Picked this one up out of a recommendation from a list of what were called “depressing” works of Sci-Fi.
It certainly might be viewed as that but it deserves a bit more scrutiny. It starts with an interesting premise—humanity is struggling at home but has progressed to the point where it can reach out to other stars and their surrounding systems. In only one of the systems they have visited however has there been found to be any life…and that life has long since gone extinct leaving a planet filled with ruins and rudimentary life but no clue as to the cause of the intelligent life form’s disappearance. Such life forms had even progressed to the point of travelling to their own moon and so the loss of an advanced civilization is felt to perhaps provide clues as to how humanity may save itself.
The book is certainly one of its times—being the mid 1970s. The threat of nuclear annihilation is rampant throughout and self destruction by Earth based governments that would strand the scientific outpost seeking these answers many lightyears from home is ever present.
The novel works out to being more of a “whodunit” than a space opera and really feels like it belongs more as a short story than the length it presents. The core of the work is in following the protagonist, a particularly skilled archeologist, as he researches the clues left behind by the prior civilization. All of which is a vehicle to explore issues with humanity itself—did they kill themselves off? Was it a virus? Did they grow too quick? Was it radiation? and on and on. This generates the weakest part of the book as Ian (the protagonist) goes from one specialist to another presenting his ideas only to get shot down by that particular base of knowledge telling why such a reason couldn’t have caused the downfall. Again, cut 40 pages out of this back and forth, put it in a magazine and it becomes much better.
I’ll leave the end of the book for the reader but suffice to say, it as well would fit much better in a shorter work where surprise twists are more acceptable without a big explanation. Here it comes off as a less than neat way of wrapping things up. Is the book interesting? Yes and a decent yarn as well as a neat hypothetical that earthbound explorers of yore have had to deal with. Lets just hope we keep moving outward and not succumbing to our naval gazing tendencies.