Readers will look forward to seeing how this imaginative cosmos unfolds in future installments.
Nanobots from another universe invade Earth–or did they create it?–in this engrossing kickoff to a sci-fi trilogy.
It’s 2147, humanity is recovering from nuclear war and devastating plagues, and the scientists at Australia’s University of Northern Territory confront new threats to the planet. Archaeobiologist Andrew Quatermas encounters one in the form of a stromatolite, a rock formation constructed billions of years ago by fossilized microorganisms. But these crystals are hardly moribund–when soaked in carbon or boron compounds, they start furiously synthesizing the chemical machinery of life. Studying them with his mass spectrometer and gamma-ray microscope, physicist Miklav Petrovsky detects unnatural elements and tiny structures that, he instantly surmises, add up to “a rocket between dimensions or universes” that “came from somewhere beyond the Planck limit.” A few days and a biocontainment breach later, the campus suddenly finds itself on the front lines of a conflict between two transgalactic civilizations–one is on a crusade to perfect the universe and abolish entropy, while the other is populated by artificial-intelligence systems that smoke too much and worry about keeping their jobs. This is hardcore science fiction, full of endless laboratory procedural and techie dialogue–“So, if electromagnetism were super-symmetric, the fermionic photinos would exactly cancel the photonic contribution and there would be no Casimir lasing”–that might mean something to a theoretical physicist but it’s difficult for the lay reader. It’s also got grand musings on the origin and fate of the universe and the meaning of existence, most memorably from the Church of the Unanswered Question, whose Sartrean prayer services include lines like “We believe in the profound irony of life” and “God is distant, remote and utterly alien.” Kelly sometimes overdoes it, but her writing is well-paced with gripping action scenes and touches of humor, and she gets enough of the science and Big Ideas across, despite the tech speak, to pique the reader’s interest.
Readers will look forward to seeing how this imaginative cosmos unfolds in future installments.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2008
ISBN: 978-1440440977
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
One small step, no giant leaps.
Weir (The Martian, 2014) returns with another off-world tale, this time set on a lunar colony several decades in the future.
Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara is a 20-something deliveryperson, or “porter,” whose welder father brought her up on Artemis, a small multidomed city on Earth’s moon. She has dreams of becoming a member of the Extravehicular Activity Guild so she’ll be able to get better work, such as leading tours on the moon’s surface, and pay off a substantial personal debt. For now, though, she has a thriving side business procuring low-end black-market items to people in the colony. One of her best customers is Trond Landvik, a wealthy businessman who, one day, offers her a lucrative deal to sabotage some of Sanchez Aluminum’s automated lunar-mining equipment. Jazz agrees and comes up with a complicated scheme that involves an extended outing on the lunar surface. Things don’t go as planned, though, and afterward, she finds Landvik murdered. Soon, Jazz is in the middle of a conspiracy involving a Brazilian crime syndicate and revolutionary technology. Only by teaming up with friends and family, including electronics scientist Martin Svoboda, EVA expert Dale Shapiro, and her father, will she be able to finish the job she started. Readers expecting The Martian’s smart math-and-science problem-solving will only find a smattering here, as when Jazz figures out how to ignite an acetylene torch during a moonwalk. Strip away the sci-fi trappings, though, and this is a by-the-numbers caper novel with predictable beats and little suspense. The worldbuilding is mostly bland and unimaginative (Artemis apartments are cramped; everyone uses smartphonelike “Gizmos”), although intriguing elements—such as the fact that space travel is controlled by Kenya instead of the United States or Russia—do show up occasionally. In the acknowledgements, Weir thanks six women, including his publisher and U.K. editor, “for helping me tackle the challenge of writing a female narrator”—as if women were an alien species. Even so, Jazz is given such forced lines as “I giggled like a little girl. Hey, I’m a girl, so I’m allowed.”
One small step, no giant leaps.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-44812-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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