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Books : Science Fiction & Fantasy : Authors, A-Z : M : McDevitt, Jack
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Deepsix is concerned with the motivating force that drives all scientists--the quest for truth, for expanding the limits of human knowledge. How much are we willing to risk for that moment of discovery, of knowing what no other soul yet knows? Our time? Our reputations? Our careers? Our lives?The premise is this-just weeks before the planet Deepsix will be destroyed by a collision with a gas giant, ruins are detected on its surface, suggesting the presence of civilisation. The Academy diverts scientists from the nearest spaceship to go down and explore, and they are joined by their century's Ellsworth Toohey: a misogynistic, sanctimonious gadfly who has never before been off of Earth's surface. The party's landers are destroyed in an earthquake induced by the approaching gas giant, so now they must find a way to get off Deepsix before it is destroyed by the collision. Needless to say, their excavations are placed on the back burner.
The science and technology, both the physics describing the space travel and the archaeology used to reconstruct the lost culture of Deepsix, are interesting and explained well. There is plenty of action and suspense-will the party survive? And the evolving characters and group dynamics are more complex than those usually found in science fiction books, making Deepsix a worthwhile read. --Diana Gitig, Amazon.com
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Gigantic meteor impacts have been a familiar SF cliché for decades. Jack McDevitt (whose first SF novel appeared in 1986) rings the changes with a two-stage disaster. A sun-grazing comet from deep space becomes visible only during the 2024 eclipse: it's a planet-killer, too big and fast for interception, and impact is in just five days. The twist is that it's going to hit the Moon. Lashings of drama follow as our lunar base--just opened by the US Vice-President, who's still there--is desperately evacuated by a Dunkirk flotilla of moonbuses, spaceplanes and a prototype Mars ship. At last the incoming monster, 180 km across, smashes into the Moon: as though this were a violent first break in snooker, random fragments fly everywhere. With grim plausibility, McDevitt shows the US government initially spin-doctoring the problem as nothing much to worry about. Then the sky begins to fall ... 37 chunks of Moon spawning fireballs and floods, and a massive 38th that threatens global extinction. The last-ditch effort to tackle this--not using nukes--attracts a sabotage strike from US militia loons who reckon it's all a government plot. McDevitt mercilessly cranks up the tension, and the pages turn faster and faster. A highly competent technothriller. --David Langford
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