Encounter with Tiber
by Buzz Aldrin, John Barnes
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Book Summary Information
Author: Buzz Aldrin, John BarnesEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1997-05-01
ISBN: 0446604046
Number of pages: 656
Publisher: Aspect
Book Reviews of Encounter with Tiber
Book Review: Best space science SF ever written
Summary: 5 Stars
This is not a read for those who could "never get past the whale blubber" when trying to read the great Moby Dick. The space science, often engineering science, is real like you have never seen it before (just as Melville's account of whaling in the age of sail is authentic). There is a problem, however, especially in the beginning, in being able to always distinguish between what NASA has done, the technical ideas others have developed and that might be done, and authentic technical ideas by Aldrin and perhaps Barnes. It is a shame not to know which are Aldrin's ideas, for some of them are ingenious and created in me a sense of wonder. Do not skip the technological descriptions (hard to do anyway as they are ubiquitous), for as was true of Moby Dick, they provide the book's tone and ultimately define it. Melville's prose sometimes carried a rolling thunder to it, said to be the result of his reading Shakespeare and the King James Bible. This book does not have anything like that quality and therefore will not escape the genre label of SF. But the insights are sometimes astonishing. The whys and the ways of massacre warfare are flatly logically stated, and the killing is carried out by humans and aliens who you otherwise generally think of as good beings (the pain and killing at Kosovo could just as easily be explained). This is Barnes' contribution, I am sure. The nature of race and prejudice is explored with an at times subtle parallel to American history. The politics of space travel are laid out, and it is clear how much hangs on ulterior motives, reactive (as opposed to proactive) thinking, and chance, including disaster. Sad to say, Aldrin and Barnes' implication that it probably would take a Tiber Encyclopedia or planet crushing cloud of comets to galvanate Earthlings to reach for the planets, let alone the stars, is believable. The interelationships of people, whether human or alien, are at times insightful and good, but mostly they are described rather than revealed through their behavior. And a major character (the younger Terrence) is described at length in a way that is so flat and without the novelist's dynamic, that I wondered if it was Buzz Aldrin's autobiography. Nonetheless, the characters are well defined characters. In other words, the fictional quality is not as good as one would like but it works, partly because of the intelligence that has gone into it. The carefully constructed aliens, human characters, and plot, along with the technology, make this story plausable. You may have to remember the stories by the aliens are supposedly dumbed down translations for high school students. Many readers who equate SF with fantasy, whether they realize it or not, and many who want ceaseless action will drop by the wayside; they will never finish this long book. The book is long and alternates from one "novel" to another, but in the end the separate stories are nicely joined. Well done, Aldrin and Barnes.
Summary of Encounter with Tiber
The Tiberians--long-extinct beings that once visited Earth--have left a record of their civilization on the Moon and Mars. In a cruel twist of fate, veteran astronaut Chris Terence loses his life trying to recover this treasure. Yet his family is determined to continue the mission--leading them on an epic adventure to Mars and beyond, in a race to avoid the Tiberians' doomed destiny.Buzz Aldrin, one of manned space flight's pioneers, has helped create a stunning, possibly prophetic novel of the future of space exploration. A radio beacon from an unknown world leads an astronaut to disaster on the Moon -- and his son far beyond that as he searches for the key to the mystery of Tiber, a civilization who left artifacts in the solar system some 9,000 years ago, with sufficient impact on human affairs to explain some odd references in the Bible. The villains of the book are not the aliens, but the benighted politicians with the minds of accountants who won't fund the necessary scientific derring-do to save the world -- apparently an affliction which alien astronauts also have to bear.
You can read an exclusive interview with Buzz Aldrin written by Frank Braun.
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