THE LAST ASTRONAUT

David Wellington writes the best surreal first contact sci-fi novel I’ve ever read. What an unusual ending. I’ve read many novels where a undefined body heads to Earth at a breakneck speed from deep outer space and suddenly decelerates as it nears. If it decelerates...it’s not a comet or asteroid. Wellington kept my attention throughout the novel while delivering empathy for his five or six main characters, which was also to my liking. What else did I like? I liked the lack of technical jargon. You can tell me how something works one time and one time only. And I’m not interested in hard to remember acronyms with two exceptions in this novel...NASA and EVA. What didn’t I like? The last two pages, but I can’t tell you why because it would spoil it for you. It’s not inept, but seemed inconsistent with the direction of the story...maybe a tad careless. A good editor would have pointed that out to the writer. Oh well, I have to find something wrong...don’t I? You probably have noticed that I love the use of an ellipsis.
 
It’s 2055 and astrophysicist Sunny Stevens goes to Houston to meet with Roy McAllister, head of exploration and operations for NASA. NASA has been in the doldrums for the last twenty one years after the failed Mars mission of 2034. The spaceship developed a fuel tank leak, and mission commander Sally Jansen and astronaut Blaine Wilson had to do an EVA outside the ship. A fire broke out and Wilson was burned alive. Jansen was blamed for the death of Wilson and the aborted mission to Mars. For the past twenty one years, no new astronauts were trained since Congress severely cut NASA’s budget. America no longer had an astronaut program. To make matters worse, China successfully landed on Mars. In this atmosphere, Sunny landed in Houston with urgent news.
 
Sunny settles down in McAllister’s office. “Sunny cleared his throat. 21/2054 D1,” he said. McAllister says, “I’m sorry, I don’t think I understand.” “That’s it’s name. Its designation, whatever,” Sunny said. McAllister said to stop babbling. “The message you sent me contained the orbital elements of an...asteroid? Comet? McAllister said, “I had one of our people take a look, and they just about split their skin.” Sunny said, “I have more. More data I can give you.” Sunny had been tracking 21 (the name of the body shortened) for over a year where he worked at KSpace, the commercial leader in space travel. He told his boss about it at KSpace. Sunny said he didn’t hear a peep from his boss. “Somebody had to do something. Somebody had to send a ship to go look at this thing. If KSpace wouldn’t do it, then Sunny was sure NASA would. It would have to. Except judging by the look on McAllister’s face, NASA didn’t necessarily agree.”
 
McAllister said, “So why don’t you tell me why you came here.” Sunny replied, “It’s decelerating, Spontaneously. It’s spontaneously decelerating.” McAllister said, “Welcome to NASA.” Finally someone believed him! Now to get a crew together...the only astronaut with experience was the publicly hated Sally Jansen, the last astronaut. Let the poop hit the fan! Oh, well. That’s my review of the first seventeen pages. I loved this novel, grab a copy...it’s different.
 
RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: I’m a sucker for First Contact novels. I think Carl Sagan’s 1985 novel, Contact, was the first ‘man meets alien/alien meets man’ novel that perked my interest. I also loved Larry Niven’s 1985 novel, Footfall. Earth comes under attack by the ‘elephant look alike’ Fithp from Alpha Centauri. Recently (see my review of 4/18/2019) I read Immortal by Nick M. Lloyd. All three were first contact novels, but totally different.