Deepsix

Deepsix (2001) is the second novel in the Hutch series, following The Engines of God. In the previous volume, Hutch discovered the location of the Monument-Maker's home planet, Beta Pac III, which apparently had been evacuated. A few of their descendents remained on the planet living in primitive conditions, but most of the Monument-Makers seem to have fled the galaxy, probably to one of the Magellanic Clouds. Refining her analysis, Hutch figured that the Omega Cloud wave should be approaching LCO4418. The rescued crew/passengers of the NCA Winckelmann took the ranger ship NCA Ashley Tee to that system and found two Clouds in transit. There they shaped some mesas into rectangles, which definitely attracted the attention of one Cloud. Despite being half way around the moon from the mesas, the Cloud even attacked their lander. In this novel, the Nightingale mission gets in trouble on Deepsix -- Maleiva III -- losing several persons to carnivorous red birds and the Academy decides to abandon the planet. Twenty years later, the Academy sends a team of physicists and planetary scientists on the NCA Wendy Jay to observe the imminent collision of Jeremy Morgan's planet with Deepsix. Scanning the planet upon arrival, the team discovers signs of civilization upon the planet, including a tower within an icebound town. Hutch picks up some homeward bound Academy personnel on Pinnacle, but her ship, the NCA Harold Wildside, is diverted to Deepsix. The Academy designates her as director of the Deepsix archaeology project to investigate the ruins on that planet. Of course, the planet will be swallowed by the gas giant Morgan's Planet within a few days and her passengers are not archaeologists. Yet Hutch is ordered to find out as much as possible before Deepsix is destroyed by the tidal effects. One of Hutch's passengers is Randall Nightingale, director of the first Deepsix mission, but he is an exobiologist rather than an archaeologist. He knows more than he can tell about the aggressive red birds, but nothing about sentient inhabitants. Nonetheless, Hutch, Toni Hamner, and Randy prepare to go down to investigate the tower. They are joined by Kellie Collier and Chiang Harmon from the Wendy Jay. While they are digging through the tower, Gregory MacAllister arranges for a lander from the tour ship Evening Star to take Casey Hayes, a young and attractive journalist, and himself down to the tower site. Hutch tries to wave them off, but MacAllister is a well-known and acerbic editor who uses his clout to pave his way. He ignores Hutch's warnings and the Evening Star lander sets down near the tower. After a short tour of the site, MacAllister arranges the use of the Wildside lander for a short interview by Casey. Midway through the interview, an earthquake shakes down the tower and swallows the Evening Star lander and its pilot. Toni is killed in the falling tower. Casey tries to get the Wildside lander off the ground before it too falls down

Jack McDevitt's fiction always reminds me of what I was reading back in the '50's, because I think he may have been reading the same stuff back then. What he's managed to do is take an old idea from SF and make it new again. A rogue planet - this time a gas giant - is passing through another solar system and is going to make hash of the system and swallow one of its planets. The question is, who cares? Well, the Academy cares, and sends a crew of people to take a last look at the ill-fated world before it gets swallowed up. When the crew goes down to the surface to take an even closer look, bad things happen and they get stranded. Rescuing them - and seeing how they behave in trying to assist the rescue from their end - is what makes the story move forward. Seeing the world on which they are stranded, and trying to get a handle on the mystery they uncover is what makes the story fun.Does McDevitt write old-fashioned hard SF? Of course, he does. Does he deliver the kinds of scenery and events that appeal to the reader's sense of wonder? You bet, he does. And that's what makes Deepsix worth the ride. Good hard SF is all too rare in a StarWars/StarTrek dominated medium, and finding someone who is willing to write hard SF - where the reader has to think about things like mass, momentum, and how the heck does an e-suit work? - is a rare treat. If the rivets slow the story down now and then, well, it's a price I'm willing to pay for the pleasure of sailing through another of Jack McDevitt's imaginary worlds.

I'm impressed with McDevitt's ability to make each novel quite distinctly different from its predecessors. "Deepsix" continues that progression and even though it is broadly set in a timeline he has used previously (and from a few hints contained in Deepsix, may return to again).Deepsix is a planet on countdown to annihilation by collision with a Galactic Wanderer in a matter of days. It provides the setting for a fast and furious story with a number of interesting twists along the way. It helps a little with the characterisiation if you've previously read McDevitt's "Engines of God" but you wont miss much if you haven't.A motely group of space ship crew, scientists and a journalist are trapped on the planet when the only two available planetary shuttles are both destoryed while on the ground. McDevitt wonderfully captures the sheer frustration that all involved feel with their inability to adequately explore the things they discover while struggling to do their parts in organising an audatious rescue, using a leftover alien artifact that itself has only just been discovered.My favourite "small details" from the novel were the names of the continents and the literary quotes from one of the novel's characters which formed a mini-preface to each chapter.

He's done it again. McDevitt goes back to the Universe we met in "The Engines of God". He goes back to his best material, the archeological exploration of a planet with a lost civilization. No other auther can hold my attention as McDevitt does as we uncover the mysteries Deepsix has for its explorers. We even get a "chrichton-esque" countdown to add drama, but its been a long time since Michael Chrichton wrote anything this good.