A mysterious craft docks unexpectedly on Colony Two . . . could this be humankind's first contact with an alien civilisation? Senator Maya Russini feels honoured when she is chosen to lead a team to board the ship. Eerily though, the spacecraft sitting silently in the dock is similar - with a few significant differences - to the "Orion", launched from Earth into deep space decades before and never heard from again.
What Maya discovers will change her life, and the course of human civilisation, forever. Five hundred life forms poised to awake from stasis. While they are genetically human, they have unique mutations such as toxic claws, fang-like teeth and unnerving violet eyes. And, as Maya comes to discover, they differ in other important ways. They have no empathy, no memories, no names - and they don't know where they came from or why.
The homeless newcomers soon become pawns in a dangerous game between rival space stations, both desperate to get their hands on whatever technological secrets they and their spacecraft might hold.
The winner of the George Turner Prize, 'Blue Silence' is a captivating meld of off-world political and personal intrigue and insight into what - beyond simple DNA - it really means to be human. 'Blue Silence' has also been shortlisted for the Best Science Fiction novel in the 2002 Aurealis Awards.
