Ancient Shores

Something very strange has turned up in Tom Lasker's wheat field: a ten-thousand-year-old sailboat made of an unknown substance. And then there's the Roundhouse, apparently a doorway to another world, sitting squarely on Sioux reservation land. How did they get there, and what do they signify for the people embroiled in their discovery? This is sci-fi on a grand scale by the author of The Engines of God. From Publishers Weekly Early in the next century, outside a North Dakota town, farmer Tom Lasker digs up a boat on his land. Not only is the vessel crafted from an unknown element, but Lasker's farm is on land that has been dry for 10,000 years. A search for further artifacts unearths a building of the same material and age that turns out to be an interdimensional transportation device. The building sits on land owned by the Sioux, who want to use it to regain their old way of life on another world; meanwhile, the U.S. government, fearful of change, wants to destroy the building. Right up to the climax, McDevitt (Engines of God) tells his complex and suspenseful story with meticulous attention to detail, deft characterizations and graceful prose. That climax, though, is another matter, featuring out-of-the-blue heroic intervention in a conflict between the feds and the Indians by, among others, astronaut Walter Schirra, cosmologist Stephen Hawking and SF writers Ursula K. LeGuin, Carl Sagan and Gregory Benford. "If the government wants to kill anyone else, it'll have to start with us," announces Stephen Jay Gould. That absurdity aside, this is the big-vision, large-scale novel McDevitt's readers have been waiting for. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist Hard sf specialist McDevitt explores what happens when an unearthed artifact, in this case a 42-foot yacht, proves to be the offspring of unheard-of technologies. Within weeks of its discovery beneath a North Dakota farm field, the boat becomes a media sensation coveted by prospective buyers and scientists, among them chemist April Cannon, who garners quick fame from analyzing the boat's astonishing components. And where there's a boat, there's a boathouse, which Cannon and company duly uncover on a nearby Sioux reservation and dub the Roundhouse. Soon the national economy verges on collapse because the materials from which the artifacts are made seem to wear forever: obsolescence in goods made from the stuff will be obsolete. So, just as scientists discover that the Roundhouse is the vehicle for instantaneous travel to other worlds, the government plots to desecrate Indian property once again to destroy it. A large cast of colorful characters, a wry overview of society's extreme behavior in the face of the unknown, and a surprise ending make this irresistibly compelling reading, one of McDevitt's best. Carl Hays From Kirkus Reviews Astonishingly, North Dakota farmer Tom Lasker unearths a perfectly preserved 42-foot sailboat from his wheatfield. More remarkable still, the boat is made of materials unknown to science- -and has probably lain buried for ten thousand years, since it last sailed the waters of an ancient glacial lake. While tourists line up to goggle at the boat--its automatic lights still work--Tom's pilot friend Max Collingswood and scientist April Cannon wonder whether there's a boathouse, too. Sure enough, a geophysics survey reveals a mysterious structure buried on the nearby Sioux reservation. Max and April negotiate permission to dig and soon uncover a glassy circular building that contains a transporter device connecting it to another planet hundreds of light-years away. But, clearly, these advanced technologies threaten global economic stability, and the President comes under pressure to secure the building and destroy it (having, apparently, forgotten about the a sailboat, which Tom has already sold). The Sioux resist, however, and just as a dreadful slaughter seems unavoidable, Max ferries in a planeload of luminaries to broadcast the truth of the world. From familiar components, McDevitt (The Engines of God, 1994, etc.) has fashioned a solidly engrossing tale that, despite some plot wobbles, brims with low-key attractions. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Read more