2020; 262 pages. New Author? : Yes, other than some of his short stories from 2012. Genres: First
Contact Sci-Fi; Hard Science Fiction. Overall
Rating : 9*/10.
Voyager 1 is an interstellar space
probe launched by NASA in 1977 to study the Outer Planets in our Solar System
and thereafter interstellar space. It passed
beyond the Outer Planets in 2012, headed to nowhere in particular and if left
undisturbed, would reach the mysterious Oort Cloud in just 300 years, taking a
mere 30,000 more years to pass through it. NASA
is still in touch with Voyager 1, sending signals to, and receiving
signals from it.
Now imagine having the
tedious job of monitoring the various instruments of Voyager 1 back here on Earth That’s what Dr. Kayla Storm does. It is a boring and slow-paced task, requiring lots of
patience since it takes more than 20 hours for a radio signal to get to or from
the space probe, and which is speeding away from us in a huge pool of empty space.
But something different has
just occurred. Readings from Voyager 1
shows that it has just doubled in mass, cut its speed in half, and inexplicably started to veer off-course.
Oh well, it’s probably bad
data from one of its more-than-40-years-old instruments on board giving up the ghost. We knew this would happen sooner or
later. Run some diagnostics to confirm
the malfunction and we can all go back to sleep.
Hmmm. What if those diagnostics
show that everything is still working just fine?
What’s To Like...
The Guest is
an ambitious blend of the “first contact” and “hard” subgenres of science
fiction. We will most likely detect an extraterrestrial spaceship headed our way long before it arrives, but if so, what are we
going to do about it? About all we’d
know initially is that its technology was superior to ours, since they’re coming
to us, not vice versa, and our first task would be to assemble a team to gather more information about the alien visitor.
Here that team consists of the astrophysicist Kayla Storm, who works at the JPL (“Jet Propulsion Laboratory”); the astrobiologist Dr. Eric Bowen from SETI ("Search
for Extraterrestrial Intelligence”); and General Tim Nathan of the
US Air Force. They are tasked with determining
the physical make-up of the aliens, how to overcome whatever defenses they might
deploy, and taking whatever steps needed to keep us Earthlings from becoming casualties should a conflict arise.
Realistically, achieving those
goals would take time and lots of trial-and-error. Mistakes are made, lives are lost,
and learning to communicate with the ETs does not improve things. Their messages to us are terse: “We come, Earth our planet now” and "LEEVE".
I was impressed by the depth
of the research done by Alan Nayes in developing the storyline. A lot of chemistry and laboratory testing is used, which is really the most effective way to learn about the alien “Guests”. In the movies, ETs seem to almost always be
bipedal humanoids who conveniently use the same respiratory process as we
do. In real life, that’s very unlikely.
It was fun to see N-95 masks
being used; I learned about them thanks to Covid. And although I knew what the word
“cacophonic” means, I had to google it to learn how to pronounce it. I’ve never been to Meteor Crater here in
Arizona, but it was neat to see it playing a major part of the story. The nods to Carl
Sagan, Oingo Boingo, and Britney
Spears shows that the author has great literary and musical
tastes. Well, two out of those three,
anyway.
The ending was both good and logical: earthly science finally wins the day.
The key to foiling the aliens might seem a bit arbitrary, but that’s what
trial-and-error is all about: keep trying anything and everything until
something works. There’s a nice little
twist at the very end, involving Cyclops and Eric, which sets up the
possibility of a sequel, although I'm not aware of one at present.
Kewlest New Word ...
Schnup (n.) : an extreme idiot or shithead (urban slang).
Ratings…
Amazon: 4.2*/5, based on 215
ratings and 33 reviews.
Goodreads: 4.29*/5,
based on 161 ratings and 14 reviews.
Excerpts...
“The Guests manipulate atomic structure in
ways we can’t define, sir. They will
fold your plate up like tin foil if they feel threatened. They play by a different set of rules, our
physics don’t seem to apply to theirs.
You’ll see for yourself the Hole.
Nothing on Earth could have created that dig—in fifty years. The so called ‘asteroid’ that created this
crater was in fact a huge spacecraft!
How they buried something that massive so deep, there isn’t an engineer
on Earth who can explain.” (loc. 2683)
“Mr. Speaker, I am not a military general,
nor a warmonger. I am just an
astrophysicist who enjoys studying galaxies and comets and the cosmos and data
from our space probes.” She took a brief sip when no questions or comments
followed. “However, I am very confident
of two things. One—if we attempt to stop them from transforming our
environment, they will kill us. Two—if
we do nothing and leave our Guests alone, they will kill us.” (loc. 3962)
Kindle Details…
The
Guest is priced at $6.99 right now at Amazon. Alan Nayes has more than a dozen other e-books
for you, of varying genres, ranging from novellas to novels to bundles in
length, and costing anywhere from $1.99 to $6.99. Back in 2012, he was a member of a writers group
called “The Eclective” which is where I
first ran across his stories, and whose e-books are also available at Amazon
for $0.99 apiece.
“That’s what I love
about math and physics – they always tell the truth.” (loc. 3541)
The nits to pick are few in The Guest. About the worst thing I can come up with is: the piglet dies. There is some cussing, but I didn’t find it overused, and by far the favorite cussword is the rather mild “hell”.
Most of the typos were the
usual “spellchecker errors”: wine/whine, war
path/warpath, on my God/oh my god, C25O4C64/C25O4H64, PMM/PPM,
etc. I only found one plot hole: the
aliens somehow manage to use the phrase “oxidative
phosphorylation” in a message, despite not knowing that the letter “X”
exists in our alphabet.
It could be argued that the
fact that the aliens learn to communicate in English in a relatively short time
is not realistic, but I was surprised to find that an audio-visual disc,
dubbed the “Golden Disk” was placed
on Voyager 1, containing written scientific information, photos, sounds,
music, and greetings in 55 different languages; thus giving any sentient life
with sufficiently advanced technology lots of data with which to learn our terrestrial tongues. The Wikipedia link
about it is here.
While such culture-sharing is
laudably well-intentioned, I still think such information, and the aims of the SETI project
as a whole, could be cosmically suicidal if such information falls into the
hands (or paws, or flippers) of
extraterrestrials with a warrior mentality.
9 Stars. Writing a hard sci-fi novel is always a challenge because “keeping it real” and “keeping it interesting” is no small feat. I’m happy to say that The Guest was up to the task; I found it to be both a page-turner and a highly enlightening piece of speculative science
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