The Light Years

(Paperback, New edition)

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Description

The captain of a family-owned starship arranges a marriage for her son in hopes of achieving faster-than-light travel and maybe, just maybe, marital bliss. A long-lost battleship and an arranged marriage may hold the key to faster-than-light travel and humanity's future in R.W.W. Greene's debutThe Light Years Hisako Saski was born with her life already mapped out. In exchange for an education, better housing for her family, and a boost out of poverty, she's been contracted into an arranged marriage to Adem Sadiq, a maintenance engineer and amateur musician who works and lives aboard his family's sub-light freighter, the Hajj. Hisako is not happy with the deal. The arcane branch of physics it requires her to study broke off a thousand years before, and she is not keen on the idea of giving up everything she knows to marry a stranger and move onto an aging spaceship. Onboard the Hajj, Hisako soon learns her dilemmas are overshadowed by the discovery of ancient secrets, a derelict warship, and a chance at giving the survivors of Earth a fresh start. File Under-Science Fiction E=mc2 | Happy wife, Happy life | Marital Bliss | Light Years Away

Reviews

"The Light Years is one of best novels about the psychological challenges of relativity Ive ever read. This is what science fiction was invented for!"
Love in the time of relativity. Greene paints a picture of the social complexities of the lightspeed era, with realistic characters navigating interstellar intrigue.
"Laced with politics, science, history, poetry, music, greed, hope, and a little Johnny Cash, this character-rich space opera has a well-developed and believable plot that kept me reading from the opening line to the surprising and satisfying end."
"The Light Yearsis a thought-provoking debut from a skilled writer."
"Sophisticated worldbuilding and diverse, emotionally-resonant characters make Greene an author to watch."
"The main characters are distinctive, Greene's dialogue lively and the prose vivid."
"On the surface, you get an engrossing space opera, but if you look deeper you will find explorations of poverty, arranged marriage, and the toll that difficult moral choices take on families."

Author Bio

R.W.W. Greene is a New Hampshire USA writer with an MA in Fine Arts, which he exorcises in dive bars and coffee shops. He is a frequent panelist at the Boskone Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention in Boston, and his work has been in Stupefying Stories, Daily Science Fiction, New Myths, and Jersey Devil Press, among others. Greene is a past board member of the New Hampshire Writers' Project. He keeps bees, collects typewriters, and lives with writer/artist spouse Brenda and two cats.