Contact - Carl Sagan

   1985; 374 pages.  New Author? : Yes, at least since the creation of this blog.  Genres : First Contact Sci-Fi; Hard Science Fiction.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

 

    Let’s suppose Intelligent Life exists in the Universe somewhere besides here on Earth.  How would we know?

 

    Well, we can look through telescopes at bright lights and hope to see some sort of “intelligent transmission”, although I’m not sure what that would be.  Is there anything that travels at the speed of light, besides light, of course?  Why yes, there is!  Radio waves.

 

    But radio waves come in all sorts of different wavelengths.  How can we tell which particular one an Extra Terrestrial would use to send out a signal?  And how would they transform a radio wave into a message someone on another planet would understand?

 

    That’s what Ellie Arroway has been working on for quite some time.  On taxpayers’ money.  And so far, she hasn’t found diddley squat of any intelligence via radio waves, on any wavelength, from any of the thousands of stars that’s she’s pointed her radio telescope at.

 

    Maybe we are alone in the Universe.

 

What’s To Like...

    Contact is divided into three parts, namely:

Part 1: The Message (chapters 1-9)

Part 2: The Machine (chapters 10-18)

Part 3: The Galaxy (chapters 19-24)

    Contact is a work of the “Hard Science Fiction” genre.  Carl Sagan makes an in-depth examination of how we Earthlings would (sometimes as opposed to “should”) react to finding out we aren’t alone in the Universe.

 

    The Message postulates that the most-likely means of initial contact is receiving radio signals from Outer Space.  Logical, but how do we figure out how to decode those transmissions?  The Machine theorizes that the Message gives us instructions on how to build a transport machine.  Fine, but do we have the materials and technology to build it, and dare we test it out before firing it up?  The Galaxy invites five Earthlings to sit down in the transport machine and enjoy the ride to intergalactic parts unknown.  Awesome, but are we sure we built it correctly, how do we choose who goes, and what if those ETs just want five specimens to dissect and study?

 

    The character development is superb.  Ellie is the protagonist, of course, so we expect she’ll be one of the Five selected to take the interstellar voyage.  But the other four in the group are richly developed as well, each having their own discrete traits.  Ditto for a host of secondary characters, including a number of government officials who are less than thrilled about this expensive space travel project (what if it doesn’t work?), and a fundamentalist preacher and a televangelist who are worried that God Himself, or even Satan, is the Entity behind those radio waves.

 

    Things build to a great ending, which is simultaneously cynical, revelatory, sad, and ingenious.  To give details would entail spoilers, which we eschew here.  Things close with a genealogical surprise twist for Ellie, which might sound irrelevant but explains a lot of the details in her life.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Samizdat (n.) : the clandestine copying and distribution of literature banned by the state.

Others: Armillary Sphere; (n.); Chiliasm (n.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 6,428 ratings and 687 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.15/5 based on 148,202 ratings and 5,016 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    Now the pulses were washing against a warm world, blue and white, spinning against the backdrop of the stars.

    There was life on this world, extravagant in its numbers and variety.  There were jumping spiders at the chilly tops of the highest mountains and sulfur-eating worms in hot vents gushing up through ridges on the ocean floors.  There were beings that could live only in concentrated sulfuric acid, and beings that were destroyed by concentrated sulfuric acid; organisms that were poisoned by oxygen, and organisms that could survive only in oxygen, that actually breathed the stuff.  (pg. 51)

 

    How much better if a few of your cells could be preserved.  Real living cells, with the DNA intact.  He visualized a corporation that would, for a healthy fee, freeze a little of your epithelial tissue and orbit it high—well above the Van Allen belts, maybe even higher than geosynchronous orbit.  No reason to die first.  Do it now, while it’s on your mind.  Then, at least, alien molecular biologists—or their terrestrial counterparts of the far future—could reconstruct you, clone you, more or less from scratch.  You would rub your eyes, stretch, and wake up in the year ten million.  (pg. 340)

 

“The Earth is an object lesson for the apprentice gods.”  (pg. 247)

    There’s a smidgen of cusswords in Contact.  I counted four of them in the first 25%, all of which were of the “milder” ilk.  I don’t recall anything that I’d label an “adult situation”.

 

    Some reviewers felt the “science versus religion” angle was overplayed in the text.  They have a point, but frankly, I think Carl Sagan accurately anticipates the religious response.  Life on other worlds, in other solar systems and other galaxies, is hard to factor into spiritual dogma.

 

    The pacing felt slow in the first two section, but keep in mind their subject matter—decoding radio pulses and building a spaceship—is highly technical by nature.  You don’t want any thrills-&-spills to take place during those phases.  The “first contact” stage also felt rather anticlimactic.

 

    But hey, if I were one of the five human space envoys, I'd hope the initial contact with Extraterrestrials was a slow-paced, peaceful affair.  A “Star Wars” scenario, while exciting to read about, would not be a promising introduction to alien species.  I don’t want to come face-to-face with a Stormtrooper, no matter how bad of a shot he is.

 

    Overall, I found Contact to be a thought-provoking work, grounded in real science and logical in presenting one possible way that humanity would react to a “We Are Not Alone” scenario.  If you don’t get bored during the “Message” and “Machine” sections, you’re in for a fantastic read in the final section, “Galaxy”.

 

    8 Stars.  One last thing.  Somehow, both Hydrofluoric Acid and Laetrile make it into Contact’s storyline.  I worked for a company who manufactured HF acid for many years, and had a moonlighting venture to develop a manufacturing process for Laetrile.  Who would've thought that Extraterrestrials are familiar with, and make use of, both these compounds?

Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke

   1953; 218 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genres : 50’s Sci-Fi; Hard Science Fiction; First Contact.  Laurels: Retro Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2004 (nominated).  Overall Rating: 9/10.

 

    All in all, it’s not so bad being ruled over by this particular set of Galactic Invaders.

 

    Oh, when hordes of their spaceships suddenly appeared in the skies over the major cities of Earth, we knew we were no match for them.  But other than declaring all national borders to be null and void (“One World”, and all that), they’ve pretty much left us alone.

 

    They do require that all communication with them pass between our one designated representative, Rikki Stormgren, and their Overlord known as Karellen.  They meet on an Overlord spaceship because the aliens refuse to physically set foot (or paw, pod, tentacle, or whatever appendages they have) on our planet.  But the relations between those two emissaries is cordial.  One can’t help but wonder, though.

 

    When will the Overlords reveal their ultimate plans for us?

 

What’s To Like...

    Childhood’s End opens with a brief, 5-page Prologue wherein the 1950s United States and Russia react with shock to the realization that they’re no longer the only ones in the cosmos.  The rest of the book is divided into three parts:

    Part 1: Earth and the Overlords (5 years after the Overlords arrive)

    Part 2: The Golden Age

    Part 3: The Last Generation (100 years after the “time of Disney”)

 

    I liked the “Hard Science-Fiction” aspect of the storyline.  The Overlords may use advanced technology, but they still can’t go faster than the speed of Light.  And those traveling at almost the speed of Light age much more slowly than the rest of the universe's inhabitants.  Relativity: It’s the Law.

 

    It was also nice to read a “First Contact” tale where the extraterrestrials don’t make their entrance with lasers and phasers a-blazing.  For a change, they seek a peaceful coexistence, albeit one tailored to their set of rules.  They must have an ulterior motive for this, of course, but that’s a secret best kept hidden for now.

 

    Arthur C. Clarke also shows impressive prescience when describing the future world.  Giant computing machines become the norm, and humans are blessed with reliable oral contraceptives and infallible paternity tests.  Yet seances are still popular and I’m still waiting for the aircar to become our principal means of personal transportation.

 

    The ending is both logical and unexpected, and both heartwarming and sad.  Humans and Overlords find their proper place in the Cosmos, but neither group knows what’s in store for them next.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.4*/5, based on 13,844 ratings and 1,898 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.12*/5, based on 164,727 ratings and 7,806 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “Karellen,” he said abruptly, “I’ll draft out the statement and send it up to you for approval.  But I reserve the right to continue pestering you, and if I see any opportunity, I’ll do my best to learn your secret.”

    “I’m perfectly well aware of that,” replied the Supervisor, with a slight chuckle.

    “And you don’t mind?”

    “Not in the least—though I draw the line at nuclear weapons, poison gas, or anything that might strain our friendship."  (pg. 55)

 

    It was One World.  The old names of the old countries were still used, but they were no more than convenient postal divisions.  There was no one on earth who could not speak English, who could not read, who was not in range of a television set, who could not visit the other side of the planet within twenty-four hours.

    Crime had practically vanished.  It had become both unnecessary and impossible.  When no one lacks anything, there is no point in stealing.  Moreover, all potential criminals knew there would be no escape from the surveillance of the Overlords.  In the early days of their rule, they had intervened so effectively on behalf of law and order that the lesson had never been forgotten.  (pg. 72)

 

“The planets you may one day possess.  But the stars are not for Man.”  (pg. 137)

    There was zero profanity in Childhood’s End, and zero adult situations.  The worst language gripe I can come up with is a single use of a racial epithet.

 

    The only typos I spotted were a couple of hyphenated words that shouldn’t have been (boy-friend/boyfriend, sight-seeing/sightseeing, co-operate/cooperate).  I have a feeling those hyphenation issues arose at the printing shop when the original typewritten manuscript was converted.  I thought I spotted a misspelling (kidnaped/kidnapped), but it turns out both those past tense spellings are acceptable.  English is a goofy language.

 

    A lot of Sci-Fi novels from the 1950s/60s don’t hold up too well over time, but I’m happy to say that Childhood’s End is an exception to this.  It is well-written, thought-provoking, entertaining, and frighteningly plausible.

 

    According to Wikipedia, the theme of Childhood’s End, transcendent evolution, is also used in Clarke’s 4-book Space Odyssey series, of which I’ve read the first two books.  It’s time to tackle the next book in that series.

 

    9 Stars.  One last thing.  At one point (pg. 61) 3-dimensional chess and checkers are compared, with the implication that the latter is child’s play relative to the former.  Well, I’ve played chess, albeit the 2-D variety, all my life, and on occasion have played checkers.  Folks, my comprehension of checkers is pathetic.

2010: Odyssey Two - Arthur C. Clarke

   1982; 285 pages.  Book 2 (out of 4) in the “Space Odyssey” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Space Exploration; Hard Science Fiction; Movie Tie-In.  Overall Rating: 9½*/10.

 

    It’s 2010, and it’s been almost a decade since the first manned space mission to Jupiter.  That one was a disaster, due to a computer malfunction.  Everyone but Dave Bowman perished, and no one knows what happened to him.  The space vehicle Discovery was abandoned, and presumably is still orbiting around Jupiter.

 

    That ship is still American property though, and now US Intelligence has just learned that the Russians are building a spaceship to go to Jupiter and claim the Discovery as "salvage".  The USA has started a crash program (no pun intended) to build a spaceship, but there’s no way we can beat the Russians’ projected launch date.

 

    But aha!, we’ve got a trump card: Dr. Sivasubramanian Chandrasegarampillai (called ‘Dr. Chandra’ for short), who programmed HAL-9000, the computer on Discovery that caused all the trouble.  He works for us, and he will be a great asset to anyone trying to get Discovery up and running again.

 

    So let's do something unexpected—call the Russians and propose the venture to Jupiter be a joint American-Russian mission, with Dr. Chandra as one of the American guests.

 

    Those Russkis are probably dumb enough to accept the offer.

 

What’s To Like...

    2010 – Odyssey Two is the sequel to 2001- A Space Odyssey, both in movie and book format.  I’ve seen the 2001 movie three times, a record for my cinematic attendance.  I haven’t seen the 2010 movie.

 

    I liked the book’s premise of Russian and American scientists cooperating with each other.  2010 – Odyssey Two was written in 1982, when the Cold War was still very much a reality.  To portray a group of Russians as normal human beings, and not the usual brainwashed Communist stereotypes, was a pleasant change.  Arthur C. Clarke also inserts a number of Russian phrases into the text, usually without translations into English.  Thank goodness for Google.

 

    There’s a multitude of plotlines to keep track of.  It’s not a spoiler to say that HAL-9000 is successfully reactivated, but how trustworthy will he be?  Will they find out what happened to David Bowman?  Is there life of Jupiter’s moons?  What’s with those monoliths?  And why is a cryptic deadline given for them to leave and return to Earth?

 

    I loved the attention to scientific details.  Arthur C. Clarke writes in a “hard science fiction genre” style.  I’m proud to say I knew what “Lagrange points” were, but had to look up “von Neumann machines”.  The “1:4:9 Ratio” twist was sheer genius, and I was amazed to learn that the name of the “EPCOT center” is actually an acronym.

 

    The pacing was similar to the 2001 storyline.  There’s not a lot of action in the first 2/3 of the book, but the reader’s interest is kept by the interactions of the multinational and mixed-gender crew, plus the reawakened HAL.  Then comes an extended and exciting ending, which resolves some questions about the mysterious monolith-building extraterrestrials, while posing new ones.  Presumably those will be addressed in the remaining two books in the series.  Things close with an altered solar system, one that is both hopeful and scary. 

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.5*/5, based on 3,323 ratings and 410 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.95*/5, based on 58,208 ratings and 1,601 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Perijove (n.) : the point in a spacecraft’s orbit around Jupiter when it is closest to the planet.

Others: Posmotri (v., Russian).; Lingam (n.).

 

Excerpts...

    “You naïve Americans! We’re more realistic; we have to be.  All your grandparents died of old age, Heywood.  Three of mine were killed in the Great Patriotic War.”

    When they were alone together, Tanya always called him Woody, never Heywood.  She must be serious.  Or was she merely testing his reactions?

    “Anyway, Discovery is merely a few billion dollars’ worth of hardware.  The ship’s not important—only the information it carries.”

    “Exactly.  Information that could be copied and then erased.”

    “You do get some cheerful ideas, Tanya.  Sometimes I think that all Russians are a little paranoiac.”

    “Thanks to Napoleon and Hitler, we’ve earned every right to be.”  (loc. 922)

 

    “It’s all very well to feel grateful to Bowman—or whatever gave that warning.  But that’s all they did.  We could still have been killed.”

    “But we weren’t,” answered Tanya.  “We saved ourselves—by our own efforts.  And perhaps that was the whole idea.  If we hadn’t—we wouldn’t have been worth saving.  You know, survival of the fittest.  Darwinian selection.  Eliminating the genes for stupidity.”  (loc. 3821)

 

Kindle Details…

    2010 – Odyssey Two sells for $7.59 at Amazon, the same price as Books 3 and 4.  Book 1, 2001 – A Space Odyssey, costs $9.99.

 

How did one annoy a two-kilometer-long black rectangular slab?  (loc. 1764)

    Profanity is almost nonexistent in 2010 – Odyssey Two, which is what I expected.  I noted only 4 expletives in the whole book, all of which were of the “milder” variety.

 

    The quibbles are minor.  Tame, playful, intelligent dolphins are worked into the storyline several times, and I kept waiting for them to make some sort of impact, presumably of the “goodbye, and thanks for all the fish” ilk.  Alas, it never happened.  Maybe they play more important roles in the remaining two books in the series.

 

    A Chinese space team also enters into the plotline, although it sort of a cameo appearance.  But theirs was an obvious fate since only one of them is even identified by name.  I suspect they'll all be wearing red shirts in the movie version.

 

    That’s all I can gripe about.  If you read 2001 – A Space Odyssey and liked it, you’ll enjoy 2010 – Odyssey Two just as much.  Now I'm wondering how Stanley Kubrick handled the cosmic ending in the movie version.  I'll have to search the Netflix files to see if they carry it.

 

    9½ Stars.  A brief mention of a novella by Leo Tolstoy called The Kreutzer Sonata intrigued me  Wikipedia says it was published in 1889 and promptly censored by the Russian authorities.  Here, it is described as “Russian erotic fiction”.  I never knew such a genre existed.

Raft - Stephen Baxter

   1991; 303 pages.  New Author? : No.  Book 1 (out of 17) in the “Xeelee Sequence” series (so sez Goodreads).  Laurels: 1992 Arthur C. Clarke Award (nominated); 1992 Locus Award for Best First Novel (nominated).  Genres: Hard Science Fiction; Colonization Sci-Fi.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

 

    Rees is a clever young lad.  No doubt he’ll go far in life somewhere out in the Nebula.

 

    But alas, not here on the Belt, where there’s only one job for all inhabitants: mining a burnt-out star kernel for ore.  It’s brutal toil and while Rees may be clever, he’s not physically built for hard labor.

 

    The ore is vital to survival on the Belt, since nothing grows naturally there.  Every so often, the privileged class who live high in the sky above in a place called the Raft, send down a transport device called the Tree.  It’s loaded with food, which they somehow have lots of, and are willing to trade for the Belt’s ore.

 

    Rees is determined to get off the Belt, even though that’s forbidden.  Raft people are Upper Class and mining people are Working Class.  The system only works when everyone knows, and conforms to, their social class.  However Rees is desperate, and has come up with an escape plan, albeit a risky one.

 

    Have I mentioned that Rees is a clever young lad?

 

What’s To Like...

    Raft is Stephen Baxter’s debut novel, and the first of 17 of his books set in the “Xeelee” universe, albeit many of which are novellas and short story collections.  In effect, this is a prequel, telling the backstory of how a ragged crew of humans arrived at, and subsisted in, a far-flung bit of the time-space multiverse where galactic physics has played out quite differently.

 

    There are actually two main storylines: the aforementioned class struggle with its inherent hostility; and a looming cosmic Armageddon that will wipe out the entire Raft and Belt colonies: the life-giving Nebula is dying.  Rees plays an integral part in both storylines.

 

     The world-building is unique and masterfully done.  There are no extraterrestrials (yet), and only a few strange space creatures, such as sky wolves, skitters, and flying whales.  The latter are sentient and reminded me of the dolphins in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

 

    I liked Stephen Baxter’s attention to detail in presenting this space world to the reader.  Time is now measured in “shifts” instead of hours or days; logarithms were found to be useful (which is something I’ve yet to discover here on Earth); and the classic situational-ethics dilemma of “too many passengers in the lifeboat” is still a vexing problem.

 

    The ending has a hopeful tone and sets the stage for the entrance into the far more expansive world of the Xeelees.  The primary plotline of what to do about the dying nebula is resolved.  Other plot threads remain up in the air, and will presumably be addressed in the next sixteen books.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.1*/5, based on 407 ratings and 40 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.69*/5, based on 4,055 ratings and 283 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “Men don’t belong in this universe.  We came here in a Ship.  We passed through something called Bolder’s Ring, which was a kind of gateway.  Somewhere in the cosmos on the other side of the Ring is the world we came from.  It’s a planet, incidentally; a sphere, not a Raft, almost eight thousand miles wide.  And its surface has a gravity of exactly one gee.”

    Rees frowned.  “Then it must be made of some gas.”

    Hollerbach took the orrery from the shelf and studied the tiny planets.  “It’s a ball of iron, actually.  It couldn’t exist . . . here.”  (pg. 83)

 

    “Sir, the lists of passengers have not yet been published; and until they are it is up to all of us—”

    “They don’t need to be published.  We all know who’ll be on that trip . . . and it won’t be the likes of me.  Rees, I should have sucked your brains out of your skull while I had the chance down in the kernel.”  Roch held up a rope-like finger.  “I’ll be back,” he growled.  “And when I find I’m not on that list I’m going to make damn sure you’re not either.”  He stabbed the finger at Grye.  “And the same goes for you.”
    Grye turned ash white and trembled convulsively.

    Roch stalked off.  Gord hefted his jet and said wryly, “Good to know that in this time of upheaval some things have stayed exactly the same.”  (pg. 255)

 

“You’re a Boney now, lad!  Welcome to the arsehole of the Nebula.”  (pg. 163)

    There cussing is relatively sparse in Raft.  I counted just 20 instances in the first 20% of the book.  Most of those were damns, and I don’t recall any f-bombs in the entire book.  Often, the occasions for profanity were covered by made-up phrases, such as “bonesucker”, “by the bones”, and the oft-used social pejorative “mine rat”.  I love it when an author does this.

 

    The book is written in English, not American; so words are spelt, the mood can be sombre, and you can munch of airborne titbits.  If you’re perplexed by any strange spelling, you can look it up in an Encyclopaedia.

 

    The main issue I had with Raft, as did lots of other reviewers, was the way the science-y parts were presented.  The laws of physics in Raft are radically different from those governing our universe.  But instead of laying this all out at the start of the story, those differences are revealed piecemeal along the way.  This made for a difficult read.

 

    But enough quibbling.  I enjoyed Raft because it was an equal-parts blend of a “lost-in-space” scenario with some hard-hitting social commentary.  And it did this in a very “hard science fiction” manner.  The storytelling may be a bit rough around the edges, but it still got the job done and promises an exciting series to follow.

 

    7 Stars.  Book 4, Ring, has sat on my TBR shelf for quite a while.  Now that I've read Raft, I just have to decide whether to jump directly into its Xeelee-inhabited world, or first go looking for Books 2 and 3.  This is a pleasant problem to have.

The Guest - Alan Nayes

   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

2001 - A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke

    1968; 256 pages.  Book 1 (out of 4) in the “Space Odyssey” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : First Contact; Hard Science Fiction; Movie Tie-In.  Overall Rating: 9*/10.

 

    The evidence is persuasive: extraterrestrial beings have visited us.

 

    They left behind some sort of marker, and we’re not talking crop circles or spaceships either.  Instead, it’s a giant stone monolith buried 30 feet below ground.  Curiously, it was placed on the moon.  Talk about an out-of-the-way location.

 

    Needless to say, we Earthlings didn’t discover it until we made it to the moon and began to analyze what’s beneath its surface.  The slab's strong gravitational field was what clued us in that it wasn't a naturally-occurring object.

 

    Further testing showed that the monolith has been there quite some time.  About three million years, give or take a few millennia.  If some alien civilization possessed space travel technology that long ago, think of how more advanced they must be now.  Although to be honest, burying a marker underground, and on the moon, doesn't make a lot of sense.

 

    I wonder if they left any other monoliths behind for us.

 

What’s To Like...

    2001 – A Space Odyssey is Arthur C. Clarke’s companion book to Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant, spectacular, and incredibly popular 1968 sci-fi movie of the same name.  The "Introduction" in the front of this book (the “Millennial” Edition) details the extensive collaborative effort by these two geniuses to create a blockbuster sci-fi epic, with plans for the film and the novel to be released at the same time.

 

    I’ve seen the movie (three times!) and decided to now read the book.  I was surprised how much they differ, despite the Kubrick/Clarke partnership.  Some examples: the opening “man-ape” scenario in the book is played out in greater detail, with its monolith, dark and silent in the movie, performing some dazzling pyrotechnics.  Later on, HAL’s demise plays out differently and his/its reason for failure is explained in greater detail.  And perhaps most notably, the main mission’s destination in the book is now Saturn; while the movie’s endpoint is Jupiter.  Wikipedia gives a complete list of the differences; the link to it is here.

 

    The overall sequence of scenes is the pretty much the same.  Things start with the man-apes, then hop on a flight to the moon to look at the monolith.  After that, we join HAL, Dave, and Frank on a spaceflight to Jupiter, the final destination in the movie, and a gravitational booster in the book to save on gas for the trip to Saturn, where, when we arrive, we find a familiar object waiting to greet us.

 

    The book is written in a “hard science fiction” style; while the movie focuses on stunning visual effects.  I enjoyed Clarke's choice of the rarely-used but completely-awesome word “waldoes”, and had to YouTube the music references to “Verdi’s Requiem Mass” and the obscure “Walton’s Violin Concerto”.  In light of the present-day pandemic, the book’s mention of China being accused of initiating a “blackmail by synthetic disease” plot was eerily prescient.  And I appreciated Arthur Clarke addressing the urban legend about how the computer HAL got its name.  Hint: it is not a clever transition from the acronym IBM by moving each letter one spot earlier.

 

    The movie-vs-book ending is a trade-off.  You can’t reproduce the movie’s fabulous psychedelic climax with words, but Clarke does give a better explanation of it.  Neither version explains the appearance, purpose, and destiny of the Star Child, and the ease with which it destroys a missile-carrying satellite.  Presumably that will be addressed in the sequel, 2010 – Odyssey Two, which exists in both book and film formats.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.7*/5, based on 2,728 ratings.

    Goodreads: 4.15*/5, based on 280,092 ratings and 6,537 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Quietus (n.) : death, or something that causes death, regarded as a release from life.

Others: Ablative (adj.).

 

 

Excerpts...

    At last, one of Man’s oldest questions had been answered; here was the proof, beyond all shadow of doubt, that his was not the only intelligence that the universe had brought forth.  But with that knowledge there came again an aching awareness of the immensity of Time.  Whatever had passed this way had missed mankind by a hundred thousand generations.  Perhaps, Floyd told himself, it was just as well.  And yet — what we might have learned from creatures who could cross space, while our ancestors were still living in trees!  (loc. 1094)

 

    “Mission Control has just dropped a small bomb on us.”  He lowered his voice, like a doctor discussing an illness in front of the patient.  “We may have a slight case of hypochondria aboard.”

    Perhaps Bowman was not fully awake, after all; it took him several seconds to get the point.  Then he said, “Oh — I see.  What else did they tell you?”

    “That there was no cause for alarm.  They said that twice, which rather spoiled the effect as far as I was concerned.”  (loc. 1878)

 

“The thing’s hollow – it goes on forever – and – oh my God! – it’s full of stars!”  (loc. 2686)

    I don’t really have any quibbles with 2001 – A Space Odyssey, neither with the movie nor the novel.  True, both leave a lot of plot threads unresolved, the movie more so, but the ending in both cases is at a logical point.

 

    The degree of storyline divergence is surprising, particularly in light of the amount of collaboration going on between Clarke and Kubrick, but both of them did a superb job within their respective fields.  We never do meet the monolith-crafting aliens, nor any of the other races of sentient creatures that are implied to exist, but I have no doubt that will be addressed in the rest of the series.

 

    The book version of 2001 – A Space Odyssey was a delight to read, and I was particularly impressed by how closely the hard science fiction proposed in it has matched up with the real-world technological advancements in space travel.  Somehow it seemed fitting that I should read this book in the same week as when Captain James T. Kirk made his ascension into the final frontier.

 

    9 Stars.  I can’t recall any other case of such close collaboration by a movie director and a novelist for the simultaneous development and release of a new movie-&-book combination.  In this age of indie and self-published authors, coupled with TikTok and YouTube video-makers, surely such an alliance should should be common practice.  Authors already co-write novels with other authors.  Why not co-produce your great idea with a movie-maker?

Proxima - Stephen Baxter

   2013; 489 pages.  Book 1 (out of 2) in the Proxima series.  New Author? : No.  Genres: Hard Science Fiction; Colonization.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

 

    It is an unprecedented opportunity.  One of the planets that orbits Proxima, the nearest star to us (not counting of our own sun), a mere four light-years away, appears to be able to sustain human life.

 

    Of course, four light-years is still a tremendous distance to travel, but this is 2155 AD, and there must be lots of intrepid people out there who’d love to be included on the first spaceship to another star system.  It would be just like being one of the Pilgrims on the Mayflower when it first set sail to the New World a half a millennium ago.

 

    Hmm. Come to think of it, life was pretty brutal for those settlers back in the 1600s.  Disease, hostile natives, and starvation all took their toll, and when things got tough, the nearest help was on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.  It’ll be even worse here: just sending an SOS message from Proxima back home to Earth takes four years.  So maybe we won’t get many volunteers for the mission.  Maybe we won’t get any at all.

 

    We better think of alternative ways to “recruit” settlers for the Proxima mission.  I seem to remember one method found to be effective was called “shanghaiing”.

 

What’s To Like...

    Proxima is a “hard science-fiction” novel, wherein Stephen Baxter presents a plausible scenario for traveling for the first time outside our own Solar System.  The two main protagonists are Yuri Eden, who discovers he’s been drafted to be one of the first colonists, and Stephanie “Stef” Kalinski, a leading authority on “kernels”, a high-energy/high-density ore-like material discovered on the planet Mercury.  Kernels can be used to build propulsion systems capable of unheard-of power, although Einstein’s principle remains sacrosanct: you still can’t go faster than the speed of light.

 

    Yuri arrives on Proxima around page 50.  Stephanie remains in our Solar System, although she planet-hops a bit.  Each gets his/her own storyline, and although you know they’ll eventually meet up with each other, trying to guess just how that's going to happen is one of the delights of the story.

 

    The first half of the book deals mostly with the challenges that the exoplanetary settlers face on Proxima-c, or, as they rechristen it, “Per Ardua”.  Stephen Baxter has a lot of fun speculating about what divergent paths evolution might take on a different world.  He also mixes in a dash of quantum mechanics, but to say more about that would entail spoilers.

 

    Critter-creating on Per Ardua is done sparingly.  It’s mostly confined to “kites” and “builders”, although evolution allows for lots of variety within both of those species.  I enjoyed flying through the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud on the way to Proxima, as well as the concept of “programmable matter”.  The use of a “silo” habitation system in harsh environments reminded me of Hugh Howey’s Wool trilogy.

 

    The history of Earth from the present to the start of Proxima was both detailed and thought-provoking.  Some reviewers didn’t like the way China was portrayed in this, but I thought it was eminently plausible and liked that the Chinese characters in the book were developed as 3-D entities.

 

    The ending is mainly just a stopping-point along the way.  It’s not a cliffhanger, but there’s a major and weird twist at the very end that changes the complexion of the tale thanks to one of the fascinating facets of quantum mechanics.  None of the plot threads are tied up.  It is important to realize that Proxima is Book One in a duology, with Book Two, Ultima, presumably assigned the job of bringing everything to a satisfactory conclusion.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.1/5 based on 32 ratings.

    Goodreads: 3.81/5 based on 5,960 ratings and 552 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

    Conurbation (n.) : an extended urban area, typically consisting of several towns merging with the suburbs of one or more cities.

 

Excerpts...

    “I am Angelia,” said the woman.

    That puzzled Stef.  “That’s the name of the starship.  The Angelia."

    “I know.  I am Angelia.  I know what you’re thinking.  That I am a PR stunt.  A model, hired by your father to personify—”

    “I don’t actually care,” Stef said abruptly.

    That surprised Lex.  “You’ve got an impatient streak, haven’t you, Kalinski?”

    “If somebody’s being deliberately obscure, yes.”  (pg. 31)

 

    “So you may as well keep going, right?”

    “Through another door, yeah.  And another.  What else is there?”

    “I’ll tell them what became of you.”

    Yuri grinned.  “Well, maybe we’ll be back to tell it all ourselves.”

    “You really think so?”

    “No.”  (pg. 449)

 

“I still say you’ve got big dreams for a bit of farm machinery.”  (pg. 146 )

    There are some things to quibble about.

 

    The book’s timeline is both extensive (2155 AD to 2217 AD; for a total 62 years) and non-linear.  There are valid reasons for that, which we won’t disclose, but it does mean trying to figure out where and when both Yuri and Stef are at any given moment is a bit of a challenge.

 

    As for R-rated stuff, the book is relatively clean.  There is some violence, mostly offstage, and a small amount of cussing (9 instances in the first 10% of the book), but nothing really lurid or graphic.

 

    Perhaps the biggest gripe is the pacing.  The first half of the book dragged at spots as the colonists try to avoid starving to death on Per Ardua.  But I imagine the Pilgrims had lots of tedious stuck-in-a-rut days too.  Things move along faster in the second half, but the bottom line is: this is a Hard Science-Fiction story, not a Space-Opera Star Wars type of tale.  Tediousness is a part of being a settler, and it beats being sick, starving, or having an arrow in your throat.

 

    Lastly, it bears repeating that this is not a standalone novel.  When you decide to read Proxima (at 500 pages), you’re really signing on to read Ultima (another 500 pages) as well.

 

    7 Stars.  It’s hard to give a proper rating to Proxima since I haven’t read the sequel yet.  Ultima is on my TBR shelf, awaiting my attention, and it will be interesting to see whether the weird tone-shifting plot twist plays out for better or for worse.