I. A Place Beyond Man (1975) category listing. ­ The Archives of Varok

The 1975 novel that launched The Archives of Varok, revised and updated updated as The View Beyond Earth (Penscript Publishing House, 2014)

How do twenty-first century humans react when they confront comparable intelligence residing in "their" solar system? Microbiologist Tandra Grey finds new hope for an ailing Earth and her own future when she makes first contact with alien neighors too intelligent, too nosy, and too near to ignore.

The version of A Place Beyond Man reviewed here is an Author's Guild Backinprint.com Edition that came out in June 2011, the original having long since gone out of print. And what a worthy revival it is, in both its continued timeliness and its intelligent, believable rendering of alien values and cultures.

—Frank Kaminski,
book reviewer for Energy Bulletin and Resilience.org

...a magnificent lesson in the humility man will have to have of himself to save the world he lives in and to venture forth into the universe, as so many sci-fi writers will want to have us do.

—Book blogger Denzil Pugh

. . . a fine multi-cultural, multi-species First Contact along with a siren call to stop 'trashing our planet" in pursuit of profit and status. Bravo!

—Science fiction author T. Jackson King, on Goodreads.com

Alien encounters with man, and woman, have been one of SF’s most popular topics and themes from the very beginning of the genre. . . . Cary Neeper’s excellent A Place Beyond Man (The Archives of Varok) takes this basic theme and makes it into a cautionary tale . . . that should stir a lot of controversy and debate. . . . I highly recommend this novel to anyone who loves great science fiction.

—Author Douglass Cobb, on Bookspotcentral.com

Cary Neeper has created not one but two credible non-human species.... It's an engrossing first novel by a microbiologist whose previous writing has been [on] pneumococcal polysaccharide."

—Psychology Today, New York, July 1975

...fine writing and down-to-earth story line, "A Place Beyond Man" is great escapism, and these days we really need it. Bravo.

—Friday Magazine, WCNY TV/24 FM/91.3, April 18, 1975, 7 pm

The 1975 novel that launched The Archives of Varok, revised and updated updated as The View Beyond Earth (Penscript Publishing House, 2014)

How do twenty-first century humans react when they confront comparable intelligence residing in "their" solar system? Microbiologist Tandra Grey finds new hope for an ailing Earth and her own future when she makes first contact with alien neighors too intelligent, too nosy, and too near to ignore.