If you like science fiction that makes you think, then you need to get this book.

Burroughs' writing is simply fabulous, and even makes the characters seem all the more realistic, though many of them are not even human, but sentient creatures who can exist only in the minds of great writers like Burroughs, and in the land known as Pellucidar.

1st rate book!

The story itself changed only a little but the surrounding world ... . The original THT had the cold war feeling of paranoia and priorities, politicians playing for global survival with implied threats and unspoken hopes. This new THT is taking place in a world of US hegemony - little threats but no hopes.

In the original the various heroes act within their characters: fanatical, timid, bureaucratic, lovingly ... Harry Carmichael acts against orders but he doesn't go to the President's face to tell him so and offer him a Clintonesque way out ...

The times they are changing, but still it would have been better if Jack McDevitt would have left the original text unchanged. Even the future has a past- and a lot of good scifi novels are products of their age - and one should respect the past and not try to alter or reinterpret it. This way a great novel (5 stars)became just a very good (4 stars) one.

As for the second novel - "A Talent for War" - the title is very hard to understand till one has finished the book and then it doesn't really fit. Overall it is vintage McDevitt: a man searching for clues and the truth, a voyage, danger and adventures. All of it very slowly evolving and sucking the reader in so that he has to finish it. When I closed the last page it was half past one in the morning - but it was worth it.

So my overall judgment: a great book, but if you can get "The Hercules Text" in the original version buy that instead.

Basically it is a re-print of 2 earlier books by this author called "The Hercules Text" and "a talent for war".

The Hercules text has been reworked to bring it into a more modern context. It is about the SETI project actually getting ET contact in the 21st century and being handed all the laws of the universe on a plate. Of course, the first things the scientists and the US politicans thing about is better weapons applications,and how to blow up the planet. Sad.

The second book - "a talent for war", is badly named and is not a good refection of the story. It is an archaelogical-historical hunt for the truth and a lost treasure. Of the two books I'd have to say I enjoyed this one the best. In the end it has a much better pace and more interesting story and is more like the author's more recent work than the first book.

Harry Carmichael is a respected administrator at a site called Skynet that examines space for evidence of other life forms. One day they see evidence that a million light years away, some alien intelligence has manipulated a star's light output in a pattern that can only be described as unnatural. A month later a stream of text from the Hercules nebula is received. Decoded, it consists of some mathematical and geometric symbols, a manual and what appear to be pictures of the beings who sent the message.

The president, worried about what else the message might contain, clamps a lid of secrecy on their facilities, irritating the scientists who work there and who feel that releasing the information can only be beneficial to the scientific community; after all, the humans never been enthusiastic about acting in concert as a species.

The religious community is divided on how to take this incontrovertible evidence that humans are not alone. One priest remarks, "How can we take seriously the agony of a God who repeats His passion? Who dies again and again in endless variations, on countless worlds, across a universe that may itself be infinite?", assuming that God had revealed Herself to the other worlds. And if not, why not? What did this do to human's perception of themselves as the primary focus of God? "If there were any truth at all to the old conviction that the universe had been designed for man, why was so much of its expanse beyond any hope of human perception? Forever.?"

As they learn more about the alien intelligence and begin to obtain information of value to the military, the scientific community begins to lose control of the information, and some of them want to have it destroyed. But they also learn something extraordinary about the intelligence that sent it to them millions of years before.

Unfortunatly the rest of his books have not grabed me the way A TALENT FOR WAR did and MOONFALL is no exception. I found most of the characters very calm and almost bored with the fact that a giant comet is going to destroy the moon and possibly lead to earth's destruction. In fact they are far more interested in insurance, money and in the case of the vice president getting re-elected.

There is very little sence of urgency in this book, it reads more like a report on a casual fishing trip. Also you know right from the start what the whole story was going to be about there were no surprises, no unexpected twists everything that you expected to happen happened.

Oh well I can always read A TALENT FOR WAR again. Now there is a good book.

While the "macro" story was riveting and well-done, the "micro" stories were slightly problematic. The events are related in a chronological fashion, with constant shifts from one scene to another and back again. It was hard to remember exactly who some of the secondary characters were, and some of them, especially those being employed to relate the devastating events happening on the earth, hardly seemed to belong in the story and, in a couple of cases, seemed to be left dangling at the novel's end. Many of the main characters reacted to events in ways I would not have anticipated. The president worried more about his "legacy" than the welfare of millions of Americans; many Americans refused to believe the situation was very serious at all; several astronauts were more worried about a future mission to Mars being scrubbed than losing the moon; even the main scientist suddenly risked the future of the planet out of narrow-mindedness. I was surprised that the possible devastating effects on earth's tides was not mentioned until well into the story and never really addressed again--that's the first thing I think of when I contemplate the sudden destruction of the moon.

For a suspenseful, thrilling science fiction adventure story, you will find few novels that surpass this one. It has more twists and complexities than your typical catastrophic science fiction story, and the plot is held together and developed very well. The small things that bothered me a little bit do not really hurt the story in any way and certainly do not slow down its compelling pace. Finally, as an added bonus, this book highlights the ingenuity, heroism, and greatness of the American spirit. This is the first McDevitt book I have ever read, but I have a feeling it will not be the last.

Make no mistake, this is a heavyweight book...But unlike Lucifer's Hammer (a great premise written badly, AND forcing you to suffer through over 600 pages), Shiva Descending (a great premise written well with near-impossible overkill), and The Hermes Fall (a great premise written all over the darned map), Moonfall keeps it together wire to wire...This is what sci-fi is all about!!

It typifies the comfortable nature of his writing style, which is some combination of Heinlein's Everyman tone with some of the hard science authors. And unlike some earlier reviewers (i.e. "superdestroyer") contend, it is not at all about "non-happenings." The novel is very much event driven, but the events are driven by the character's desire to understand a dead race and the clues they leave to a mystery that bears very much on the future of the human race.

There are only really 3 weaknesses I see in Engines of God (and McDevitt's work in general), that prevents me from giving it 5 stars:

1) The characterization is weak, not exactly Card or Donaldson or even Babylon 5. This can prove for exceedingly pointless moments as he explores characters that we don't really feel.

2) He has a way of creating slow spots in his writing that can be difficult to wade through if you don't know that there's a payoff coming. This is never really a problem in EOG, but in some of his more recent efforts like Moonfall, it can grate.

3) His writing style will never be considered highly literary. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes there are narrative flow issues related to this that can be jarring.

Ultimately, this book is for people who can enjoy what is very much an above-average prose SF book. It's not the next Stranger in a Strange Land, but -and thank God- it isn't Voyager either.

This story combines science fiction and mystery. It is the story of archeologists of the future who study the ruins of ancient alien cultures instead of human ones. The archeological study reveals a mystery that spans the galaxy, and the reader is left guessing until the last few chapters.

This is a well-conceived and well-executed novel, and in a very special class because of its faithfulness to the hard sci-fi genre.

But for some reason Jack McDevitt is able to weave an interesting sci-fi story that can really keep my attention. His books focus on a single character and you are always working your way toward the conclusion of the book. You feel like you're making progress.

Engines of God is no different. There's a constant, logical progression as the characters weave their way through discoveries and ultimately wind up at finding a conclusion that you speculated about, but weren't quite sure. You really want to skip to the end and figure it out, but you don't want to wreck a really good read.

Frankly, I'd like to see a sequel to this book written about 900-1000 years in the future to see what happens.

My first McDevitt book was "Infinity Beach", then "Eternity Road", and now this. All were excellent and interesting.

If I have a complaint about McDevitt, it's that technology in his books isn't all that advanced, even 1,000 years in the future. I guess that helps with the readability, as he doesn't get carried away with tons of technobabble as most authors do.

We follow many world reactions to this newfound technology - from the collapse of the stock market at the apparent use of materials that would never wear out, to religious fanatics, to the UN demanding the artifact be made a world-owned item, free of any one nationality. McDevitt certainly extrapolates the effect of technological change in this novel, and it is quite a classic approach to Science Fiction.

However, the plot withers amid all of this extrapolation. The heroine and hero of the story begin to get less and less air-time, and ultimately fizzle out near the end. Likewise, a sub-plot of a potential "alien trapped on earth" peaks interest, then loses ground to yet another tangent in the story.

For a better tale of the effects of Science and Technology on the world stage of economics and politics, try the "Red Mars," "Green Mars," "Blue Mars," trilogy by Stanley Robinson. McDevitt had a good idea here, but it just didn't quite fly as high as it should have. It was interesting, and made me think of a few new ideas, but didn't drive me to the end like his tales usually do.

Just like other McDevitt stories I read however, it again is not truely believable. Of course, this is a science fiction novel, and those tend to be less believable, but I actually am talking more about the details. All the scientists in McDevitt's books always seem to practice what I would call "cowboy science".

However, if you can overlook that for a great story, you will have a lot of fun with this one...

Eternity Road is another in a long series of "archeological" SF novels by Jack McDevitt. Here, a group of people in a post-apocolypse America set out to find a fabled storehouse of ancient knowledge, despite the failure of an earlier mission and the deaths of almost everyone involved.

As in most his books, McDevitt does a nice job of setting up a believable, consistant world. It's a fun game to play "Figure out what this was" when he begins to describe something mundane from our world in terms of a iron age culture. Less well developed are the characters, who tend to be there mostly as props for the story and are discarded as needed.

Where the book finally begins to fail is near the end. As you read, you note that the story is still unfinshed with 20 pages to go, then 10, then 5. The ending is amazingly abrupt, almost like McDevitt got bored of writing and just decided to stop. This seems to be a recent trend in SF (See Neil Stephenson) and it's not a good one. The novel would have been far better if McDevitt had decided to discuss the implications of finding the storehouse on the people of the post-apocalypse world, or at least left room for a sequel, which the epilogue basically prevents.

Eric Remy

This is a classic "quest" tale -- and, like many such quests, the answers at the journey's end are not quite what was expected by the participants in the quest.

I found many (but not all) of the details believable. A sentient computer still runnning trains -- but only a handful of books surviving the disaster. An apparently immediate rediscovery of religion -- and virtually no remembrance of the belief structures of only a few centuries before.

But for these minor flaws, the reader is treated to a group of engaging, well developed characters, profound love, interesting speculation, and high adventure.

This book is definitely worth the time.

First, McDevitt describes an economy where anyone, if they choose, can lead a life of leisure, living off of a government-supplied pension. At the same time, all of the goods and services were supplied by private firms and entrepreneurs. How? The reader is left to resolve the question of why anyone would choose to engage in a low-pay, low-reward career when they can simply relax on the beach.

Secondly, it is difficult to believe that any collection of intelligent beings placing so much thought and resources into finding other sentient species has given so little thought to what they would do when they actually found them. The behavior of the characters during first and second contact was astonishing, making the scene sound more like an alien encounter with a Space Shuttle crew in 2001. Confusion and surprise in such a situation is understandable, but to have no plan, no protocol, nothing when exploration and discovery of other life forms this is the primary reason for the expedition only casts doubt on the entire plot.

The plot moves too slowly, ends too quickly (with barely a glipse and elaboration on the aliens), and brings in far too many ancillary characters. As an SF novel, it is nothing that hasn't been done before elsewhere, and better.

That being said, the author is good at setting a mood of tension and fear, and describes scenes well, and the worlds the book takes place in do have a sense of history about them. However, nice prose can carry a book only so far.

First-contact has been done better elsewhere. Read A Deepness in the Sky instead.

This whining out of the way, you might want to know why "Deepsix" deserves a good review. It is a fairly intelligent novel about a rare, habitable planet that is about to be destroyed. Just days before the planet will collide with a rogue gas giant, observers notice ruins on the planet's surface. An expedition is sent, and subsequently stranded.

Now, this may not sound like an especially new plot, but let's face it: Jack has to get someone down on the planet to solve the mystery he's created, and he has to make sure they stay there. (That is, after all, how mysteries work.) And mystery it is - Deepsix (that's the name of the habitable planet) has evidence of both primitive and advanced civilizations. The explorers find more and more ruins, encounter strangely intelligent animals (an undeveloped plotline is that Deepsix developed life two billion years earlier than Earth; therefore, the animals are considerably more advanced and almost sentient), and wander around in a melancholy, haunted landscape. Great stuff.

Consider this sample passage (not a spoiler):

"There was snow on the tower roof. Hutch wondered who had lived in the building, how long ago, where they had gone."

"It was possible that the tower marked the site of a climactic battle, or a place where opposing forces had come together to establish an alliance. A Plato might have conducted discussions on this hillside, in warmer times. Or a Solon laid out a system of laws."

"Who knew? And no one ever would, except for what little she could salvage."

***

It's almost impossible to write a sequel that rivals the original, and "Deepsix" is no exception. Taken as a sequel, "Deepsix" is somewhat disappointing - but consider the scale! "Engines of God" has a mystery that spans the galaxy; poor old "Deepsix" must content itself with a mystery of planetary proportions. But try reading "Deepsix" as a separate, unique book - you'll find it satisfies.