A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense.

A low-key, oddly likable performance considering that, despite all the complicated maneuvering, nothing much happens: the old Asimov charm keeps the pages turning.Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. Yet a threatened clash between Fisher's hyperdrive expedition and Pitt's hard-line isolationists fails to materialize, as Pitt sees his dreams die and Fisher realizes that the Erythro-intelligence has claimed Marlene. Now, as regards Rotor, Pitt's desire is to develop a totally independent civilization, so he has told Earth nothing of Rotor's whereabouts, nothing about Marlene (she's acquired frightening mental powers and can read people unerringly at a glance), about Erythro (where Marlene has contacted a colony intelligence), or about Nemesis (five thousand years hence, it will plunge through the solar system).

As ten years pass back on Earth, various pressures mount to recontact Rotor agent Crile Fisher is assigned to persuade physicist Tessa Wendel to invent a truly instantaneous hyperdrive-aboard Rotor, you see, is Fisher's daughter Marlene. What's more, the Nemesis system boasts a habitable planet, Erythro. One such self-contained colony,' Rotor, bossed by the single-minded, secretive Jason Pitt, disappears from the solar system, having both discovered a hitherto unknown star nearby, the red dwarf Nemesis, and invented hyper-assistance, a drive that moves Rotor at the speed of light. In the 23rd century, a crowded Earth and dozens of space colonies are seeking new opportunities for development. From the author who needs no introduction: a medium-future space drama, often quite absorbing despite the absence of a theme or even much of a plot.

Nemesis by Isaac Asimov