“Deep in space, billions of miles from Earth, an ancient machine awoke. The machine ran several simulations, quickly settling on the optimal way to eliminate the target. The question wasn’t whether it could wipe out the primitivism. It was how to do so with the least amount of energy expenditure. Energy was the most precious resource in the universe. The grid needed the energy from the star in the primitives’ solar system.”
Those are some lines from the prologue to A. G. Riddle’s sci-fi novel The Solar War. It’s the second book in his apocalyptic sci-fi series after Winter World. The story begins several years after the remaining earth inhabitants had reversed the long winter by destroying the grid, an alien force that tried to destroy earth’s inhabitants and steal earth’s energy source - the sun. And now, only a few years into rebuilding their world, huge asteroids are sent by the grid to finish the annihilation.
Earth’s people swarm to underground bunkers to figure out a way to survive. An alien robot tells them they have two choices: die or journey through space to begin again on a new planet.
As the story progresses, civil war breaks out while the smartest people remaining on the planet work on whether it’s possible to beat the alien or if and how they need to plan to leave earth forever.
The chapters alternate between the voice of James Sinclair (the smartest man on the planet) and his wife Emma (the astronaut James rescued in the first book). Dan Woods, General Manager of KRCU, says that these books are really good as audiobooks.
If you want to know what happened to the survivors of Winter World, then you must read The Solar War by A. G. Riddle.
