Just Finished Reading: Moonfall by Jack McDevitt (FP: 1998)

It was the dawn of the New Space Age. Whilst the Vice President of the USA officially opens Moonbase the first manned mission to Mars it just weeks away from launching from the largest of humanities orbital space stations. As if on que a full eclipse is visible from the Eastern seaboard of the USA and amateur astronomer Tomiko Harrington begins taking high resolution images of the totality. Then she sees a slight fuzz low in one corner and records a possible comet. Confirmed by other observers she gets to officially name the object which becomes comet Tomiko in her honour. But it’s a bit of a strange one – entering our system from deep space and moving much faster than normal comets. It’s a big one too. Very big. Once its course and speed re calculated, checked and triple checked the alarm bells begin to ring. The good news is that’s it’s going to come close but will miss the Earth. The bad news that it’s going to hit the Moon – hard – and then chunks of the Moon re going to hit us and all in a matter of days! Whilst Moonbase begins evacuation the US President decides to downplay the possibility of coastal damage due to tsunami’s generated by oceanic Moonstrikes. Thinking that more US citizens would definitely die in the resulting panic than is the possible flooding he hedges his bets and hopes for the best. Meanwhile the Lunar evacuation does not go well and six people will be left behind – including the VP who has laid his political future on his decision to ‘turn the lights out’ as the last person to leave. Saved in an adrenaline fuelled escape the VP is in a position to watch as debris from the impact makes it through Earth’s atmosphere devastating the parts of the globe facing the Moon. But worse is to come – the largest chunk of Moon yet seen is approaching and this one will do more than cause localised tsunami’s. This one is a planet killer…..

Of course we’ve seen a read this sort of thing before: from Armageddon, Deep Impact and Lucifer’s Hammer. As you might expect this often highly entertaining volume treads that well-travelled formula. Plucky astronauts, cool blooded (but highly intelligent) scientists, meddling politicians, greedy businessmen, and a whole host of average Joes just trying to survive. Oh, word to the wise, as this is an end of the world novel it’s probably best not to get too attached to any of the characters. Just saying…… Anyway…. From that basic premise the author builds a cracking story that moves at a good clip and it honestly a real page turner. There’s a few bits I had some problems with – the VP was far too much of a hero especially because he didn’t have any particular skill set to offer up except being the man on the spot and, well damn it someone had to do something! Oh, and there was a weird side story about a bunch of militia types who try to stop the final attempt to save the world (the one with far too many cliff hangers!) because they don’t believe the planet killer is real and they expect any real damage to bring down the government so that they can ‘take their country back’. Oh, and did I say anything about the incessant cliff hangers? But apart from these few, and to be honest insignificant, niggles this was a cracking story well told. It’s always a good sign when I power read through something and I managed the 544 pages in a long weekend. Recommended for anyone who wants to read a seat of your pants adventure novel.