The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion

Our book-of-the-month for August 2022 is The Engines of God by Jack McDevitt, first published in 1994.

Two hundred years ago, humans made a stunning discovery in the far reaches of the solar system: a huge statue of an alien creature, with an inscription that defied all efforts at translation. Now, as faster-than-light drive opens the stars to exploration, humans are finding other relics of the race they call the Monument-Makers - each different, and each heartbreakingly beautiful. But except for a set of footprints on Jupiter's moon Iapetus, there is no trace of the enigmatic race that has left them behind. Then a team of scientists working on a dead world discover an ominous new image of the Monument-Makers. Somehow it all fits with other lost civilizations, and possibly with Earth's own future. And distant past. But Earth itself is on the brink of ecological disaster - there is no time to search for answers. Even to a question that may hold the key to survival for the entire human race...

hope to start it in a day or two!

I plan to join by the end of the week

I've started.

I started. The story takes place in 2202 and they already have manned missions to other solar systems and are about to start terraforming a planet. Even if we allow that they have somehow discovered faster-than-light travel, that seems a very optimistic idea of how far we will get in just 200 years.

I've finished section 1. Interesting so far.

I have a bit of a hard time with so many characters being introduced so quickly. For me, getting to know a character takes time, and I don't like to have a bunch of them described quickly.

Sometimes people complain about "info dump" -- when the plot of a story stops so the author can explain something about how the imaginary world works. I feel like this book is doing some "character dump" -- giving lots of details about each new character. I would understand better if the details of the characters would just slowly be revealed.

same here. i mostly do not bother to try to remember the names. if they are important for the story they will pop up more often and that way I will get to know them with no effort. 10% in and liking the archeology so far.

I'm in for this one but I am going to get a late start on it.

I was amused by the shout out to Antioch, which is currently a college with 116 (Wikipedia) students: “Linda Thomas
Letter to her mentor, Dr. Philip Berthold, University of Antioch. Dated the 211th day of the 28th year of the Quraqua Mission. Received in Yellow Springs, Ohio, May 28, 2202.”

I've started the book, but only 10% thru maybe it is explained later, but now I found civilizations and artifacts too close to our time - just thousands of years. Also that addressing climate change took so long and that political world map sees unchanged... maybe the author was just more interested in what happened outside Earth

I like the idea of the archeologists who won't leave their site because they are about to make another discovery, and another one...
It's something I see in my own work. In building projects there's alway too little time to do a good archeological examination of the underground, before construction starts.

I agree that there seems to have been very big technological steps in just 200 years. I'd like a Flickinger suit or forcefield though, in current temperatures. I discovered a whole wiki page about spacesuits, where also this one is mentioned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacesu...

Leo wrote: "I agree that there seems to have been very big technological steps in just 200 years. ..."

Yep. Far too much happened in those 200 years to make sense to me. No only did they discover FTL travel, but they've had sustained interactions with one of the planets. Not only did they find lost cities, but they have deciphered some of the languages, and recovered the old myths and legends. That just happened too fast.

They claim to have found only two planets in the galaxy that are potentially inhabitable by humans. OK, that could be true. But what are the odds that those two planets would be inhabited, or recently inhabited, by human-like aliens? Unless there is some explanation later (and I suspect there will be), then that is an amazing coincidence.

The alien printing press that they find seems too similar to the human version. Why? It isn't like that is the only way text could be created.

Leo wrote: "I like the idea of the archeologists who won't leave their site because they are about to make another discovery, and another one....."

Yeah. That is believable. And it is also believable that there would be conflicts between the archeologists who want to study the world, and engineers who want to start changing it. But the way those two groups act towards each other, putting each other into very dangerous situations, doesn't feel likely.

Does Scalzi's The God Engines have any relationship to this?

God Engines and Engines of God. The premise of the Scalzi novella reminds me of Frank Herbert’s Whipping Star. The protagonist brought to mind Blish’s A Case of Conscience.

Jim wrote: "Does Scalzi's The God Engines have any relationship to this?"

No, not at all. I like that Scalzi novella, and I find it to be completely different from anything else I've read from him.

The book keeps repeating the phrase "He will come who treads the dawn." That makes me think of CS Lewis "The Dawn Treader". There is no direct connection between the books, but I wonder whether they are both referring to something else. Anyone know?

Finished the novel, my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Finished.

The book contains some things that are interesting to me (strange artifacts, alien life, some mysterious event that happens every 8000 years) and some things I don't enjoy (long action scenes, too many characters). I would enjoy this more if the action scenes were reduced and the book were shorter.

If this was a TV series, I would continue watching. But I don't want to read more of this in books. This book solves some of the mystery, and that is enough for me.

There are many things that happened in a just-too-easy way. For example, they figure out that something is traveling toward a distant star system and make an rough estimate that it will arrive there in a small number of years. So they travel to that system, and the thing arrives the very same day! Coincidences are often used to make fiction more fun, but this one was just too much for me.

I'm still not finished - I agree it is taking a long time to reach a point. and new names keep coming up...

Finished Engines today. I admire the way Mcdevitt sets up Hutch to be the main character of the series without allowing her to be the whole show in this first novel.

Thomas wrote: "Finished Engines today. I admire the way Mcdevitt sets up Hutch to be the main character of the series without allowing her to be the whole show in this first novel."

Yes, it was done well enough that I wasn't aware that she'll be the series MC - I guessed the possibility but wasn't sure

It felt to me like he was setting up a series around the Omega clouds. But, those don't reappear until book 4.

I just finished the book as well. I thought Hutch was a good, solid character and liked the sections when their ship was failing and they were trying to stay warm and the part when they were on the planet with the brachyids. The rest seemed less interesting to me.
I don't think I'll continue with the series. A friend told me Alex Benedict series is good so I might try those.

Agreed, Alex Benedict is a good series.

It took me a long time to finish. It is a solid 3 star for me, I'm quite satisfied with the story. I'm a bit disappointed it left me with a big unsolved mystery though. Therefore, and because I did like it enough, I would like to continue with the series. Allthough I got the impression that they do contain different stories in the same universe, have to check that out. Otoh, there are more series I would like to continue, and Iain Banks' Culture series still is on top of them.

Oh, and the stinging alien crabs reminded me a lot of those in Children of Ruin!

Leo wrote: "It took me a long time to finish. It is a solid 3 star for me, I'm quite satisfied with the story. I'm a bit disappointed it left me with a big unsolved mystery though. Therefore, and because I did..."

From what I remember the story does carry on along the same plot lines. I really liked them all.

Cordelia wrote: "From what I remember the story does carry on along the same plot lines. I really liked them all. "

thanks, that helps.

I haven't read Children of Ruin yet but I read Children of Time and the Spiders in that story attack unsuspecting people in a similar way too.

True, but in Children of Ruin there is a stinging crab, this creature starts all the fun.

I have it on my TBR because I enjoyed Children of Time. Thanks for the heads up.

The cool thing (or bad thing) about this book was the interim plot lines. For example, they're trying to terraform a planet by nuking its polar ice caps, but the whole chapter isn't really about that. It's about the archeological team trying to recover a kind of Rosetta Stone on the surface, while those setting the bombs are playing head games with them, and the team retaliates by launching a fake ice ball at them and everyone almost dies while trying to escape the planet when the nukes go off.

So that means it took a long time to get to the point, like a couple of people mentioned. But I did like the ending! It was worth waiting through all those side stories. I like the idea of the Monument Makers really being (view spoiler)[a civilization that was warning people on other planets about the Omega Cloud that wipes out planets by targeting squared objects--including by making fake cities on moons to save them. (hide spoiler)] It finally makes everything make sense.

I thought it was an excellent adventure book, and decent sci-fi.

Daniel wrote: "The cool thing (or bad thing) about this book was the interim plot lines. For example, they're trying to terraform a planet by nuking its polar ice caps, ."

I agree that these parts were more interesting, also the environmental calamities and response to them on Earth seems too mild and too late

I'm about 20% through in my (tardy) read of this one so I've skipped many of the comments above.

Just wanted to revisit the talk about technological advances in 200 years. It didn't seem too long to me. Look at the last 200 years in our history. In 1822 there were no computers, no cell phones, no TVs, no cars, but it goes well beyond that.
- Clothes were mostly hand-made. Singer wouldn't advertise the sewing machine until 1850.
- The cotton gin (modern industrialism) had only been invented about 30 years prior
- The steam train had only been invented 20 years prior and the first passenger RR wouldn't open for another 3 years
- Medicine was basically the equivalent of witchcraft. Pasteur wouldn't begin his work for another 35 years or so, and viruses wouldn't be discovered for another 70 years.
- The AVERAGE human life span was about 35 years
- Heck, even 40 years ago if you brought home a PC you had to learn how to work with a C: prompt just to use it.

So with computer-assisted research and development I wouldn't have a problem believing that technological change speeds up in the future and makes possible greater advances. Once FTL drives are made possible, of course space exploration would increase (there is actually a "news article" complaining that space travel has not brought about the expected bounty and advances and might not be worth the cost which I thought was a good way of summing up the likely problems of early inter-solar space exploration).

But of course the real debate is whether FTL travel is possible at all.

I read this a couple of years ago and followed up with the next book, Deepsix. Then I flipped over to the Alex Benedict series and read three of those. Yes, there are coincidences, assumptions & tech advances that make things easy, perhaps a bit too easy. But I also find them easy to overlook in getting engrossed in the excitement of the adventure, which I find better than most. I see both series as essentially space versions of Indiana Jones. So, yes, the Ark of the Covenant is a powerful weapon (MacGuffin), but the action, adventure & puzzle-solving carries you along & makes it fun.

Finally done! The book was a drag at times, and consequently it didn't hold my attention as well as I had hoped it would. I thought there were plenty of interesting ideas in the story, and Sci-Fi archeology stories always seem to tweak my interest, but in this case I just never felt like the story coalesced well. Things felt episodic, like "OK now we're going to go here and do this, then we're going over here to do that," but I didn't feel a building sense of momentum. As someone else pointed out, the idea of the Omega clouds is an interesting one, but it felt very unexplored, almost as though it was just a nice convenient way to end the book. I understand the Omega clouds are explored more later in the series of course, but as far as the book goes I thought it never quite lived up to its potential. I am going to continue on with the series eventually, and I'll evaluate more later. This was, I believe, McDevitt's third novel, and the 2nd book in the series was published 7 years later, so hopefully future installments will be a bit sharper.

I too thought the book consisted of essentially 4 episodes with the characters there to tie it together. I'm interested to hear how the next book is.