- Cawdron, Peter.
Feedback.
Los Gatos, CA: Smashwords, 2014.
ISBN 978-1-4954-9195-5.
-
The author has established himself as the contemporary
grandmaster of first contact science fiction. His
earlier
Anomaly (December 2011),
Xenophobia (August 2013),
and Little Green Men (September 2013)
all envisioned very different scenarios for a first
encounter between humans and intelligent extraterrestrial
life, and the present novel is as different from those which
preceded it as they are from each other, and equally
rewarding to the reader.
South Korean Coast Guard helicopter pilot John Lee is flying
a covert mission to insert a U.S. Navy SEAL team off the
coast of North Korea to perform a rescue mission when his
helicopter is shot down by a North Korean fighter. He barely
escapes with his life when the chopper ditches in the ocean, makes
it to land, and realises he is alone in North Korea without
any way to get home. He is eventually captured and taken to
a military camp where he is tortured to reveal information
about a rumoured UFO crash off the coast of Korea, about which
he knows nothing. He meets an enigmatic English-speaking
boy who some call the star-child.
Twenty years later, in New York City, physics student Jason Noh
encounters an enigmatic young Korean woman who claims to have just
arrived in the U.S. and is waiting for her father. Jason, given to
doodling arcane equations as his mind runs free, befriends her and
soon finds himself involved in a surrealistic sequence of events which
causes him to question everything he has come to believe about the
world and his place in it.
This an enthralling story which will have you scratching your
head at every twist and turn wondering where it's going and
how all of this is eventually going to make sense. It does,
with a thoroughly satisfying resolution. Regrettably, if I
say anything more about where the story goes, I'll risk spoiling
it by giving away one or more of the plot elements which the
reader discovers as the narrative progresses. I was delighted
to see an idea about the
nature of flying
saucers
I first wrote about in 1997 appear here, but please don't follow
that link until you've read the book as it too would spoil
a revelation which doesn't emerge until well into the story.
A Kindle edition is available. I
read a pre-publication manuscript edition which the author
kindly shared with me.
February 2014 