In The Coming, Joe Haldeman posits a society in the year 2054 where politics has devolved to the point where even I would be looking at GWB as an excellent President. University of Florida astronomy professor Aurora Bell detects an anomalous reading in her monitoring of gamma rays which translate literally as the message “We’re coming” repeated over and over again. Checking with a colleague on the Moon, her determination that the message has been sent from the outer reaches of the Solar System, from a trip travelling barely below the speed of light is confirmed. The ship will arrive at Earth in three months, on New Year’s Day.
Aliens on the way? Haldeman leaves the answer to that question for the very end of the story, though since this only runs a thin 217 pages that isn’t too long to wait. He’s not writing about aliens here, anyway, but about how humans will prepare for the meeting. Though his societal evolution isn’t positive–The Coming was published in 2000, before our latest round of troubles truly began–it also isn’t that different from today except for homosexuality being outlawed (seems like he got that wrong) and urban traffic coming under control of automation.
Sadly, this book simply never develops the narrative energy I need although Haldeman is a good enough author that I kept reading, hoping for the best, and he does have a way with words. The story is just really slight, even though he tries to pump it up with a subplot involving the professor’s husband and a local mobster. Honestly, for the first 100 pages I was still expecting the ship to show up and have that be the main focus but no.
Haldeman posted a bit of the beginning as unformatted text to his personal website.
Not recommended
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