(Skrev detta på engelska för en utländsklista för att få kommentarer om
författaren, som jag tror är ganska okänd i Sverige. --AE)
Review: Moonfall, by Jack McDevitt (1998)
I have myself written a book set on the Moon, Mord på månen ("Murder on the
Moon", 2006; https://zenzat.wordpress.com/bocker/), a collection of mysteries
solved by a police chief in a future Lunar colony. So when I stumbled upon Jack
McDevitt's Moonfall it looked interesting enough to advance on my mental
reading list.
The story is about a giant comet (the since of New Jersey) crashing into the
Moon, with such a force our satellite will be turned into rubble and rocks.
The comet has an orbit that makes it be discovered too late, and it is
discovered only because of a total solar eclipse. The year is 2024.
The US has it's *second* black president - the novel was written long before
Obama came on stage - and have also had a woman prez before that. (Mr McDevitt
may have a visionary eye for Hillary there.) But most of all it has together
with many other nations built a huge moonbase. Earth also has a fleet of ten
spaceplanes, or SSTOs as he calls them (Single Stage To orbit). Early in the
book we meet US vice president Charlie Haskell who has gone to the moon to
inaugurate the moonbase. The US has invested most in the base and the VP is
often the one handling space issues in a presidential administration. The news
about the Moon risks obliteration comes as Haskell is up there, and the 730
people on the base need to be evacuated.
One problem, though. Too few moon shuttles, too little time.
See eg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/337134.Moonfall
On the cover Stephen King is quoted claiming /McDevitt is/ "The logical heir
to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke". My thoughts go more in the direction of
Poul Anderson, but I like McDevitt's style of writing. He writes clean and
clear, with good characterisation, with a tight natural-sounding dialogue, an
eye for details and a knack for plotting and suspense. But the novel has its
problems.
Too many people, not only on the moon but also in the novel itself, is one
problem. There are maybe ten main characters (VP Haskell, moonbase boss Evelyn
Hampton, Russian moon shuttle pilot Saber, a professor Wesley Feinberg, a
chaplain Pinnacle and a few others are among them) but also about 50 minor
characters, who all get a quarter to half a page of background and
presentation. Some characters just flashes by on 1.5 page, never to come back.
There should have been an editor present brave enough to say: Hey, you, I need
you to cut the manuscript by a third and leave out plot lines that don't mean
anything of importance and kill characters that don't do anything for the story!
I guess that McDevitt with the overflow of people intended to create a broad,
kaledoscopic panorama of the huge impact of the events. But in this he fails.
The parts of the novel not set on the Moon or in space (which is the majority)
is all set in the US of A. He mentioned that moon debris hits Kiev, Tokyo etc -
and we get a short report from London, UK - but all earthside action is in the
US. What happens in the rest of the world? We learn very little. I'm not sure
McDevitt knows much of things overseas. At one point, for instance, the US
president is advised to contact "the chief of state of Belgium", claimed to be
a "strong leader" in Europe. He must be unaware of that that person is the
Belgian king, a constitutional monarch with no leadership role at all (apart
from cutting ribbons for new bridges).
I'm not sure that the author's research is all that solid. The comet is said
to arrive with a huge speed, ten times the usual or 400+ km/s (that's why it
has so much kinetic energy that it can smash the Moon). But if so, the speed
may be too high for the object to make an U-turn around the sun. He describes
the effects of tsunamis, which seems incompatible with what we could see during
the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 or the one off the Japanese coast in 2011. He
describes them as rising water - but these babies *do* arrive as walls of
water! And the water will subside in the matter of hours - while he lets is
stay for days, weeks, forever in some cases. Beside this, the force of a
tsunami would probably topple many high buildings, but he lets them stand.(And
I'll cover another glitch in a spoiler appendix.)
But it is an exciting adventure. VP Haskell is thrown into the hero role like
some Bill Pullman from "Independence Day". McDevitt throws in some interesting
turns in the plot and that's something I like. I do like space operas, and
despite some flaws, Jack McDevitt knows who to spin a yarn and catch the reader!
--Ahrvid
***Appendix and spoiler alert***
There are a few solutions McDevitt doesn't think of, when it comes to
evacuating too many people from the moonbase in too little time. He says the
base administration has thought of everything.
But they haven't.
In the story, after about half the evacuation, a technical fault upsets the
schedule and six persons have to be left (incl hero VP, who is in an election
campaign and can't afford to seem like a coward, saving himself before others).
Here's the easiest solution: All the moon shuttles have a pilot and a
co-pilot. The vehicles have heavy computer support and can easily be piloted by
*one*. In fact, later in the novel, one is piloted by just one, during very
pressing circumstances. So just skip the co-pilot, and you'll easily get
transport capacity for six more.
Another solution: rip out some of the interior, like the passenger seats. If
you can make a shuttle 80 kg lighter (approx the weight of a person) for six
trips, problem is solved. The acceleration when starting from the Moon's .16 G
is reasonably mild, and special acceleration chairs shouldn't be needed. Neil
and Buzz lifted from the Moon in their Eagle *standing*.
Yet another solution: tell the evacuees not to eat, drink very little and
have light clothes (and perhaps be barefoot). This way, every passenger would
be, say, 2 kg lighter. There were about half the 730 left, ca 365 people, when
the transport emergency emerged. 365 x 2 kg = 730 kg, but six people would only
weigh 6 x 80 kg = 480 kg.
How McDevitt solved getting six extra people off the moon? Well, he
re-scheduled a shuttle using the tightest possible time margins - despite that
it had earlier been claimed to be impossible. The last shuttle leaves minutes
before the Moon explodes under them. All for the suspense!
--
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