The Oort Chronicles

Braxton Thorpe has discovered a threat to the entire solar system, but he has a problem: he's dead. Frozen at death, he awakens to find himself uploaded into an electronic matrix. Exploring beyond the matrix and the larger GlobalNet, he discovers the Oort, a distributed electronic entity older than humanity, with an unnerving secret: Aliens wiped out nearly all life on Earth once, and are coming back to do it again. The mathematical entity that is Thorpe has to find a way to convince humans of the threat, and in time to do something about it. But how, and what?

As the Oort Federation becomes a major force in the Solar System, Braxton Thorpe passes the Federation chairmanship to former US President John Butler. Thorpe’s group offers humanity virtual immortality, but Isidor Orlov and his Udachny Enterprises oppose their every move. While terraforming Mars for more living space, the Mars Reds prove formidable as resisters. If the Asterian starship fighter pilots are released, will they align with Phoenix or Udachny, and who will develop the right FTL technology?

Humans and Asterians construct a huge starship, Andromeda, and set out on a voyage of discovery to the Cold Spot in the Cosmic Microwave Background—first stop, the star Ran in the constellation Eridanus. They discover an incipient space-faring saurian civilization that has deliberately hidden itself from the rest of the galaxy, fearing the military might of the civilizations they have observed through their electronic transmissions.

The starship Andromeda stops at the Keid triple-star system on its voyage of discovery and stumbles on a derelict Dyson Sphere. The starship is attacked by microbots scavenging one part of the sphere to repair another. They map the sphere and discover several primitive races inside—humanoid, feline, and saurian. They investigate the internal structure of the Dyson Sphere with its hundred-kilometer wide tubes filled with fast-moving magnetic fluid, and I-beams with hundred-kilometer wide plates and thirty-kilometer wide flanges that are one hundred meters thick.