Infinity Beach

This is really quite an entertaining thriller set in a scifi/first contact tableau. It is set in a distant future in which, after finding and colonizing a few earthlike worlds, but finding absolutely no sign of any extraterrestrial life, mankind has essentially given up on both space exploration and the search for other life in the universe.

Our protagonist, Emily, is a young scientist turned p.r. person for the remaining space exploration agency. She starts looking into the mysterious disappearance of her sister some twenty five years earlier, and eventually starts to find evidence that perhaps her sister was part of a crew that made first contact.

McDevitt does a good job of building suspense, and laying out reasons why a host of show more powerful characters might want to keep our first contact with an alien race secret. I also liked his musings on humanity's need to search for something more, and the potential social and psychological impact of giving up on this search. Certainly, he makes a convincing case that folks put in a position where they might make first contact should have some level of training as to how to respond. Don't expect anything profoundly thought-provoking about the aliens themselves; they are more a plot device than anything else. show less

Another of McDevitt's heroines seeks to determine what happened to her clone sister while she was searching for any kind of alien existence in the galaxy. Every step of the way the heroine finds something, good enough to end the search…but not for her. She ultimately learns: what happened to her sister and the 3 other people in the team; and then she learns how they were killed; and then why they were killed; and then...that her sister screwed up the first human-alien encounter and she spends the rest of the book trying to make amends with the now angry aliens. Good detective story. I'm impressed that McDevitt can create such excellent "who done what, when, where & why" stories that don't rely on a dystopian backdrop necessitating a show more lot of insane violence. show less

a good plot, but much of the characterization feels very dated

Another of McDevitt's televisual novels with his well-drawn worlds. This novel is a mixture of sf, horror, murder mystery and political thriller. I visualised the heroine with an Eighties hairdo and shoulder pads, and in numerous other places I felt my mind's eye was watching a tv mini-series. I swear I could even hear the sound fx.

But the story was engaging, and the far-future technology, both human and alien, was well-realised and sufficiently different from the norm to hold my interest.

This novel felt so much like one of McDevitt's Alex Benedict stories that at times I was convinced he had written a Benedict series novel recycling the same plot, but apparently I read this once before and filed it in my head as a Benedict novel. A good mystery and a haunting first contact story.

What would it be like if man made contact with an alien species?

What if misunderstandings occurred and things went wrong?

How could the damage be repaired or could it be repaired?

This is not an easy book to read. In my opinion, the bad ratings here are given by readers that never finished the book. Jack McDevitt labourously develops his space world. The book is sort of a SciFi mystery but McDevitt does not develop the mystery aspect of the novel very well. The mystery is there alright, unknown explosion wipes out a community, disappearance and deaths of crew members of a space ship whose goal is to search for life in the universe. But there is no tension or clues that grab the imagination of the reader for almost the first 200 pages of show more the 500+ page book. If McDevitt was a new author for me I would have probably set this book aside after a normal 100 pages.

But the book picks up in interest after 200 pages and by 300 pages NOW it becomes a page-turner and ends with the reader wanting more.

This IS a well written book, though it does drag for almost half the book and requires patience to read it to a satisfying end. show less

This is a science fiction book that occasionally reads like a horror and occasionally reads as mystery. While I enjoyed the protagonist’s search for the truth and for information about other intelligent life in the universe, the book as a whole didn't leave me with strong impressions.