The premise - the arrival of a message from outer space - is only half of this story; the other half of the story comes from the various responses (private and public) from the international team of scientists who received the message, from the governments behind those scientists, from their military and covert operations, from the religious perspective ... which are at times plausible and sometimes not, particularly the laughable assurances by various operatives paraphrased as "We don't shoot civilians anymore".

Possibly not in Scotland (where the author lives); elsewhere, whether or not a government would dispose of troublesome civilians by shooting them in cold blood or not is another matter. I live in the U.S. and have no doubt that the U.S. military would shoot me in a nanosecond and not lose a moment of sleep over it. But maybe I need to stop reading international espionage novels.

I would love to hear from the astrophysicists in LibraryThing (are there any?) who could comment on the scientific plausibility behind the premise of the message itself and its delivery system ... the author was correct in that we of the SETI generation always expect a message of contact to arrive via radio waves. But what if we're wrong?

Lastly, I've never been a big fan of the religious right in this country, but even I'll admit that the religious point of view was somewhat shortchanged in this novel - surely, the religious perspective could have come from a wider group than an idiotic evangelist who changes his religious convictions every time the wind blows. I'm sure there really are sane and thoughtful Christians out there who wouldn't have an emotional meltdown after learning that "we are not alone" - they just aren't represented in this novel. ( )