Earth Unaware

Orson Scott Card · Aaron Johnston

Jul 2012 · The First Formic War Book 1 · Sold by Macmillan

About this eBook

A hundred years before Ender's Game, humans thought they were alone in the galaxy. Humanity was slowly making their way out from Earth to the planets and asteroids of the Solar System, exploring and mining and founding colonies.

The mining ship El Cavador is far out from Earth, in the deeps of the Kuiper Belt, beyond Pluto. Other mining ships, and the families that live on them, are few and far between this far out. So when El Cavador's telescopes pick up a fast-moving object coming in-system, it's hard to know what to make of it. It's massive and moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

But the ship has other problems. Their systems are old and failing. The family is getting too big. There are claim-jumping corporates bringing Asteroid Belt tactics to the Kuiper Belt. Worrying about a distant object that might or might not be an alien ship seems...not important.

They're wrong. It's the most important thing that has happened to the human race in a million years. This is humanity's first contact with an alien race. The First Formic War is about to begin.
Earth Unaware is the first novel in The First Formic War series by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston.

THE ENDER UNIVERSE

Ender series
Ender’s Game / Speaker for the Dead / Xenocide / Children of the Mind / Ender in Exile / Children of the Fleet

Ender’s Shadow series
Ender’s Shadow / Shadow of the Hegemon / Shadow Puppets / Shadow of the Giant / Shadows in Flight

The First Formic War (with Aaron Johnston)
Earth Unaware / Earth Afire / Earth Awakens

The Second Formic War (with Aaron Johnston)
The Swarm / The Hive

Ender novellas
A War of Gifts / First Meetings

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Ratings and reviews

I would really like this book, weren't there one really horrible error in it. Large pile of problems for its heroes stem from the "high velocity" of the spaceships, e.g. when docking with one another. The problem is that the authors mean an absolute velocity, not acceleration or relative velocities. Well when two objects move through empty space on the same vector with the same absolute velocity, their relative velocity is almost zero, so there's absolutely no reason why there should be any problem with them docking, nor is there any reason why the spaceships should decelerate or even "stop" for launching a shuttle... This is a really horrible mistake in very basic understanding of motion in space which plagues the book from start to end. Really annoyingly so. Totally destroyed immersion into the book.

I was going to give this book 5 stars...I immensely enjoyed the story line and was captivated through the entire story...I just don't like that the conclusion didn't really conclude any of the story line...while I understand this book to be the first of three books...and I get that a cliff hanger is a great way to make people want to read the next book I would like to at-least have a bit more of the story concluded in each book...should definitely read...but it definitely leaves you wanting more

The original books were fantastic but this one has some blatant inconsistencies about space travel that it broke disbelief a few crucial times. Still a fun read but the points that got it wrong hurt.

About the author

ORSON SCOTT CARD is the author of the bestselling Ender’s Universe series and its spinoffs. Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead both won Hugo and Nebula Awards, making Card the only author to win these two top prizes in consecutive years. Card has also written the fantasy Tales of Alvin Maker and Mither Mages series.

AARON JOHNSTON is a New York Times bestselling author, comic book writer, and screenwriter who often collaborates with science-fiction legend Orson Scott Card (Invasive Procedures, the First and Second Formic War series in the Ender Universe).