A thoughtful, inventive SF fable.
In Ho Yen’s debut SF novel, aliens and humans meet at a crossroads for humankind.
In the 22nd century, humankind labors to restore Earth following the ravages of the 21st. Unbeknownst to them, two aliens observe their work from the remote safety of the moon. One is the Ethnologist, a crafty and dispassionate recorder of human endeavors. The other is the Cosmologist, whose traumatic past makes him deeply empathetic and who harbors something of an independent streak. Both are members of a migratory trans-species alien collective known as the SelfMade. They are acutely aware of an impending “Catastrophic Cosmological Event” that will destroy Earth’s segment of the galaxy, but they are unsure if and how they should intervene to help save humanity. Down on Earth, specifically in Quebec, Laurence Levesque is a high-functioning autistic girl forced to deal with the cruelty of “normal” children. She’s cared for by an ailing single mother until lymphoma makes her an orphan. Meanwhile, in Iowa, Matt Hutney is raised in a violent, religious household until his father murders his mother, consigning Matt to years of foster care. As Laurence and Matt grow up (to become a prominent AI scientist and a radical anti-secularist, respectively), their fates become linked inextricably with those of the two aliens, each of whom decides to get a bit more hands-on when it comes to human affairs. Ho Yen’s prose style varies based on which characters he is following, from the grit and suspense of Hutney’s chapters to the wry serenity of the SelfMade: “The Ethnologist admitted to its having left a message for a journalist. ‘Harmless fun,’ it said to the Cosmologist. ‘Something to break the monotony.’ The Cosmologist did not admit to having coopted a rover to observe an individual human.” Ho Yen’s descriptions of advanced technologies should please fans of hard SF, but what really makes the book work are the questions it raises about what it means to be a person and a member of a species.
A thoughtful, inventive SF fable.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2022
ISBN: 9780976615828
Page Count: 398
Publisher: Grand Unification Monastery
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 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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