I have been reading, I just haven’t had the inspiration to put down my thoughts on them. Not because they haven’t entertained me, most have, but, well, whatever, you don’t want to read my excuses.
The Engines of God came highly recommended from the Big Guy. It’s the first in the Academy sequence, or the Priscilla “Hutch” Hutchins Novels as author Jack McDevitt sometimes calls them, though I didn’t realize there were five more with the last a couple of months away. To some extent I was surprised to see McDevitt refer to them as the Hutchins novels since she’s a major character in Engines but hardly more than the one who shows up in each of the three main segments.
Hutchins is a freelance interstellar pilot and in each of the voyages in this volume she drives the bus for a mission sponsored by the World Academy For Science And Technology. 190 years from now a somewhat faster than light star drive (much slower than, say, those used in Star Trek or Star Wars) has allowed humanity to explore a few dozen nearby star systems but the ROI is such that mass travel hasn’t developed. Only one other sentient race has been found still living, though several other planets clearly held intelligent beings until relatively recently.
What explorers have found are monuments, one per system, wherever such life has existed, different in size and what’s depicted but clearly all left by the same unknown starfarers. In our own solar system on a moon of Saturn is a three meter tall female, which we read about in the prologue, a brief trip for which Hutch pilots renown archaeologist Richard Wald. Those who left their creations are called the Monument Makers.
Several years later Hutch and Wald fly to Quraqua, a world whose intelligent inhabitants died off (to the last Quraquan) just a few centuries ago. An Academy team has been studying the planet for nearly three decades but their mission is almost over–global warming has continued and severely damaged Earth and a private company is days away from unleashing a terraforming Armageddon with the hopes of creating a new home for us in just 50 years. Wald’s trip is motivated by the discovery of that system’s monument, a huge, seamless Potemkin city on Quraqua’s moon.
The mission ends in tragedy and the survivors retreat to Earth, scattering to new posts in academia and government, but work continues on the mystery of the monuments. A breakthrough inspires the last voyage, to Beta Pacifica III, where Hutch and a small team find further mystery and more questions despite learning the answers they thought were the point. And more trouble too, of course.
Knowing now that there are five more novels to the story I’m a bit less put off by the climax which, after all, doesn’t really solve anything. Heck, it leaves not just the astronauts in jeopardy but humanity’s entire existence. I was, still, a bit miffed at the lack of closure and payoff after a very well-written book. The questions McDevitt raises are intriguing and he has decent skills, and drew me in to these characters and their troubles. Will I read the rest? Not sure.
recommended, just
BillSaysThis 