regon's Jasper County has been the scene of 24 disappearances
and numerous UFO sightings. These mysteries have become the domain of
Detective-Sergeant Colin Cedars, a crime scene investigator assigned to find
any evidence which might help locate the vanished citizens. A hard-nosed and
meticulous forensic scientist, Colin must determine if the disappearances
are coincidence, the work of a serial killer or something even more
sinister.
His first day on the job proves challenging in more ways than one. First
an old friend, Robert Dawson, stands him up for a lecture they planned to attend
together. Then he learns that Dawson has arranged for
Colin to be the speaker. The audience is a disparate collection of Jasper
County's UFO believers, eager for Colin to prove that the local disappearances
are actually alien abductions.
Before the evening is over, Colin is summoned to a lonely corner of the
Oregon rainforest where two deputies sent to investigate gunfire at a
remote cabin have now themselves gone missing. Colin must work the original
shots-fired crime scene and also look for clues as to the deputies'
whereabouts. This leaves him alone, in the middle of the night and in a
radio dead zone, with a complicated crime scene and no hope of backup. Even
worse, there are menacing shadows in the woods and a mutilated homicide
victim in the cabin--a victim who may well be Colin's friend Dawson.
A Spillane-style close encounter
Ken Goddard's First Evidence is a peculiar hybrid, mixing a police
procedural with an alien contact story. The result is hard science fiction with
the flavor of a mystery novel. Though it is clear to readers from page one
that there really are aliens at work in the woods of Jasper County, it takes
Colin a long time to reach the same conclusion. Sometimes his dogged refusal
to use guesswork or intuition stretches reader
credulity, especially when he rejects the evidence of his own eyes in favor
of carefully collected bloodstains, bullets and fingerprints.
At first, the novel appears to be deadly serious. Colin is a taciturn
tough guy in a perilous situation, and he responds to the alien threat with
a cool head and bullets--lots and lots of bullets. Just when this weighty
tone is about to become utterly crushing, though, it becomes obvious that
the author isn't taking himself or Colin too seriously, and the situation
explodes in unexpectedly funny ways. This wry humor, along with the
fascinating details of forensic science and crime scene
procedure, make First Evidence compelling and suspenseful. Readers
who like to see their heroes outclassed and in serious danger will love this
novel.
That said, First Evidence is definitely not for everyone. Like
most hard-boiled mysteries, it is funny but not lighthearted, with only a
few fully developed characters and little in the way of participation by
women. The aliens are not flashy--there are no laser pistols, giant
tentacles or incredible spaceships anywhere in sight. Rather, the aliens
keep to the shadows, hiding every trace of their presence. The book's
conclusion is smart and satisfying, but it is Earth-based,
prosaic and very human.
Gritty and dark, very much written to the X-Files sensibility. I'm
looking forward to the sequel.
-- Alex
housands of years from today, humanity slowly colonizes space by terraforming lifeless planets that are connected by "timeshaft wormholes" that allow spaceships to travel backward in time. Ships carry crews in cryogenic suspension on century-long trips, but arrive soon after embarking. The Chronologic Patrol guards these wormholes to ensure that no one travels back and violates causality.
Anton Koffield commands the ship that guards the "uptime" side of a wormhole. An armada of robotic ships destroys the "downtime" guardian ship and travels through the wormhole into the future, temporarily disabling Koffield's ship. When the intruders, who appear able to exceed light speed, return to re-enter the wormhole, Koffield destroys it, isolating the planet Glister.
Koffield, a century in his future, is blamed for the ecological collapse of Glister and reassigned to a desk job. He meets Dr. Oskar DeSilvo, famous terraformer, who is using a unique methodology that involves an asteroid-based "greenhouse" to terraform the planet Solace. Koffield finds evidence that DeSilvo's techniques are plagiarized, and will eventually fail. Koffield journeys to Solace with his evidence, but when awakened he is shocked to find he has arrived more than a century late, bypassing the timeshaft. Solace, without knowledge of his discovery, has rapidly declined.
Stranded in the future a second time, Koffield must convince scientists on Solace that he is right, and the great DeSilvo wrong. The answers to some, but not all, of the mysteries Koffield has been facing may be found within the tomb of Oskar DeSilvo.
At times fascinating, at times annoying
The Depths of Time begins what appears to be an original new series of novels by an author probably best known for various "sharecrop" novels. The book demonstrates that Allen has developed a number of strengths as an author, while still showing a number of glaring weaknesses.
The novel is quite interesting conceptually, especially Allen's use of time-travel wormholes for interstellar travel and the techniques for terraforming planets. The mysteries faced by Koffield are fascinating and complex. But one of Allen's annoying habits is a markedly padded prose style. Descriptions that should be a paragraph go on for pages. Interactions between characters that should take a page become whole chapters. A book that may be compelling at 300 pages becomes less so at more than 400.
Another annoyance is Allen's use of an "idiot plot," a story line that can occur only if most or all of the characters are less intelligent than the reader. Koffield discovers that DeSilvo has hidden the work of a long-dead genius who developed a terraforming technique but found it to be fatally flawed. Koffield understands the work easily. Thousands of professional scientists over centuries, however, despite extensive empirical evidence, fail to discover these flaws. (This is similar to Newton's laws of motion being lost, cars without brakes crashing, and scientists failing to understand why.)
At one point Koffield even stops to wonder why he has seen almost no social or technological change over the centuries he's been alive. One wonders if any of the characters asked why so little has changed over the past 3,000 years! Is something suppressing humanity's intelligence and creativity? Hopefully the next novel in the series will include some answers.
It's an uneven start, but if the sequels are tighter and reveal satisfying answers to the mysteries left hanging, this could be an interesting series.
-- Doug
regon's Jasper County has been the scene of 24 disappearances
and numerous UFO sightings. These mysteries have become the domain of
Detective-Sergeant Colin Cedars, a crime scene investigator assigned to find
any evidence which might help locate the vanished citizens. A hard-nosed and
meticulous forensic scientist, Colin must determine if the disappearances
are coincidence, the work of a serial killer or something even more
sinister.
housands of years from today, humanity slowly colonizes space by terraforming lifeless planets that are connected by "timeshaft wormholes" that allow spaceships to travel backward in time. Ships carry crews in cryogenic suspension on century-long trips, but arrive soon after embarking. The Chronologic Patrol guards these wormholes to ensure that no one travels back and violates causality.
