Sweeping, imaginative, and captivating: As good as, perhaps better than, anything Williamson has written in his long and...
Why would Earth need terraforming? Well, what if a giant meteorite smacked into the planet, asks grandmaster Williamson (The Silicon Dagger, 1999, etc.), wiping out all life? Rich eccentric Calvin DeFort insists that a major meteorite impact is likely, and dedicates his life to creating Tycho Base on the Moon, run by a computer, staffed by robots, and complete with frozen human-, animal-, and plant-tissue specimens. When the fateful meteorite duly shows up, devastating Earth, only DeFort's chosen handful escape. Thousands of years later, the computer prepares clones of the original survivors. They study the records intensively until it seems as though they have the actual memories of their originals. Astronaut Pepe and biologist Tanya travel to Earth, finding conditions still hostile; in the interim, weird octopus-like amphibians have evolved. Both explorers perish, however. Many years pass. Tycho Base’s computer raises a new crop of clones who study both the ancient records and those more recent. Their attempt to repopulate the planet succeeds, after a fashion; survivors build a Moon-worshipping civilization whose citizens don't believe that their visitors are really from the Moon. Another impact wipes them out. Millions of years later, the latest clones awaken to discover alien invaders; still later, new clones are raised by humans so advanced that Tycho Base and its contents have been preserved as historical artifacts.
Sweeping, imaginative, and captivating: As good as, perhaps better than, anything Williamson has written in his long and astonishing career.Pub Date: July 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-87200-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
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
A new edition of the by now classic collection of affiliated stories which has already established its deserved longevity.
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1963
ISBN: 055338256X
Page Count: -
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1963
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