Review: Entertaining Sci Fi Novella, First in a Series
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 14, 2014
“Contact: Episode One” is the first novella in a series dealing with Earth in the near future—an Earth in which humanity has made great strides in space travel and scientific progress involving space travel.The story begins with a scientific experiment that involves increasing and then slowing the speed of Mercury’s rotation. Shortly after the experiment concludes, a Chilean observatory notates an object that could collide with Earth sometime in the distant future. However, the object appears to be getting closer much faster than it should—and eventually it doesn’t look like an asteroid, but like something else altogether.“Contact” does a good job of building and then holding interest, starting with the mysterious object hurtling through space—my curiosity about what it was propelled me through the first half of the novella. The main characters are also well-written and memorable—Steve, the young lab assistant/student who likes to party, and Clive, the more serious lab assistant/student who is a little socially awkward but also a genius. I am interested to see how their personalities grow and their roles expand in future books in the series. The most enjoyable part of the book for me, though, was the thoughts it prompted in me about extraterrestrial intelligence—especially with how the military and others in the book view the potential visitors through their own very human lenses, even though there’s really no way to understand something so completely alien as a race of beings from outer space. The book ends on a cliffhanger, creating excitement for the next installment. Recommended to readers who enjoy science fiction, especially science fiction that mixes science with suspense.