The Hercules Text

By: Jack McDevitt

Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins

Length: 13 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

The classic first-contact science fiction novel that launched the career of Jack McDevitt, the nationally best-selling 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....

©2015 Cryptic, Inc. (P)2018 Tantor

a thoughtful contemplation

To start with, if you are looking for some sort of adventure with aliens, space battles, etc - this is not the book. The alien signal is received and decoded and that's it with them aliens. The rest is about humans. I quite liked it. It's thoughtful.

Entertaining

A good story for light reading. Flawed in that the author dabbles in Christian theology with which he obviously has only a surface understanding. I have enjoyed many of his other books.

Long drawn out story

eExpected a lot more story regarding the text besides that last hour. Too much drama over Harry's relationship omg. is this scfi?

Lots to recommend here!

An update on the debut novel by Jack McDevitt. Granted, he misses some updates, and some references are a bit off putting. Also, there were some rather explicit editing issues, esp. later in the book. That all said, the concept, and Kevin Collins' performance put this on the recommended list. Enjoy it as much as I did!

Ehhhh

Not a terrible book, but it didn’t seem to really go anywhere. Idk that I would recommend it.

The Hercules Text

Jack is my favourite sci-fi author. However he lost me completely with this book. For me, it's not character driven, it's situation propelled and way beyond anything I can find interesting. I say, sorry Jack, even though I know you are no longer living.
I've tried twice, but have only read halfway through. I love hard scifi, but this is hard-hard sci-fi, and continues to be beyond me. I must quit now, but I will probably try it again, 07/04/20.

pedestrian, illogical first contact story

nothing really unexpected happens in the entire book. of course governments would make weapons of alien technology. it makes no sense that NASA would have exclusive copies of the transmission after announcing to the world about the first 'hello' signal, there would be a million radios recording the transmission.

Love McDevitt… but not here

Oh man…. I loved McDevitt’s academy series. This however is slow, almost no alien stuff. Mostly drama about personal relationships and fake political setups and religious debates.
I only made it 6 hours in before I had to bail.
stay away

Bleh... super preachy

This story doesn't really make much sense. Nothing about it is logical or realistic.

Look, I don't mind heavy politics or some deep philosophical discussions, but every thing about this story feels like a forced excuse to discuss god and Harry's repressed sexual desires.

Even all the nonsensical politics exists just to preach and endlessly ask the same question over and over.

If Earth received a signal, everyone would have access to it. Not just NASA.

I'm frustrated on finishing this book that absolutely nothing happened and no real epiphanies happened about the question we were repeatedly beaten with the entire story.

It's essentially a retelling of Contact that literally goes no where.