First

A glimpse of what could be…

I loved this for many reasons, maybe not so much the tech gobbledegook (the author admits he is no physicist and this is just fiction), but the premise, characters and plot.

The main character, Lewis (and his brother, Clark) are named for the explorers who discovered the routes to the North American West. I almost wished the author had kept the Clark name for Lewis’s paired AI ( named Ray for Lewis’s grandfather). It sets the scene for readers to expect Lewis to be a trailblazer who can think his way out of the problems that arise on a journey into the unknown. Lewis (and other European explorers) actually owed their ‘discoveries’ to the help of the indigenous peoples already there… so I almost expected our trailblazers to be given alien guides. In this respect, the AI systems are their guides and protectors… or at least they must hope this to be the case.

Lewis, along with Eve, Colt, Sandra and Peter are the astronauts selected, employed and trained by Chris, a tech billionaire aiming to be the first with the technology to send a human to Alpha Centauri and thence to other galaxies. His company, Space First, is in competition with a rival, Deep Space that uses different technology, to see who gets there first.

The reader is given a made-up guide to the ElectroMagnetic technology that allows Space First’s craft to bend/suspend time while it transports itself through space. I skimmed through some of the nerdier paragraphs as it was all improbable/made-up/garbage probably beyond my comprehension - or patience.

The competitive spirit (yay capitalism, urgh) that operates between Space First and Deep Space is echoed in the characters, all of whom want to be the first person to leave the Galaxy, set foot on another planet etc. It even extends to the AI systems, each tailored to their specific crafts and pilots.

But competitiveness, like the other emotional drivers of human nature, has a dark side that soon comes to the fore. One of the candidates and their AI are sabotaging the operation and their cohort while leaking falsehoods to the media. We live in an age of misinformation and bots that spread lies and this reminds us that evidence that proves facts is, all too frequently, a runner-up in the race where the lie sprints to victory.

This is not high literature and the writing is often clunky. But the premise is so good, the characters well realised and the pace kept up, that it was a breeze to read in a single sitting. A little more editorial expertise and this would be a fully 5* read. Even so I’d give it 4.5* for enjoyment and also because in an age of chaos and negativity, it is a story of hope, of trust in human ingenuity, expertise and above all, love.