Gate Crashers

May 15, 2018
The American-European Union starship Magellan, travelling at half light speed in the year 2345, comes upon proof of the existence of sentient aliens in the form of a space buoy. Captain Allison Ridgeway and her crew work with a secret government team back on Earth to decipher the technology and its origins. Before long, the secret gets out, and politicians, bureaucrats, the military, and even some alien beings start to get involved. In the ensuing political space opera, humor and hard science play off each other with colloquial ease. With a constantly shifting narration between the motley group of characters, Tomlinson (The Ark, 2015) presents a 360-degree view of the world that helps drive the compelling pace as new technologies are developed, new planets are explored, and new species are encountered. Some tropes are familiar, but the many new ideas here will draw in casual and serious genre fans. This is thought-provoking, character-centered sf with a sense of humor in the vein of Becky Chambers' The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (2014) or John Scalzi's Collapsing Empire (2017).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)