Action-jammed, entertaining, and sometimes profound pseudo-history SF despite the pulpy plotting.
In this SF novel, an alien mothership blunders into a historic Soviet space flight, triggering conflicts and mayhem between Russia, America, and the extraterrestrials.
SF authors Bruno and Castle recast the 1960s Cold War with an alien encounter of the unfortunate kind rather than Cubans. A vast mothership carrying an amphibious race (the Vulbathi) materializes in 1961, by chance—or perhaps God’s design; a few Roman Catholic characters ponder this—in the path of Yuri Gagarin’s manned space flight, killing the pioneer cosmonaut. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, assuming American aggression, launches his nuclear arsenal, which the advanced Vulbathi divert but don’t exactly neutralize. A belt of Eastern European countries becomes the “Dead Curtain,” irradiated and strewn with alien refuse and weird aftereffects (shades of Arkady and Boris Strugetsky’s first-contact classic, Roadside Picnic). Three years later, the Vulbathi—known in human slang as “Toads”—sojourn on the moon in an uneasy détente with Soviet, American, and Chinese officials, who covet their superscience and maintain peaceful relations despite the traumatic history and the black market in copied Toad gadgets and arms. Kyle McCoy was a foot soldier in the early Dead Curtain American-Russian-Vulbathi skirmishes who miraculously negotiated a cease-fire. Now, he is prominent in the DAR—not the Daughters of the American Revolution but the Department of Alien Relations. He is invited to an interspecies summit meeting to chart a future. But deadly sabotage, assassination, and terror ensue. Meanwhile, it goes unappreciated that present at the scene is not really Kyle but his ne’er-do-well twin brother, Connor, a junkie, con man, and part-time Hollywood actor, who switched places. Yes, that’s right, and more than one character marvels at this groaning cliché. The authors’ hell-for-leather approach brims with battles, betrayals, and cartoony villains, including a recurring New York City Mafia crime lord (who ultimately gets a more positive evaluation than the statesmen and politicians). President John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Neil Armstrong, and J. Edgar Hoover are among the real-life eminences who show up (seldom in a flattering light), though a sense of nostalgia gets dispelled by the occasional anachronisms in the prose. Still, there are no cellphones or PCs in this diverting roller-coaster ride through what-if time and space.
Action-jammed, entertaining, and sometimes profound pseudo-history SF despite the pulpy plotting.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-949890-61-7
Page Count: 486
Publisher: Aethon Books, LLC
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ambitious but plodding space odyssey.
Having survived a disastrous deep space mission in 2038, three asteroid miners plan a return to their abandoned ship to save two colleagues who were left behind.
Though bankrolled through a crooked money laundering scheme, their original project promised to put in place a program to reduce the CO2 levels on Earth, ease global warming, and pave the way for the future. The rescue mission, itself unsanctioned, doesn't have a much better chance of succeeding. All manner of technical mishaps, unplanned-for dangers, and cutthroat competition for the precious resources from the asteroid await the three miners. One of them has cancer. The international community opposes the mission, with China, Russia, and the United States sending questionable "observers" to the new space station that gets built north of the moon for the expedition. And then there is Space Titan Jack Macy, a rogue billionaire threatening to grab the riches. (As one character says, "It's a free universe.") Suarez's basic story is a good one, with tense moments, cool robot surrogates, and virtual reality visions. But too much of the novel consists of long, sometimes bloated stretches of technical description, discussions of newfangled financing for "off-world" projects, and at least one unneeded backstory. So little actually happens that fixing the station's faulty plumbing becomes a significant plot point. For those who want to know everything about "silicon photovoltaics" and "orthostatic intolerance," Suarez's latest SF saga will be right up their alley. But for those itching for less talk and more action, the book's many pages of setup become wearing.
An ambitious but plodding space odyssey.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-18363-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
Elegiac and elliptical, this slim novel is a sobering read.
Six astronauts on a space station orbit the planet over the course of a single Earth day.
Two hundred and fifty miles above the Earth, a space station goes round and round. Over the course of 24 hours, the astronauts inside experience sunrise and sunset 16 times. Though they're supposed to keep their schedules in tune with a normal “daily” routine, they exist in a dream-like liminal space, weightless, out of time, captivated and astonished by the “ringing singing lightness” of the globe always in view. “What would it be to lose this?” is the question that spurs Harvey’s nimble swoops and dives into the minds of the six astronauts (as well as a few of the earthbound characters, past and present). There are gentle eddies of plot: The Japanese astronaut, Chie, has just received word that her elderly mother has died; six other astronauts are currently on their way to a moon landing; a “super-typhoon” barrels toward the Philippines; one of the two cosmonauts, Anton, has discovered a lump on his neck. But overall this book is a meditation, zealously lyrical, about the profundity and precarity of our imperiled planet. It’s surely difficult to write a book in which the main character is a giant rock in space—and the book can feel ponderous at times, especially in the middle—but Harvey’s deliberate slowed-down time and repetitions are entirely the point. Like the astronauts, we are forced to meditate on the notion that “not only are we on the sidelines of the universe but that it’s…a universe of sidelines, that there is no centre.” Is this a crisis or an opportunity? Harvey treats this question as both a narrative and an existential dilemma.
Elegiac and elliptical, this slim novel is a sobering read.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780802161543
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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