The Hercules Text

What a magnificent book, and a debut (twenty years ago!), to boot. The vast majority of today’s science fiction debut novels can’t hold a candle to this one. The Hercules Text is a first-contact story, wherein humanity finally receives signals from another life form, but more importantly, the story i......more

A classic on the subject of communication with extraterrestrials, actually written before the much more famous CONTACT by Carl Sagan. I read it some years ago and went on to read other books by Jack McDevitt, one of the best of the science fiction writers today, in my opinion. Upon rereading it, I'm......more

VOTO PERSONALE:4,0 Nella narrativa fantascientifica, il tema del primo contatto con una civiltà extraterrestre intelligente ha giocato e sempre giocherà un ruolo fondamentale, in virtù delle numerose speculazioni a cui esso si presta, e credo che pochi altri temi interessino e stuzzichino la fantasia......more

This one started a little slower than McDevitt's books usually do, but with a great payoff once it got moving. It deals with the implications of receiving an alien communication with tremendous new technologies: anti-gravity, free energy, the ability to live forever. Sounds great, right? But can hum......more

More like 2.5. Without doubt the weakest book of McDevitt that I've read. It's not so much a SciFi novel as a rather tiresome debate about how the White house would handle an alien message. The book works ok for the 200 pages or so but after that the story becomes more and more fragmented. Sagans (I......more