The Engines of God

De: Jack McDevitt

Narrado por: Tom Weiner

Humans call them Monument-Makers. An unknown race, they left stunning alien statues scattered on distant planets throughout the galaxy, encoded with strange inscriptions that defy translation. Searching for clues about the Monument-Makers, teams of 23rd century linguists, historians, engineers and archaeologists have been excavating the enigmatic alien ruins on a number of planets, uncovering strange, massive false cities made of solid rock. But their time is running out.

Earth's ravaged environment is quickly making it unlivable, and colonizers want to begin terraforming these abandoned worlds for human habitation. Only interstellar archaeologist Richard Wald and starship pilot Priscilla Hutchins are convinced that uncovering the secrets of the monuments may hold the key to survival for the entire human race.

©1994 Cryptic, Inc. (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Splendid. Not since Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama has the discovery of artifacts of alien intelligence been treated so skillfully." ( Baltimore Sun)
"McDevitt is at his best award-winning style in this intelligent and wide-ranging novel." ( Kirkus Reviews)
"With plenty of startling plot twists, a heavy dose of intrigue, and an unusual amount of character development for science fiction, McDevitt holds us fast right through to a thrilling finish." ( Booklist)

Outstanding Story

I got it on paperback amd read it years ago and finally I got the audiobook and am not disappointed!

Don't waste a credit

I very rarely dislike a book. This one is terrible. The narrator thinks it's 1950 and the story is slow and pretty much uneventful.

Alien Archaeology

Earth is set to teriform a world where The Academy is working to extract the remains of alien artifacts before they are lost. Just before the deadline, a new find is made that changes everything.

What a fun read. Just the sort of book I like. No laser wars, no crazy manic madmen, just scientists trying to figure out the strangeness of what they find.

Definitely continuing this series.

Great SciFi story

Great SciFi story for anyone who dreams of space travel with a flair for history

Conceptually intriguing, but uneven writing style

The basis premise concerns 200 years in the future where faster than light drives have allowed some exploration of our galaxy. The startling discoveries have all been related to a mysterious alien race referred to as the Monument Makers (MM) from their habit of leaving gigantic sculptures scattered around including our solar system. At the same time evidenced is found of alien civilizations past and present, although none even at our technological level.

The major thrust is to understand what happened to the MM. This leads to archeological investigations that form the bulk of the action which in turn leads to solar system hopping. The plot twists are fascinating and unexpected.

Unfortunately there are several aspects that really detract from the overall story. The characters are largely forgettable. Most of their actions come off as a high school theatrical production. At the same time, the injected elements creating drama are forced, seem arbitrary, and aren't necessary to drive the plot forward. Finally, the authors drags out certain sections with too much detail that becomes dull and boring. The ending is satisfying up to a point, but leaves open much of the opening questions.

Big idea, Clarke-like SF

The Earth is facing environmental catastrophe in the 23rd century. Humans have spread to other star systems, but generally not found a lot of Earth-like planets, and those they have found are already inhabited. A handful of intelligent alien races have been discovered, but all are primitive compared to humanity. Most alien races discovered, however, are long dead, and the most prominent is one that apparently traveled to other stars, as their monuments have been found across the galaxy.

Earth has generally taken a "hands off" approach to living natives, but as pressure mounts to begin terraforming habitable worlds as an escape plan, this "Prime Directive" morality begins to seem less desirable. There is an interesting reversal of the classic sci-fi trope, and subtle commentary on colonialism and how we might justify it in the future, when an argument is made to colonize an inhabited planet "for the natives' own good." They are in the middle of a savage global war, and it is claimed that some of them have become aware of the existence of their alien watchers, and are begging for intervention. That technological aid and imposed peace would incidentally involve Earthlings resettling on their hosts' planet would be only a logical extension of a benevolent intervention...

This is a fairly hard SF novel that will appeal to fans of "big idea" SF, particularly if you like academic/scientist protagonists. Jack McDevitt gets compared a lot to Arthur C. Clarke in the blurbs for this book, and that's a fair comparison. Also an unfortunate one as far as I'm concerned, because like Clarke's science fiction, The Engines of God did little to stir any passion in this science fiction fan. It was a perfectly well written book, it was just dry and flat and even the high stakes did not truly engage my interest.

Great SF!

Solid and engaging SF. One of the things I respected about this book is that it shows the future as a messy place. Sure, they have FTL travel and communications but everything is not hunky-dory at home. Earth is a messed up place that seems only to be getting worse, science is still operating on a shoestring budget, the military/government is still stepping on peoples toes and the universe is a big scary place.

Spanning 5 separate planets, this tale is good (generally what I have come to expect from Jack McDevitt). We have the stars but they are a fairly lonely place. Only one alive race has been found (the are technologically around the WWI level), another never got off their planet and died out and a third was engaged in a game of clue, placing structures near all three races (they left a statue near us an weirdly empty city on a moon of another race).

The main characters are mostly archaeologists, who only seem to have exciting jobs in the stories that are written (like Indiana Jones) who are trying to put all the pieces together. There is action scenes scattered all around story as well as high tech action. I am really looking forward to the next book!

Dual Engines?

The story structure is divided into two halves, each of which feels completely different in tone and pacing. While each holds the attention, they are so stylistically divergent that one may even forget they share an author.

The first half of the book is a satisfying salute to the archeological profession, and primarily takes place on a planet named Quraqua, the site of an ancient civilization which has mysteriously disappeared. The methodology and techniques used by the archeologist, linguists, and other scientists seem quite believable, and one comes to appreciate the painstaking manner in which they reconstruct a forgotten culture. Many intriguing mysteries about alien origins and interactions with galactic history are opened, and the reader will come to feel (incorrectly) that the answers will be their reward for finishing the novel.

However, in the second act of the story, the thoughtful pursuit of answers goes out the window as a rapid succession of breakthroughs and timely hunches bring the characters from one planet to another. With unrealistic abandon, these archaeologists set aside their jaw-dropping finds to pursue the next thin lead. Each stopover is accompanied by a tense, life-or-death scene, which all have clever resolutions, but are examples of action unseen in the first half of the story.

Each of these two plot halves are entertaining in their own way, but are jarringly uncharacteristic from one another, and would benefit from a stylistic synthesis. The cliffhanger ending, presumably setting up the subsequent book, deprived me of the satisfaction of solving most of the open mysteries, but that can be forgiven if further books in the series provide this.

Mediocre

What did you like best about The Engines of God? What did you like least?

The premise/mystery about the monument makers was the most intriguing part. I was hoping he was going to play off that more, but instead the focus of the story just became the cheap thrill of whether or not they would make it off the planet in time. I'd expect something that mundane to be maybe a climactic end to a chapter, but not the main focus of the book.
The narratation was terribly annoying. He has a nice voice, but feels the need to draw out every final vowel in each sentence to sound dramatic. Yikes. Make sure you listen to the sample to be sure you can put up with this before buying it.

Asimov Lives!!

Asimov warned that Sci-Fi needs to be driven by the "Sci" or it's just plain "Fi". Too often contemporary SF wants to be socio-political screed warped to some other similar culture or world. It's preaching in drag. McDevitt's piece has a spark of BIG TODAY ISSUE as part of the fuse to its powder, but its peripheral. He pulled in my imagination with a "Sci" mystery wrapped in a philosophical then cultural puzzles. Sweeeeet!

Tom Weiner's read's just fine. Oh sure a couple of the character voices overlap, but he's good enough. Love the risky way McDevitt treats important characters. And there's neither sexist damsel in distress nonsense, nor over reach to make all the men bumblers. He's created a cast of equals.

Now this cast ain't vying to create great literature… what they do is rise a tad beyond comic books, but that tad's fun, the plot's reasonably thrilling. And yeah, there's a cinematic thrum throughout. McDevitt should be, if he's not, a screen writer. I'll buy the next in this series...