This distant-future story is an absorbing, heartfelt journey, with a few bumps along the way.
A family’s generations-long attempt to save humanity entails traveling through a wormhole in Filho and Alencar’s SF debut.
In the 21st century, climate change devastates the Earth with storms, rising oceans, and continually worsening conditions. Brazilian American astrophysicist Joseph Silva may have a way to save the world, but it’s only a theory: He postulates that anyone moving through one singularity’s black hole will exit another singularity—a wormhole—to another dimension. Joseph writes this out as a mathematical formula, but all he gets in return is the scientific community’s ridicule. Daisy, his daughter and most devoted supporter, vows to validate her father’s work (“Joseph was getting old, and Daisy feared her dad would never see his theory proved”). After earning a doctorate degree in aerospace engineering and a job at NASA, she designs a probe to pass through a black hole and collect any data. Then, a just-landed meteorite brings good news—it’s pure Munerium, a previously unknown substance that easily resists atmospheric pressure and is the perfect choice for building a spaceship. In due time, Daisy has a wormhole-capable probe, along with space drones, to explore whatever parallel universe awaits, all in the hope of finding another habitable planet. The process involves years of waiting for the probe’s return; as the century turns, the world’s population clamors for the salvation that NASA has promised. In the meantime, Daisy’s son Alexander grows into a young man and becomes a recruit at the International Space Command Center. He’s intelligent enough, and willing, to carry on the family legacy. But as the interdimensional ship Knight Discoverer has limited seating capacity, how will the ISCC choose who gets a ride to a prospective new world?
Filho and Alencar’s surprisingly short novel covers quite a number of years. Daisy, for example, goes from a trampoline-jumping little girl to an accomplished professional woman developing a space probe. Although the straightforward narrative is concise, it’s chock-full of curious, real-life ideas, from nuclear gravitation and the Runaway Greenhouse Effect to Einstein’s space-time “fabric.” These elements help provide a sense of realism, even with the characters’ talk of traveling to alternative universes and discovering a viable Earth substitute. In the same vein, a strong father-daughter dynamic will help ease readers into this story—Joseph and Daisy are both bright, likable nerds whose loyalty to one another is undeniable. However, in many respects, the novel feels as if it’s sprinting to get from the mid-21st century to the 2100s. As a result, potentially engrossing subplots, including more than one romance and Alexander’s devout Christian faith, barely register, as there’s only a modicum of space given to flesh these out. Similarly, other elements enter the storyline rather abruptly, such as the lunar space station that plays an integral part in Knight Discoverer’s potential launch and a couple of individuals who prove crucial to Daisy’s plan. Still, the notable family theme is consistent throughout, leading to some genuinely emotional turns (readers will sense there’s a good chance that not every character will make it to the final page). The ending suggests the possibility of a sequel.
This distant-future story is an absorbing, heartfelt journey, with a few bumps along the way.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9781962185158
Page Count: 146
Publisher: Underline Publishing LLC
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2024
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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