Ancient Shores
1 journaler for this copy...
I bought this used book today, at the annual Friends of the Library Sale in Beaufort SC USA. It appears to be a hardcover Science Fiction Book Club edition. I have read another copy back in 2007, and liked it quite a bit.
After being disappointed with a few of Jack McDevitt’s most recent works, it was a pleasure to re-read this novel from his heyday decades of the 1990s and 2000s. While it was not the winner, it was nominated for the Nebula Award in 1998. There is a 2015 sequel, Thunderbird.
The initial hook of the story is that farmer Tom Lasker has unearthed an enigmatic yacht from the middle of one of his fields in North Dakota – a yacht whose sails are made of a transuranic element (atomic number 161) previously unknown to science. And some wood fiber embedded in the yacht carbon-dates to the late glacial period. The lead characters of the story soon change over to Max Collingswood, an old friend of Lasker who runs an aircraft restoration business, and April Cannon, the chemistry scientist that analyzes the samples that Max has brought in to the lab where she works. Through some logical thinking about the shoreline of prehistoric Lake Agassiz, they are led to the discovery of a more significant artifact located on the Sioux reservation. The revelations are continuous, and the impacts begin to roll out through society. The plot culminates with a tense struggle between the US government and the Sioux reservation for control of the technology.
The conceptual speculation revolves around the societal implications of science and technology change. The characters are diverse, interesting, and the almost-relationship between Max and April is finely nuanced. It was great to be reminded of how Jack McDevitt could write in those days. There is quite a bit of telling the story through print news citations and television dialog. While that is anachronous in his far-future stories, it is perfectly suited to this 1990s setting. Sadly, as I finished the novel, I realized that almost all of the hero figures of the ending have now passed. But it is still a great story, and a quick read.
The initial hook of the story is that farmer Tom Lasker has unearthed an enigmatic yacht from the middle of one of his fields in North Dakota – a yacht whose sails are made of a transuranic element (atomic number 161) previously unknown to science. And some wood fiber embedded in the yacht carbon-dates to the late glacial period. The lead characters of the story soon change over to Max Collingswood, an old friend of Lasker who runs an aircraft restoration business, and April Cannon, the chemistry scientist that analyzes the samples that Max has brought in to the lab where she works. Through some logical thinking about the shoreline of prehistoric Lake Agassiz, they are led to the discovery of a more significant artifact located on the Sioux reservation. The revelations are continuous, and the impacts begin to roll out through society. The plot culminates with a tense struggle between the US government and the Sioux reservation for control of the technology.
The conceptual speculation revolves around the societal implications of science and technology change. The characters are diverse, interesting, and the almost-relationship between Max and April is finely nuanced. It was great to be reminded of how Jack McDevitt could write in those days. There is quite a bit of telling the story through print news citations and television dialog. While that is anachronous in his far-future stories, it is perfectly suited to this 1990s setting. Sadly, as I finished the novel, I realized that almost all of the hero figures of the ending have now passed. But it is still a great story, and a quick read.
