ALIEN NEIGHBORS

Astronauts encounter aliens offering to share technology and resources in Golden’s SF novel.

Tom Whitaker is an American nuclear scientist (and recent divorce casualty) working on ways to make nuclear fusion a clean-energy technology to conserve dwindling fossil fuels. A key to his project is restarting NASA moon-shot missions to mine a helium isotope only found beneath the lunar surface. Against political opposition, U.S. president William B. Ferris agrees. The official go-ahead allows Tom to hope he can reignite his relationship with an old college flame, Theresa McDonnough, now a NASA pilot—but she repeatedly cools his jets. Then, the incredible happens: On the moon, humanoid aliens from the Cygnus constellation casually introduce themselves. Cygnans are six-fingered, with funky eyes, and they claim to live in an unstable binary-star system at the far end of a wormhole. Having observed humankind for generations, the Cygnans propose a joint human-alien venture to share tech and the precious helium that will both help the nuclear-fusion breakthrough and aid the Cygnans in relocating their endangered civilization. But xenophobic humans—not just conspiracy freaks, but also respected astrophysicists and opinion-leaders—mistrust the extraterrestrials; the alien representatives seem cordial, but their society remains a closed book. Tom personally finds his ex-wife strategically leveraging his closeness with an amiable alien named Lanjo in their custody fight over their daughter Stephanie. Occasional deposits of hard-SF jargon (“Cygnan technology created a trap that cools the antiprotons and combines them with positrons to create antihydrogen, keeping the antimatter confined and preventing their annihilation”) give rise to some small bumps in an otherwise smoothly told tale that accents emotions, relationships, and good feelings—characters break out occasionally in the “Snoopy happy dance.” The Cygnans may inspire only muted wonder in readers (proud of his human pop-culture savvy, Lanjo speaks in language that tilts deliberately toward pop-culture references and cliches like “a friend in need is a friend indeed”). Despite episodes of deadly sabotage and hints that rogue Cygnans may have their own hostile agenda, “group hugs all around” is the prevailing sentiment.

The rare SF yarn that emphasizes the positive.