The Sky People

By: S. M. Stirling

Narrated by: Todd McLaren

Marc Vitrac was born in Louisiana in the early 1960's, about the time the first interplanetary probes delivered the news that Mars and Venus were teeming with life: even human life. At that point, the "Space Race" became the central preoccupation of the great powers of the world.

Now, in 1988, Marc has been assigned to Jamestown, the US-Commonwealth base on Venus, near the great Venusian city of Kartahown. Set in a countryside swarming with sabertooths and dinosaurs, Jamestown is home to a small band of American and allied scientist-adventurers.

But there are flies in this ointment - and not only the Venusian dragonflies, with their yard-wide wings. The biologists studying Venus' life are puzzled by the way it not only resembles that on Earth, but is virtually identical to it. The EastBloc has its own base at Cosmograd, in the highlands to the south, and relations are frosty. And attractive young geologist Cynthia Whitlock seems impervious to Marc's Cajun charm.

Meanwhile, at the western end of the continent, Teesa of the Cloud Mountain People leads her tribe in a conflict with the Neanderthal-like beastmen who have seized her folk's sacred caves. Then an EastBloc shuttle crashes nearby, and the beastmen acquire new knowledge...and AK47's.

Jamestown sends its long-range blimp to rescue the downed EastBloc cosmonauts, little suspecting that the answer to the jungle planet's mysteries may lie there, among tribal conflicts and traces of a power that makes Earth's vaunted science seem as primitive as the tribesfolk's blowguns. As if that weren't enough, there's an enemy agent on board the airship.

Extravagant and effervescent, The Sky People is alternate-history SF adventure at its best.

©2006 S.M. Stirling (P)2006 Tantor Media Inc.

Critic reviews

"The science is refreshingly realistic." (Publishers Weekly)

Still Love This Book

I first read this a number of years ago, along with its sequel. Excellent story over all. Yes, you would expect there to be more. Makes sense to stop where it did. Don’t want to have this as one of those series with 27 volumes to it.

Fun in a wild world....

I liked this book.
It took a while for me to get past the real history that this book (alternated and/or) left from. It is easy to suspend our reality when the story is hundreds of years in the future or in a different galaxy and time. This starts in a bad time for our real world.
The STORY though has nothing to do with Earth or our reality. It isn't even hard SCI FI. It is closer to a land of the lost story with high tech characters involved. If you listen carefully through the initial disjointed plot lines, they do come together and never let you down.
I will get the next book in this series when it comes out.

A Whole New World

At first I couldn't figure it out. The very incorrect history of earth the digital camera that was so big. Then I thought it must have been written 40 years ago like Asimov with incredible foresight of what would come but not exactly how it would turn out. But no it was a delightful turn of "what if" if things had developed just a little differently. The narrator is WONDERFUL, patois fabulous, roaring dinosaurs. I'm supposed to listen on the bus to and from work - but I cheated and kept listening when I got home.

Fun book

First and foremost, the Narrator, Mr. McLaren, does the best triceratops lowing I have ever heard in an audiobook. Ever.

Seriously, Mr. McLaren does a great job narrating this fun adventure story.

I have read some criticism that Mr. Stirling's stories are a little "black and white", but sometimes it is nice to know who the good guys and the bad guys are. Reminds me a little of Heinlein's supermen. The throwback plot line to the old pulps is also well done.

Pretty good, Scifi romp.

The story is good, the characters interesting enough, and the set up is pretty cool. The only grating problem is the horribly bad Cajun accents. The narrator is a pretty good one, but when it comes to the accents in the dialog, its pretty bad. Also the incorrect use of the "pidgeon French " is REALLY bad. I've spent a good bit of my life on Grand Isle and NONE OF US talk like that. If you can get over that and listen to the book, its a good story.

There's dinos on that there planet!

I've gotta say, in regards to alternate history stories, this one certainly takes things in a unique direction. When the United States and the Soviet Union send probes out to Venus and Mars, its discovered that both contain lifeforms... including humans. With this knowledge, petty squabbles cease and the space race is on a hundredfold. In this story, we see U.S. researchers based on the planet study its various forms of life, which include tribal natives and f***ing dinosaurs. They find it odd that the planet contains life at all when it probably shouldn't, implying some unknown force seeded life there ages ago. The story takes a more adventurous turn when the team becomes tasked with rescuing possible survivors from a crashed Soviet ship. Along the way, they'll entangle with natives both friendly and hostile, as well as something far more mysterious. Overall, this story is pretty good. It's an alternate history novel, but even those who don't particularly care for the genre can just treat this as a standard foreign planet sci-fi story in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs (who is frequently mentioned and alluded to).

interesting

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes

Which character – as performed by Todd McLaren – was your favorite?

McLaren does a good job.

Any additional comments?

I like how Stirling has such an odd perspective of things. Fun to read.

Interesting but forgettable

I kept listening all the way through, but forgot the story after a couple months. It might make for gomd repeated listens.

Love this series!

This series is engaging and fun to listen to. The characters seem real, and I could imagine being part of the story.

The Sky People

Very entertaining