In the Ocean of Night
Gregory Benford
ebook $9.78 Kindle $10.99 Nook
paperback $22.99

This one has been around for a while. I read it in high school, which should tell you something right there, although it had been a few years when I first read it. I didn’t really connect with the book at that time. I think I had gotten it and the sequel, Across the Sea of Suns, as a combination deal through the SFBC. I never read the sequel.

I recently decided to reread In the Ocean of Night. I’ve been in the mood for some hard science space adventure. Bowl of Heaven only scratched the itch.

So how did the book hold up when returning to it after nearly 30 years? Pretty well, on the whole. Even though time has caught up with the novel’s timeline, so that it opens in what is now the past.The novel opens in 1999 and closes in 2019.

The story concerns Nigel Walmslely, a British ex-pat in the US astronaut corps. He’s sent on a mission to destroy an asteroid that has changed course due to a sudden gas jet erupting on the surface. The new course will result in a collision with Earth.

While planting the charges, Nigel discovers artifacts on the asteroid that shouldn’t be there. Is this evidence of alien life or of a previously unknown technological civilization from Earth? Nigel holds off on blowing the asteroid up as long as he can, studying what he finds and removing as many artifacts as possible.

During his exploration, something triggers a signal. That signal is received by an alien probe nearby, “nearby” being within a few light years. The probe changes course and arrives in the solar system to investigate.

Dubbed “The Snark”, the probe sets off a series of events that won’t be concluded in one novel.

I don’t think I was ready for this book in high school. It’s more of a novel for someone with a bit of life experience. Nigel has to deal with internal politics at NASA throughout much of the book. Also, there is a religious movement that is growing in society, and it gets stronger throughout the novel. By the end of the book, it’s strong enough to have political influence to put its own people in positions of authority.  They cause Nigel a number of problems on the personal and professional level.

I didn’t find Nigel to be a particularly likeable character, but then I didn’t find him particularly unlikable either. The thing I found compelling was the scientific mystery that starts off the novel. By the end, there are so many more compelling questions waiting to be answered.  It was the mystery of the great unknown that the book was really about.

In the Ocean of Night is the first volume of Benford’s Galactic Center series. I liked it enough to want to read more in the series, which I’ll  be working my way through during the rest of this year.