The Hercules Text

Zusatztext “The logical heir to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.”—Stephen King “ The Hercules Text is much more than a knowledgeable scientific mystery; it is simply the most thoughtful and engaging first-contact story I have ever read.”—Paul Preuss, author of Secret Passages “A good read…Delightful.”—Gregory Benford, Nebula Award–winning coauthor of Shipstar Informationen zum Autor Jack McDevitt is a former naval officer, taxi driver, English teacher, customs officer, and motivational trainer, and is now a full-time writer. His novel Seeker won a Nebula Award, and he is a multiple Nebula Award finalist. He lives in Georgia with his wife, Maureen. Klappentext The classic first-contact science fiction novel that launched the career of Jack McDevitt, the national bestselling author of Coming Home—now revised from the original edition, and featuring a new foreword. From a remote corner of the galaxy a message is being sent. The continuous beats of a pulsar have become odd, irregular...artificial. It can only be a code. Frantically, a research team struggles to decipher the alien communication. And what the scientists discover is destined to shake the foundations of empires around this world—from Wall Street to the Vatican... Leseprobe ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | | | FOREWORD | | | When we first talked about reissuing The Hercules Text , I knew immediately that I’d have to update the original novel. Its computer technology was out-of-date. The Cold War, which fueled much of the narrative, was long over. Not only in the sense that the superpower confrontation has, if not ended, at least substantially cooled. But our national mind-set has also changed. Who today would believe that a major power might seriously consider launching a preemptive strike over a question of weapons development, a scenario that was front and center in the original Hercules Text ? Somehow it seemed not entirely implausible in 1986. It’s possible that my original perspective was simply deranged. But it didn’t feel that way then. I can still recall the nuclear-attack drills in high school, during which we descended, in an orderly manner, down to the basement cafeteria and sat under tables, which would presumably protect us when the bomb dropped. At home, left over from my father’s days as a WWII air-raid warden, we had a bucket of sand for tossing on fires. For some reason we never threw it out. It served as a reminder that terrible things were possible. In 1962, at the height of the Berlin Crisis, I was driving home on the Baltimore–Washington Parkway, headed for Philadelphia. At the time there was major construction going on, crews building overpasses and widening highways, but catastrophe seemed so imminent it was difficult not to wonder why we were bothering. The night was thick with the conviction that it was all going to get knocked down in the near future. It didn’t happen, of course, a reality for which we can be grateful to a series of U.S. presidents and Russian premiers who kept their heads. Had they not been there, today’s world might have been little more than a pile of smoldering ash. But the current reading public has a different perspective, and so it seemed prudent to go back and reframe The Hercules Text in the light of these happier times. I’ve done that, and the experience has left me, as the original effort did in 1986, with the suspicion that we do not really want to hear from the stars. No matter how hard we root for SETI. And no matter what the outsiders may have to say to us. No news is good news. | | | ONE | | | Harry Carmichael sneezed. His eyes were red, his nose was running, and his head ached. It was mid-September, and the air was full of pollen from ragweed, goosefoot, and thistle. He’d already taken his medication for the day, the latest antiallergen...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Jack McDevitt
• Editore: Ace Books
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 28.04.2015
• EAN: 9780425276013
• ISBN: 978-0-425-27601-3
• Pagine: 368
• Dimensioni: 108 mm x 175 mm x 26 mm
• Serie: Penguin Publishing Group
• Categoria: Narrativa > Science Fiction, Fantasy