New White Space novel coming Summer 2025
Dr. Sunyata Song must travel across the Milky Way to learn to communicate with the greatest discovery of her century: an artificial intelligence the size of a stellar system, in Hugo Award-winning author Bear’s next science fiction epic.
Information doesn't want to be free. Information wants to vanish without a trace.
Sunya Song's job is to stop that from happening.
She's an archinformist: a specialist historian whose job usually involves sitting at a console at her university job near the Galactic Core, sorting ancient documents and restoring corrupted files.
But now, the research opportunity of a lifetime has sent her—along with her teenage children and alien wife—halfway across the galaxy to preserve the data and aid in the retrieval of the archaeological find of the century: an ancient alien artificial intelligence called the Baomind.
As vast as a stellar system, the Baomind orbits a dying red giant, and the star's time has nearly ended.
The remote research station and its small fleet of ships come under attack by fanatic Freeport pirates who believe that artificial intelligence is an abomination that must be destroyed, putting the lives of Sunya and her family at risk.
Tens of thousands of light years from home, isolated from all help, Sunya is the only one who can save them all.
Hi, I’m Elizabeth Bear and have I got news for you!
I’m incredibly excited to bring you the cover art by Stephen Youll for The Folded Sky, the third novel in my White Space series, a book that took me almost four years to write.
This book has been a passion project for me, uniting themes of family, personal growth, and unprocessed trauma with the vast sense of wonder that made me love space opera in the first place. I have been thrilled with the reception the White Space books have received, and even more thrilled to have the opportunity to work on such a broad canvas.
For new readers of my work, The Folded Sky stands alone. It’s the story of Dr. Sunya Song,a somewhat anxious historian who’s won a coveted slot to research—and help rescue—an ancient abandoned matrioshka brain called the Baomind.
What Sunya doesn’t realize is that, as she travels to the far reaches of the galaxy, her wife and kids plan on showing up to surprise her, and that along the way they have befriended the narcissistic ex-lover who stole her research and tanked her brilliant career.
She also doesn’t realize that the research station will be attacked by pirates. And then things really get complicated....
For returning readers, this is an indirect sequel to Ancestral Night, and takes place more or less concurrently and a little bit after Machine. To coordinate with the publication of The Folded Sky, Ancestral Night and Machine will be rereleased with new covers in a matching edition!
And that’s not all!
Because I am currently hard at work on a fourth novel in this series, which will re-unite us with some old friends (Goodlaw Cheeirilaq and Farweather the pirate) and tell a story on a more intimate scale, as a small group of planetary surveyors wind up stranded on the surface of an unexplored world, where mysterious technology is trying to kill them.
Thanks so much for stopping by, and please enjoy this glorious cover!