The Engines of God by Jack McDevitt
Are you Serious Right Now? Another Death Wave?!
You are not going to believe this! Remember back a month or so ago when I was listening to The Star Quest Trilogy by Ben Bova? That was the series that was all about humanity reaching to the stars in an attempt to find and warn alien species about a catastrophic event that was spreading through the galaxy and would result in the death of all organic life - unless they took immediate action. They called it the Death Wave.
Well, I just finished reading book one of The Academy series by Jack McDevitt, titled The Engines of God, and SPOILER ALERT; it was about a death wave! Sorry, I know that's a major spoiler, but it's just one of those coincidences that when I discovered it, I couldn't keep it to myself. With McDevitt's book published in 1994 and subsequent books published in the early 2000s, and Bova's books published in the 2010s, I have to wonder if Bova's stories were inspired by McDevitt's work in any way. Maybe?
Sidebar: I've been daydreaming about starting a podcast, and I was thinking the other day that I could start one called Spoiler Alert. It would be me and my son Kaleb talking about books that I've read. Since Kaleb hates reading, I figured it would be fun to share what I enjoyed about a book I just finished - especially if there is a movie version of the story that we've seen. Then we could go back and forth about whether the book or the movie was better - basically making a compare and contrast of the detail, storyline, and character interpretation of each version. It might be fun!
Summary
Anyway, The Engines of God is a hard science fiction novel by Jack McDevitt, published in 1994. The story follows Priscilla Hutchins, a pilot for the Academy, as she ferries xenoarcheologists to faraway worlds and faces many disasters, both natural and manufactured. Though humankind is still in its early stages of space exploration, they have technology that makes super-luminal travel a reality. As they reach the galaxy's core, they find mysterious alien monuments along the way, but the Academy's scientists can't quite figure out if they are standing guard over a valuable discovery or if they are a warning of some impending doom.
Thoughts
If you like stories about archeology and world-hopping travel amongst the stars, you're likely to enjoy this story. I'm a slow reader, so it took me four months to read this book, but I suspect that those of you who have the bandwidth to read more than a few pages per day will enjoy this story even more. When it takes too long to read a book, you tend to forget details and miss connections between characters and plot points. I think that's why I only rated this story four stars out of five.
The story didn't give much detail about how the ships traveled between star systems, but the same cast of characters traveled between Earth and other systems several times throughout the book. It was never discussed how much time had passed back home, so whatever technology they were using, it provided a loophole to relativity. I have to assume that their ships used some sort of hyperspace engine. If you have more information about that, let me know in the comments. The author did make it clear that the spaceships had engines they used specifically for interstellar travel and other engines that were for use once the ship was in a star system. Reminds me of Star Trek's warp engines versus impulse engines.
Another interesting technology mentioned is a sort of personal shielding device called a Flickinger field. This was described as a field of energy that enveloped the user, hovering just above the skin and clothing but leaving enough room around the head and mouth to hold breathable air. Right at the beginning of the book, one character is described as wearing gray jeans, a white sweater, and an Irish country hat, all while walking on the surface of one of the moons of Saturn. Only the thin field of energy protected him from the hostile environment. I think it's a cool idea, but slightly terrifying! I don't know if I could trust a field of energy to keep me safe from what would otherwise be certain death.
Conclusion
I realize that I'm not doing a great job of generating interest in reading this book, but I can tell you that I was never bored. There were times that I was a little confused about what was happening, but I was never bored, and I don't think you will be either. In fact, there are a total of eight books in this series, and I just added the other seven to my list of books to read.
This was my first Jack McDevitt book, and as of the time of this writing, I have to say that I'm excited to explore more of his stories.
Do we have any Jack McDevitt fans out there? If you’ve read The Engines of God, what do you think? What was your favorite or least favorite part? Have you read other McDevitt books? Which ones would you recommend?
Join me in the chat to talk about all of this and more.
Fans of Ben Bova will want to check the following books:
