Safehold
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| Author | David Weber |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science Fiction |
| Publisher | Tor Books |
| Published | January 9, 2007 |
| Media type | |
| No. of books | 9 |
Safehold is a science fiction book series by David Weber, which currently consists of nine titles, the latest of which was released in October 2016. The series is mostly set around the 31st century, on a distant world dubbed "Safehold" where a group of humans has hidden themselves from an enemy responsible for the end of all other human civilization, the Gbaba.
The humans on Safehold avoided detection by reverting to a pre-electrical and pre-industrial technology base and incorporating that into a religious belief system which discouraged scientific curiosity and forbade any higher technology on penalty of death. The threat of the Gbaba is barely mentioned in the books so far; the main issue is the divergence of the official church from its original aims versus the outlying areas which deny the leadership of the corrupt vicars.
Every book after the first has a name taken from a hymn.
In the 24th century, the Terran Federation—Earth and its colonies—discovers the ruins of a nearby alien civilization, the victim of an enemy named the Gbaba. The inevitable confrontation arrives 10 years later. The Federation Navy is well prepared for battle, but it is outnumbered and outgunned. A Terran fleet takes several enemy systems but is quickly overwhelmed when the vast Gbaba reserve arrives.
One by one, each colony world is annihilated. A hopeless defense forestalls the end for several decades. Emergency colonies are started on faraway worlds to save the species, but all are wiped out. One last fleet escapes Earth via trickery. A terraforming team led by Pei Shan-Wei arrives first on a new world ahead of the fleet carrying 8 million colonists. They name it Safehold.
Because signs of technology led the Gbaba to past emergency colonies, the mission on Safehold restricts all industrialization. Excepting Shan-Wei's team and her trusted staff, Administrator Eric Langhorne erases the memory of every colonist. Yet Langhorne follows his own plan: the colonists awaken programmed to believe they are the first humans, newly created by divine will. They worship Langhorne as the leader of God's "Archangels", charged with guiding a permanent pretechnical society.
Shan-Wei tries to defy this plan, but is labeled a traitor and killed, along with most of her followers, at their Alexandria settlement by a hidden orbital weapon. Shan-Wei's side retaliates, killing Langhorne and most of his allies, sparking the "War Against the Fallen" among the survivors. Langhorne's "Church of God Awaiting" eventually prevails and sets up a militantly technophobic global theocracy, which deifies and worships Langhorne and demonizes Shan-Wei.
Centuries pass before Shan-Wei's backup plan comes into being. During the terraforming process, Shan-Wei hid an android, with the personality and memories of Nimue Alban, a Terran Federation Navy tactical officer, deep within a secret mountain base. "Nimue's Cave” is stocked with an AI military computer and a room full of technology. When Nimue awakens, she accepts a mission to destroy the Church and uplift humanity.
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