A space odyssey that’s worth taking.
A probe’s discovery of organic molecules on a moon of Saturn—proof positive of alien life—prompts an international team of scientists to embark on a dangerous journey in Morris’ (Der Riss, 2018, etc.) hard-sci-fi novel.
In 2031, a long-range automated spacecraft confirms biological material on Saturn’s ice moon Enceladus, where a liquid ocean exists beneath the frozen surface. The prospect of extraterrestrial life awaiting discovery in the solar system prompts a worldwide effort under NASA to recruit, train, and finally send several scientists on a 2046 mission to explore below Enceladus’ surface in the Valkyrie, a manned vessel described as “a drill that could swim, not a submarine that could drill.” Its co-pilot is Martin, a cool-headed Jet Propulsion Laboratory contractor who seems to have no fear of death due to a personal tragedy; the epic unfolds from his point of view during the risky, monthslong voyage. Morris is an exponent of highly technical sci-fi that details aerospace exploration and innovation practically down to the last rivet. Happily, he also pays heed to the human element, an aspect that can feel poorly engineered in many other hard-sci-fi books. Early on, for instance, the crew deals with an emergency when the mission commander, Amy Michaels, who’s in a relationship with engineer Hayato Masukoshi, becomes pregnant despite the fact that doctors told her that she was infertile. Morris also gets plenty of altitude from the brainy, minuscule crew’s problem-solving, as they cope not only with the challenge of having another mouth to feed, but also missing supplies and malfunctioning propulsion. The fact that the stakes on Enceladus may only involve unicellular organisms is no drawback; the author’s gift for narrative even endows the collision between a space rock and an automated vessel with something like emotional weight. The book also adroitly handles the tricky question of alien intelligence. Lengthy nonfiction postscripts, written in a similarly supple style, describe the science in the story; it’s hopefully not a spoiler to note that the Valkyrie is an experimental concept in real life (and the head of the firm behind it, as well as businessmen Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, is mentioned in the novel).
A space odyssey that’s worth taking.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72683-024-9
Page Count: 436
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.
Another surprise from an author who never writes the same novel twice.
Though Whitehead has earned considerable critical acclaim for his earlier work—in particular his debut (The Intuitionist, 1999) and its successor (John Henry Days, 2001)—he’ll likely reach a wider readership with his warmest novel to date. Funniest as well, though there have been flashes of humor throughout his writing. The author blurs the line between fiction and memoir as he recounts the coming-of-age summer of 15-year-old Benji Cooper in the family’s summer retreat of New York’s Sag Harbor. “According to the world, we were the definition of paradox: black boys with beach houses,” writes Whitehead. Caucasians are only an occasional curiosity within this idyll, and parents are mostly absent as well. Each chapter is pretty much a self-contained entity, corresponding to a rite of passage: getting the first job, negotiating the mysteries of the opposite sex. There’s an accident with a BB gun and plenty of episodes of convincing someone older to buy beer, but not much really happens during this particular summer. Yet by the end of it, Benji is well on his way to becoming Ben, and he realizes that he is a different person than when the summer started. He also realizes that this time in his life will eventually live only in memory. There might be some distinctions between Benji and Whitehead, though the novelist also spent his youthful summers in Sag Harbor and was the same age as Benji in 1985, when the novel is set. Yet the first-person narrator has the novelist’s eye for detail, craft of character development and analytical instincts for sharp social commentary.
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.Pub Date: April 28, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-52765-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2009
BOOK TO SCREEN
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