Book Review: Mission One, by Samuel Best
A 2001-inspired first contact novel.
Sky City, 2017, 419 pages
Five months to Titan. Four brave crew members. One incredible mystery.
Jeff Dolan always wanted to be an astronaut. After helping a private space company build a ship that can travel to Saturn's largest moon in five months, he gets his chance.
Shortly after launch, a devastating malfunction forces Jeff and the crew to make a choice: continue to Titan or go back home. As the truth about their mission unravels, one thing is clear: Someone on Earth knew about the system flaw and covered it up.
Yet surviving the journey isn't the crew's only concern. Even if they make it to Titan, they will face another problem: Something is already there.
This book about the first manned mission to Titan, Saturn's moon, was clearly inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was written by an indie author and while it's a pretty good space story for those who like medium-hard SF, the prose was merely adequate and the characters and dialog were stilted, and some of the twists made me roll my eyes.
Jeff Dolan, the main protagonist, leads the crew of a mission to Titan, powered by an antimatter drive (this is one of several handwavey technological bits that can be forgiven in a SF novel but make it somewhat less "hard science") built by a private space company. The entire mission is funded by an Elon Musk-like billionaire who wants to be the first to reach Titan.
Jeff, of course, is banging one of the engineers back on the ground. As a secondary character, she becomes aware of some sort of conspiracy involving a rival company and a known flaw in the ship's drive. One of her coworkers is a comical figure full of anti-government conspiracy theories despite (or because of) having been a NASA engineer. There's a really implausible twist in which it turns out the billionaire in charge was just the pawn of his evil underlings. Also, he's banging the ex-wife of one of the crew, which surprise, surprise, results in another twist midway through the book in which said crew member turns out to not be cool with this.
All of this skullduggery overshadows the real climax in which the crew finally arrives at Titan and finds someone already there. The ending was a little confusing, with very Arthur C. Clarke-like alien deux ex machinas, and it turns out to be setup for the next book.
Mission One was okay, but it's not The Martian.
My complete list of book reviews.
Sky City, 2017, 419 pages
Five months to Titan. Four brave crew members. One incredible mystery.
Jeff Dolan always wanted to be an astronaut. After helping a private space company build a ship that can travel to Saturn's largest moon in five months, he gets his chance.
Shortly after launch, a devastating malfunction forces Jeff and the crew to make a choice: continue to Titan or go back home. As the truth about their mission unravels, one thing is clear: Someone on Earth knew about the system flaw and covered it up.
Yet surviving the journey isn't the crew's only concern. Even if they make it to Titan, they will face another problem: Something is already there.
This book about the first manned mission to Titan, Saturn's moon, was clearly inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was written by an indie author and while it's a pretty good space story for those who like medium-hard SF, the prose was merely adequate and the characters and dialog were stilted, and some of the twists made me roll my eyes.
Jeff Dolan, the main protagonist, leads the crew of a mission to Titan, powered by an antimatter drive (this is one of several handwavey technological bits that can be forgiven in a SF novel but make it somewhat less "hard science") built by a private space company. The entire mission is funded by an Elon Musk-like billionaire who wants to be the first to reach Titan.
Jeff, of course, is banging one of the engineers back on the ground. As a secondary character, she becomes aware of some sort of conspiracy involving a rival company and a known flaw in the ship's drive. One of her coworkers is a comical figure full of anti-government conspiracy theories despite (or because of) having been a NASA engineer. There's a really implausible twist in which it turns out the billionaire in charge was just the pawn of his evil underlings. Also, he's banging the ex-wife of one of the crew, which surprise, surprise, results in another twist midway through the book in which said crew member turns out to not be cool with this.
All of this skullduggery overshadows the real climax in which the crew finally arrives at Titan and finds someone already there. The ending was a little confusing, with very Arthur C. Clarke-like alien deux ex machinas, and it turns out to be setup for the next book.
Mission One was okay, but it's not The Martian.
My complete list of book reviews.