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Zusatztext An Amazon Best Book of the Month “A fun and heartwarming send-up of classic science fiction.” —Washington Post “Doucette delights with this wonderful example of speculative fiction . . . [He] writes winning characters who read like real people, and Sorrow Falls is similarly credible. The head-spinning ideas both power the narrative and invite the reader to think hard, while plenty of humor and action move the plot along. This excellent work will appeal to readers from middle school through adulthood.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “Doucette’s genial, leisurely novel feels like a throwback to the squeaky-clean science fiction of the mid-twentieth century . . . The town is vividly realized and described . . . [and] Doucette’s dry sense of humor and obvious affection for his characters go a long way . . . A warmhearted ode to a simpler time and place in a community so small that everybody knows everybody else’s business.” —Kirkus Reviews “An enormously enjoyable first contact story you won’t forget, from a talented new voice in sci-fi!” —A. G. Riddle, best-selling author of The Atlantis Gene and Pandemic Informationen zum Autor GENE DOUCETTE is the author of more than twenty sci-fi and fantasy titles, including The Spaceship Next Door and The Frequency of Aliens , the Immortal series, Fixer and Fixer Redux , Unfiction , and the Tandemstar books. Gene lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Klappentext When a spaceship lands in Sorrow Falls, a lovable and fearless small-town girl is the planet's only hope for survivalThree years ago, a spaceship landed in an open field in the quiet mill town of Sorrow Falls, Massachusetts. It never opened its doors, and for all that time, the townspeople have wondered why the ship landed there, and what--or who--could be inside.Then one day a government operative--posing as a journalist--arrives in town, asking questions. He discovers sixteen-year-old Annie Collins, one of the ship's closest neighbors and a local fixture known throughout the town, who has some of the answers.As a matter of fact, Annie Collins might be the most important person on the planet. She just doesn't know it. The spaceship landed on a cool night in August, in a field that wasn’t being used for anything in particular. Like most remarkable things, nobody realized it was remarkable as it happened. The ship lit up the sky above Sorrow Falls when entering the atmosphere, but that was only slightly unusual in the way a meteor could be slightly unusual. Later, eyewitness accounts would describe the evening as becoming “as bright as daytime” in that moment, but this was a profound exaggeration. The truth was, while the object flashed brightly, an observer had to already be looking skyward to see it. If one were instead looking at the road, or the television, or the ceiling, the craft would have gone unnoticed as it traveled toward that field on the edge of town. It was also nearing midnight, on a Tuesday. Prior to the arrival of the spaceship, Sorrow Falls was a prototypical rural mill town, which was to say there was nothing unusual or spectacular about it. Most residents were either mill employees or farmers. Nearing midnight, on a Tuesday in August, just about everybody was sleeping. It’s possible the sonic boom woke up one or two people, but as was the case with the supposed eyewitnesses startled by the profound brightness that didn’t happen, the boom was unlikely to have awoken anyone. The sound made by the object was more like a pop. To those who did hear it, the volume was approximately equivalent to that of a Jake bra...
