Ancient Shores - Jack McDevitt

Ancient Shores

By Jack McDevitt

  • Release Date: 2009-10-13
  • Genre: Science Fiction
4 Score: 4 (From 77 Ratings)

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Book Synopsis

It turned up in a North Dakota wheat field: a triangle, like a shark's fin, sticking up from the black loam. Tom Lasker did what any farmer would have done. He dug it up. And discovered a boat, made of a fiberglass-like material with an utterly impossible atomic number. What it was doing buried under a dozen feet of prairie soil two thousand miles from any ocean, no one knew. True, Tom Lasker's wheat field had once been on the shoreline of a great inland sea, but that was a long time ago -- ten thousand years ago.

A return to science fiction on a grand scale, reminiscent of the best of Heinlein, Simak, and Clarke, Ancient Shores is the most ambitious and exciting SF triumph of the decade, a bold speculative adventure that does not shrink from the big questions -- and the big answers.

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Latest Impressions

  • Ancient Shores

    5
    By turquoise Dave
    Rarely have I read such an original and exciting work!

  • Good fiction, bad humans..

    1
    By John Frosted
    In my opinion, good science fiction is what happens to the characters of the story when confronted with a new idea or discovery. It's not the discovery that's important, it's how everyone reacts to it that's makes the story. Well in this book, I think the reactions of the social/political/religious/economic characters, when faced with something that they did not understand and could not control, were dead on exactly what we could expect. In fact, I barely made it through the book, for I was ashamed to be a member of the same species as whom the characters depicted. The ending was not satisfactory for I don't think any of the characters actually learned anything.. It was a coop out, but maybe I missed something because buy the end of the book, I had little empathy or positive feelings for any one in the human race. The writing was good, you can completely come to terms why everyone reacted the way they did, but you certainty won't like it, or wish to be associated with them.

  • What a ride

    3
    By gina MP
    I decided to read this book even after reading reviews that mentioned there was politics and world events heavily involved with a fantastic discovery. I tend to like my Scifi a little more pure. Best decision of the month! I was hooked immediately and could not put it down until the last word. One word of criticism... I was left with such a sense of loss of not getting to explore all the worlds that this story so tantalyzingly dangles in front of the reader. A second novel is an absolute MUST!!!!

  • Decent read, but annoyingly faulty premises

    3
    By Jacob Whitehead
    I really enjoyed the possibilities the ancient artifact opened up. But as I read the novel I could not buy into the assertion that a global economic catastrophe would immediately result from finding an alien technology that could potentially make some current technology obsolete but no one was any where near duplicating it. Furthermore, the alien tech opened up so many new possibilities and opportunities that i would believe the opposite result should occur; i.e., i would foresee an economic boom to occur. I would say more but I don't want to give away what the artifact does. It seems to me that the premises would be analogous to suggesting that the invention of the steam engine would result in an economic collapse because blacksmiths etc. would no longer be needed. I think people are smarter than that. We retool and pretty soon we are opening new frontiers and making cars and planes. I would give the book four stars if the author would have supported the premises with more details rather than assume mass hysteria because of the possibility of a new technology that was not even close to being realized.

  • Riveting, mind spurring read

    5
    By Azikate
    Ancient Shores is beautifully written with vibrant characters and a plot and setting combo that both entertains and spurs the reader to think. I couldn't stop reading it, and even when it was over I wanted to pick it up and bask in it again. Fantastic book.

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