So, yesterday was the official kick-off of the Keep Portland Weird festival here in Paris, which meant that I had a reading/screening in the...
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Yeah, it's "just" s-f. Yeah, it's not by a "big name" author. Yeah, it's not snooty or about to be made into a Tom Hanks movie.
What Deepsix IS is an insight into what makes human beings tick.
A rare cosmic event is discovered: one world being swallowed up by another (literally). Of course, humans have to go watch! In fact, humans have to go down to the surface of the world being swallowed, to see what's there.
What IS there? People--aliens--or at least, remains of what they were. Also some still living creatures, who may be the degenerate remains of that lost people.
But there's no way to save the living, or the dead. The world is about to end.
And though fickle technology, the lives of the humans may be about to end as well. A journalist, a scientist, a starship captain. Not exactly the crew you'd ideally place in such a position. How can they possibly escape, live to tell about all they've learned?
By being human. By ignoring their strengths, and playing to their desperation, and their will to live. By doing what couldn't be done--but which HAD to be done.
Touching, exciting, filled with grief and fear and exhilaration and wonder, Deepsix is the best book I'VE read in the last decade. I recommend it as an introduction to McDevitt, who's turned into one of the most consistently challenging authors I know; and as an introduction to Science Fiction for anyone who thinks the genre is nothing but light escapism. You don't have to be stuffy to have meaning. You have to understand humanity--and tell a good story.
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Deepsix by Jack Mcdevitt
bjaybush, January 1, 2010
Yeah, it's "just" s-f. Yeah, it's not by a "big name" author. Yeah, it's not snooty or about to be made into a Tom Hanks movie.What Deepsix IS is an insight into what makes human beings tick.
A rare cosmic event is discovered: one world being swallowed up by another (literally). Of course, humans have to go watch! In fact, humans have to go down to the surface of the world being swallowed, to see what's there.
What IS there? People--aliens--or at least, remains of what they were. Also some still living creatures, who may be the degenerate remains of that lost people.
But there's no way to save the living, or the dead. The world is about to end.
And though fickle technology, the lives of the humans may be about to end as well. A journalist, a scientist, a starship captain. Not exactly the crew you'd ideally place in such a position. How can they possibly escape, live to tell about all they've learned?
By being human. By ignoring their strengths, and playing to their desperation, and their will to live. By doing what couldn't be done--but which HAD to be done.
Touching, exciting, filled with grief and fear and exhilaration and wonder, Deepsix is the best book I'VE read in the last decade. I recommend it as an introduction to McDevitt, who's turned into one of the most consistently challenging authors I know; and as an introduction to Science Fiction for anyone who thinks the genre is nothing but light escapism. You don't have to be stuffy to have meaning. You have to understand humanity--and tell a good story.