Imaginative high-stakes SF breathes fresh life into the alien-first-contact genre.
In Tabor’s SF novel, a NASA expedition to the edge of the solar system encounters a long-hibernating alien.
In the year 2112, a NASA expedition (a dangerously cut-rate, low-budget one, it turns out) has sent volunteers to explore deep space, with little or no chance of return. The crew, led by Commander Jerry Jerrison, is on the edge of Pluto’s orbit when they make an epochal discovery: a fantastically advanced, shape-shifting alien spaceship, guided by an artificial intelligence and harboring one hibernating occupant, a being named Muni. He is a Morgi, a long-lived galactic species with a strongly acquisition-based socio-economic culture. Resembling large slugs with taloned wings and quadruple eyes, Morgi have inherent predator instincts—the initial contact (while Muni is still awakening) results in the shocking devouring of an astronaut. After that faux pas, the creature must employ skillfully spun falsehoods and half-truths to explain himself and win Jerrison’s trust. Muni explains that his near-destitute Green Hill Clan took a risk and dared to explore two distant star systems, hoping to annex them for their survival and self-aggrandizement. One held a promising ice age planet, Earth. But Muni did not imagine its Cro-Magnon population evolving over millennia into an intelligent, spacefaring civilization—something no Morgi had yet encountered. Muni faces the erasure of his tribe (and the extermination of the human race) by ambitious rival clans unless a strictly formal Morgi “ownership ritual” tradition is followed in full cooperation with the humans. But how can humankind submit to the will of this (not entirely honest) alien? The plot contains some credulity-stretching coincidences and fortuitous turns of fate, nicely blended with canny depictions of diplomacy, strategy, and flimflammery. The alien biology and culture (and how they drive each other) are well thought out. Readers will enjoy the sidelong jabs at human-style colonial imperialism and realpolitik (“Doctor Johnson, I have a question for you. Which is better, a great peace supported by a lie, or a massacre justified by the truth?”). The breathless wrap-up would seem to indicate that the story is a stand-alone, but an epilogue points to a sequel.
Imaginative high-stakes SF breathes fresh life into the alien-first-contact genre.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A ridiculous concept imbued with gravity, charm, humor, plausible cynicism, and pathos—and perhaps the merest touch of spite.
A Wallace & Gromit dream is more of a nightmare in this darkly farcical science fantasy in which the moon inexplicably becomes…well, not green, but decidedly dairy.
When the moon and every lunar sample on Earth transform into a cheese-like substance, it seems amusing at first, but the appearance of this newly organic, extremely unstable satellite has far-reaching, apocalyptic consequences. A variety of U.S. citizens—disappointed astronauts from newly cancelled lunar missions, scientists whose understanding of the universe has been entirely upended, writers frantically adapting their pitches, retirees at a rural diner finding solace in their friendship, a small church community looking for divine answers, bickering cheese-shop owners whose product gets both welcome and unwelcome attention, the ultra-wealthy owner of an aerospace company with a spectacularly self-involved agenda, bank executives seeking a financial angle, and government officials desperately scheduling press conferences—respond in ways grand and petty, generous and self-serving. Those responses can only escalate when a cheesy lunar fragment threatens to destroy all life on our planet. Scalzi’s premise is absurd, but it’s merely the pretext to take a multifaceted, satiric look at how Americans deal with large-scale crisis, something we’re abundantly and recently familiar with, and will no doubt experience again in the not-so-distant future. He writes of denial, conspiracy theories, anger directed at the wrong people, unscrupulous political machinations, and multiple attempts at profiting from the end of the world, for as long as it lasts. There are moments of unexpected kindness and generosity, too. Of course, Scalzi takes aim at his favorite corporate, social, and government targets, as well as at the cheap sentiment that crisis always seems to inspire (as exemplified by a catastrophic Saturday Night Live episode).
A ridiculous concept imbued with gravity, charm, humor, plausible cynicism, and pathos—and perhaps the merest touch of spite.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780765389091
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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