Three Miles Down, by Harry Turtledove (Tor)
At the height of the Cold War and on the brink of the 1974
Watergate scandal, the US discovers a sunken Soviet submarine…and something
they didn’t expect. Something they want to keep even more secret. Under the
guise of harvesting
undersea manganese nodules, they recruit a team of experts, including marine
biology grad student and aspiring science fiction author, Jerry Stieglitz.
After being sworn to secrecy, Jerry learns the secret-inside-the-secret: the
Soviet sub is sitting on top of an alien spaceship. They want Jerry not only to
bolster their disguise when Soviet warships come to check them out but to use
his writerly imagination in interacting with the ship and its inhabitants, both
dead and in suspended animation. His insight (derived from the scene at the
doors of Moria, “speak friend
and enter”) opens the door to the ship, for example. Of course, all does
not go swimmingly. These are the days of anticommunist paranoia, an
increasingly embattled POTUS, and paranoid intelligence agencies. The stakes
for Jerry are not just being kicked off a lucrative and historic mission, but
survival itself.
Turtledove is a terrific writer, combining sfnal First
Contact elements, humor, the unfolding domestic political drama, and human
interactions, whether it’s Jerry’s friendships with the others on his
alien-spaceship team or his difficulties with his fiancée when he goes missing
for months. All this is highly enjoyable, fast reading, but what I found most
delightful were the many homage-to-science-fiction touches, like a love letter
to fans. There’s even a guest appearance by a well-known hard science fiction
author (I won’t divulge who!) that had me laughing out loud at how brilliant
the portrayal was. (I’d met the guest-appearance author and yet, that’s exactly
what they’d say!)
No comments:
Post a Comment