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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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