DEAD SILENCE

S. A. Barnes’ space novel, Dead Silence, somehow never lives up to the blurb on the inside jacket…” picks up a strange distress signal,” a line that always hooks me into reading a sci/fi novel. That line opens the door to a cornucopia of possibilities but sadly doesn’t add to the suspense of this novel. The signal is picked up by a space repair ship, LINA, a ship on its 26th month of updating “a network of beacons throughout the solar system designed to boost ship and colony transmissions.” The upgrade will put this crew out of work since the upgrade they are installing will be handled by a Verux SmarTech machine on earth in the future. The five-member team is led by our protagonist, Claire Kovalik, who was the only survivor of a past failed mission on the Ferris Outpost twenty-three years ago. Everyone died except Claire. Since then, Claire seems to flip-flop between reality and hallucinations bordering on insanity for the entire 343 pages of this fake novel, I’m calling it fake because it never lives up to its potential. The author’s prose is very easy to understand for a sci/fi novel yet still caused me the dreaded sleepy eyes syndrome. After listening to Claire’s constant whining about her previous failed outpost disaster and continuous complaining about her bosses back on earth, I lost all empathy for our lead character, who lives in a perpetual state of *Einstein Insanity (*Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.)

The distress signal comes from the luxury liner ship, Aurora, designed for the rich and famous and that disappeared on its maiden voyage. Can the crew bring it home and claim it as theirs and all the riches inside? “Twenty years ago, five hundred passengers and a hundred and fifty crew left on a maiden voyage for a tour of the solar system. It was supposed to take a year. But the Aurora disappeared six months in. All souls are presumed lost. The luxury space cruiser had every possible amenity you can imagine. Gold faucets, real wood floors, coffee from actual beans, meat that was once alive.” The crew on the Lina consisted of team captain, Claire Kovalik, and teammates Voller, Kane, Lourdes, and Nysus. They debated whether they should return home and report the incident or try to bring it back to earth and collect the salvage fee. They decided to see if they could return the ship to earth and earn enough to quit their jobs, “We’re going to be rich!” The crew navigates Lina next to the Aurora. “The Aurora is discomfortingly large, once we’re right upon it. In the Lina, it feels like we’re a tick crawling on a sleek silver beast that hasn’t yet noticed our presence or been annoyed by it to shake us loose.” 

“Theoretically, the Aurora could receive shipments from resupply vessels while cruising. State of the art for the time, “ Nysus says, his voice high and reedy with excitement. “So the outer doors could be independently operated if the setting was engaged and you had the override code.” And clearly, he does.

“Then the working lights kick on outside, giving us our first look inside the Aurora. It is shockingly normal, other than the fields of debris. A coffee mug, absurdly upright, floats by, and a four-legged object, glossy with black paint drifts aimlessly in the far left corner.  “Shit”...it’s a baby grand piano, floating upside down. The lights continue to sweep the area as Voller edges us toward the center of Aurora’s bay.” Suddenly they were in, Lina’s landing gear attaching their ship to the deck. That’s your 59-page taste of a 339-page novel. Are any of the 650 souls still alive after 20 years? What went wrong with this massive luxury liner? Can the five-person crew of the Lina navigate the massive ship back to earth? Why did so many people have to die? Was it corporate’s fault? This book was enjoyable but nothing special. The jacket blurb gave me a reason to believe this novel was going to be exciting but failed to rouse me. One of my favorite first contact novels was Harry Bates’ Farewell to the Master published in 1940 (see Rick’s review in Rambling Comments #5 on 2/3/2018.) You probably never heard of the novel because the theme was the major difference between the short story and the movie. The atomic bomb had not been invented yet when Harry Bates wrote the short story in 1940. The 1951 movie was a big hit and is considered a sci/fi classic. The movie? The Day the Earth Stood Still, starring Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, and Sam Jaffe as the professor.

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: So Rick, what are some of your favorite first contact novels? Well, how about the following in no particular order:

Contact by Carl Sagan published in 1986: Amazon writes, “The future is here…in an adventure of cosmic dimension. When a signal is discovered that seems to come from far beyond our solar system, a multinational team of scientists decides to find the source. Why are they watching us? And what do they want with us?”

Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky published in 1972: This is one of my favorites, it was banned in Russia for 8 years due to government censorship. “Roadside Picnic takes place in the aftermath of an extraterrestrial event, which simultaneously took place in half a dozen separate locations around the earth for a two-day period.

Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke published in 1973: This is my all-time favorite! “A huge, mysterious, cylindrical object appears in space, swooping in toward the sun. The citizens of the solar system send a ship to investigate before the enigmatic craft, called Rama, disappears.”