Humanity does not play well with others in this untraditional and engrossing SF tale.
Archival fragments, testimonials, and ephemera tell the story of space-traveling humans discovering two alien races in dire straits and how the multiple species enter into bitter conflict while sharing Earth.
In this SF novel, Jacobson uses an epistolary style to describe—via ingredients in some kind of multimedia “virtual exhibit”—a fateful clash of Earth and alien cultures. In the mid-22nd century, after humanity attains technology to explore millions of galaxies, Earth explorers stumble across the Laffians, tall humanoids in need of a helping hand. They escaped the tectonic destruction of their home world to settle the only other planet they could find supporting life, which they dubbed Adalaffa. But Adalaffa is a globe completely covered in ocean, and the refugees have to unhappily adopt a floating subsistence existence off the ubiquitous (and carnivorous) seaweed. With superior star-mapping, Earth’s emissaries promise the Laffians a better planet—but only in exchange for the aliens meeting impossible harvest quotas of precious Adalaffian flora. The flora turns out to have restorative properties for Earth’s badly damaged biosphere. Ultimately, the Laffians figure out they are getting the raw end of the deal and rebel. This leads to the Laffians meeting (and becoming allies with) the HoFe, another species victimized by Homo sapiens. The HoFe are tree-dwelling feline creatures with a strong warrior heritage—and a doomed home planet for which time is running out. Can the three races possibly share an abundant Earth in peace, acceptance, and respect?
In a narrative woven from bits and pieces of correspondence, diaries, official reports, and even a sort of movie script excerpt, the plot is fragmentary and a bit sketchy in aspects—asking readers to swallow that the distressed, less advanced Laffians and HoFe could suddenly mount an effective Earth conquest (even granted that all of the planet seems ground under the high heel of one bitchy but strategically vulnerable corporate-monopoly CEO). That being a given, the two alien species, charitable and ethical despite their grievances, attempt a cooperative existence and try to blend together into an established society. But the author’s intriguing point of view is similar to that in the Walter Tevis classic The Man Who Fell to Earth. Humanity’s pathologies, such as religious extremism, xenophobia, racism, sexism, consumerism, and capitalism, turn out to be, as with H.G. Wells’ microbes, the subtle threats that undermine and daunt the interplanetary visitors, no matter their thoroughly benign intentions. Previous books by Jacobson took a strong LGBTQ+ orientation, and indeed here, as in Ursula Le Guin’s landmark The Left Hand of Darkness, the aliens are ambisexual, flipping from male to female as mating conditions dictate. While it’s not a prominent theme, a significant subplot deals with the first domestic coupling of a Laffian and a human (“It was our court case that made marriage between our species legal”). And, as with all things where humanity is concerned, complications ensue in this absorbing story.
Humanity does not play well with others in this untraditional and engrossing SF tale.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781604893632
Page Count: 278
Publisher: Livingston Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 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
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.
Weir’s latest is a page-turning interstellar thrill ride that follows a junior high school teacher–turned–reluctant astronaut at the center of a desperate mission to save humankind from a looming extinction event.
Ryland Grace was a once-promising molecular biologist who wrote a controversial academic paper contesting the assumption that life requires liquid water. Now disgraced, he works as a junior high science teacher in San Francisco. His previous theories, however, make him the perfect researcher for a multinational task force that's trying to understand how and why the sun is suddenly dimming at an alarming rate. A barely detectable line of light that rises from the sun’s north pole and curves toward Venus is inexplicably draining the star of power. According to scientists, an “instant ice age” is all but inevitable within a few decades. All the other stars in proximity to the sun seem to be suffering with the same affliction—except Tau Ceti. An unwilling last-minute replacement as part of a three-person mission heading to Tau Ceti in hopes of finding an answer, Ryland finds himself awakening from an induced coma on the spaceship with two dead crewmates and a spotty memory. With time running out for humankind, he discovers an alien spacecraft in the vicinity of his ship with a strange traveler on a similar quest. Although hard scientific speculation fuels the storyline, the real power lies in the many jaw-dropping plot twists, the relentless tension, and the extraordinary dynamic between Ryland and the alien (whom he nicknames Rocky because of its carapace of oxidized minerals and metallic alloy bones). Readers may find themselves consuming this emotionally intense and thematically profound novel in one stay-up-all-night-until-your-eyes-bleed sitting.
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13520-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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