In 2072, the Lunar Farside Radio Observatory on the Moon intercepts signals that are far too clean to be mere background interstellar noise. Working through the noise it becomes distinct, chatter, music and conversation. Mankind may not be alone in the universe! A society has evolved around our closest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri!
So begins the 2021 book by Travis S. Taylor and Les Johnson called Saving Proxima. It was a pretty inspired read for me at the end of 2021, a year that had begun in so much madness and chaos. So a story of interstellar humanitarianism was something I could really get behind!
The story is told in a roughly three decade span, first from the discovery of alien life around Proxima to the decision to send a ship to visit. There are, of course, reasons to do so. Information from the civilization around that star indicates they face a very real risk of a complete and total demographic collapse which only the more advanced civilization of Earth may be able to help. That isn't to say that everyone is onboard with offering such help, and there's some pretty rich machinations and intrigue behind all that we get to explore, and beneath that there are a few deeper mysteries I simply can't spoil! One thing I will say I appreciated is that the story very nicely stomps on the concept of the Fermi Paradox which I also tend to find annoying.
The various viewpoint characters serve to drive the plot. The three mains are the astronomer Lorraine "Rain" Gilster who initially discovers the signal, eccentric engineer and inventor Enrico Vulpetti who is extremely interested in the Proxima mission and the test engineer Roy Burbank, who sinks a lot of his life and expertise into humanity's first interstellar starship the Samaritan. There are numerous supporting characters and villains, but this would be what I consider the main cast whose stories we follow.
Our story really shines in the journey to Proxima as we examine a ship travelling at .85c towards our closest stellar neighbor with some clever (and plausible) technology to do the boosting. Life onboard the ship, how the ship functions, and some really clever technical work to keep it all together really hooked me in. The authors were very knowledgeable in how much of this future tech might work, what might mess it up, and all the ways to fix it. I was quite hooked by some really Star Trek style problems, but no technobabble fixes! No reversing the polarity here, just old fashioned elbow grease and technical know how!
It all comes together at arrival, with both a lot of human tragedy on the way there and some real hopeful moments with first contact. I'm happy to say that one of the few criticisms of the book I can make is that it simply felt like it needed to be longer in order to really maximize the impact the story could tell, and to explore some of the simply fascinating mysteries it set up early on and near the end. Thankfully, the book does seem to set us up for a sequel which will hopefully address more of these issues.
A short and compelling read for the end of 2021 or the early 2022 reader! Definitely worth your time!
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