Fortress Sol by Stephen Baxter

Well, I’ll say one thing about Fortress Sol — it’s not lacking in ambition.

In the 22nd century, a strange energy-based swarm consumes Neptune, and fearing this is a precursor to an alien attack, the human race takes a number of bizarre steps to defend itself, and ensure its survival if it can’t.

Fortress Sol

A generation starship is launched in a century-long journey to colonise a distant star system. …

… And much closer to home, an ambitious millennia-long project begins, to hide the solar system from the as-yet-unseen invaders.

A thousand years later, the Lightbird returns to the Sol system to see what has become of Earth. The crew finds that humanity has masked the entire solar system in a shroud, wrapped the Sun in a Dyson sphere, and is now travelling around the hidden solar system on a planet-spanning rail network!

As I said: ambitious!

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