Melody Adams works for NASA as a physicist and astronomer. One night, in Hawaii, she discovers an odd object near Pluto with attributes that don’t make any sense. She and her associate quickly come to the conclusion that the object must be coming from outside the solar system. Furthermore, it does not behave like a natural object. When she goes public with her discovery, she quickly loses credibility with the scientific community and NASA, and gets fired.
Fast forward a few years, when the object is observed again near Saturn, slowing down. All doubts are erased. Melody quickly gets back in good graces with NASA, and she eventually gets the commander post as an astronaut on a mission to rendezvous with the object. Once on the journey, things quickly go wrong, and a rift develops between the crew on the ship and Earth and its petty politics.
The book, even on its cover, is portrayed as hard science fiction. It plays in the near future, and the characters all use today’s technology. But I don’t think this is hard science fiction, like Andy Weir’s The Martian. Actually, I found it kind of hokey. Melody Adams, the protagonist, is one of those female astronaut superheroes. She is smarter than everyone else, she has a Ph.D. in physics, she is at the top of her astronaut class, and – as you would not suspect – she sleeps with Jim, the NASA administrator. That whole side plot of being in love with Jim makes no sense, does not contribute to the plot, and I could not quite figure out why it was there.
Without spoiling the book for you, I just have to add that it’s always baffling when there is a space mission where Earth selects its best and brightest to go to meet an alien vessel, and those brilliant super astronauts do really, really stupid things once they are out there on their own. Perhaps that makes for an exciting plot, but for me it’s just distracting. These people are idiots out there, and when I read the story, it does not draw me in. It loses me and I want it to just move on and be done.
