The year is 2024. On the day of a solar eclipse, darkness allows astronomers to discover a comet hurtling towards... the Moon? Well, at least it's not the Earth, right? No need to send oil riggers up to nuke it, no need to hide everyone in underground caves in Missouri, we'll miss the Moon and life will go on. However, Moonbase has just opened, and hundreds of people have to be evacuated. Then there is the fact that the Moon doesn't vaporize, it shatters, sending debris towards the Earth along with one big moonrock that could precipitate a nuclear winter and send mankind hurtling back to the Dark Ages. Perhaps the politicians should have paid a bit more attention to the whole thing...
Different people read books for vastly different reasons. In a sense, when a person reads a book it becomes theirs, and thus open to the myriad of thoughts, opinions, and ideas that that individual holds dear. At the same time, each book remains unique and true to the voice and ideals of the author. Literature must walk this fine line and great literature, great stories, walk it triumphantly, skillfully merging the author's vision with the reader's until it is no longer clear where one ends and the other begins, until the world of the book becomes as vivid, if not more vivid, than the 'real' world we inhabit.
Jack McDevitt attempts to walk this line by staying very close to reality. Moonfall is not so much a prognostication of a possible future as it is a chronicle of what has actually occurred. McDevitt has the story down cold. He knows his science, he sees the events and transmits them to the reader clearly. He never manipulates, he never uses the power of the author to push the story into strange unlikely situations. He is true to his story and to us. Forget for a moment the likelihood of a comet actually shattering the moon and Moonfall could be a very intricate multi-point-of-view memoir. Every character, every plot twist rings with a strong note of reality, as if it were something we were watching on the news. Though one may be fairly sure the world is eventually going to survive, the reader is never certain from where salvation will come. Small mistakes can lead to big problems just as easily as flashes of inspiration can herald salvation, be it only for a few people or the world.
Yet (and I'm sure ya'll felt this coming) too much of anything can be a bad thing. Moonfall is so realistic my attention began to wander. The characters were only as real as people you read about in the history books (and I know what I'm talking about here). There wasn't an emotional connection with any of the characters. When someone died I cared on the level of 'Oh, what a shame' and I continued on. When disasters struck the Earth it all seemed strangely separated from both myself and my ability to actually care about them. It was as if McDevitt tried so hard to grasp reality that he lost it. McDevitt's voice is so strong that he never allowed mine to speak, he never allowed me to grab a character, a situation, and make it my own.
In the end, there is only one character that is truly sympathetic and whose fate brought out an emotional response in at least this reader, that of the Moon herself. McDevitt's own obvious love of the Moon is enough to make one set the book down and silently, mournfully contemplate a world without it. Unfortunately, even that moment could not save the book from sinking under its own weight. I can't wholeheartedly recommend Moonfall, yet its very intelligence is reason enough to read it. In an era when people equate asteroids and/or comets with movies like Armageddon and Deep Impact, it is refreshing to read an asteroid story that is this real and frank. Jack McDevitt is refreshingly unformulaic in his interpretation of such a disaster.
-- Megan Linton
Moonfall, published by HarperPrism, is currently available in paperback.
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