CauldronAuthor: Jack McDevitt
Genre: sci-fi, hard sci-fiBack Cover:
By 2255, the age of starflight is over. The Academy of Science and Technology is long closed, and the only efforts at space exploration are carried on by privately funded foundations. However, physicist Jon Silvestri insists that an abandoned prototype for a much more efficient star drive is workable. Priscilla Hutchins, now a fund-raiser for the Prometheus Foundation, persuades the group to back his research. Soon the Cauldron - the core of the galaxy - is only months away. At long, the mystery of the deadly omega clouds that have devastated the galaxy for centuries can be penetrated. And a handful of brave men and women, Priscilla Hutchins among them, will journey into the very heart of the Cauldron...
Orion's Review:
Sometimes sci-fi is bad because it's too exotic, too science-fantasy-ish, too imaginative, or just too different, and the reader can't suspend his disbelief and go along with the story. McDevitt, however, goes too far in the opposite direction. McDevitt's character are VERY human, and unfortunately, the average human really isn't all that interesting. One of the lead characters, Matt, is a retired star pilot who's moved on to - real estates sales... OK, in the setting of the book, that lifestyle choice may make sense for Matt, but it doesn't make the reader want to learn more about him. Later in the book, Matt is having lunch with another minor character, and McDevitt actually narrates the details of ordering and eating. In case you were wondering, Matt had fried chicken. Not gagh with a solylent green appetizer and a class of Romulan ale, but fried chicken. And his guest had a chef salad and turkey sandwich.
McDevitt's mundane character descriptions might be forgivable. But what is not forgivable is the wasted potential of the universe he has created for Cauldron (and all of his earlier books). There are hints of vast spaces, ancient mysteries and new discoveries to be made. But... what really happens is that a jaded humanity has largely turned it's back on space exploration (mainly because they haven't found anything really interesting or profitable), characters die in pointless dull tragedies on alien worlds (one character breaks his neck after falling down a flight of stairs while being chased by a big snake), and the ancient mysteries seem to be the creation of idiot savants. Stop reading here if you want to avoid a big spoiler...
-- spoiler filler---
OK, so the spoiler is the payoff of the story line of the origin of the Omega Clouds, which have figured prominently in several of McDevitt's books. The Omega Clouds kill civilizations - well, really they destroy anything with right-angles - like for instance, buildings... The creator of the Omega clouds turns out to be a cloud-like entity trapped in the galactic core. It has mastery of nano-technology that is uses to create the clouds and is more or less immortal. But the best idea it can come up with to free itself is sending out killer clouds to get someone's attention and then to try to steal their starship. THAT idea sucked when used in Star Trek in both the animated episode "Beyond the Farthest Star" and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. And probably many other places too, but when you can make an "as bad as Star Trek" comparison, it's hard to resist.
It's hard to decide between rating this book as a C+ or B-. On the negative side, the big payoff is silly, the characters are dull, and the setting is depressing. On the positive side, at least there IS a payoff, and, while the setting is depressing, it is believably depressing and self-consistent as an extrapolation of our own rather shallow present-day world. So, as a comprise, Cauldron get a B-- (that's a double minus, not a typo!)
Review Grade: B--
wasn't that bad - as long you're willing to accept the whole twisted continuity of the Enterprise universe.
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