Apes and Angels

September 19, 2016
In the deeply disappointing final volume of six-time Hugo-winner Bova’s Star Quest trilogy, humans are the ultra-advanced aliens encountering extraterrestrial life. As part of a mission to protect other planets from the “death wave... of gamma radiation” spreading from the core of the Milky Way, the crew of the starship Odysseus voyage to the Mithra star system, where they must negotiate the challenges of contact and the possibility that they are not the first interstellar travelers to visit. Bova’s premise is intriguing, but the execution is at best an untidy, transient retro pleasure, and at worst offensively dated. Flat characterizations are exacerbated by obsolete notions of gender roles, and the supporting cast comprises infelicitously described single representatives of races, ethnicities, and nationalities: the white protagonist whimsically imagines a man of Aboriginal descent as “a black leprechaun,” and a Chinese woman is “physically small, doll-like,” and wearing a tunic with “a high mandarin collar.” The rushed, unsatisfying conclusion also has disconcerting overtones of white-savior heroism.

November 1, 2016
An ancient race named the Predecessors has arrived to warn citizens and save the earth from a gamma radiation burst from the galactic core. Now humankind must head out themselves to save the intelligent life among the stars. The Odysseus has set a course for the distant Mithra system while the crew of volunteer scientists sleeps. Their mission: to save the inhabitants of Mithra and return home 400 years later. Isolated from the rest of humanity, this group of scientists and academics, led by Professor Adrian Kosoff, must evaluate the best way to shield Mithra from the death wave and determine what, if any, contact the humans must have. Brad MacDaniels is the most junior member of the sociology group sent along to study the rest of the expedition. He soon discovers that everyone on the mission has his or her own reason for being there apart from the desire to save intelligent life in the galaxy. The final book in Bova's Star Quest trilogy is an engaging introspection into tribes, humanity, and how much of academia is essentially tribal in nature.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)