WHERE LIGHT DOES NOT REACH

A globetrotting whale researcher and an aging astronaut are thrown together by Earth-shaking enigmas in Night’s SF novel.

Soledad, an oceanic researcher specializing in whales, is investigating a horrific phenomenon that sees sperm whales fatally stranding themselves around the planet, most recently on a beach in Australia—it’s a marine-mammal mass suicide that’s only one example of whales behaving out of character lately (“For an endangered species with only an estimated several hundred thousand members left, this was equivalent to losing something like thirty million people”). Jack Dash is a veteran U.S. astronaut from the International Space Station who has earned notoriety by living through a suit-breach incident that left him exposed to the vacuum of space for five minutes. From his terrestrial point of view (he’s since pivoted to earthbound astronomy), he is the first observer to detect that stars seem to be vanishing mysteriously. Circumstances throw the pair together, and as they investigate their respective puzzles the two find that their divergent science backgrounds—and perhaps their respective heartaches—nicely complement each other. But much bigger things are afoot: Fearful populaces, panicked over the “dark forest” theory that holds Earth’s radio telescopes and broadcasts are drawing attention from hostile aliens, are attacking sky-watching stations. Soledad’s whale-trackers indicate that the sperm whales are feeding on some kind of abyssal sponge, leading to altered-consciousness states; what would happen if a human consumed it? Night spins an apocalyptic SF yarn of the high-IQ Gregory Benford variety, with an extremely odd cosmic alliances of alien superintelligences and Earth life coming together to combat an apocalyptic menace. The author notes that Arthur C. Clarke’s SF classic Childhood’s End (1953), with its narrative of humanity making a great leap forward, is a direct inspiration, but in this case the progression takes the form of an almost certainly fatal emergency. Despite all of the inherent gloom, however, readers will cheer as the smart, nervy characters persevere in their fight and prove that survival is a worthy goal; the book also boasts loads of funky physics, cetacean science, some philosophies of existence worth considering, and a heartening shoutout to Carl Sagan.

Literate, big-brained SF that tells a whale of a tale.