric Nylund ("The Warlords of Recess") is a New York Times bestselling and World Fantasy Award–nominated author of fourteen published science fiction, fantasy, and YA novels. His latest is a science fiction series for young readers, The Resisters. Eric also works for Microsoft Studios, where he makes video games.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Voyager; First Mass Market Edition (June 1, 1999)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Mass Market Paperback ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0380792923
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0380792924
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.7 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.19 x 1 x 6.75 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 64 ratings

About the author

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Eric Nylund

Eric Nylund

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Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Eric Nylund is a New York Times bestselling and World Fantasy Award nominated author of sixteen novels including HALO: THE FALL OF REACH and the LitRPG novel, HERO OF THERA.

For 15 years, Nylund's day job was making video games. He attended the 1994 Clarion West Writer's Workshop and has a Bachelor's degree in chemistry and a Master's degree in theoretical chemical physics. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his family on a rain-drenched mountain.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
64 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Hard Sci Fi that you can't put down
Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2001
Verified Purchase
I'm always on the lookout for good "hard" science fiction, so it was with great pleasure that I read this book. Nylund's confident grasp of a wide range of advanced theoretical physics is mixed with a humorous writing style and meticulous attention to story line and character. The "T"s are crossed and the "I"s dotted (no loose ends or deux ex machina solutions) -- and the story goes at such a clip you'll have a hard time putting it down. I'm looking forward to more from this author!
10 people found this helpful
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Electromotive Force
5.0 out of 5 stars Good book.
Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2006
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Well, what can I say? A great book, blending intricate details of a technical, near-post-apocolyptic society with grand-scale espionage and intrigue while tying all that in with how just 3 working-class characters fit into it. It'll keep you guessing the whole time about who's on who's side and what the main character will do next. I highly recommend this book and its sequel, "A Signal Shattered." Eric Nylund's works on Halo is what got me interested in his other works.
3 people found this helpful
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Andrew X. Lias
4.0 out of 5 stars Paranoid and Edgy
Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2000
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Signal to Noise reads much like one would imagine a corraboration between Philip K. Dick and Larry Niven would read. The science is generally hard (with one exception: see below), but not nearly so hard as the oppressive sense of paranoia and lurking evil.
Everyone around Jack, the protagonist, is a potential enemy. Every time he takes a step forward, he runs the risk of finding that he's been walking in the wrong direction. Even his good intentions can have (literally) Earth shattering consequences. And we, the audience, share his paranoia. After awhile, the reader begins to feel like he's navigating a bewildering maze of smoke and mirrors, filled with razor-wire and spring-loaded spikes.
The one area where hard science gives way to soft metaphore is via the sophisticated neural-integrated virtual reality technology of the book. Here the book really starts to seem like a PDK work. In a brilliant variation of the tired, old VR theme, Nylund does not create his artificial experiences out of pixels projected on to retinas, but out of vivid metaphors projected directly into the brain. There is a very literal dream quality to those sequences, heightening the sense of paranoia and the nightmare sense of running down an infinite corridore being chased by ever-closer enemies.
It is a good book. True, it could have been better. The characters could have had a tad more depth (although, in a story filled with shadows, too much depth can be a bad thing) and some of the philosophizing strike a tin note. Never the less, it is an engaging and compelling story that plays to that part of our psyche that Kafka used to explore so very well. It was the stort of story that demanded completion by me even as I came to feel stifled by the oppressiveness of the plot. It is absolutely sadistic that it leaves so much to the sequel -- and absolutely delightful that it torments the reader by doing so.
27 people found this helpful
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Kyle Porter
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Novel
Reviewed in the United States on October 28, 2018
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Eric S. Nylund is a genius. He paints a near future San Francisco tech scene that is full of backstabbing and "dog eat dog" politics. I enjoyed the "faustian" deal made with Wheeler. Good stuff. Its worth a read if you like post-cyber punk writing.
3 people found this helpful
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Justin
5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Book!
Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2014
Verified Purchase
This is my favorite book and I had been looking for a hard copy at a reasonable price for some time. The seller provided just that. It was a library copy so there are some identification stickers on the dust jacket but other than that the book is as described, in great condition, and arrived promptly. I would recommend this seller.
One person found this helpful
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RedEdwards
5.0 out of 5 stars fun
Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2018
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fun story. Well written. Good premise.
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Patrick Darden
5.0 out of 5 stars fantastic speculative hard science fiction
Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2024
AMAZON!! This needs to be on kindle. As well as his other backlog originals.

One of the best SF novels of that year. Still holds up. Great stuff.
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James C. Dascoli
4.0 out of 5 stars Wicked and Fun Sci-Fi despite cliched characters
Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2006
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Eric Nylund brings together unique and wicked sci-fi themes and creates a story that has no slow parts. Some have criticized his writing style, and his characters are certainly clichéd, the beautiful female asian assassin/friend, the rouge double agent who you never quite sure what side he is on, the "break the rules" but good-hearted protagonist, you get the idea. It seems though that Nylund knows this and plays to its strengths and when part of the plot gets crazy, the characters react with real and emotional response.

Yet despite the cliché's, the characters especially Jack, the protagonist, still come across as authentic and interesting. Nylund uses a broad canvas to "paint" a richly descriptive world with the not so future "bubble environments." A fresh spin off and deviation of the cyberpunk worlds of Gibson, Moriarty, Stross, etc. I also enjoyed how one initial decision, to deal with the alien, keeps spiraling out of control, despite the same plot line working in any crime noir environment.

Anyone who enjoys the style of going in and out of cyber worlds will find one of Jack's escapes from the NSA types after him, ingenious in its simplicity. There is a sequel to this but Nylund should be given pounds of credit for making it a stand-alone book, with a solid ending. Nothing is more aggravating (see Peter Hamilton's Pandora Star) as investing the time in a book only to find out that it's the first in a series, without there being any indication in the jacket's cover.
3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Mathias Lang
5.0 out of 5 stars Mal eine neue Grund-Idee - SF, der auch heute noch überrascht. Schnell, packend, spannend
Reviewed in Germany on January 9, 2017
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Das Buch dreht sich um einen Wissenschaftler, der aus dem Elfenbeinturm heraus Kontakt mit Aliens über Lichtjahre hinweg in "Realzeit" (Live) aufnehmen kann. Quantenverschränkung oder so. Die Aliens sind böse u. Kollegen neidisch (und böse). Geheimdienste sind ihm auf den Fersen. Das muss im Desaster enden u. das tut es auch, aber so richtig! Das Buch mag als Paradebeispiel dienen, was passieren kann, wenn der Mensch für bestimmte Technologien noch nicht reif ist. Oder als Warnung gegen Alleingänge. Oder als Appell, Geduld zu haben.
Noch ein Wort zu Nylund: Er ist SF-Fans vermutlich kein Unbekannter, hat er doch einige Bände aus der HALO-Reihe geschrieben. "Signal to Noise" ist Klassen besser als HALO! Ganz klar. HALO hat ja aufgrund des Grund-Plots enge Vorgaben, aber hier hat Nylund freie Hand gehabt, was gut war. Ich würde das Buch als "Hard Science Fiction" einklassifizieren, hier geht es schon sehr zur Sache! (nicht im militärischen Sinn wie bei HALO, aber vom Ergebnis her, vom Plot u. den Ideen.)
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