Fairly exciting sci-fi catastrophism with some quirks; call it The Day the Earth Certainly Didn’t Stand Still.
Eccentric, brilliant, and disgraced scientist Dave Holmes may be humanity’s only hope for survival when a black hole is detected on a collision course with Earth.
Rothman (Perimeter, 2018), an engineer, tackles the hard-science/apocalypse trope of a “Very Bad Thing” threatening Earth in the tradition of Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer’s epochal When World’s Collide and Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s Lucifer’s Hammer. Focusing rather tightly on a small group of characters—from tough U.S. President Margaret Hager to a NYC cop recalled to active military service—the epic takes place in the year 2066. Humans routinely mine asteroids and have a thriving lunar colony, but that matters naught when the ultimate natural-disaster threat looms: a black hole, preceded by a cloud of debris. A long-shot solution may reside with Dave Holmes, a scientist who’s had a spectacular rise and fall in his discipline. He foresaw the oncoming doomsday and, working in obscurity, has secretly been researching an astounding, untested technology to save at least some of humanity. But other dangers abound—an end-times terrorist messianic cult called the Brotherhood of the Righteous. The Brotherhood make for rather pallid villains, and late in the narrative, a few colorful Vatican reps show up if only to underscore that not all religious folk are hellbent psycho death freaks. But a theme emerges that Earth’s real savior is “Big Science”—and, particularly, science spearheaded by social outcasts, misunderstood misfits, and mavericks. (One surprise supporting-cast hero turns out to be the Supreme Leader of North Korea.) The thickening techno-jargon is somewhat daunting though not entirely beyond a lay reader’s comprehension (“Detecting an acceleration of 20 meters per second squared...correction, the acceleration has increased to 40 meters...60 meters...holding at 60 meters per second squared”). In an afterword, Rothman fact-checks the realities behind his imaginative flights of physics and technology, though a cliffhanger ending points the survival narrative into an entirely different direction and feels a bit like a misalignment.
Fairly exciting sci-fi catastrophism with some quirks; call it The Day the Earth Certainly Didn’t Stand Still.Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-983323-00-3
Page Count: 459
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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