Omega

Rating:
Summary: Very light
Review: I picked this up in an airport bookstore hoping for a tight, believable plot. This is very light science fiction - there are way too many holes and unbelievable elements in the science and set-up. Fine for a quick adventure read, but don't expect much more.

Rating:
Summary: Solid read
Review: I was a bit shocked to see such an angry review of this book by an earlier reviewer. I guess some people just dont get mcdveitt. Some people didnt understand heinlein either i suppose.

I'm not saying Mcdevitt is on par with heinlein, but the style of writing is very similar. If you are looking for hard SF, with science driven stories, this isnt for you. If you like character and idea driven stories, with a SF background, this is an ideal book, although not as good as some of the earlier in the series (The Engines of God, Deepsix, Chindi...although it really isnt neccessary to have read any of them before this one. While they do follow a sequence, they're stand alone books as well, the older books would just provide more background)

The plot is more or less summarised in the reviews above, so i wont go into that. If you've liked Mcdevitt in the past, you will enjoy this as well. If you havent liked him, well, his writing hasnt changed, and probably wont. I'd reccommend the book to those who havent started in on Mcdevitt yet, but would reccommend starting with The Engines of God first as i feel it's a better starting point that jumping into this one.

Rating:
Summary: Glad not the Omega(last) Mcdevitt Novel
Review: In this latest space opera/hard sci-fi novel penned by veteran sci-fi novelist McDevitt Priscilla Hutchins a recurring lead character, has moved up in The Academy Hierarchy. Yet that doesn't prevent her from lighting this novel up the way she has lit up his previous novels.

Omega is a malevelant(presumably) destroyer of civilizations, a space-cloud that had wiped out a couple societys in the distant setting in which the novel is based in, and there is an Omega clou heading to earth in oh about 900 years or so. Therefore nobody takes nuch notice of the far from imminent crisis, as they study the phenomenom in the most abstract terms. Until a sentient race is discovered on a planet due to be hit by an Omega in the very near future. The inhibitants or Goombahs as the media has dubbed them are a very cute and popular species making the effort to divert the cloud and save them even more politically intense. Priscilla almost launches a rescue mission of teams forbidden to break protocol i.e. letting the "Goombah's" learn of the human existence which makes the mission even more unlikely to succeed.

McDevitt has been given due for his ability to create alien systems/races and planets. This is clearly a novel of him highlighting his strengths as a writer as the Goombah's are almost more fully characterized than their human counterparts. The reader is made to fully understand the workings of Goombah society, their daily life, entertainment sexual practices, religious maxims etc...

I surmise the author went out of his way to use this book as an expression of some of his own beliefs and values, there were passages I drew an imaginary parallel to Gulliver's Travels. The Literati would probably be offended by such a comparision, yet I feel McDevitt echoed some of Swift's message in a far away setting in the far future. This is more than mere entertainment and high space drama, it is a story with meaning (whether intentionally inserted into the tale by the author or not the meaning is still evident to this reviewer and can be interpreted by any reader however they like.)

There are no clear answers to the Omega offered by McDevitt but I think that was part of his point and should not subtract from one's enjoyment of this book.

Rating:
Summary: ok but nothing exciting
Review: Jack McDevitt is one of my favorite writers and that's why I was so dissapointed after I read this book. While it wasn't bad by any means it was nowhere near as good as Chindi or Deepsix or Infinity Beach. I think the problem that I had is that most of the book is taken by description by this alien civilization and how they live and act. Its rather boring and personally, I couldn't wait for something exciting to happen. I only hope his next book will be more satisfying.

Rating:
Summary: Omega is the Antithesis of Sense of Wonder SF
Review: Jack McDevitt's preachy and unimaginative morality tale, Omega, will appeal to fans of writers such as Robert Sawyer who use futuristic SF settings as childish allegories for the modern world. What it will not do is make anyone sit up and gasp at its author's inventiveness or perception.

Although the story is set some 230 years in the future, its underlying assumptions are strictly those of the early 2000's. In the same way that much of 1950's SF is unreadable today (and was unreadable then to readers looking for something more from SF than 1950's characters and ideas sloppily glued into a future with rocket ships), Omega is rendered incredibly boring by its having no speculative ideas whatsoever.

The author never tires of having his fictional third-rate intellects tear down paper tiger arguments propounded by fictional fourth-rate intellects. His readers may not all have such patience.

McDevitt gives us bipedal, seeing, speaking, clothes-wearing, city-building aliens who are more human than human beings are. They are physiologically close enough to earth life as to not really seem alien at all. And the physical resemblance is only the tip of the iceberg - McDevitt laboriously pounds home what he clearly considers to be a profound point: the aliens are, at heart, Just Like Us. What then, the reader may ask, is the point of having aliens at all?

The aliens ("Goompahs," so named in the book because of their likeness to the characters in a popular children's show of 2234) will appeal precisely to those readers who regard Barney the dinosaur as a great entertainer.

The book's plot consists of a straightforward though of course predictable scramble by humans to save the Goompahs from a killer space cloud (an Omega, one of many that mysteriously destroy civilizations throughout the galaxy). There is no real suspense, obviously - Barney never dies in his 2004 appearances, either.

Frequent gratuitous character viewpoint shifts are annoying distractions, especially since much of the "action" reverts to recurring McDevitt character Priscilla Hutchins. Hutch is now a bureaucrat back on Earth. Betters authors than McDevitt would be unable to make a bureaucrat's daily activities seem exciting (if they were unwise enough to try), so it is not surprising that the story plods even more than usual when it is sidetracked to Hutch.

Omega is not a book for adults or intelligent adolescents. Actual pre-schoolers would be better served by the real Barney.

Rating:
Summary: Accessible and yet still of high calibre
Review: Okay, first off - this was, hands down, the best McDevitt I've read to date. If you've not read McDevitt, and are at all a fan of Science Fiction, you need to go out there and find yourself a copy of 'The Engines of God,' 'Infinity Beach,' 'Deepsix,' and 'Chindi.' Now. If you're not a huge fan of Science Fiction, let me tell you, though there's some astrophysics in there, McDevitt writes a lot more sociologically, adventure-action, and philosophically than nearly any other contemporary science fiction author I know, with the exception of Robert J. Sawyer. That said, his style is quite deft, as is Sawyer's, and a lot of people just don't 'get' it - as is obvious from some of the reviews written here. I happily suggest reading a chapter in the store prior to purchase, though I've yet to meet someone while working in my bookstore's Sci-Fi section who didn't like McDevitt.

Okay, fan-boy praising hereby endeth.

The story picks up the character of Priscilla Hutchins (who, now married and with a kiddy, plays a much more administrative and planet-bound role) and the storyline of the Omega clouds. Strange clouds that pop up, find anything remotely geometrical (especially, say, buildings), and blast them to bits. They're all over the universe, but why worry, as the one heading towards earth is not due for another, oh, nine hundred years. Yawn.

But one of them being tracked by the Academy makes a right turn, and this time, in McDevitt's nearly lifeless galaxy, seems to be setting its sights on levelling an alien race who are somewhere around the Ancient Greece level of evolution. In about nine months.

The race is on - but to do what? Try to stop the cloud - no one knows how. Try to save the race - again, how do you save a race that's about to be hit by tsunamis, tidal waves, tornadoes and all the other horrid things the Omega clouds do? Obviously, it would be wrong to step in, break protocol, and talk to the natives?

Right?

The story is very high paced, and as is always McDevitt's style, you never know who will make it to the end (he is not above killing off a character in a completely realistic fashion - by which I mean there's no hero capable of dodging all the bullets all the time), and his tendancy to through in a few philosophical characters absolutely shines in this book. McDevitt, as always, delivered a solid adventure worthy of any Sci-Fi buff's attention, but in a manner accessible to those who don't read Sci-Fi on a regular basis. Superb!


Rating:
Summary: The Clouds Strike Again
Review: Omega is the fourth novel in the Hutch series, following Chindi. In the first volume of this series, Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins piloted the expedition that discovered the omega clouds in 2202. Twenty-eight years later, an omega cloud turned from its path and approached Moonlight (Brinkman IV), an iceworld with extensive ruins. David Collingdale led an Academy team that tried to destroy the cloud with nuclear weapons. Although the bombs tore great holes in the cloud, it recovered and carried through the attack, yet missed one city hidden within a blizzard.

In this novel, four years later, Hutch is acting Director for Operations at the Academy. She receives word from Broadside that another omega cloud, 3000 lightyears away, has turned from its path and that an academy ship, the Bill Jenkins, has been diverted to check the target system for artificial structures. Elsewhere, other Academy ships have been investigating the omega clouds. The Peter Quaqmor team find something unusual directly in front of their cloud: a 240-sided vessel that looks like a hedgehog. When the team drills a hole into the vessel, however, everything in the vicinity disappears in a great flash.

Academy ships soon find that hedgehogs are leading every omega cloud that they have investigated, with one exception. The cloud that recently turned aside does not have a hedgehog in front of it, but one was found on the original path. Apparently the clouds normally follow the hedgehogs, but can change directions after detecting objects with right angles, such as artificial structures, in order to attack those objects.

When the Jenkins reaches the target system (which the team names Lookout), they find that funny looking aliens dwell in a limited area on the surface. Since Hutch has been anticipating this situation, she sends two more ships to Lookout. One contains a team of linguists and nabobs and the other is a freighter carrying rainmaking gear, holographic projectors and a huge box kite. The mission chief is David Collingdale, who is determined that the cloud will not destroy the homes of this civilization.

In this story, the aliens, who look like the Goompahs in a popular children's show, catch the interest and sympathy of the general public, prompting a number of movements and activities to profit from the situation. For example, a drive to provide assistance to the natives is well funded from public donations. However, various firms also produce dolls and other products based on the alien society. Moreover, the media and other entertainment industries want footage of the aliens during the crisis to titillate their patrons.

Hutch is squarely in the middle of the efforts to analyze the omega clouds and to avert a catastrophe on Lookout. The Commissioner stays as far away from these efforts as possible to avoid any fallout from a possible failure. Hutch gets to talk to all the flaky, greedy and narrow-focused opportunists who want transportation to Lookout.

Meanwhile, Digger Dunn and the team on the Jenkins are getting to know the Goompahs. They have been provided with lightbenders, so that they can walk invisibly among the Goompahs, setting pickups in public places to collect data for analysis by the linguists on the al-Jahani. They start in the city which they have named Athens, due to its architecture, but called Brackel by the natives.

This story is the best so far in a particularly good series. The aliens have many human attributes, but seem to mostly lack any form of bigotry or fanaticism. They seem to be more flexible in their thinking than humans. However, they are terrified of the human image because of the resemblance to a type of demon in their mythology. They run off screaming whenever Digger appears, which rather depresses his mood.

Highly recommended for McDevitt fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of alien societies and first contact.

Rating:
Summary: Very satisfying
Review: Once again Jack McDevitt delivers a hard sci fi thriller set in the not too distant future. This time the deadly omega clouds are approaching an small planet called Lookout 3000 lightyears from earth. A small survey team heads for the planet to determine whether any life exists, and at the last minute they discover a race of beings.

Now it is a race between human technology and the deadly omega clouds to attempt a recue of an entire planet. But 3000 light years is still a very long ways away, and it comes down to a handful of heroic people to attempt the impossible.

I never miss a McDevitt novel and you shouldn't either.

Rating:
Summary: Suspenseful and imaginative
Review: Still almost 900 years away from Earth, the Omega clouds - malevolent energy masses that drift through the universe, destroying any civilization they encounter - are nobody's immediate worry. Until an Omega veers toward an unexplored system, and a planet that happens to have a very appealing, pre-technological civilization on it.

In the conclusion to McDevitt's trilogy ("The Engines of God," "Chindi"), former astronaut Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, is now married, a mother and a Space Academy administrator. It's her job to figure out how to save the cute aliens, staying within Protocol if possible. Which means no contact that might disrupt or influence their development.

Jack Markover has spent his working life seeking alien civilizations and the Goompahs - named after similarly appealing TV characters - are the first he's found. In nine months the Omega is going to obliterate them. He can't let it happen.

David Collingdale saw the Omega's destruction first hand, and it left him obsessed with stopping them. When Hutch hastily throws together a rescue mission from Earth, he insists on leading it. But the mission won't arrive for almost nine months, so Markover and his crew have to try and convince the Goompahs to flee their cities, while feeding data back to Collingdale's scientists and linguists. Meanwhile the scientists back on Earth are working on the problem and the newspapers are clamoring for rescue.

There are a lot of characters involved - in various spaceships and on Earth - and a number of subplots including a romance and mysterious exploding stars that were never stars. McDevitt spices his suspenseful story with plenty of humor and irony (only occasionally heavy-handed) and his characters are credible and sympathetic. The rescue attempt goes down to the wire, naturally, and McDevitt's characters pull out all the stops for an exciting, satisfying finish.

Rating:
Summary: Not quite an _Omega_ but not an _Alpha_ either
Review: Strangely enough (the book was released quite a while ago) I've found myself to be the first one to review it. Everyone's waiting for paperback? (I've actually tuned in to READ opinions on this one, but since there are none - I'll put my two cents.)

This book is rather typical for Jack McDevitt of late. I'm a huge fan of his, and to me his best work is still _A Talent for War_, with _Infinity Beach_ and _Ancient Shores_ coming very close. In his best efforts he creates an intriguing mystery and explores it with us through main protagonists. This scheme fully applies to all the books in the _Hutch trilogy_: _The Engines of God_, _Chindi_, and the last one, _Omega_ (well, there's also the _Deepsix_, but it's more of a _rescue-them_ thriller and doesn't feature any grand ideas). Space archeology is intriguing subject indeed, but unfortunately the scheme works less and less with each subsequent book. McDevitt has an increasing tendency to bury the main plot (i.e. archeology, Chindi exploration, or omegas themselves) under some rather mundane adventures and constant attempts to rescue one or another character from various (but not terribly creative) dangers, mostly self-induced, which after a while gets incredibly tiresome. This, to a lesser extent, was also the problem of _The Engines of God_,
but that book still had great sense of wonder. However, the fundamental problem of the book is that these ordeals constitute the major part of it, with so little space given to the mystery of the omega clouds, that the solution to it feels almost as an afterthought (and, frankly, quite tedious one - but no spoilers here). Also, I have to say that, within the context of this solution to the origin of the omegas, some of the events of the two previous books just make no sense to me.

Ultimately, the book reads as a mixture of _The Engines of God_ and _Deepsix_, with far more of the latter in the mix. This might sound like a good combination, but it really isn't. For a fast-paced _rescue-them_ thriller it's far too slow, and for a book of discoveries on a grand scale it doesn't really have anything new. Oh yes, McDevitt introduces a whole new civilization of Goompahs; however, he fails to describe it in any convincing way, and at best they're still _men in funny costumes_, to put it in great Star Trek tradition. Honestly, rather sketchingly presented Noks from the first book feel much more compelling. So, if you loved _The Engines of God_ and _Chindi_ (doesn't seem to be very likely, this one), then you don't need an invitation. Others, who are new to McDevitt, might want to try his earlier books, they're well worth it.