Techno-Thrillers discussion

Poll results are in for November 2024 Book of the Month. Thanks to those who nominated and voted on the books. We have a 2-way tie, and I'm of the mind to call both winners. Calling this one a "contemporary" since it is < 10 years old.

The Object by Joshua Calvert (2024)

Foreign object enters solar system. Rated 4.18 (4.3K ratings)

Publisher's Summary
Deep space holds secrets…

…and one astronomer for NASA has found a big one.

But it’s not what she thinks.

Dr. Melody Adams, a physicist at the Gemini North Observatory, was studying Pluto in the telescope data and it struck her as odd. The numbers didn’t make sense. Could there be an extraterrestrial object in our solar system?
She followed protocol.

The scientific community didn’t believe her.

And before she knew what happened, her career was over.

The day that changed Melody’s life was like any other over the previous two years. She’d found she had a gift for writing and her career as an author had almost healed the pain of losing her job. When the Secret Service rang her bell, everything changed.

Something was nearing Saturn…
…and it was slowing down.

Had she been right about the object?

You’ll love this hard science fiction novel because Melody is about to find out that everything she knew about space and time was wrong.

Started and liking this book. Seems relatively realistic like The Martian. Some quibbles from about 41% or start of chapter 10: (view spoiler)[Choosing to go out and intercept the object seemed way too confident and hasty given the circumstances. First, they would intercept the object while it will still be moving … in orbit. Second … it has not yet entered orbit. Given what happened at Saturn, would they really be that cocksure what it is going to do. Third … they don’t know if it will stay in orbit, or like it did from Saturn, proceed to the next planet … the next planet now being Earth which would be more convenient by a long shot than Mars. Fourth … they had never been remotely as far as Mars as there is no mention whatsoever at 41% through the book of how much harder Mars would be than say the moon and what those particular challenges would be. Also, the “mishap” that puts her in line as a crew member seems a little too convenient. (hide spoiler)]

I think about Ch. 17 … (view spoiler)[ it starts going into dreams and using yo entirely too much oxygen on this topic, getting kind of hokey. It makes me think of the sphere a little bit. Fortunately, it moves on. (hide spoiler)].

Then maybe Ch. 26 … (view spoiler)[ they cut a hole in the side of Serenity and go inside and becomes weird like they’re in a big carcass and becomes hokey like Dennis Quaid in Innerspace. This seems like a big waste of the premise. (hide spoiler)]

Finished.

This book is a science fiction take on Oumuamua, a real interstellar object that drifted through the solar system in 2017, baffling many and provoking lots of speculation.

Is this book an ode to Rendezvous with Rama? This is a 1973 novel by Arthur C. Clark (1973) that more ingeniously preceded Oumuamua? I don’t know. I haven’t read that one. Only heard Morgan Freeman talking about wanting to make that into a movie. If anyone wants to buddy read it, let me know.


OK, for me, The Object got frankly pretty damn weird in the last third or so. I was nearly to the point of abandoning what seemed lost at sea but stayed with it based on the first half. The first half was a little plodding and aimless, but decently written, and so this Crazy Ivan at 2/3 in was hopefully an incongruous fluke chapter. I stayed in. In the end, something even weirder happens and as it did my reaction was: … really? But I stayed with it, and the final concept … a third almost insufferable idea as it emerged … turned out to be an interesting notion that kind of makes some sense of the earlier odd bits. I cannot defend how I possibly stayed with the book as each of the 3 insufferable turns arose, other than I was listening while driving on the freeway or otherwise unable to take evasive action, and made it through the hokey bits before I could take action. I didn’t have another book on deck ready to switch to, and didn’t have time to find a new book mid-commute. It was rare to be stuck like that, but fortunate for getting through this book. I think as implausible as the final notion was, it will stick in my head as a pleasant notion/reference that somewhat redeems an awkward ending third. If they purged all mention of lucid dreaming, I think that would’ve improved it. Ultimately it struck me like a promising trailer for what turns out to be a B movie.

Finished my last book and diving into The Object now!

About a third in, and it's just okay for me so far. the Saturn thing bugged me because there's no mention of the real life Jupiter thing, which gave important lessons. I'm also not sure about putting fictional comments into a real person's mouth, in this case Elon musk. Will keep at it, I like the premise.

Done! It definitely evokes rendezvous with Rama premise. a fair amount of it bugged me, but curiosity pushed me on to the end. I wish the epilogue was a little clearer, but yeah, I liked this book pretty well. I'm curious about lucid dreaming now, ha!

Today, a new interstellar object was spotted. It is only the 3rd such object ever seen.
https://www.livescience.com/space/ast...

Getting crowded around here

They’re calling it 3I/ATLAS. Not as cool as Oumuamua.
It’s going ~150,000 miles per hour or maybe someone else said 58 km/s and will pass by Mars around October. It won’t come within the orbit of Earth to the Sun and will be heading out of the inner planets area by December 2025.
The same professor who said Oumuamua was due to alien intelligence is speculating … in this case saying it might be 12 miles long. They really don’t know.

Unlike the stories of The Object or Rendezvous with Rama, we don’t have a ship capable of catching up with these objects.

Scientists have determined that Atlas object is roughly 7 miles across. This is over 10 times the size of the other two prior interstellar objects. Interestingly, it was discovered on July 1st. However, the size was determined by looking back at data from June 21st, from the new Vera Rubin observatory in Chile which has just started to come online. It took “first light” in June 2025. It has a 3 mirror system, the largest being 8.5 meters made at my own University of Arizona here in Tucson, Arizona. It is considered very large aperture for a telescope, with a field of view of 3.5 degrees radius. For reference the sun and moon fill a field of view of 0.5 degrees radius. Because this is such a wide field of view, it just happened to capture the area of the sky the Atlas object is passing through. It is the biggest digital camera on Earth, at 3.2 gigapixels. Won’t get this with your iPhone.

The Harvard-based carnival barker could not resist his pathological need for attention and again sought headlines by speculating that the interstellar object an alien spaceship with no substantiation other than his own outsized self-regard. However, new observations have given evidence to determine that it is a comet, … an interstellar comet … as most non-narcissistic scientists expected.