![]() ![]() ![]() He isn't one of the astronauts he isn't even on the trip. The astronauts, for example, are strangely laid-back, largely unmoved by the momentousness of exploring a new, living world. They aren't as colorless as Bowman and Poole (I'm thinking of Kubrick's 2001), yet they aren't quite what one would expect in a science fiction novel, either. ![]() In a way, its characters are digressions. It has the deliberateness of the scientific mind and also its leaps forward, as well as its odd digressions. This is a good thing: it's different and it suits the subject matter. Written by astrophysicist Fred Hoyle and his novelist son Geoffrey Hoyle, this book doesn't read like any ordinary science fiction novel. To be honest, it's all a little weird from the beginning. Two expeditions, one Russian, one American, set out for Achilles, where they discover endless swards of grass and long, shallow lakes. Four of its five planets are gas giants, but the fifth, dubbed Achilles, is Earth-sized and evidently Earth-like. One hundred years in the future, a star with its own planetary system passes near Earth. It isn't as cosmically imaginative as Clarke's book, but it has a similar vibe. ![]()
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