ne thousand years in the future, humanity has spread to more than a dozen
habitable planets around neighboring stars, and explored hundreds more. But
no evidence of extraterrestrial life has ever been found. Faster-than-light travel has allowed the search to continue, but a long-lived, rich, comfortable humanity seems on the verge of losing its desire to continue to expand and to continue to explore the cosmos seeking out new life.
Kim Brandywine is an astrophysicist who manages public relations for a scientific institute that seeks to continue the search for life. She hears rumors that 30 years ago a ship may have made first contact and brought back proof that was kept hidden by the five-member crew, all now dead. One member of that crew was Kim's clone sister, Emily, who mysteriously disappeared soon after the ship's return. Others of the crew were presumed killed in an unexplainable explosion.
As Kim investigates, she begins to discover anomaly after anomaly within the official record of events relating to the mission, and she begins to learn that someone doesn't want her to uncover the truth about the mission and the fate of her sister. As she slowly unravels the complex evidence, with the help of a close friend at the institute, she becomes convinced that the mystery can be solved
only by retracing the steps taken by the earlier mission.
Kim and her accomplice steal an institute ship and plan to retrace her sister's final voyage. Will they learn the truth about the first expedition and what really happened to her sister?
McDevitt's best novel yet
Jack McDevitt has produced a continuous stream of promising hard science fiction novels over the past 15 years. Many of his novels involve puzzling mysteries and/or first contact with alien intelligences. Infinity Beach may be McDevitt's best novel to date. The story remains compelling despite the intricate complexity of what really happened 30 years before and the slow, step-by-step manner in which Kim uncovers the truth.
The characterization in the novel is better than in most hard SF books, especially that of Kim. Her only annoying characteristics are those common to most hard-SF puzzle solvers, an uncommon amount of intuition and incredible good luck. The human society and culture on Kim's planet, Greenway, is affluent, intellectual and progressive--indeed, a near-utopia by current standards--despite their worries that humanity is losing its desire for further exploration and progress. Cloning is casually used to create progeny without any social stigma, a subtle comment on the silliness of the recent hysteria over the potential for human cloning. In most ways, however, the attitudes and mores of the people of Greenway differ little from those of today's affluent intellectuals, a common problem in far-future novels. It's hard to imagine that even a hundred years from now--never mind a thousand--human society would remain so similar to today's.
The strengths of Infinity Beach, however, far outweigh any shortcomings. McDevitt has written a complex, perfectly paced hard SF puzzle story addressing some of the genre's most important themes--humanity's proper role as an intelligent species in the cosmos, and the need not to be utterly alone.
