Friday, May 6, 2022

Book Reviews: Alien Messages from Space

Shadows of Eternity, by Gregory Benford (Saga)

Gregory Benford is an accomplished, seasoned writer and as usual, he offers a treasure trove of fascinating ideas. In this novel, set two centuries from now, humans have set up a base on the Moon to house a SETI library whose mission is to decipher and comprehend the many Messages received from space. As Benford points out, the immense distances involved would almost certainly mean that these civilizations are now long since extinct. So why would they broadcast Messages for a future intelligent race to receive? As a record for posterity, a boast of their prowess, a plea for help? What about the alien AIs, who have aggressive agendas of their own? Fascinating possibilities abound!

The story begins when Ruth, a trainee Librarian, is accepted into the program, her work is to analyze Message texts and eventually converse with the AIs. She finds her feet in the byzantine hierarchy of the library, makes friends and discovers romance, and embarks on studying the Messages and interacting with the alien AIs.

After Ruth’s initial integration into the Library culture and her first few AI encounters, the book loses much of its forward momentum and takes on an episodic quality. To be sure, there are occasional references to earlier events—for example, a present-day alien race seeks her out because of her role in deflecting an existential threat to Earth, a result of her bargain with one of those AIs. I kept looking for a sense of rising tension, the inexorable progression of one crisis building to an even greater one, and not finding it.

Eventually, I gave up. The book is really long, and I kept having the experience of beginning again. Information that is usually presented near the beginning of a novel appeared a third or a half through. This circling back to “Go” reminded me of television programs of the 1950s and early 1960s, where episodes could be shown in any order because no matter what happened, all the characters and pieces ended up right where they started. (In contrast, programs of the 1970s and later tended to have story arcs that lasted several episodes, and then Babylon 5 blew them all out of the water with a five year story arc.) Upon reflection, if the book had been presented as, “These are the ongoing adventures of Ruth, Librarian to Alien Cultures,” my expectations would have been more in line with my experience.

All that said, Benford is a highly skilled writer, and many readers will relish the length and slow build of this novel, as well as the richness of the ideas.


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