Young astronomy fanatic, Aki Siraishi is a witness to an enormous structure on Mercury. Propelled into fame in the scientific community, Aki maintains a cold and scientific approach to her new passion, "The Ring."
The tower on Mercury is belching raw materials from the swift planet itself into the sun, where nanomachines are collecting it and using it to create a thin solar energy collector shield around the sun. The level of advancement required to keep the ring from falling into the sun's gravity (by expelling a constant blast of recycled solar energy from the sun-side and barely holding it in orbit) is a source of amazement for Earth.
Any fascination Earthlings initially feel for this phenomenon is quickly overshadowed (pun intended) by fear, as humanity discovers what can happen to the Earth's climate when 20% of it's solar light is blocked by a celestial body.
Glaciers and drought plague the planet. Casualties by the millions occur every week due to famine and the elements.
In the years of the ring's growth, Aki has dedicated herself to finding an answer to the ring. She is selected as a crewman aboard humanity's last hope to stop the ring. With some quick thinking and a sad heart she manages to destroy the tower and temporarily stop the ring.
This seems pretty epic, but it's just the beginning of the book. Aki deduces that the aliens who sent the ring to our solar system are not aggressive. They are on the run. They have launched this technology ahead of them as they move their entire civilization on a 600 year journey. The ring is to act as a braking system for their launch. With the ring destroyed, they will be unable to stop, forcing them to sail past their destination and into the void forever. By destroying the ring, Aki has doomed an entire civilization to death.
Through much research, Aki discovers that she can reprogram the nanotechnology within the ring to build itself on an axis perpendicular to its original design, which would not effect the Earth's light in the least.
However, people are furious at the "Builders" for thoughtlessly killing 2 billion people on Earth with their ring. Even if it was accidental, humans feel no love for the coming aliens or guilt for destroying their future.
The remaining drive of the book is full of political intrigue as military personnel attempt to undermine Aki's intentions and push their aggressive agenda on the unknown species.
The book is quite good. It covers complex ideas ranging from artificial intelligence to language compatibility, to space travel.
This author was compared to Haruki Murakami, who is one of my all-time favorites. I did not quite agree with the comparison, but the read was enjoyable nonetheless.
This book was translated by John Wunderley with only minor bumps in the prose. It had a spare style and an uncluttered representation of the characters.
I would suggest this book to readers of hard science fiction any day of the week.
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