- Cawdron, Peter.
My Sweet Satan.
Seattle: Amazon Digital Services, 2014.
ASIN B00NBA6Y1A.
-
Here the author adds yet another imaginative tale of first contact
to his growing list of novels in that genre, a puzzle story which the
viewpoint character must figure out having lost memories of her entire
adult life. After a botched attempt at reanimation from cryo-sleep,
Jasmine Holden finds herself with no memories of her life after the age
of nineteen. And yet, here she is, on board Copernicus,
in the Saturn system, closing in on the distant retrograde moon
Bestla which,
when approached by a probe from Earth, sent back an audio transmission
to its planet of origin which was mostly gibberish but contained the
chilling words: “My sweet Satan. I want to live and die for you,
my glorious Satan!”. A follow-up unmanned probe to Bestla is
destroyed as it approaches, and the Copernicus is
dispatched to make a cautious investigation of what appears to be an
alien probe with a disturbing theological predisposition.
Back on Earth, sentiment has swung back and forth about the merits of
exploring Bestla and fears of provoking an alien presence in
the solar system which, by its very capability of interstellar travel,
must be far in advance of Earthly technology. Jasmine, a key member
of the science team, suddenly finds herself mentally a 19 year old girl
far from her home, and confronted both by an unknown alien presence
but also conflict among her crew members, who interpret the imperatives
of the mission in different ways.
She finds the ship's computer, an early stage artificial intelligence,
the one being in which she can confide, and the only one who comprehends
her predicament and is willing to talk her through procedures she learned
by heart in her training but have been lost to an amnesia she feels
compelled to conceal from human members of the crew.
As the ship approaches Bestla, conflict erupts among the crew, and
Jasmine must sort out what is really going on and choose sides
without any recollections of her earlier interactions with her crew members.
In a way, this is three first contact novels in one: 19 year old Jasmine
making contact with her fellow crew members about which she remembers
nothing, the Copernicus and whatever is on Bestla,
and a third contact about which I cannot say anything without
spoiling the story.
This is a cracking good first contact novel which, just when you're
nearing the end and beginning to worry “Where's the sense of
wonder?” delivers everything you'd hoped for and more.
I read a pre-publication manuscript edition which the author
kindly shared with me.
September 2014 