When apocalyptic disaster looms, humanity turns to science and technology in this well-crafted tale.
In this debut sci-fi novel, researchers desperately work to protect Earth from a planet-munching entity.
On June 20, 2014, Samantha “Sam” Monroe, a research scientist at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, gets an alert, the first one she’s heard in six years of working there. Amazingly enough, this one seems to be legitimate and coming from Pluto. Sam immediately calls her superior at SETI, Jennifer Epstein, a senior research scientist, and soon a team of astronomers worldwide assembles to investigate the signal thoroughly. If it truly represents first contact with an alien civilization, it could be “the greatest discovery in the history of mankind.” But humanity might not have long to appreciate this discovery because a huge, massive object or ship methodically consumes Pluto, Neptune, and Uranus and appears to be headed toward Earth—due to arrive in 10 years. Attacking this “Leviathan” won’t work, not even a direct hit from the entire world’s combined nuclear missiles. The best option involves diverting the object, but how to accomplish this? The SETI team allies with scientists, governments, and the Elon Musk–like Muzikayise “Muzie” Khulu, CEO of Khulu Global in South Africa, who has enormous resources. They build and launch a rover, and communication is established with the sender of the beacon, an artificial intelligence. Despite efforts to calm the populace, apocalyptic movements have gained currency and spread panic, leading to dangerous armed resistance to the scientists’ work. Can the joint mission to save the planet succeed before it’s too late? In his series opener, Williams offers a wealth of well-informed, highly technical, and scientific details that will captivate fans of hard sci-fi. He takes readers step by step through the mission’s reasoning, methods, and machines, as in this excerpt from a description of an advanced spacecraft: “The four rigid, right triangle-shaped polyimide radiation fins were not retractable and were forty meters long, all of which were mounted to the cylindrical structure by way of a series of trusses that ran the length of the craft, made of titanium and tungsten. The four fins also connected to each other with taut titanium cables every ten meters on their outer edges.” Less technically minded readers may find the going slow, but a strong thread through the novel is humanity’s reactions to this epochal event. The author does a nice job of evoking the complexity of responses. Muzie, for example, sees that “a possible existential threat like this can bring untold benefits to the world if we can resolve the problem” and recognize ways to exploit it for power and gain. A slenderer but still important thread involves relationships, as when Sam and Jennifer slowly fall in love. The book’s possible solution to the threat isn’t terribly dramatic by the usual blow-it-up-extravaganza standard but has the virtue of being realistic and leaving room for further development.
When apocalyptic disaster looms, humanity turns to science and technology in this well-crafted tale.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73311-183-6
Page Count: 401
Publisher: Trevor Writes
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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