The Long Sunset
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- € 8,99
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From Nebula Award winner Jack McDevitt comes the eighth installment in the popular The Academy series—Priscilla “Hutch” Hutchins discovers an interstellar message from a highly advanced race that could be her last chance for a mission before the program is shut down for good.
Hutch has been the Academy’s best pilot for decades. She’s had numerous first contact encounters and even became a minor celebrity. But world politics have shifted from exploration to a growing fear that the program will run into an extraterrestrial race more advanced than humanity and war.
Despite taking part in the recent scientific breakthrough that rejuvenates the human body and expands one’s lifespan, Hutch finds herself as a famous interstellar pilot with little to do, until a message from an alien race arrives.
The message is a piece of music from an unexplored area. Despite the fact that this alien race could pose a great danger and that this message could have taken several thousand years to travel, the program prepares the last interstellar ship for the journey. As the paranoia grows, Hutch and her crew make an early escape—but what they find at the other end of the galaxy is completely unexpected.
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Despite its placement in the 23rd century, this long but accessible and optimistic eighth volume in McDevitt's series featuring interstellar pilot Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins (after 2013's Starhawk) recounts a very timely victory for scientific advancement and universal compassion over xenophobia. World Space Authority consultant Derek Blanchard rushes an exploratory mission, led by Hutch, to follow up on the source of a 7,000-year-old transmission that shows an alien waterfall and plays beautiful music. Blanchard hopes to find the transmission's origins before the government which is fearful of alien invasion and working to make deep-space exploration illegal can interfere. McDevitt's moderately humanoid aliens are almost comically pleasant and relatable, and his depictions of first contact are joyful and low on conflict. On the home front, he uses news headlines to wryly show an American culture that has changed little despite technological advances, juxtaposing worried stories about the expedition with those of celebrity deaths at more advanced ages, mass shootings at high schools, and fluffy reports of insignificant scientific studies. Academy fans will appreciate this solid addition to the series.
